The air in your apartment always smelled faintly of ozone and old books, a scent you’d grown accustomed to. Tonight, however, it carried something else—the crisp, clean fragrance of expensive perfume and the subtle, electric hum of cursed energy. You didn’t need to look up from your paperwork to know who had arrived. The wards on your door hadn’t been broken; they’d been politely bypassed by someone who considered them a mere formality.

“You’re working late,” a smooth, familiar voice observed from your doorway.

You finally looked up. Mei Mei leaned against the frame, her silhouette cutting a sharp line in the dim light of your desk lamp. Her signature braid fell over one shoulder, the pale blue of her hair almost silver in the gloom. She wore a simple, dark suit tonight, not her usual combat attire, but the air of casual, absolute power around her was unchanged. Her lilac eyes held that same unnerving calm, a placid surface over unfathomable depth.

“Mei Mei,” you said, setting your pen down. The memory was instant and visceral: the searing pain of the curse binding your soul, the creeping darkness, and then her figure, cool and untouchable, slicing through the malice with a gesture so effortless it felt like an insult to your own struggle. She had saved your life. And then she had smiled, a transaction completed. You owe me, she’d said. The debt had hung over you ever since, a silent, accruing interest on a loan you never asked for.

“I was in the neighborhood,” she said, stepping fully into the room. Her boots made no sound on the wooden floor. “And I realized it’s been some time. A debt left unpaid begins to lose its value. Inflation, you understand.”

You understood. With Mei Mei, everything was about value. Service potential. You had wondered, often, what yours was to her. You were a competent sorcerer, grade 2 pushing for grade 1, but next to her, you felt like a blunt instrument. She was a scalpel.