"Why are you sitting so high up?" Ku Yue stood in front of the bar called Butterfly Kisses, looking up at the person sitting on the bar's rooftop.

  The person replied loudly, "Getting some sun!"

  It was now 5:30 PM, summer, but the sky had already darkened, with only a thin line of twilight left on the horizon. Moon City was indeed too remote, so remote that it was out of sync with the city he had lived in before.

  Whenever he arrived in a new city, the first pce he looked for was a bar. He needed to rex, even if it was artificial; it had become a habit.

  He followed the direction the person on the rooftop was looking at and saw chimneys spewing bck smoke into the sky amidst the factories and some flickering,

  Every part of Moon City is as old as a photograph abandoned by time.

  "Aren't you hot?" He was intrigued by the person who liked to sunbathe on the rooftop in the scorching summer, enjoying such a view.

  "Not at all!" the person replied excitedly.

  In the distance, a few heavy and prolonged bell tolls could be heard. As soon as the bell rang, the person on the rooftop shifted slightly, as if pnning to come down.

  At that moment, a stone flew out from the alley diagonally opposite the bar, zipping through the air like a prank, and hit the person's butt.

  With a scream, the person wobbled a few times and fell from the rooftop.

  Just as Ku Yue was about to step in to save this unfortunate soul, the guy floated up less than a meter above the ground, arms spread out like a pair of wings, and then slowly nded on the ground.

  "Dead mantou! Pying with that slingshot again? Next time I'll beat you senseless!" The person, who had just nded safely, yelled at a chubby little boy hiding in the alley. The boy was round and pudgy, like a mantou, and the person shouted while carefully pcing a small gss bottle, which glowed with an unusual light, into their satchel.

  "I won't do it again, Sister Luo Ye!" the chubby boy shouted back, sticking out his tongue pyfully. Holding his slingshot, he and a few giggling friends quickly dashed away.

  Ku Yue looked closely at the girl, who wore a faded T-shirt and jeans with frayed cuffs. A cap with a hole in it sat on her head. She looked around sixteen or seventeen years old. Except for her fair skin and petite frame, she didn't look much like a girl at all.

  He gnced around, then stepped closer and asked, "Excuse me, is this the SWORD District?"

  "Yes," she replied, turning her head and looking precisely in his direction.

  The st glow of the setting sun mingled with the light from the bar's entrance, casting a warm glow over her face. Only then did Ku Yue notice her strikingly beautiful, rge eyes—yet they were veiled with a shadowy, dull haze, obscuring the starlike brilliance they should have held.

  He cautiously reached out and waved his hand in front of her face. No reaction. Her gaze remained fixed in some imagined direction, forever unchanging.

  "Did you grow up here?” he asked, withdrawing his hand.

  "I think so,” she nodded, then took a wary step back. “Are you from outside?”

  "Yes, I am,” Ku Ye replied, intrigued. “How did you know? Do I have an accent?”

  "You don’t smell like the locals here,” she took another step back.

  "Losing your sight has made your sense of smell that sharp?” He chuckled, sniffing his own arm. Aside from his faint natural scent, he didn't detect anything unusual.

  "How did you get into Moon City?” She backed up further, her hands feeling around for anything that could serve as a weapon. Finally, she picked up a metal dustpan from beside the bar's trash can, gripping it tightly. The look on her face suggested she was one step away from shouting something like, “Pervert!”

  "Excuse me… I'm only here to visit an old friend. I mean no harm.” Her stance made Ku Ye want to ugh. “I was only asking you for directions.”

  She tightened her grip on the “weapon,” her unseeing eyes precisely trained on his position. And then, for just a fleeting moment, her long shes suddenly fluttered.

  Bang! A hard, cold object struck Ku Yue's back head violently. Amidst the blurred, shifting figures around him, he fell to the ground with a thud.