To Ke Jie's surprise.
The so-called small punishment was no punishment at all.
Annie only handed him the black-bound antique book with a serious look, and solemnly required him to read the story written in it aloud, with full feeling, and with variation of pace and tone.
Less a punishment than the sort of wilful little request a real young sister makes of an older brother; the affectionate give-and-take of siblings.
Understanding that in his heart.
Ke Jie naturally had no reason to refuse.
He straightened his hem, sat down gently on the sofa beside Annie, a fist's width from her, carefully opened the book in his hands, and prepared to read.
The text was mostly in the flowing script of the Western Continent's main language, rather beautiful and elegant, with a line or two of the Eastern Continent's simplified characters inserted here and there in the margins as translation notes and the like, proof of the first owner's care.
Beyond that there were only the book's own illustrations and character sketches, rough, oil-paint in style, a little dreamlike and grotesque, scattered between the pages.
Clearly this was no printed popular reader. It had the unmistakable look of a private collection, and the character of a handmade, unrepeatable single copy.
Annie did not need to say it; at a first glance.
Ke Jie could guess by feel that this book must be something precious left by Annie's late brother.
"Please begin today's fairy tale, big brother."
Annie said it, her gaze complicated and deep.
Her words gave off a heavy longing and nostalgia.
"This is a story that happened long, long ago, in a wondrous land......"
Ke Jie began to read, his face intent.
One big and one small, one warm and one cool, the two pretend siblings sank together into the story in the black book, no different from real ones.
The story told of a protagonist, a down-and-out writer of fairy tales, who fell asleep from weariness while working one night, dreamed his way by accident into the fairy-tale world of the so-called wondrous land, and met the souls of Andersen and others.
Corrupted by malice from the waking world and the intrusion of Sword Fiends and Blade Demons, the whole fairy-tale world had fallen into disorder, and to set the scrambled tales right, Grimm and the other great tellers had summoned the protagonist to save it.
The protagonist answered the call, received the blessings of the great tellers' souls, and set out on the road of growth and of sacrifice that led to becoming the fairy-tale world's saviour.
From helping little Susan suppress her werewolf blood so she would not lose control and eat her grandmother, to rescuing a princess from the hands of seven man-eating fairies, and at last, having passed through a run of the great tellers' classics, facing the unfinished fairy tale of his own pen, he chose to fill it with himself, and saved the fairy-tale world......
"The master of the story became, in the end, a part of it. This is his story: a down-and-out writer of fairy tales, and the saviour of the fairy-tale world......"
As the pages in his hands turned to their end.
The story's close arrived with them.
Ke Jie finished reading, turned his head by reflex, and met the eyes of Annie, who had turned to look at the same moment.
"What does big brother think the person who wrote this book was like? Like the protagonist, or?"
"What kind of person he was, I wouldn't presume to say. But I think the protagonist was modelled on him. Perhaps a brother who loved his little sister very much?"
"......Thou hast guessed right. But he was really a big idiot! A third-rate writer who lied to his own little sister! Nothing like the saviour in the book!"
The words were a cute, spirited grumble.
But what Ke Jie heard from the girl's mouth was not only the surface complaint; beneath the emotional outburst was a heart crying out its regret and loneliness.
He could not help thinking of himself before he met Bai Wuxie, before he became the Sword Maiden Darknight. The same loss of the dearest, the same shutting out of the world, the same keep-away.
Perhaps it was these likenesses between them, found and not yet found, that let a pretend brother and sister come, by degrees, to get on and live together like real ones.
"Everything you say is right. After all, it can't be helped that I'm your idiot big brother and you're my clever little sister."
The blood-coloured eyes softened, and Ke Jie agreed.
The lifted corner of his mouth traced a doting smile.
"So... thou wert here all along, my brother."
Seeing this scene, strange and familiar, and hearing words so like the one in her memory.
Annie, struck still, murmured it, and her clear sea-blue eyes, like frost and snow at the first clearing, gave off a dazzling light in which cold and life existed together.
She did not take Ke Jie for a stand-in for her dead brother. Ke Jie was Ke Jie, An Ge was An Ge. Two brothers, one after the other, and both brothers who doted on Annie.
Only, seeing the shadow and the spirit of her old brother appear and come true in a new one, she could hardly help being moved.
Holding to that thought, Annie drifted off without knowing it, staring blankly at Ke Jie's face for a short while.
Only when Ke Jie waved a hand and handed the old book back to its owner did Annie come to with a start, as if waking from a dream.
That small episode over.
The pretend siblings noticed the time, hurried to get their things together, and went downstairs together to the agreed meeting place and lunch restaurant.
After a short walk.
Before they had even entered the restaurant's private room, they heard the talk inside through the half-open door.
"Relax, with Annie not here there's no great harm in talking about the Corps. I'll put it plainly: there are really just three kinds of people in our Execution Corps. The kind like me and the Commander, where mad and not mad make no difference; the kind who aren't mad yet but nearly; and the last kind, the dark-edgy ones who already are."
"Miss Deputy Commander, are you sure it's really fine to talk like that? I'll say this, Fang Zheng bows to nobody else today but I bow to your honesty and your nerve. You're practically my idol."
"Shh! You all have to keep it to yourselves, or if Annie hears......"
Halfway through.
"Bang!"
Annie burst through the door, cold-faced.
"Mind your words, my dear Sis Caiya."
She shot her own Deputy Commander a savage glare.
"I don't know anything!"
The Deputy Commander, doubling as the minibus driver, raised both hands in surrender, all innocence.
By looks alone, a dashing tomboy with short black hair, in a black peaked cap and cool street style.
Sword Maiden code name Riot Graffiti, team nickname Caiya, known as the Execution Corps' Miss Street Fighter.
Seeing Annie about to keep bickering with Sis Caiya.
"Don't be angry, little sister. Eat first, settle scores after." Ke Jie put in a timely word.
He pointed at the food on the table, gone cool and more than half eaten.
"Hmph! Were big brother not here, today would be the day thou art finished, Sis Caiya." Annie gave the warning with put-on ferocity, and slowly took her seat, holding back her hunger.
The others exchanged looks, marvelling at how Annie and Ke Jie's sibling relationship had somehow advanced.
After that the two latecomers finished lunch quickly and without a word, took their luggage and followed the squad back onto the minibus, riding on toward the mission site.
On the road, Ke Jie and Annie fielded the others' curiosity about their relationship every so often; call it a resigned way of passing a dull journey.
***
Dusk.
Nearly six in the evening.
The minibus pulled into Haichao Village's public car park.
Marking the formal start of the mission for the six aboard......