Cassiopeia crossed the living room toward him, heels making quiet, precise taps against the marble, her eyes already fixed on Phei — on his reflection in the window, on the line of his shoulders, on the shape of him in the lamplight.

And then, three steps from the couch, her gaze drifted sideways.

Stopped.

Narrowed.

She had seen the book before.

Several times, in fact. On the edge of his bed at the Maxton mansion. Folded under his arm as he walked through corridors that wished him dead. In the one photograph Emily Hartwell had taken of him at a Paradise café just recently, always close to his bed at the penthouse —

It had occupied a dozens of quiet corners of his life since the moment she had known him and it had always made her wonder how he possessed something like this book.

She had, professionally, done her research on it.

Nothing her research had turned up had ever felt ordinary.

"Master."

"Mm?"

"How are you in possession of Rhythms of the Longing Distant Hearts?"

Phei glanced at the table where he had set the book face-down three minutes ago. Gave her a small, easy, entirely untroubled smile.

"Oh. Yeah. It’s actually a really nice book. You should try it sometime."

Cassiopeia did not move.

"Master."

"Mm?"

"I know the book. But that is not why I am asking."

He turned to look at her properly. One eyebrow tilted upward.

"How come you have it? You specifically?"

"What about it?"

"Master."

"What’s so—"

She cut in.

Her voice held a steady, measured weight — she had been sitting on the information for years and was now placing it carefully onto the floor between them like a thing that might bite if mishandled.

"Rhythms of the Longing Distant Hearts isn’t a book in the way people mean it when they say book. It only pretends to be one. What you’re carrying around in hotel rooms and under your arm in hallways is a relic wearing a paper jacket.

"It was compiled by a reclusive figure called Aurelian Voss, though even that name is contested. The text isn’t written in one language — it is a working codex assembled across roughly four centuries, in at least seven hands, on vellum that the binding alone has been valued in the low eight figures.

"The earliest folios are in a Mesopotamian dialect that survives in fewer than a dozen attested manuscripts worldwide. The middle quires switch into a court Latin that was specific to a particular monastic scriptorium, and the marginalia in those sections include annotations in the hand of two named historical figures whose verified handwriting samples are themselves museum pieces.

"The final folios contain diagrams and notation systems whose grammar is no longer fully understood — there are six surviving scholars in the world qualified to attempt a translation, and three of them refuse to work on it."

"Mmm? I did not know about any of that."

"Of course you didn’t. You know that spine alone is the first sign... it isn’t ordinary. It isn’t leather, not really. It’s a composite binding — it shows layered fibre structures similar to muscle tissue. It flexes very slightly when handled, almost imperceptibly, as though it’s adjusting to the grip. That’s why it never cracks. That’s why it never ages the way other bindings age.

And the embossing on the cover — those aren’t decorative sigils. They’re harmonic markers. Each symbol corresponds to a tonal frequency. When the book is opened, those frequencies resonate under conscious hearing. Subtly. Enough to influence perception, memory recall, emotional state. Collectors don’t simply display it. They experience it.

At least that’ what they say. I don’t know for sure. Research, right?"

His eyes flicked up at that.

"There are fewer than twelve confirmed copies in existence. Each is slightly different from the others. Not editions — iterations. The copy you have is known for what collectors call its echo phenomenon."

Phei exhaled.

"That’s why it’s valued the way it is. Not because it’s rare — though it is. Because it’s considered a convergence object. Literature, artefact, and something else nobody has ever managed to file neatly. It’s studied by private collectors, cognitive researchers, and a handful of specialists who work on what they politely call anomalous objects."

"What’s the price tag, then?"

"The last recorded private sale was just under a $250,000. And that was several years ago. It appreciates quietly, because it doesn’t behave like a static object. Every documented interaction with a copy adds to its perceived depth."

She let a small silence sit.

"It goes beyond a book because it refuses to stay one."

Phei looked at the novel lying face-down on the side table.

Looked back at Cassiopeia.

"So, I’ve been, what — broke for ten years while carrying a $250k book in my backpack."

"Yes."

"Huh."

"And you’re not broke anymore, Master."

A beat.

"How did you get it?"

She asked it gently. She already had a guess.

Phei looked at the book.

Something in his face went softer around the edges, the way it always did when whoever he was thinking about was not in the room to see it.

"My mother bought it for me."

"Ah~"

"I was — three, maybe four? I’d been a piano prodigy as you already know, by then, I’d started trying to write my first emotional pieces, and the rhythms were not coming. The notes were fine. The structure was fine. The feeling underneath the notes —" he gestured vaguely "— was not there. I couldn’t find the pulse of anything. Every piece I wrote sounded like... all my other pieces. I was tearing my hair out about it."

"And she gave you this."

"She said it would help. She didn’t explain how. She just said "read it, my little lark, and come back to your piano when you’re done."

"And did it?"

"Cassi." He smiled. "It was the best lesson I have ever been given about hearts. Not music. Hearts. The rhythm of people wanting things they can’t name. The pulse of longing, way a person’s absence has its own rhythm and sounds it resonates if you listen for it. Every time I’ve sat at a piano since then and found the right pulse for a piece, it’s because of this book."

He glanced at it. Glanced away.

"I didn’t know what it was worth. I still don’t care. It’s — hers."

It was the last gift he still had in possession from his mother.

Cassiopeia was quiet.

She had not expected the answer to land in her heart the way it did. She had expected the vector — of course his mother had bought it, Mei Lin’s family had wealth enough to buy a quarter of China if they’d wanted.

What she hadn’t expected was for the transaction to be a love letter.

She cleared her throat.

"Well. For what it’s worth, Master — it isn’t a $250k anymore. From the glimpse I just got of the spine, yours is signed by the author themselves, if I’m reading the sigil correctly. Which would put it closer to $270k. Possibly more in an auction." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"Noted."

Phei crossed to the side table. Picked the book up. Handled it exactly the way he had been handling it for years — casual, the way he would have handled an old jacket but with fond care.

He carried it across the living room to a shelf of hotel-decorative books beside the fireplace — thick, gilt-edged volumes no one had read in fifty years and no one was expected to — and slid Rhythms of the Longing Distant Hearts neatly in between two of them. Stepped back.

"There? Master, you are leaving it there?"

"It’ll be fine."

"Phei. There are rumours about thieves in these hotels. Professional. Patient. Clever. And you are leaving a $250k responsive manuscript on an open shelf like a Sunday paperback."

"Cassi."

"Master."

"This is Infinity Chaos Hotel."

A pause.

"Oh."

"No sane person on this island would attempt a theft here. Also—" he gestured at the shelf, where between a ten-pound illustrated atlas of the Mediterranean and a leather-bound Tolstoy, the famous The House of Mirth, his little soft-spined novel sat looking, frankly, boring "— who is going to look for an ordinary-looking book on a shelf of much fancier ones?"

"...That is true."

"Have you ever actually heard of book thieves who stake out hotel rooms?"

"Only in novels."

"I have, however, heard of targeted thefts — thieves who already know a specific person carries a specific object whenever they travel."

"—yes," Phei said, quietly, "that’s the only version I would worry about. And nobody in this city, as of today, knows I carry it."

Cassiopeia nodded once.

"All right, Master."

He offered her his hand.

She took it, and together they turned to face the wall where the air was already beginning to fold.

Eira, perched on the armrest, stretched her small arms over her head, snapped her fingers, and the portal opened — quiet, dark, edged in that now-familiar void-ice purple.

Phei squeezed Cassiopeia’s hand.

They stepped through.

The portal sealed behind them with a soft, clean sound — like a page being turned.

It was time for the next target!