Chapter 2

Chapter 2: No Victims

Dusk pressed in. Slanting sunlight spilled from the far edge of the city, threading thin bands of pale gold between a forest of skyscrapers.

But deep inside the Old City—hemmed in by tall buildings that blocked the light—the alley had already sunk into shadow.

The damp chill lingering in the air didn’t match the dry warmth outside. Between cracks in the brick and stone, tiny chips of ice were still melting, stubborn evidence that something unnatural had happened here.

Several fast-moving black shadows slipped through the gaps between buildings as if they had no weight. They leapt down from above and landed in the corner of the alley, their edges trembling as they condensed into wolf-like forms.

Faceless shadowspawn.

They prowled and sniffed at the ground for a while, then slowly gathered together. The leading wolf lifted its head and began to howl toward the sky.

“Awooo—”

Bang!

A stone struck it cleanly on the head, cutting the howl off mid-breath. A sharp scolding voice followed from the shadow of a nearby building.

“Shut up! You’re not allowed to howl in the city. And tacking a ‘woof’ onto the end doesn’t make it okay! Humans aren’t idiots. No one’s going to believe you’re dogs!”

The wolves immediately let out a few embarrassed whines and backed away, heads lowered like scolded pets.

A petite figure stepped out of the darkness.

She was a short-haired girl in a black skirt and a dark red coat, a strand of hair curling up at her forehead. She looked sixteen or seventeen. Her eyes, however, were calm and steady, too mature for her face.

Without sparing the wolves another glance, she walked past them and stopped beside the body lying at the roadside.

A shadow crossed her expression. She crouched and checked something, while one of the wolves padded closer and conveyed information in a low, muddled growl.

“…The smell of rain?” the girl murmured.

She frowned and glanced up. The sky between the skyscrapers was clear and bright despite the fading light—sunny for days, with no hint of gloom.

After a moment, something seemed to click into place. She looked down again, studying the horrific wound in the corpse’s chest, and muttered under her breath.

“…Rain. Heart. The stench of frogs…”

A ringtone blared from the small pouch at her waist, cutting off her self-talk—the opening theme from the 1986 Journey to the West. She answered before the Monkey finished his fourth somersault.

“Hello? …Ah. Right. It’s me.”

With the phone pressed to her ear, she lifted a hand and motioned around. The wolves fanned out to guard the alley while she stepped aside.

“I’m here. My wolves sensed something off first, but we lost it. Came up empty.”

She sighed, her gaze drifting back to the corpse.

“It was ‘Rain.’ It generated an entity called a ‘rain frog,’ but this should’ve been a local projection. The affected area was just one person. Yeah. Extremely unlucky—a ‘Rain’ that fell for one person only. It stopped before I arrived. Depth here is back to L0, and ‘Rain’ has already detached from the borderland.”

She paused, listening while the voice on the other end fired off questions and instructions. After a moment, she clicked her tongue.

“…Medical staff? Send a corpse collector. How could an ordinary person survive a solo encounter with a ‘rain frog’? The heart’s gone.”

Another pause.

“I’ll stay on-site. And don’t forget to file the overtime separately.”

The middle-aged boss on the other end kept talking, but the girl’s patience ran thin. She gave a few clipped answers and hung up.

She walked back, waved a wolf over, and sat down on its back as if it were a bench. Resting her chin in her hands, she stared at the dead man.

“Unlucky guy,” she muttered softly. “No idea if you’ve got family. Dying out here alone…”

She exhaled, watching the empty lane.

“It must’ve been cold. Dying in ‘Rain.’ If I were the one with Little Match Girl, I could’ve warmed you up before you went…”

She waited like that until an engine roared at the intersection a few dozen meters away.

The sound was so violent it felt like a heavy armored vehicle towing a shipping container, running on firewood, bouncing over ten speed bumps in a row. Even the wolf under her jolted, half-ready to leap—only stopping because she was still sitting on it.

A battered van rattled into view, creaking and shuddering over the speed bumps like the Soviet Union in 1991.

The girl slid off the wolf at an unhurried pace and watched with a flat expression as the van bumped, stalled, and died. Several burly men in black tactical gear jumped down, armed to the teeth with high-tech equipment, and began pushing the van from behind as if this were standard procedure.

A middle-aged man climbed out next. He wore a brown coat, dark-skinned and sturdy, with the air of someone who’d long since stopped being surprised by anything. Behind him came a young woman in a white dress, brown hair falling over her shoulders.

The two of them shot helpless looks back at their subordinates and the dead van, then walked over.

The short-haired girl couldn’t help muttering, “Seriously, can’t your Second Team apply for a new van? The Special Operations Bureau can’t be that broke. I feel like one of your guys’ helmets could buy a replacement.”

“Shh!” the middle-aged man hurriedly waved her down, lowering his voice as he glanced back. “Don’t say that. You don’t know the situation. Things are special in the Special Operations Bureau. The van’s just… not feeling well today. We absolutely can’t replace it.”

“Big organization, big headaches,” the girl said, unimpressed.

Then she turned to the woman in white. “Good evening, Dr. Lin. Long time no see.”

“You should say good evening to Little Red Riding Hood,” Dr. Lin replied with a faint smile. Her thin lips made her look reserved, even when she was being kind. “How’s that injury from last time?”

“Almost healed.” Little Red Riding Hood rolled her right wrist. “Wolves heal fast.”

“Humans heal the fastest,” Dr. Lin corrected in a serious tone, “they’re just remarkably good at not getting injured in the first place.”

“…Right,” Little Red Riding Hood said, clearly uninterested in arguing.

She gestured toward the roadside. “Let’s focus. Victim is male, looks mid-twenties. Heart taken by a rain frog. Time of death: about two hours ago. I haven’t searched him yet. I kept the scene intact. Not sure if he has ID—”

Dr. Lin crouched beside the body and examined it briefly. She checked the pockets and produced an identification card.

“The name is Yu Sheng. Twenty-four,” she read, comparing the photo to the dead man’s face. “Registered address: No. 66, Wu Tong Road, Old Quarter. Captain Song, later see if you can contact his family.”

“Mm.” Captain Song leaned closer, frowning at the card. “Why’s the photo so blurry?”

Little Red Riding Hood leaned in too.

The portrait area looked smeared with gray-black grime, as if someone had rubbed soot across it. The face beneath was almost completely erased.

Dr. Lin scraped at the stain with her finger. It didn’t budge. The grime wasn’t on the surface—it felt like it had sunk into the card itself.

“You can’t even read the name clearly,” Little Red Riding Hood muttered. “And the ID number’s gone too. You’ll have to bring it back and read the chip.”

Captain Song sighed and let his gaze drift to the dark, washed-out stains on the ground.

“What a shame,” he said quietly. “If only we had a usable identification card. Like this, there are too few clues.”

Dr. Lin nodded, brows drawn. “…And there isn’t even a body left behind. It’ll be hard to figure out what happened back then.”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked.

For a moment, the alley seemed to tilt, as if reality had slipped a half-step sideways. Dr. Lin’s hand still hovered where the card should be. Captain Song still stared at the ground.

And yet—

The corpse at the roadside was gone, leaving only damp stone and faint traces that barely looked like blood.

Little Red Riding Hood raised her head, her face smoothing into something neutral and polite, like a switch had flipped.

“Dr. Lin, good evening.”

Dr. Lin looked up and smiled, returning the greeting without hesitation. “Good evening, Little Red Riding Hood. How’s patrol been?”

Little Red Riding Hood stroked the nearest wolf’s head and glanced around the alley.

“It rained ‘Rain’ here,” she said evenly. “It may have generated an entity called a ‘rain frog,’ but there probably wasn’t any victim.”

Relief softened Dr. Lin’s expression. “That’s good.”

Behind them, the van coughed, sputtered, and finally rumbled back to life. The agents pushing it stumbled away, panting, and one of them hurried over.

“Captain Song, the van’s started. We—”

Captain Song nodded briskly, turning toward his team. “All right. We’re heading back to the bureau.”

He paused, as if only now remembering the woman beside him.

“And don’t forget to bring Dr. Lin.”