Chapter Text
Swire is normally the absolute last person to worry a little that she hasn’t got any texts so far, but it’s nearing one in the morning and the security guard on duty tonight still hasn’t asked if she’s on her way home yet, which—hey, suits her just fine. It’s just the slightest bit strange, because usually her phone is blowing up around this time of the evening.
Well, maybe he just fell asleep at his post. Not Swire’s problem as long as she gets home by sunrise. She shoves her phone back in her bag and swipes another glass of wine off a passing waiter’s tray, grinning to herself as she takes a sip and eases her way through the crowd. She’s glad she took the risk to sneak out of the house tonight and attend this party, because so far she doesn’t think she’s ever had alcohol this good in all the others she’d gone to. Old university friends who inherited their family’s stupidly huge companies are really something else, much as she hates their attitudes.
Now that she thinks about it, though, she should probably check in on what’s going on at home. Maybe her parents figured out she left in the middle of the night by grilling the security guard and are now planning various ways on how to make her regret it. Swire finishes off her wine, only for another waiter to refill her empty glass without a word. “Why, thanks,” she chirps. Alright, one last glass, and then she’ll head home…
Actually, where was the exit of this place again? It’s been a while since she’s had to navigate a club. Swire tries to pick her way through the crowd, waving hello whenever someone calls her name. Let’s see… was it this way? Wait, no, that’s the restroom. That way? No, that’s the food table—“Ack!”
“Oh—”
A hand flashes out and catches the glass before it would have fallen, but the same can’t be said for the wine inside; it sails out in a sparkling arc and splashes all over the front of the person Swire had bumped into. “Oh, no,” she groans, “I’m so sorry! I wasn’t looking…” And she can also barely stand straight, which may have contributed to that, but whatever. She tries to wipe the growing wine stains off the person’s shirt with the edge of her own blouse, but she already knows there’s no use, and the person steps back with a shake of their head. “I’m really sorry!”
“It’s alright,” the person says. Their voice is nice, Swire thinks, a little deeper than her own, with a rich quality to it Swire doesn’t think she’s ever heard anywhere else. Or it’s just because she doesn’t go out much, but whatever. “Don’t worry about it.”
Well, now Swire just feels even worse. “Don’t say that,” she chides, taking the now-empty glass so she can set it aside on a nearby table, then starts digging around in her bag. The person, whoever they are, watches on in clear bemusement. “Okay, uh… here! This should be enough for the dry-cleaning, right?” She fishes out a handful of bills from her wallet and hands it over to the person, taking the chance to look up at their face as well…
…and, oh, they’re pretty. Swire has to admit her eyesight isn’t the best right now, from the combination of the club’s flashing lights and the alcohol making her head spin a little, but she can definitely tell this person is good-looking, even though they’re hardly dressed in party clothes. Their eyes are the same sparkling shade of red as the wine Swire had just been drinking.
They blink down at the money, drawing Swire’s attention back to the present. “This is…?”
“Just take it, okay? I know it’s not much,” Swire says, pushing the cash into their hands, “but hey, maybe you can buy a new shirt too or something. Okay, I’ll be off! Sorry again!” Without waiting for a response, or possibly a protest against the money, Swire hurries through the crowd, spotting the front exit just a few ways away. She can feel her phone buzzing in her pocket now, and when she pulls it out she winces at the security guard’s message in all-caps telling her to get home.
Man, does she have time to clean up a little, at least? She can’t go home stinking of party just in case she bumps into her parents. If she enters her room through the window, though, she can probably take a shower…
Swire takes the winding but familiar roads home, glad the club isn’t too far from her place this time. Yet what she sees first when she gets closer to the family manor isn’t the front gates or an anxious security guard, but a swarm of police cars instead, sirens off but red-blue lights flashing incessantly and slicing through the darkness of the evening.
Shit, did her parents think she’d been abducted in her sleep or something? No way did they call the police to start looking for her? Swire circles around the house until she finds the cracked portion of the gate wall she can clamber up, then circles around the house again to scale the manor wall as fast as she can and tumble into her room through the window. Thankfully her bedroom’s as dark and empty as she’d left it earlier, with no yellow tape or police officers to be seen, so at least Swire can take the fastest shower of her life and change into pajamas to make it look like she’d just fallen asleep in the bathroom or some equally stupid-but-hopefully-believable reason.
Her breath still smells of wine, but whatever, she’s not about to let anyone get close enough to notice. Satisfied, Swire eases her room door open and creeps down the stairs until she can trudge into the lobby, rubbing her eyes and yawning theatrically. “What’s going on? Why’re the police here?”
Her mother whirls around to face her. “Swire!” she cries. Swire half-expects and very much hopes for her to say something along the lines of, “Where have you been? We couldn’t find you anywhere! We thought you got kidnapped and called the police for help! But thank goodness you’re here, now everything’s fine and dandy and we can all go back to bed now.” Instead, what comes out of her mother’s mouth is, “Go back to your room. It’s dangerous!”
That… certainly is not what Swire had been expecting nor hoping to hear. “What?”
“Yep, this matches the phantom thief’s handwriting in all her other letters, alright,” the police officer by the doorway grunts, holding a cigarette in one hand and squinting down at a crumpled sheet of paper in the other. Swire’s father stands before him, arms crossed and brow furrowed. “Would be a good idea to tighten security around here. She’s gotten past top-notch systems and the most experienced military soldiers before.”
“Wait.” Swire frowns, dropping her sleepy facade. “Seriously, what’s going on? What do you mean, ‘phantom thief?’”
“It’s nothing,” her father replies gruffly, not even bothering to turn around and face her. “Go back to your room, Swire, we’re busy—”
“You don’t know, girl?” the police officer asks, looking blissfully unaware of the dirty look her father shoots him. “The phantom thief Ch’en, who fancies herself some heroic vigilante—”
“No, I know who this person is,” Swire impatiently interrupts, jabbing a finger at the letter in the officer’s hand. “I mean, you’re saying she sent a letter through the freaking mail like announcing her next robbery is no big deal!?”
Aside from the fact that Swire hadn’t expected Phantom Thief Ch’en to, as previously mentioned, announce her next robbery via cheaply-stamped letter in the mail, the situation really isn’t that surprising.
She’s no dedicated journalist, nor is she one of Ch’en’s avid supporters, but the stories of her heists are popular enough that coming across them is inevitable. As far as Swire knows, she’s some Robin Hood character who started growing more prominent in recent months, after the fuss she kicked up over discovering the only copy of some historical novel locked away in a billionaire’s library and returning it to the museum he’d stolen it from. Many of her previous cases had been much the same, snatching paintings thought long lost to history from wherever they’d been hidden and returning them to their proper places, or uncovering some piece of jewelry that belonged to 15th century royalty and dropping them on the front doorstep of a museum. And of course, she’s built up her reputation for never killing anyone as well, mostly just leaving the perpetrators to be rounded up by police or other authorities.
Before this, though, Swire had never really seen her as a real person who actually did this sort of stuff; Ch’en seemed to exist on a separate plane of reality entirely, like when Swire watched a TV show and found it hard to differentiate actor from character. Everything Ch’en did seemed too fantastical to be true, despite how the news articles about her insisted she really did escape the notice of hundreds of trained, armed guards, or that she really did perform several impossible maneuvers in order to bypass security traps that would have sliced her head off if she so much as brushed against them…
She looks up from her phone, where she’d been scrolling through the ‘Ch’en’ tag of a newspaper site, in time to avoid bumping into a lamp post. This is going to sound ridiculous, considering Ch’en just announced she would be robbing Swire’s household next, but somehow Swire can’t really bring herself to care, and that may partly be because she’s walking around on the streets, in broad daylight, for hours and hours, and her parents haven’t so much as called her yet.
Swire suppresses a grin. Normally she needs to exert more effort in sneaking out—feed lies to her butler here, bribe the guards at the gate to look the other way there—but this time, it feels like the entire household staff is busy running around, conducting preparations for Ch’en’s little visit next week and tightening security, so much so that Swire almost feels suspicious when she’d walked out through the front gates earlier and nobody stopped her.
The suspicion faded into tentative delight, and then full-out glee, when Swire realized that, for once in her life, they’d be too busy to care about her for now.
When was the last time she’d had this degree of freedom? No, had she ever had this degree of freedom? Most of her life had been spent inside that stupid manor, all because her family is too rich for its own good and attracts its fair share of all sorts of people looking to try and get their hands on their fortune, so for as long as Swire has known her parents have caged her in, told her it was for her own good, that as long as she followed what they did she’d be safe.
She can almost hear their voices in her head right now: What do you think you’re doing, going out on your own? Are you doing anything to improve our social status? No? Then get back here and attend the most boring gathering of all time so you can buddy up with this sleazy rich man and establish connections! Swire shivers just thinking about it.
Anyway, now she’s here! Over the years she’s devised her own techniques to sneak out of the house, but recently they’ve barely even looked at her now that they’re all so busy with preparing for Ch’en. Swire can’t help the skip in her step as she heads for the nearest clothes store—if she ever gets to meet Ch’en personally, she might as well thank her, just for this one week of relative freedom.
“Did you hear?” someone says, as Swire enters the store. “Apparently that thieving vigilante’s declared her next target! Some family close by, in the upper neighborhood.”
Their conversation partner scoffs. Swire moves closer, doing her best to look casual as she eyes some of the newest items on display. “Well, the phantom thief only ever goes after the people who deserve it, and you can’t trust anyone in the upper-class. Whatever it is Ch’en’s going to steal, that family will have it coming.”
“Oh, don’t be so crass! I suppose it’s true, though…”
Swire frowns. Is that really what they think of her family? She’s lived with them all her life and much as she loathes how much they keep her sheltered, it’s not like they do anything wrong or keep any historical artifacts in the basement…
Or, well. Do they? It’s not like Swire is privy to the inner workings of the family business either. She worries on her lower lip as the two customers she’d been eavesdropping on wander elsewhere and out of hearing. What does Ch’en plan to steal anyway? Knowing her parents, they’ll never tell Swire anything aside from useless platitudes, and they’ll definitely clam up if—and when—Ch’en succeeds with whatever it is she plans to take from them to avoid looking shameful in front of their daughter, even though there’s little else they can do now to make Swire think any less of them than she already does.
The more she thinks about it, the more certain she is—there has to be a reason Ch’en would target their household, and Swire highly doubts it’s for money. But if so, what could it be? What historical artifact could Swire’s family possibly be holding in secret?
She pretends to look absorbed with some new blouse on a mannequin. Things are getting more interesting than she thought.
Some two hours ago, her father had gripped her shoulders and instructed Swire, in no uncertain terms, “You are to remain in your room for the night until the thief has left. Got it? Don’t even think of trying to get a look at her or something. This is for your own good, alright, and if you get hurt…”
Swire wanted to point out that so far Ch’en has never harmed anyone outside of occasionally knocking people unconscious, but decided that would hardly help her right now. So she nodded and let a pair of guards lead her back, like she needed help getting back to her own bedroom. Swire spent her time rolling around in bed and generally feeling bored out of her mind until she heard the guards outside begin to raise their voices.
Now, Swire clambers out her window, crawls along the wall, then slips inside the window of the unused room beside her own.
It’s funny, honestly, that her parents never thought to install bars on her window like she’s seen in those over-the-top movies. Swire dusts herself off and stretches her arms and legs, just in case she needs to break into a run at any moment, then heads towards the door and peers outside. She waits until the guards outside her room are looking the other way before taking off down the corridor, her socked feet ensuring her steps are soundless, and lets herself grin when she rounds the corner without having her name be called out. This process used to take much longer and used to be much more nerve-wracking, but after having done it so many times, the movements are ingrained in her mind like muscle memory by this point.
Swire follows the loud noises, shouts, and footfalls down to their basement, which is mostly used as a storage room—she hides behind a corner to listen in on the security guards, but after barking into their intercoms about having found the thief, they duck down into the basement as well, leaving the corridor empty. What kind of security just does that, Swire internally sighs. She moves to step out into the hall—
—only to freeze in place when something drops down from the ceiling, landing silently on the floor. The person, dressed in all-black and reminding Swire very much of a bat, straightens to their feet and glances around them before, for one heart-stopping second, locking eyes with Swire at the end of the corridor.
Swire darts back, fully hiding herself behind the wall. Had they seen her? They definitely had. Could that be Ch’en herself? The articles had never been able to include any high-quality images of her, but they’d also mentioned she works alone. Damn it, Swire knows Ch’en rarely ever hurts others and never kills, but her heart is still beating a mile a minute. Could she be coming here right now, ready to silence Swire? Swire doesn’t hear footsteps, but she highly doubts someone like the phantom thief would be walking around audibly. Shit, maybe she really should have just stayed in her room for once…
She waits, and waits. And waits. But nothing happens and no one comes, and when Swire plucks up the courage to peek out again, the corridor is deserted once more, not a sign of Ch’en—if that really had been Ch’en—having been there just a few minutes ago. Instead, the basement door is ajar, looking like it had been intentionally left open, whether to serve as a quick escape route for Ch’en or to invite Swire in, Swire can’t tell.
If it’s the latter, though, Swire will gladly accept. She picks her way across the hall, making sure to look up at the ceiling, before inching the door open and creeping inside.
She’s been down in the basement a few times, but today it looks particularly cramped despite its relatively large space, mostly because there are so many security guards in it. Swire takes the stairs as quickly and lightly as possible, glad they’re well-maintained enough that they don’t creak tellingly, ducks behind a few foul-smelling cardboard boxes, and holds her breath as she surveys her surroundings. It looks like the guards are waiting, since they’re all just standing around with their guns at the ready but doing little else.
Swire’s heart thunders in her chest again, but this time out of excitement rather than fear. What could Ch’en have planned? Did she already steal whatever it is she was meant to steal here, and did she just lure the guards into the basement to trap them inside and let her escape safely without anyone in the way? Or does she plan to steal the treasure right under all these people’s noses, like she’s done several times before? Whatever it is, Swire doesn’t plan on missing what happens next, especially if Ch’en will be making a move.
There’s something fascinating about seeing how Ch’en works in person, even if Swire is technically supposed to hate her for stealing from them or something. Ch’en is part of a world Swire will never get to be in, and even if just for one night Swire wants to see what that world is like.
A shadow flashes past the guards, zipping around and between them, stopping right in front of—oh, fuck—Swire, who scrambles backwards until she hits the wall behind her.
For a split second Ch’en—because this person, despite their mask and disguise, can’t be anyone else but the phantom thief herself—only stares down at Swire, silent and motionless, before she bends down to pluck something out of the boxes Swire had been hiding behind. “Excuse me,” she says. Her mask distorts her voice, turning it androgynous that Swire wonders how the media had figured out Ch’en was a woman at all. “I’ll be taking this.”
“Uh,” is all Swire manages, blinking stupidly up at her. She doesn’t even care about whatever Ch’en had retrieved; all she can think about is that she hadn’t figured a vigilante would be so polite.
“There she is!” the guards are shouting—Swire realizes, with a start, that they hadn’t even noticed Ch’en weaving between them earlier, only noticing her now when Swire had spoken. What the heck? Is that really possible? How can one person possibly go by completely unnoticed when she had literally spoken?
Her thoughts cut off there, replaced by panic when the guards start firing, gunshots ringing out and bullets burying themselves in the wall behind Swire, who squeaks and ducks down, hiding herself as best as she can behind the boxes. One wrong shot and they’ll rip a new one in her, and for all of Swire’s getaways outside the house she’d never been caught in the middle of a gunfight, for goodness’ sake—a bullet whizzes past her, inches away from her ear, and Swire’s breath catches in her throat. Any closer, and…
Wait a minute, could this have been Ch’en’s plan from the beginning, to get her right in the crossfire and get rid of her without having to actually do it herself? A cunning plan! At the same time, Swire really wishes she’d seen through it sooner! “Wait!” she tries to shout, though it comes out more like a croak. “Stop shooting, you idiots, I’m right here—”
Without warning a pair of hands grab her under her shoulders and haul her to the side, behind a wall that effectively blocks any stray bullets. Swire lets out an undignified yelp cut abruptly short when she realizes it’s Ch’en who’d grabbed her, not any of the guards who are literally paid to protect her. “You okay?” comes that voice through the mask again, toneless but gentle.
Swire is made suddenly, extremely aware of Ch’en’s hands moving briskly down to her wrists. It isn’t in the same way some men at parties touch Swire, in a manner that makes her want to drop-kick them into oblivion, but more like Ch’en is trying to see if she’s hurt anywhere, and once again Swire wonders just how strange a thief this Ch’en is. “I… Yeah?” Swire eventually manages. It comes out sounding more like a question, but she’s surprised she’d been able to speak at all.
Ch’en nods. “Alright,” she says—and then, as quickly and abruptly as she’d appeared, she’s gone again, and Swire just barely manages to turn fast enough to see her racing back up the stairs and through the door, this time slamming it audibly behind her. As if to purposely attract the guards’ attention, Swire realizes.
“Lady Swire!” one of them shouts, hurrying to her side while the other guards give chase up the stairs. Somehow Swire already knows they’re not going to make it. “Are you unhurt? How dare that criminal attempt to harm you!”
“Oh, shut up,” Swire groans, brushing the guard’s hands away and scrambling up the stairs herself. She knows there’s no way she can catch up to Ch’en, but maybe if she looks out the window, she can catch another glimpse of her shadow, at least?
Back upstairs, Swire bypasses the front gates and heads up to the second floor instead, panting and gasping for breath when she reaches the small balcony there that overlooks the garden behind the manor. At first she sees nothing, and a part of her despairs—was she too slow and missed Ch’en? Or did she guess wrong and Ch’en left through the front gates after all? Swire takes a moment to lean back against the railing to catch her breath, struggling to keep an eye on the garden below at the same time. The route from the basement to the front gates are longer and likely more filled with guards than the route from the basement to the garden…
Swire’s heart stutters in her ribcage again. There—a shadow, near-indistinguishable from the darkness of the evening, darting through the bushes and shrubbery before vaulting over the fences and scaling the garden walls with enviable ease. There she is.
For a moment the shadow—Ch’en—pauses at the top of the garden wall, and though it’s impossible to make out anything else in the darkness, Swire wonders if Ch’en’s turning around to look at her, where she’s sure the balcony lights must make her a beacon in the night. But the moment passes, and quick as she had come Ch’en disappears again; even as Swire cranes her neck, she can’t see much else over the garden wall, and after a while even the guards’ clamor outside begins to die down.
Swire slumps against the railing, wiping the sweat off her brow. Somehow this visit of Ch’en’s has left her with more questions than answers, but one thing is for sure: no amount of sneaking out and partying will give her as much adrenaline as tonight has.
As it turns out, Ch’en has a schedule.
After her parents had lectured her for days on end—“we were very clear you were to stay in your room, what part of that was at all vague,” and by the second sentence Swire tuned them out—she subscribed to about a dozen different newsletters, checking her mail as soon as she woke up like the morning paper, and discovered the pattern. Ch’en usually took two weeks after a heist to announce a new one, and usually she would give her target another week to prepare (as if anyone could really and truly prepare for someone like her, Swire privately thinks). Then, aside from a few special cases, it would start over again.
Swire makes a little list in her head that she titles ‘things about Ch’en I hadn’t expected.’ Number one is that she sends her announcements via mail. Number two is her politeness. Number three would have to be how she sticks to a very predictable schedule. Does she note things like these down on a tabletop calendar? ‘August 8: Steal a fortune from this billionaire?’
At first she doesn’t quite believe it, but exactly two weeks after the robbery on Swire’s household Ch’en’s on the headlines again: this time her target is the department head of a company Swire recognizes the name of, because her parents have dealt with them a few times in the past. She scrolls through the articles about it, along with the target in question ranting about how he’s never done anything wrong in his life, then memorizes the company building’s address at the bottom of one of the articles.
Just like whoever this rando is, she’s got a week to prepare. Swire hops out of bed and begins the long, arduous process of sifting through her wardrobe.
Seven agonizing days of waiting later, Swire sneaks out of the house once more—normally she enlists the help of the security guards, but this time she’d rather not risk it so soon after Ch’en’s break-in. She locks her room door instead, shoves some pillows under a blanket to make a semi-convincing lump on the bed just in case, then climbs out her window and scales down the manor’s walls. Not for the first time, Swire is thankful her parents haven’t grown paranoid enough to install security cameras around the house, and she escapes through the garden at the back rather than through the front gates.
She pauses atop the garden wall, the creeping vines soft and damp under her hands. This is where Ch’en had left, too, and where she’d turned back to look at Swire… or is that just wishful thinking? Maybe Ch’en had been checking to see if anyone was chasing her. Still, Swire likes to believe they’d locked eyes in the darkness, if only for a moment.
The instant her feet hit the ground again, Swire allows herself a grin, even when she also feels nervous enough to run right back into her room. How nice would it be if she could be a little like Ch’en, too? To have the freedom to run around the city at night and scale people’s walls? Not like Swire doesn’t already do both of those regularly, but it’d be nice to not check her phone every five minutes and be hyper-aware of every text she gets, in case it’s the guard telling her to hurry back home before her parents find out she’s gone. No, how nice would it be if Swire could taste freedom like this everyday and every night?
She sighs. For now, she’ll have to settle for these little getaways.
It’s just about that time in the evening where most salarymen leave work, and though it’s a bit of a risk to head somewhere with no clear plan in mind for what to do if she gets lost, Swire is nothing but a risk-taker. She pulls a cheap surgical mask over her face and gets in a cab, rattling off the address of the office building and hoping the driver just assumes she’s someone’s sister there or whatever. By the time she arrives, there’s already a steady flow of people leaving from the front entrance, and her heart jolts when she gets out of the cab and sees Ch’en’s target almost right away.
He looks exactly the same as he had in the news article photos, tall and wiry and looking like someone Swire would never go fifty feet of. She does her best to look as busy as possible on her phone, leaning against the handrail of the stairs leading up to the building. Could Ch’en be here right now? Since Swire had no idea where her target lives, she’d decided to just follow him home from the office, but the man must be anxious and paranoid as all hell. Hopefully he won’t notice a car following him from behind the whole way back to his house, or Swire trailing him on the walk to the subway…
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you home?” Swire hears. When she turns around, pretending to scan the small groups of office workers for someone specific, she spots Ch’en’s target talking to a pretty woman, her smile attractive but distant. “You know, that phantom thief is all over the media right now, would be dangerous to go home alone like you always do…”
“I’ll be fine.” The woman’s smile grows strained. “Shouldn’t you be heading home now? I heard you were that person’s next target.”
“O-Oh. That… Well, actually… H-Hmph! The time she indicated in her letter has already passed. I hardly have anything of value at home anyway. Doesn’t she only ever get historical artifacts? Do I look like the sort of man to have things like those lying around at my place?”
Swire frowns. It doesn’t sound like the man is lying, but at the same time… did he really just ignore Ch’en’s warning and leave his place unguarded? He’s lucky Ch’en isn’t a petty thief, because Swire’s sure his house would have been thoroughly ransacked otherwise. The woman shifts in place, looking like she’s thinking much the same. “Well… I still think you should head home, in case something you need actually does get stolen,” she suggests.
“Hah! That would be showing she intimidates me, which she—”
Swire almost jumps out of her skin when the man’s cut off by the highest, most ear-piercing shriek she’s ever heard in her life; she gives up on pretending to look occupied and turns to openly stare. Standing behind the man is—someone who can only be Ch’en, because she’s wearing the same mask and a similar disguise as to when Swire had seen her. She tilts her head, her hand hovering above the man’s shoulder like she had just tapped him. “Good evening,” she greets. “You weren’t home. I took the liberty of coming to see you here instead.”
“What… what… what…” the man sputters. Swire only realizes now that the scream from earlier had come from him.
“One second,” Ch’en says. She heads over to the side of the office building, then retrieves—Swire has to blink twice to make sure she hasn’t completely lost her mind—retrieves an entire bicycle to bring it over to the man. “Here,” she says, nodding to the man. “Just so you know what I stole. Or, rather, stole back.”
The woman gasps. “Huh? I’m sorry, but… i-isn’t this my bicycle?”
“No!” The man whirls on her. “Absolutely not! I didn’t steal your bike, it wasn’t me—”
But Ch’en nods again, this time to the woman. “He stole your bike so you would have more reason to accept an invitation from him. Or like last week, when he followed you onto the subway. Here, I’ll return it to you now.” She pushes the bicycle towards the stunned woman, going as far as to take her hand and drop the keys in her open palm. “If something like this happens again, just ask.”
Both people seem at a loss for words, which Swire can absolutely relate to. Since when does Ch’en just… do charity work? This had never been mentioned in the news articles about her, but then again there aren’t any cameramen or journalists at the ready here either. Maybe these had just never been publicized, and Ch’en has been doing stuff like this for even longer than she’s been stealing important artifacts? Either way, Swire mentally adds a fourth number to her list of unexpected Ch’en details.
Then the woman frowns. “You,” she says, clearly addressing the man before her. “You were the one who took my bike. All because you wanted to drive me home? And then you followed me into the subway?”
“Ah. That. Well.” The man clears his throat. “I think there has been a misunderstanding here. I was only there because—”
“Please stay away from me from now on. I’d like nothing to do with you.”
Even from this distance, Swire can imagine seeing a vein pop on the man’s head. “Now there! How is that any way to speak to your superior? You realize this is your fault from the beginning? If you had just accepted my offer, I wouldn’t have needed to take your bike—”
“Excuse me,” Ch’en interjects. The man makes a pathetic noise and backs away from her. “I’m still here. If you have anything to say to her, you will have to answer to me first.”
The man holds his ground for an admirable three seconds before throwing his hands in the air. “You… You’re both ridiculous,” he shouts, before fleeing down the stairs and across the street, disappearing when he turns around a corner. Swire privately hopes he gets run over by a car to bring the whole thing to a nice, neat end.
“Thank you for doing this,” the woman says, sounding in awe. “I never imagined the, um… the phantom thief would do something like this. I thought you only stole… things like important artworks, or jewelry, or…?”
Ch’en shrugs. “I was on the subway the other day and noticed. So I just did some digging around. Don’t worry about it.”
Number five on unexpected Ch’en details, Swire adds: she takes the subway. Why is this surprising? Well, she had sort of imagined phantom thieves running through the city streets and swinging from rooftops as their mode of transportation, not taking the subway like a regular citizen.
“Thank you so much again,” the woman says, retrieving her wallet. “Um, I don’t have much right now, but I can wire—”
“Oh, no need for that. Really,” Ch’en says. The voice distortion makes it a little hard to make out, but Swire thinks Ch’en sounds genuinely uncomfortable, like she hadn’t expected this level of gratitude at all. “I don’t do this for money. Anyway, I should get going. I hope he doesn’t bother you again.”
The woman looks reluctant, but eventually pockets her wallet. “Thank you. After this, I doubt he will.”
Swire expects Ch’en to disappear instantly, ducking into one of the nearby alleyways or slinking behind the shadows of the office building, but instead she turns around and—inexplicably enough—seems to lock eyes with Swire again.
A shiver runs down Swire’s back but she stands her ground as best as she can, refusing to break eye contact for several solid seconds even as her brain feels like it’s running on overdrive trying to analyze the situation. Ch’en definitely recognizes her as the daughter of the family she robbed some three weeks ago, right? They’d been up close and personal back then, there’s no way Ch’en could have forgotten. Does she think Swire’s out for revenge against her? Is she going to come here and get rid of Swire, to cut away loose ends from a previous job…?
She waits, and waits. And waits. But, just like last time, nothing happens. Ch’en looks away first, giving the woman one last nod before walking away. She doesn’t do anything special or dramatic, like melding with the shadows or something, but somehow Swire loses her in the streets anyway even as she tries her best to keep her eyes on Ch’en’s back.
Minutes pass. Only when the woman gets on her bike and cycles out of sight, too, does Swire return to her senses and realize that… that was it. That was the end result of Ch’en’s announcement, and now she’s probably off to plan another one three weeks from now.
And three weeks from now, Swire thinks, she’s going to make sure to be there too. There’s no way she’s going to miss another of Ch’en’s heists when she knows she can watch from the side.
There’s no better word to describe what Ch’en does other than captivating.
Maybe Swire’s exaggerating a little, but she doesn’t care. There’s something fascinating about how Ch’en pulls off her jobs, even if Swire doesn’t always get to see the whole thing from start to finish.
Returning the bicycle had not, in fact, been a one-off thing, because two weeks later Ch’en announces her next target: the CEO of some huge company that also holds a bunch of different establishments throughout the city, like small restaurants and bars. This is a little more difficult for Swire to follow, because when she searches up the address of the company building it turns out to be halfway across the city, so she has to sneak out earlier than she prefers to catch the train there. By the time she arrives, almost everyone has left the office, and Swire almost despairs before, as luck would have it, she spots Ch’en’s target walking out of the building flanked by two bulky bodyguards. Following him back home is even harder—she has to switch taxis at least three times to make sure neither him nor any of his bodyguards notice the same car following from behind, and when they get to the gated neighborhood he lives in she has to climb a tree and swing from its branches like the most strangely-dressed monkey of all time to get past the guards.
Just how does Ch’en do this? Swire wonders, dusting leaves and dirt and bugs off her clothes. She’s plenty athletic, as a combination of both regular fencing lessons and all the exercise she gets from scaling the walls of her house, among other buildings, but she’s already out of breath from this pseudo-movie-chase-scene. But Ch’en probably does even more difficult stuff like this all the time without breaking a sweat, doesn’t she?
Even the thought of getting to see Ch’en in action again is enough to reinvigorate Swire. She picks her way across the neighborhood’s communal garden and creeps behind the lines of houses, squinting in the darkness to try and see where the CEO’s car had driven off to. She’d been able to memorize what part of the route she’d watched him take, at least—so, a left here, and then a right there…
Something flickers in her vision, and Swire skids to a stop. No way. It couldn’t be?
For a moment she wonders if she’d just imagined it, but then she sees it again—a shadow zipping past the light of a street lamp, almost too quick to see. Then the shadow pauses, long enough that Swire can make out the vague outline of a person—indistinct as the rest of their features are, somehow Swire already knows this can’t be anyone else but Ch’en.
They stand there on either side of the street, Swire behind the wall of a house and Ch’en half-shrouded in darkness. Then Ch’en disappears again, and Swire hurries to follow the brief, barely noticeable movements of a shadow making its way across the neighborhood.
Breaking in the man’s house is probably something only Ch’en can do without alerting the authorities, especially since it looks like there’s an entire platoon of security guards standing outside and around the manor. Swire stakes out in the clump of bushes across the place instead, for once uncaring of how she’s going to have to clean out all the dirt from her clothes later at home. There’s a big window on the first floor that shows off a good chunk of what looks like the living room, and Swire watches intently for any reactions among the guards. With that many of them, surely at least one will notice Ch’en’s movements? With that many of them, surely it would be difficult even for Ch’en to get inside without getting caught?
But no. Swire watches as Ch’en bypasses the front doors and slips inside a window on the side of the manor instead, even the swish of the curtains soundless as she steps foot within. Not a single trap is tripped, not a single wire is cut, and not a single guard turns their head as Ch’en practically strolls right in, fading into the shadows just as Swire manages to get a good look at her through the big window. Swire counts the seconds as they go, just to keep her nerves from fraying any more than they already have, and reaches a grand total of nine minutes before she spots Ch’en slipping out again, something long and thin in her hands.
She pauses by the manor, dangerously close to one of the guards, and turns to look straight at Swire again—not at the bushes, nor at the house behind her, but at Swire, hidden as she is in the shrubbery.
Swire’s breath catches in her throat. How does Ch’en always know where she is? And why isn’t she doing anything about it? She’s clearly always worked alone, but she doesn’t seem to care about Swire following her around and watching her pull off these impossible jobs. Also, what did she steal anyway? Whatever she’s holding doesn’t look like a bag of money, or a handful of jewelry, or even a landscape painting to return to a museum. And how, just how, did Ch’en avoid every single danger she could have encountered tonight without a hitch?
In the next second Ch’en disappears. Swire curses in her head and hurries to follow the flickering shadow down the street.
Somehow she has a feeling Ch’en is moving purposefully slowly, or at least at a pace Swire can follow, because she only needs to maintain a light jog to keep up with her. It feels like they run through the whole city, going from the upper-class neighborhood down to, of all places, the red-light district, where Swire has to throw her hood over her hair and pull her face mask almost all the way up to keep anyone from possibly recognizing her. Ch’en, or the shadow of her anyway, pauses beside a bar for a while—Swire wonders if she’s surveying the area, or just craving a drink—before setting off again, and Swire convinces herself all this running is just like any other exercise.
Eventually they arrive at a rundown residential area, where most of the buildings look like they house more mold than people and the streets are littered with enough cracks to trip Swire up several times despite how much care she puts into where she steps. Ch’en stops outside what looks like the smallest apartment building in existence and fiddles with the intercom at the gate for a few minutes until the screen finally lights up.
“Hello? Who is it?” comes a low, irritated voice. “You know it’s, like… one in the morning, right?”
“Good evening,” Ch’en greets, polite as always. Swire takes cover by a nearby building, more to lean against the wall and catch her breath than to actually hide from Ch’en anymore. “I have something you might want to see.” She lifts the long, thin object she nabbed from the CEO earlier; Swire squints, but in the darkness she can’t make out much aside from it being wrapped in threadbare cloth.
Silence, and then the intercom switching off. Some five minutes later a young woman, with only a jacket thrown hastily over her sleepwear, slams the building doors open and scrambles down the stairs. “W-Who are you?” she sputters. “How do you have that? I thought it was gone forever! Don’t tell me you just found it lying around or something?”
“Do you remember when the CEO handling the bar you work in came to visit at your workplace?” Ch’en asks. “It was to keep you there so his employees could steal this. I’ve brought it back now.” She hands the item over, and when the woman hurriedly unravels the cloth, Swire’s eyes nearly bug out of her face—it’s a sword, and an authentic-looking one at that. A family heirloom, maybe?
“You…” The woman runs a hand through her hair, holding the sword in her hands reverently, before looking back at Ch’en. “I can’t thank you enough—but, wait, how did you get it back? Are you—You’re not that, that, what was it, that phantom thief or something?”
Ch’en shifts in place, then shrugs. “It doesn’t matter who I am. Keep a better eye on that, alright?”
“What? Wait, I should—I don’t have much money, but—”
“Goodnight,” Ch’en says, and then she’s gone, too fast for even Swire to catch. The woman makes a startled sound, looks frantically around, but sighs and gives up when it becomes obvious there’s no use looking for someone dressed in all-black in the darkness. Only when the woman returns back into her apartment, staring lovingly down at her sword the whole while, does Ch’en reappear, the edge of her coat just barely visible from the alleyway she had hidden inside.
Again, neither of them say anything, standing across the street from one another. Swire wonders if she should say something, since obviously Ch’en is doing this—standing close where Swire can see her for several seconds—on purpose, and maybe it’s an invitation for Swire to speak. But what would she even say? ‘Hi?’ ‘You don’t mind me being here?’ ‘How did you get in and out that house without getting your head chopped off?’ So many options, none of them particularly intelligent.
Just as Swire makes up her mind to say hello, Ch’en is gone again—this time for good, since Swire can’t see her now-familiar shadow even when she turns around and around enough times to grow dizzy.
Maybe next time, Swire thinks. And then she can’t hold back a grin, because there will be a next time.
The next few times Swire follows Ch’en go in much the same manner—Ch’en pulling off the most impossible jobs, sneaking in and out of heavily-guarded places with ridiculous ease, Swire trailing behind her as best as she can to admire from afar. Half the time she can’t get close enough to see most of what happens, but there’s something thrilling about getting to see the aftermath too, whether it be Ch’en walking away with something glittering in her hands or a large bag slung over her shoulder or following Ch’en as she returns whatever she took back to its proper owner. The only difference is that Ch’en doesn’t stop and linger around Swire as often, mostly because her jobs are more fast-paced, which means Swire can’t even say hello if she wants to.
It’s fine, though. For now she’s content with just watching, and feeling that rush of freedom every time Ch’en flawlessly pulls off another job, that full-body tingle when she runs through the city streets at Ch’en’s heels. What would it be like, if she could do this all the time? For the rest of her life? This isn’t actual freedom, Swire knows—during the daytime she still has to attend the most boring meetings, gatherings, and parties her parents arrange, where even her dress is picked out for her. But it’s the closest she can get to the real thing.
But, Swire reflects, she probably should have expected something would go wrong, sooner or later.
Tonight is a bigger job than the past few ones Swire has followed Ch’en on: it’s in some millionaire’s mansion, and there are more armed guards surrounding the place than Swire has ever seen in her life. Ch’en’s target had made a big statement to the media just earlier that day about how he refused to let ‘that thieving hooligan continue to run unchecked,’ so he’d hired the most successful security firms throughout the country, going as far as to promise he would pay double their fees if they kept Ch’en out of the house.
It looks like that won’t be happening anymore, though, considering they couldn’t even stop Swire from getting in.
It’s the first time she’s actually managed to get in like this—she usually just stakes out to watch from somewhere outside, which she’d been planning to do as well until she saw Ch’en leave the window she climbed in from swinging open. Ch’en almost always closes the window (or door, or trapdoor, or other similar entrance) behind her, most likely to keep any guards from noticing it, but tonight she must have been in a hurry or something, because if the wind blew any harder it would make the window creak on its hinges, and that was the absolute last thing Swire wanted to happen. What if the noise drew the guards’ attention?
Her heart had been racing in her chest, and only grew faster and harder when Swire crept out of the hedges she’d been hiding behind to climb up the wall.
Somehow she convinced herself that this was just like sneaking in and out of home, even though she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what might happen if she made even the slightest sound or if a guard turned even the slightest bit towards her direction. Miraculously enough she didn’t fall off the wall despite her sweaty palms, and miraculously enough she managed to swing into the hall the window led to despite her unsteady legs.
When the soles of her shoes hit carpeted floor, a rush like nothing else ran through Swire’s body. Wow! She had done that. She’d just done that. If anyone saw her now, she’d get arrested for breaking and entering for sure. And yet the thought didn’t frighten her at all.
It probably should have, Swire thinks. Maybe then she wouldn’t be in this situation.
“Phantom thief Ch’en!” the police chief shouts, clearly pleased with himself. Swire is both annoyed and relieved this isn’t the same officer who had spoken to her father when her household had been Ch’en’s target. “You’ve finally slipped up. We have your ally right here!”
“I’m telling you,” Swire groans, yanking her arms out of the authorities’ grip for the third time, “I’m not her ally! We’re not related in any way! Will you just let me explain myself already?” In truth, she has no idea if the story she’s rapidly concocting in her head is at all believable, but she has to at least try. She can’t risk damaging Ch’en’s pristine reputation like this over some dumb mistake, nor drag Ch’en into a situation she would never have gotten into if Swire hadn’t been stupid enough to follow her this much.
Swire had, at least, been able to enjoy a few minutes of sneaking around the house. She made it all the way from the hallway she entered to the treasury on the third floor, which she’d stumbled upon through a combination of pure luck and following Ch’en’s shadow, although she didn’t stop to marvel at its contents. She’s sure plenty of other people would be impressed by the golden grand piano and the various marble sculptures, but Swire honestly gets enough of that in her own house—instead, she followed the faintest sounds and the smallest movements in the darkness until she spotted Ch’en at the very back of the room, lifting a nondescript painting up to fiddle with something that looked like a safe or vault behind it.
She took a step forward, peeking out from behind a statue of some swooning Victorian woman, and Ch’en whirled around to face her. It was the closest they’d gotten since that night in Swire’s basement, close enough that even in the darkness Swire could make out the smaller details of her mask and the wisps of dark hair that escaped the hood of her disguise. If Ch’en didn’t have a mask on, Swire thinks she would have been able to make out the color of her eyes.
Then there was a thump from outside, and Ch’en had disappeared so quickly even Swire couldn’t figure out where she’d gone. By the time she realized what was happening, the authorities had already slammed the door open, the beam of their flashlights nearly blinding Swire, and dragged her out into the garden to announce their supposed success.
The policeman sneers down at her. “Then what are you doing in the location of that wannabe vigilante’s next target, good miss? Couldn’t be sightseeing, I suppose? Or were you hoping to see the thief in action up close?”
He isn’t wrong about that last one—he’s very right, actually—but Swire isn’t about to tell him that. She crosses her arms over chest, glaring at the officers who attempt, futilely, to restrain her wrists again. “Alright, you better not interrupt,” she huffs, trying to put on her best noble airs. She isn’t anywhere as good at this as her parents want her to be, but Swire is nothing but the best at pretending she’s something she isn’t… well, in this case, something she is, but—anyway. “First of all, I had no idea this… phantom thief you’re talking about would even be here—”
Swire has several more to say after that, including a long, elaborate story rich in imagery and thematic undertones, and hopefully along the way she could keep talking until she was sure Ch’en was out of the immediate area and the policemen were confused enough by whatever she’d said that they would let her go free, but she cuts herself off when she sees something move in the shadows of the mansion.
…No, it can’t be, right? There’s no reason for Ch’en to still be here. Swire had honestly thought she’d be miles away by now, running back to return whatever she’d stolen to its proper owner. Maybe… Ch’en had just been assessing the situation, waiting for the right chance to escape. Right! That must be it.
“Chief, doesn’t she look kind of… familiar?” one of the policemen says, and Swire has to keep herself from jolting in surprise. “Like, there was another Ch’en case a few months back, and… I coulda sworn…”
Oh, no. Oh, shit. “What are you talking about?” Swire scoffs, trying to very subtly tug her scarf up her face while adjusting her hat to further stuff her hair inside it. “I told you, I’m not involved with this Ch’en person!”
A few blonde curls find their way out all the same, dangling on either side of her face. The police chief’s eyebrows rise so high they’re nearly halfway up his forehead. “No, you’re right, I recognize you… that hair… and those eyes… wait!” he squawks. “You can’t be the daughter of those two, can you? What’s your name again—”
Swire decides that will be as far as he goes. She kicks him in the shins, then makes a break for it as fast she can—which is faster than the policemen scrambling in her wake, but not faster than the shadow that suddenly comes shooting out from the darkness and grabbing her wrist with a grip tight enough to crush bone.
“H-Hey!” Swire yelps, not sure whether to retreat or keep running. On one hand, the police are behind her, but on the other hand… actually, who even is this? “What do you think you’re—”
“There she is! The phantom thief!” the police chief sputters from behind, and Swire’s words die in her throat. The hand on her wrist suddenly feels much warmer and more solid than it had earlier. “This must be some sort of kidnapping! Everyone, after them! Don’t harm a hair on the other girl’s head!”
“Come on,” Ch’en says, letting go of her and running further ahead without turning around, like she fully believes Swire will follow her without so much as a question—and, well, what’s Swire supposed to do? Not do exactly that?
Ch’en’s already way ahead of her, and Swire hurries to catch up, stumbling at first before she gets the hang of it again and starts running steadily, her fear of the policemen finding them fading into the adrenaline rushing through her veins. She can’t help the silly grin that breaks out on her face—is this how Ch’en feels all the time, this thrill, this excitement, this freedom? She follows at the heels of the shadow before her, eyes burning with the effort it takes to keep up with the ever-moving, near-indistinguishable outline in the darkness of the evening, and it feels just like the past few nights, running through the city with Ch’en, somehow not at her side but there at the same time.
As usual Swire has no idea how long they’ve been running, only that when they finally come to a stop in a small, narrow alleyway she’s panting lightly, and she has to lean on the wall beside her to catch her breath. The policemen must be far behind now, and secretly she’s a little relieved they’d recognized her as her parents’ daughter, because otherwise they probably would have started shooting.
She doesn’t even have time to speak before Ch’en steps into the faint light cast by a street lamp, for the second time tonight more than just a slippery shadow. “Why are you following me around?”
“Hah,” Swire tries to laugh, though it comes out sounding like a wheeze instead. She always feels like nothing could tire her while running with Ch’en, only to nearly collapse from exhaustion afterwards. “Not even a hello for your biggest fan?”
When Ch’en speaks again, she sounds almost embarrassed. “Is that what you are?”
“I’m kidding.” Swire straightens up, trying not to look as tired as she still feels. Standing in the light for once, Ch’en seems somehow less real than she actually is—or maybe it’s because this is the first time Swire is seeing her in this way, in this light. At least, Swire thinks, this isn’t the first time she’s seeing Ch’en up close. “I’ve got a question for you first. Did you really just help me out back there? I was trying to give you time to get away!”
“I didn’t need it.”
“Yes, yes, because you’re the best thief in the world and everything, I know that. Still.” Swire sighs and crosses her arms over her chest. It’s oddly easy to speak to Ch’en like this, like she’s a friend Swire has known for a long time. Of course, she hardly knows if Ch’en feels the same. “It was probably my fault you nearly got caught anyway.”
Ch’en is toneless as ever when she responds. “I don’t get caught.”
“Ugh, you know what I mean—”
“I helped you because I couldn’t just leave you there,” Ch’en suddenly says, stopping Swire from launching into a tangent about how even master thieves should appreciate the little things their fans try to do for them. “Answer me now. Why are you following me?” In a lower voice, she adds, “Nothing good can come from being around someone like me, you know.”
Swire isn’t sure whether to bristle at being interrupted or sputter in flustered surprise at Ch’en seeing her as someone worth helping in a sticky situation like that. “I…”
“Do you want revenge?”
“What?” Swire almost laughs.
“Do you want to take revenge on me? For stealing from you?” Ch’en tilts her head a little, like this is only mildly interesting for her rather than an apparent threat on her life. Then again, considering who Ch’en is, Swire thinks very little threats on her life could constitute as actual dangers.
Swire shakes her head, both to answer the question and both because this situation is almost too surreal to accept. “I don’t want revenge,” she says, slowly, more for her own sake than Ch’en’s. “I… I just want to… to feel free. I mean,” she adds, after realizing how stupid just those words on their own sound, “the things you do, the jobs you pull off, they’re all so amazing! How do you even do all of that without getting caught once? Without even, like, getting tired?”
“Uh…” If it weren’t for the mask, Swire thinks Ch’en might look embarrassed. “Thank you…?”
“It’s not the same as actually doing it myself,” Swire continues, “but just getting to see you perform all those amazing feats up close… it’s a little thrilling, see? And it feels freeing, too. I mean, it’s not like I can ever do the things you do, after all, so being able to watch is almost the same.”
Ch’en tilts her head again, this time to the other side. “But you do.”
“What?”
“You do the things I do,” she says, which doesn’t really make Swire any less confused until she keeps speaking. “It takes serious skill to avoid being caught. It’s been a few times by now, right? And you just snuck into that mansion without the guards outside noticing.” Ch’en gestures vaguely in what Swire supposes is the direction of the mansion. They’d been running for so long—and Swire doesn’t have a mental map of the entire city like Ch’en probably does—that she has no idea where they even are right now. “That was very good.”
Swire is glad for the cover of evening, because she can feel her ears going warm. “Well! Well… heh, now I’m the one thanking you.”
“What will you do now?” Ch’en asks. The question is sudden and abrupt, and Swire idly wonders if this is because Ch’en doesn’t have many people to talk to or because Ch’en is just a naturally terrible conversationalist. She’s leaning towards the latter theory. “I don’t mind if you keep following me. I don’t mind if I have to help you out every once in a while either. But those police seemed to recognize you…”
“Ah, shit.” Swire leans back against the wall behind her again, massaging her temple. She desperately hopes the police are stupid enough to still be running around searching for them, but she highly doubts that they haven’t paused to call her parents. “They better not be sending out search warrants now or something…”
Ch’en seems to watch her curiously, though it’s not like Swire can tell much through her mask. “What, do you… want to run away from home, or something?”
She sounds so endearingly awkward, in sharp contrast to this calm, cool, rebellious persona she must have unwittingly built up because of her heists, that Swire can’t help a laugh. “What, are you… offering to help me, or something?” she teases, even as she wonders what on earth Ch’en could possibly do to help her with this, short of virtually kidnapping her.
“I’ve already brought you this far. Walking around this late at night would be dangerous.” Ch’en pauses, fiddling with the edge of her mask—and then, to Swire’s alarm, beginning to unclasp it. “Do you want a ride home?” Ch’en asks, apparently completely oblivious to the shock doubtless written all over Swire’s face.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Swire says, torn between staring at Ch’en’s face, her real face, without a mask, without a mask, coming into view bit by bit, or covering her face and looking away like some blushing ingénue. What does Ch’en think she’s doing? There are barely any decent photographs of her that aren’t heavily Photoshopped or so blurred that she looks more like a speck of dirt in the picture than an actual person, much less any decent photographs of her face. Ch’en can’t possibly trust Swire enough to be doing this… can she? Or maybe this is just another presupposition Swire’s gotten from the media, and Ch’en doesn’t actually care that much if anyone sees her face? But what kind of thief—
Her train of thought skids to a stop so abrupt, Swire imagines she can hear the screech of its wheels on the rails. “You…”
Ch’en tucks her mask in the small bag at her side. When she blinks it’s slow, almost intentionally so, like she wants Swire to get a good long look at her unmistakable, wine-red eyes. “What?”
“What the heck?” Swire blurts out, eloquently. “Aren’t you, that person, from that party… that’s right! I spilled my drink on you!” Logic dictates this sort of coincidence can’t be possible, and that Swire should have recognized something about Ch’en earlier on, but there’s no mistaking those eyes, and that face, and… Swire is staring again. She can’t help it, though—Ch’en sort of just demands the attention, so much so that Swire is tempted to say something like how she shouldn’t bother with a mask anymore, if her looks are enough to singlehandedly distract everyone around her.
Unexpectedly enough, Ch’en freezes. “You remember that?”
You remember that too? Swire doesn’t ask. “Of course I do, I’ve got a good memory…” She trails off, another explanation occurring to her. “Hold on! Now that I know who you are and what you look like, are you going to silence me or something?” she yelps, trying to step back and only hitting her head against the wall behind her instead. “Are you gonna get me alone in a car just to kill me!?”
Ch’en looks confused. It’s almost dizzying to have a face to the person Swire has been following for months now, when she’d grown used to having Ch’en exist as just a vague shadow in her head. “Huh…? No, no, that’s against my code. I don’t kill. Besides, I don’t treat women like that…”
Swire opens her mouth to say more, even if she hasn’t decided between, “Then why show me your real face?” and, “You were serious about driving me home?” when her phone chooses that moment to vibrate insistently in her pocket. “One second,” Swire groans, fishing it out and wincing at her mother’s name on the caller ID. The incoming call disappears for a moment, long enough for Swire to wince even harder at the seemingly never-ending string of message notifications on her screen, when her mother calls again.
“You should probably take that,” Ch’en says. “Just in case.”
“Just in case what?” Swire grumbles, but answers it anyway. “Mom? Look, I’m fine, I can explain—”
“Where have you been?” her mother wails, loud enough that even Ch’en flinches in surprise. “We just got a call from the police about how you were kidnapped by that phantom thief that’s been running about! Don’t tell me you tried to get revenge on her on your own? Where are you right now? Please say this is all a misunderstanding!”
Swire should have known better than to answer. Just thinking about going home and explaining everything to her parents, who are doubtless the last people to understand her situation, sounds like hell—and worse, what if they think it’s too dangerous for her to go out anymore and lock her up at home, for real, jail bars on the windows and everything? It was already awful before, but it’d be like capital torture now that Swire knows how freedom feels like, how running through the city with Ch’en feels like. She’s always known these escapades of hers would never last, but she hadn’t expected them to end so soon, so soon after she had just begun to crave the thrill and the rush of adrenaline every month.
She looks up at Ch’en, who just looks back at her, face perfectly neutral, one side cast in shadow and the other lit golden by the street lamp. Swire swallows, not sure which of her thoughts to say first, not sure what she should say at all.
What if this is just a chance encounter, the sole intersection of perpendicular lines? What if Swire never sees those eyes again?
Swire shuts her phone off and stuffs it back in her pocket, Ch’en blinking but saying nothing. “Well, you heard her,” Swire says, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. “Kidnap me. Right now.”
The only indication of Ch’en’s surprise is her eyebrows rising ever-so-slightly higher. “I’m… sorry? What?”
“Take me with you,” Swire says, stepping forward, not sure if it’s the remaining adrenaline from earlier or something else entirely that has her heart jumping at a jackhammer beat in her chest. “I can help you with your heists or something! I’ve got good memory, and you said it yourself, I’m pretty good at sneaking around! Not as good as you, but it has to count for something, and—you can even give me a test or whatever to see what I can do, I don’t care. But take me with you. I—” She has to force herself to keep speaking, here, even as her voice threatens to crack. “I don’t want to lose this.”
Some emotion crosses Ch’en’s face, one Swire doesn’t recognize right away, but it’s too quick and dark to see much else. “You don’t seem to understand something. I work alone.”
“That—!”
“But we can talk later,” Ch’en interrupts, not unkindly. There are police sirens in the distance, growing increasingly louder, and Swire bites a curse back, not even sure who she’s cursing in this situation. “Come on. We should get somewhere safer first.”
Ch’en leads her onto a street almost as narrow as the alleyway they just left, and Swire stares as Ch’en walks around to the passenger side of a car and opens the door for her. “You drive?” she asks, feeling stupid for asking in this situation but also completely in the right. She’d never imagined Ch’en got around through any other means besides her own two feet, much less own a car. It even looks expensive, but Ch’en’s made it clear she doesn’t steal anything for her own gain.
“When necessary,” Ch’en says, looking at her. It’s been a good few minutes now, but Swire still can’t quite get used to seeing her face instead of a decorative mask. Swire doesn’t think she’ll ever quite get used to it, actually, assuming she’ll even see Ch’en again after tonight.
Swire slides inside the car, still raising an eyebrow at the unnecessarily elaborate seatbelt when Ch’en gets in the driver’s seat, doing something to the ignition that didn’t look like it involved car keys. Ch’en notices her gaze and says, like this is no big deal, “This isn’t mine. I hijacked it.”
Swire almost chokes on her own spit. “What?”
Still speaking like the hijacking of a car is about as important as the weather, Ch’en says, “It’s fine. Some idiot politician was cheating on his wife with a woman thirty years younger than him in this very car.” She gives the passenger seat a passing glance. Swire feels suddenly uneasy about sitting on the leather, just in case there’s something else about (or on) it she should know about. “Don’t worry about it. He’s got plenty of other cars at home.”
“…Good for him…?”
The sirens get fainter and fainter as Ch’en drives away until they’re entirely inaudible, though that does nothing to calm the still-rapid beat of Swire’s heart. In an effort to distract herself she fiddles with the radio, switching from station to station until pausing at the low drone of a news reporter’s voice. “This just in—infamous phantom thief Ch’en has struck again, but this time in a completely different manner,” the man says, voice crackling with static.
Swire freezes. In her peripheral vision, Ch’en seems perfectly unmoved, eyes fixed on the road and grip on the wheel neither too tight nor too loose.
“Tonight, instead of carrying out one of her regular heists, she appears to have kidnapped a young woman,” the reporter continues. “The kidnapped responds to ‘Swire,’ about 160cm tall, long blonde hair, green eyes. Police are on the chase, but anyone with valuable information will be handsomely compensated courtesy of the victim’s family. To anyone who might have insight on the situation, please contact—”
Swire almost smashes the radio in with the force she uses to turn it off. Ch’en still isn’t looking at her, but after an uncomfortable pause, she asks, “Swire, right? You still have your phone?”
Swire rolls the window down and chucks the offending object out the window. “Nope.” Hopefully the car wheels grind it down into a useless hunk of scrap metal.
“Well,” Ch’en says, slowing to a stop at a red light and finally looking away from the road to raise an eyebrow at Swire now rolling the window up. Swire supposes she shouldn’t be too surprised that even the phantom thief herself follows traffic laws. “I was making sure you still had a way of contacting your family. Just how long, exactly, do you plan on having me be your kidnapper?”
Swire rests her elbows on the dashboard and props her chin on the edge of her palms. At least pulling a grin up isn’t too hard. “How long will you have me?”
As Swire soon finds out, living with Ch’en is nothing like living with her family.
She hadn’t been expecting it to—and she definitely hadn’t wanted it to—but it’s still much more different than what she’s grown used to. For one thing, Ch’en brings her not into a lavish manor nor a decent flat but into a modest one-bedroom apartment in the rundown residential area Swire vaguely remembers having also gone to with Ch’en before (albeit under different circumstances), where there is no elevator and they have to climb up nine flights of stairs to get to Ch’en’s unit, tucked away at the end of the corridor, where the floor tiles are peeling and Swire counts three rats as large as her hand scurrying to and fro, there one second then hidden by a bag of garbage the next.
“You live here?” Swire asks—though it comes out sounding more like, You live like this?—while Ch’en unlocks her door. At least she has actual keys for this one and doesn’t have to pick it open.
Ch’en just nods. She doesn’t seem the least bit bothered, and Swire decides she shouldn’t be, either. She’d asked for this, after all—to be put off by a bit of dirt and trash would just be rude of her. Even as she tries not to think about how she has a feeling the smell will stick to her skin.
Despite Swire’s protests, Ch’en insists on letting Swire have the singular bed while Ch’en herself takes the couch in the living room—though she doesn’t so much as ‘insist’ as much as she stares Swire down until Swire, unnerved by the sudden intensity in those eyes, gives in and says she’ll pay Ch’en back for this in the future. To even get to the bedroom, Swire has to pick her way across the entryway (filled with all sorts of shoes and boots), the living room (more like a living space, since there seems to be no clear start nor end to it), and then the hallway leading to it (which is even narrower than the alleyway from earlier, so much so that Swire can’t imagine more than one person squeezing through it).
The bedroom proper isn’t messy, thankfully, but Swire can’t count the amount of times she bumps her waist against the edge of the desk at the side or stubs her toe on both table and chair legs alike. Ch’en walks in a few minutes later and silently rifles through her closet to hand Swire what she calls ‘sleepwear,’ but are really just a shirt and shorts that look too worn to wear outside. “Fine. Pajamas,” Ch’en says, when Swire might have stared down at the clothes a second too long. “Loungewear. What word do you use to describe these?”
“I’ll take them, I’ll take them,” Swire hurries to say, ducking into the bathroom to change, where she proceeds to bump her elbow against the edge of the sink a minimum of eleven times. When she’s done she heads back out, but the room is empty and the lights are all turned off in the living space when Swire peeks outside, so she supposes Ch’en is already getting ready for bed, too. Or couch, as it is.
Ch’en’s bed is nothing like Swire’s own back at the manor, obviously. The mattress is so thin Swire can feel the wooden bedframe beneath it, the blanket is too threadbare to keep much of the cold out, and the pillow feels virtually nonexistent when she rests her head on it. But she draws the blanket up to her chin and inhales, smells not detergent but a vaguely flowery scent mixed with the headiness of wine, and sighs.
At least her email will have a bunch of interesting news articles for her tomorrow. Too bad she doesn’t have a phone to read them on anymore.
There are plenty of things to get used to throughout the next few days, the first of which is that living with Ch’en is not as glamorous a life as Swire had half-imagined. After all, she’s a phantom thief! Surely they sleep on a bed of coins or something? Or maybe money bills, since sleeping on a bed made out of coins sounds uncomfortable. Either way, she hadn’t been expecting a rundown apartment that could use some now-hiring posters for cleaning staff, but Swire tries not to think about that. The next morning, she wakes up exhausted but excited to discover some new things about Ch’en, things no one else—especially not the damn media—knows about.
When she walks out of the bedroom, it’s to the smell of coffee and not much else. Ch’en is perched atop her kitchen counter, sipping from a chipped, off-white mug and scrolling idly through her phone. “Morning, Ch’en,” Swire greets, trying to inconspicuously look around the space for a chair. There are none. Now that she’s paying more attention, there isn’t a dining table either, just the kitchen counter and a few cabinets where Swire assumes Ch’en keeps utensils in. Well… it makes sense for someone living alone to not need a dining table, and Ch’en probably doesn’t have people over often if at all, but…
Ch’en doesn’t return the greeting, just gives her a noncommittal glance and nods. Then she looks over at the end of the counter, where a small box containing what look like a dozen or so packets of instant coffee is sitting. “There’s some hot water left. Do you drink coffee? Or tea?”
“Either’s fine.” Swire wanders over to the box, trying not to make her confusion too obvious. No coffee machine? Surely those aren’t too expensive for someone like Ch’en to buy? But now that she thinks about it, Ch’en doesn’t go around stealing historical artifacts or returning lost items for the money. If that’s the case, where does she get money? She can’t… possibly have a day job or something, right? Just the mental image of Ch’en, the most elusive thief to exist by night, working as the cashier of some convenience store by day is almost too ridiculous to believe.
Ch’en is quiet for a moment, then says, “Are you more used to a coffee machine?”
“T-That’s not it!” Had Swire been staring down at the box a bit too long? She grabs one of the packets and takes the mug Ch’en slides towards her. “Okay, well, I kind of am. I was just thinking, though… you’re, like, the greatest thief who’s ever lived and everything. Why do you choose to live like this?”
“I wouldn’t call myself that,” Ch’en says, seeming almost bashful, though it’s hard to tell when her expression barely changes. “And I think it would be… what’s the word… disingenuous, to keep doing what I do while living in luxury. Anyway, this isn’t the only place I live in. But that’s not important.”
“Wait. What do you mean? This isn’t your only house?”
“Do you know how to prepare instant coffee?”
“Don’t just drop something on me like that and act like it’s unimportant!?”
As it turns out, Ch’en does have a day job: a bouncer in a casino as rundown as her apartment building. Apparently Ch’en has few documents to speak of, but that casino—and most establishments in the area—are lax about that sort of stuff, which is why she’d decided to get the job in the first place. “I have to get going now. I’ll be back by seven or so,” she says, finishing off the rest of her coffee. “You can do whatever you like, aside from answering the door.”
Swire raises an eyebrow. “Even if it’s you knocking?”
“I wouldn’t knock.” Ch’en shrugs on her jacket. “I’m off.”
“Wait! You’re really just going to leave me here? Let me come along.”
“What would you do in a casino?”
Swire almost rolls her eyes. “What else would I do in a casino?”
Ch’en looks at her like she hadn’t expected Swire to be much of a gambler, and, well, she isn’t. But Swire knows her way around most card games, thanks to a few influential upperclassmen back during her university years, and it’s not like she hasn’t snuck out to hang around shady, sketchy places a few times. (The fact that she’d left immediately to try her luck elsewhere is irrelevant.) Just as Swire comes up with something else to say to convince Ch’en to bring her along, Ch’en says, “Okay.”
Swire grins. “Okay?”
“But not today.”
Swire droops. “Then don’t say ‘okay,’ what the heck?”
“You can go out, if you want,” Ch’en continues. “Just make sure to disguise yourself well. People will be searching everywhere for you. Or you can stay here, too, and make yourself comfortable. I don’t care either way.” She pauses, then adds, “If you get caught, leave some hints so I know where to go.”
Swire feels her eye twitch. “What, are you asking me to leave bread crumbs or something? You’re funny.”
“Thank you.”
“That… oh, never mind. Get going already!”
If search parties are in full-force, then even Swire isn’t stupid enough to leave the house for now. She putters around the tiny apartment instead, trying to get used to the vast difference in space—it had seemed cramped last night, and it still sort of does now, but after a while it starts feeling a little more comfortable. Not a single inch of space is wasted, and though it’s cluttered here and there, everything feels like it’s in its proper place. Ch’en definitely doesn’t have any trouble finding whatever she needs in here.
It definitely hadn’t been made and furnished for more than one person in mind, though; the single bedroom is evidence enough. Swire frowns, flopping down on the couch—what if Ch’en gets tired of her and decides to give her back up to her family? Just the thought is terrifying, especially since the walk from this apartment back to her manor might be the last time she ever walks outside, period, but… would Swire even be able to do anything? Ch’en is kind enough to let her stay here, after all, to let Swire drink her coffee and sleep in her bed even when it’s obvious she doesn’t earn much to support two people. If Ch’en decides she doesn’t want Swire around anymore…
These are awful thoughts. Swire hops off the couch and decides she’ll just have to make Ch’en want her around—or, at least, to keep Ch’en from thinking otherwise. And where better to start than with the house?
“Wow,” Ch’en says, monotonous, when she returns home later that day at precisely 7:02pm. “You made yourself comfortable, I see.”
“Heh. No need to thank me,” Swire preens, flicking a stray curl over her shoulder.
“I wasn’t going to,” Ch’en informs her. She slips out of her jacket and hangs it up on the coat rack by the door, then steps over a small pile of cleaning materials Swire had accidentally left on the floor. Whoops. “You didn’t have to. Did you move anything from its original position?”
Swire shakes her head. “Only the dust bunnies.” She’s always annoyed when the cleaning staff at her own place move her things around in her room, so she’d been very careful to put everything back where she found them afterwards. Well, aside from the aforementioned cleaning materials on the floor, which she surreptitiously hurries towards to gather up in her arms. “Seriously, how have you not developed some kind of allergy to dirt or something? It’s a mess in here! Renowned phantom thief or not, you should take better care of where you live!”
“I’d rather not hear a lecture about my cleaning habits from you.” Ch’en looks around, and Swire preens even more at the hint of awe in her eyes. That, at least, seems genuine. “Well… I guess this is a step up from the norm. Does this mean you’re open to doing chores after all?”
“What?”
“I don’t have shifts often. Only every other weekday.” Ch’en casually slides the coffee table out of the way. Well. Swire had forgotten about that too. “I’ll do chores tomorrow. You do them again the day after. You get the point.”
Sharing chores… now it really feels like living together. Swire follows Ch’en into the kitchen with a thoughtful hum. “I mean, yeah, sure, it’s only fair I do my part while living here… but hey! Doesn’t this mean I won’t ever get to go with you during work? This was your ploy all along, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, no,” Ch’en says, still perfectly toneless. “You figured it out.”
“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not…”
Swire can clean, because it’s not like that’s rocket science, but she finds out later that night how tiring it is when she falls asleep right away. Swire can also cook, because she’s snuck into her manor’s kitchen a few times to try out some cool recipes she found online, but Ch’en’s kitchen has none of the appliances she’s used to and she nearly ends up setting off the fire alarm when she tries to work them anyway. At the very least, Swire knows how to operate the washing machine—she’s surprised Ch’en has a washing machine in her house at all—but forgets to separate by color and has to mumble an apology when Ch’en silently holds up the victims of her accident.
So Swire doesn’t exactly do a great job at housekeeping. But Ch’en doesn’t seem to seriously mind, just tells her it’s fine every time she screws up and teaches her how to do it in the future, and a tentative feeling wells up in Swire’s chest every time Ch’en guides her in even the smallest of things, from how to work the gas stove to how to fold clothes the way Ch’en prefers. It’s probably stupid to care so much for something so little, but Swire can’t help it, when she recalls how her parents would have yelled at her for each and every one of her mistakes.
Still, even when away like this, Swire can’t fully escape her family. Ch’en had gone out with her to buy a new phone once the news about a missing daughter from an esteemed family had died down a little, but every time Swire checks the news, all she ever gets are more articles about the continued search for her. “Stay smart when you go out,” Ch’en had told her, after peering over Swire’s shoulder to read the news on her phone. “Don’t need anyone recognizing you. And you’re recognizable.”
Swire laughed awkwardly, not sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or an insult. Or just a fact, since Ch’en made it sound like one. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ch’en gave her an odd look, like she was confused by Swire’s confusion, and just shrugged.
Swire can’t very well walk back to her old place and empty her closet, so for a few days she makes do with some of Ch’en’s clothes, which are hell on earth to match together. (Ch’en always looks like she can’t care less about what she wears, and sometimes it shows when she throws denim on denim in the morning.) Then she straps on a face mask and a pair of shades before leaving, not sure if her heart is thundering away in her chest because of fear or excitement.
She has to admit—she can’t help doing a stupid little twirl in the middle of an empty street when she leaves the apartment on her own for the first time. It’s that same feeling of freedom, only this time several times better, because Swire didn’t have to sneak out or scale walls or bribe security to do this. She’d even tried asking for permission to leave earlier, and Ch’en had just stared at her like this was the last question she’d expected. “Why would I tell you not to?” she returned, nibbling on her egg whites (Swire had done a pretty okay job with those for breakfast, at least). “Just don’t forget a disguise.”
Swire takes her sweet time going around the city—she doesn’t have a map, nor does she perfectly memorize it like Ch’en does, but she knows her way around still. She gravitates to the fashion street as soon as she recognizes it, glad she’d brought her wallet along the night she left home and can use her cash on hand rather than her credit card. She’ll need many more clothes if she wants to keep going out in various disguises, and sharing Ch’en’s wardrobe just doesn’t cut it, even if it’s a little addicting to wear clothes that smell like her…
“Did you hear? About the kidnapping?”
Swire pauses, her hand hovering over a pair of jeans. Why is it that she always hears important news in clothing stores?
“It’s awful,” a middle-aged woman whispers, though not very well, considering Swire can still hear her anyway. “I mean, I knew that thief was bad news from the start, going around stealing everything of value and all, but then they turn around and kidnap a young woman? Poor girl, she must be terrified right now. What do you think that criminal is doing to her?”
Swire abandons the jeans and turns her attention to a jacket instead. That poor terrified girl is going clothes shopping right now, she badly wants to say. Now that she thinks about it, didn’t Swire kidnap Ch’en instead of the other way around? It certainly feels like Swire’s been having her way while Ch’en has to put up with her. The only thing missing is Swire demanding a ransom, although she has no idea from whom she’d be demanding it from…
“It’s strange, don’t you think?” the woman’s conversation partner responds. Like she’d read Swire’s thoughts, she adds, “I mean, kidnapping the daughter of a rich family… you’d think that thief would be asking for ransom right now. But it’s been a week and it’s completely silent.”
“Oh! I thought the same! The news is all abuzz with theories. Did you hear about the one where…”
Theories? This Swire doesn’t want to hear about secondhand. She grabs the jacket, stuffs it in her basket, and hurries to pay at the cashier.
When she gets back to the apartment, it’s late but not late enough that Ch’en is back from work, or at least not dozing off at the kitchen counter like she seems prone to doing whenever she wants to sit down and ends up falling asleep instead. Swire sets her purchases aside and drops down on the counter to open up her phone—she’d needed to make a new email to renew all her subscriptions, just in case they were monitoring her old account’s login activity—and goes through some of the articles she’d let build up. Most of them are ones that are just the same rehashed information and paraphrased paragraphs she’s already read, but…
Swire switches from a reputable news agency to a slightly-less-reputable one, and almost groans aloud at the first few articles she sees. ‘Still waiting for daughter to come home,’ says mother of kidnapping victim… Search parties in full swing for kidnapped daughter… Phantom thief’s former supporters speak out against her…
Swire frowns and opens the last one. ‘I just can’t believe she’d do that,’ some man who used to call himself one of Ch’en’s fans had said. ‘I’m all for stealing from the rich and giving it back to the poor, but there’s no reason for her to have kidnapped someone.’ The rest of the statements in the article are along much the same lines, people who used to look up to Ch’en now talking about how disappointed they are in her and that they never thought she’d do anything to seriously harm others.
It’s a bit comical, because Swire wonders if Ch’en even cares about any of these people or what they think of her, but also mostly ridiculously guilt-inducing, when Swire realizes Ch’en’s reputation had been injured because of her. If she hadn’t shown up that night… no, if she had been more careful to not get caught by the stupid police, this wouldn’t be happening, would it? Ch’en’s reputation would still be as pristine as a phantom thief’s reputation can get. If it hadn’t been for Swire…
She sighs. It feels like a lot of things would be better for Ch’en right now if it hadn’t been for Swire.
She scrolls further down the article in a weak attempt to distract herself, and her eyes almost pop out of their sockets when they catch on a short section at the end:
Some theorize that, because no ransom has been made in exchange for the young Swire’s safety yet, she had not been kidnapped for money but rather for the criminal’s personal interest. “I think it’s definitely possible,” one of Ch’en’s staunch supporters says. “Why would she only ‘kidnap’ someone now after months of never fatally hurting anyone? Besides, it’s equally possible her ‘victim’ went with Ch’en of her own will. I know I would.” On some social media, fans have even suggested that Ch’en could have been enchanted by Swire’s beauty…
“What are you looking at? Why’s your face so red?”
Swire barely suppresses a startled shriek and jolts back instead, clutching her phone to her chest and keeping it firmly away from Ch’en, who seems to have made a habit of creeping up on her and looking over her shoulder. “N-N-Nothing!” Swire laughs, fingers moving on autopilot to open up a different news article. “When did you get back? I didn’t even hear the door!”
Ch’en steps back, looking just the slightest bit put-out. It’s an expression Swire hasn’t seen on her before, and it’s more than a little endearing. “Just now. And that might be because I used the window.”
“Haha, that explains… wait. What? The window?”
“Police are standing around outside.” Ch’en stretches her arms over her head like this is no big deal. “It’s no big deal,” she adds, when Swire supposes whatever expression she has on her face right now plainly expresses her thoughts. “If they do come up, I have a plan. They probably won’t, though—the landlord is a pain to deal with. They’ll give up in a few minutes. Have you made dinner?”
“There are police outside the apartment and you want dinner?” Swire shakes her head. “Never mind. I didn’t make anything, but I bought some food while I was out.”
While Ch’en sticks the food in the microwave, Swire tries to forget about the police lingering around the apartment building’s front door by going through some of the other news articles open on her phone. These, thankfully, aren’t about that stupid theory about her enchanting beauty or whatever, but they’re not much better: Swire’s parents are actively encouraging others against Ch’en, undermining her already-damaged reputation and hard work so far by focusing on Swire’s kidnapping instead. ‘She must have been waiting for the right time to swoop in and take her chances,’ Swire’s father says, in one interview. ‘We’re ready for the ransom, but we’re not going to let her have her way. Either our daughter will escape on her own or we’ll find her ourselves. We’re not giving that criminal a single coin.’
Swire rolls her eyes so hard her head hurts. She knew her parents were a little slow on the uptake about literally everything about her, but do they even hear themselves right now? Part of her wants to show these to Ch’en, mostly so she has someone to talk to about it, but she already knows it would be pointless. It’s not like anything her parents say can actually be used against Ch’en, because—well, because they’re not true anyway, obviously! Besides, do they really think Swire is going to break out now that she almost has more freedom than she knows what to do with? So far Ch’en is already far better family than her actual, blood-related relatives have been to her.
Swire fiddles with her phone. Still, can she really keep this up, staying here with Ch’en? It’s only been a week or so but she already knows she doesn’t mind at all, and so far neither does Ch’en. But surely… won’t there come a day when Ch’en decides she doesn’t want her around? What then? Swire can’t imagine dragging herself all the way back to her parents, not when she already likes spending time with Ch’en. And talking to Ch’en. And listening to Ch’en talk about her plans for her next heist. And… just Ch’en, in general. True, Swire had come to admire Ch’en because of her impressive feats (not crimes… in her perspective), but she wouldn’t live with someone just because she idolizes them.
“I’m going to be working on a new job soon,” Ch’en says, drawing Swire out of her thoughts.
The conversation opener is a welcome distraction from the police-versus-landlord argument Swire can hear beginning outside. “Ooh, I saw that. You announced it just the other day, right? You know, I really wonder why the post office agrees to do it for you. Haven’t they made the connection yet?”
Ch’en shrugs. “I don’t think they read the letters. Most of the time I leave the letters in the mail myself anyway, if it’s in walking distance.”
Ch’en’s ‘walking distance’ is probably other people’s ‘five subway stops away,’ considering Swire has seen (and accompanied) Ch’en cover that approximate distance without breaking a sweat. “I’ll come along too, then,” Swire says, closing her phone with a grin. “This’ll be our first case together! Like, officially! Will I get to do something? Learn some tricks from the legendary phantom thief herself?”
Unexpectedly enough, Ch’en frowns. “I thought I told you. I work alone.”
“…Oh,” Swire says, at length. “Right.” Ch’en had told her. Multiple times, now that she thinks about it. She’d been half-hoping Ch’en would change her mind after spending enough time with Swire, but either this week hasn’t been ‘enough time,’ or… there’ll never be ‘enough time’ at all. “But… are you sure?” Swire ventures, just as the microwave dings and Ch’en moves to retrieve their dinner. “Okay, I won’t do anything, I’ll just follow you like usual. How’s that?”
Ch’en still looks unsure—Swire likes to think she’s learning to differentiate the minute changes in Ch’en’s perpetually-neutral expression—but says, “That’s fine. As long as you’re careful.”
“You really won’t let me help any other way, though?”
“No.”
“…For real?” Swire washes a pair of plates and two sets of utensils while Ch’en pokes at the food to see if it’s properly heated. “Just asking, but why won’t you let me help? Or more like, why do you insist on working alone? It’s not like I’m going to report you to the police.”
Ch’en says nothing for a while, just mutely accepts the plates Swire hands her and distributes the food equally. When she’s done she perches atop the counter and stares down at her dinner while Swire leans on the edge instead, placing her plate on the surface, still damp from where she’d wiped a spot of dirt off a while ago. Then, just as Swire had begun to give up on getting an answer out of her: “I don’t want to implicate you.”
Swire almost chokes on her own saliva. “You can’t be serious?”
“I am.” And Ch’en does sound serious, more serious than she usually is. “I told you before. Nothing good can come from being around someone like me. Right now you’re still a victim I kidnapped, and if the authorities ever find you, that means you’ll be safe. But if you’re spotted helping me out there—” She pauses, turns away. “You’ll turn into my accomplice. It doesn’t matter if that’s what you want to do. I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”
Swire can’t help it—she lets out a laugh. It comes out sounding far sharper and less happier than a regular laugh should be, and Ch’en blinks, looking just a little surprised for once. “Hey,” Swire says; “hey. Sorry, but do you hear yourself right now?”
Ch’en’s eyes narrow, and just that small action is enough to turn her from Ch’en, Swire’s new housemate, to Ch’en, legendary phantom thief. “Why?”
“I’m literally, already living with you!” Swire says, just barely keeping the words from turning into a shout. “I appreciate it, I really do, you taking me in and letting me live with you without, like, paying rent. But—Ch’en. Come on.” She hadn’t imagined that, right, the tiniest flinch on Ch’en’s face when Swire had said her name? Is it because barely anyone calls her by that name instead of using thief or criminal? “If I cared about getting hurt or being your accomplice, you really think I would’ve asked to live with you at all?”
Ch’en’s jaw clenches. “Living together and following me around is one thing. Helping me is completely different.”
“How? You said it yourself, that I’ve got potential! I can keep up with you, can’t I? If I just learn—if you just teach me—”
“That’s enough.” Ch’en stands up. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I work alone. That’s the end of it.”
“What? But—!”
But Ch’en is already bringing her plate away from the kitchen and into the living space, placing it on the coffee table and sitting on the floor to eat. It’s almost hilarious, that her apartment is so small she can’t even lock herself in a room, and then it’s even more hilarious when Swire realizes it’s because she’s been using Ch’en’s bedroom while Ch’en sleeps out here on the couch of her own place.
And by hilarious, she means frustrating. Why can’t Ch’en understand that Swire just wants to help, that Swire wants to prove she’s someone worth having around? Not wanting her to get hurt just sounds like a flimsy excuse to keep someone from dragging her down, which Swire knows will happen eventually, but is also something she knows can be improved on, if Ch’en would just…
This is hopeless and stupid and pointless. “Fine,” Swire says, childishly, taking her own plate and storming into Ch’en’s room. If she thinks about it more, maybe she’ll understand where Ch’en is coming from—but if she thinks about it more, she’ll start hearing Ch’en’s words in her parents’ voices, too, and that’s the last thing Swire needs right now.
In the next few days, they seem to silently agree not to talk about it—when Ch’en takes care of the chores for the day, it leaves Swire with little to do but sit on the couch and pretend to be absorbed in scrolling through her phone. When it’s Swire’s turn, she puts her all into cleaning and cooking and watching the washing machine shudder through its cycles, just to avoid thinking back on what had happened and making herself annoyed again. After a while, Ch’en starts staying up later in the evenings, moving the coffee table closer to the couch to pore over sheets of paper and scrawl over what look like diagrams from afar.
Is this how she plans for her heists? Swire can’t help the curiosity overpowering her previous irritation. No one’s ever seen phantom thief Ch’en’s behind-the-scenes, and she has to admit it’s something she’s always wondered about. At least now she knows Ch’en isn’t an actual superhuman who can get in and out the most heavily-guarded places without so much as a plan.
On one such night, Swire sighs and decides this tension between them is stupid. “Ch’en,” she calls, heading out of the bathroom after brushing her teeth. Ch’en blinks, her shoulders shifting the slightest bit, like she’d been surprised but trying not to show it. “You’re going to get bags under your eyes if you stay up this late all the time.”
Ch’en has the gall to look confused. “So?”
“So? Sleep deprivation is bad for the skin!”
“Huh,” is all Ch’en offers, before she returns to her plans. Swire can practically feel the attention slipping away from her and back to the papers.
Swire shakes her head. “Do you want coffee?”
“That sounds bad for the skin too,” Ch’en placidly notes. When Swire only crosses her arms and waits, Ch’en makes a small noise and says, “Please. Thanks.”
At least her politeness never fails her, Swire thinks. She heads into the kitchen, strangely proud of herself for knowing where Ch’en keeps the coffee packets and where to replace the electric kettle without needing to ask anymore.
She leaves the coffee mug on the edge of the table, on the only triangle of space that isn’t covered by papers. “This is for your next job, isn’t it?” Swire asks, trying to keep her voice as casual and nonchalant and disinterested as possible. She sneaks a glance down at the papers anyway, pleasantly surprised to realize she’s seen them before—they’re floor plans for a museum she remembers Ch’en having gone to on a past job, and Swire had visited the museum itself afterwards to look around and see the historical artifact Ch’en returned to it just the night before.
Ch’en visibly hesitates, then nods. At least just talking about the case doesn’t immediately mean Swire is helping her out, then. Unexpectedly enough, just as Swire begins to bend slightly down to get a better look at the floor plans, Ch’en says, “You can come along if you want.”
Swire has to fight hard not to stumble backwards. “Whoa, what?”
“The same way you did, before,” Ch’en hurries to add. She sounds almost nervous, and much as Swire still feels a hint of annoyance about their past argument, she can’t help but feel endeared anyway. She doesn’t get to hear a nervous Ch’en too often, considering Ch’en seems to be the sort of person who plans and is ready for everything. “Following me around without doing anything, just watching. You can still do that.”
Swire sighs. “It’s not the same, though.”
“No,” Ch’en allows, her voice low. “But it’s safer.”
“If you say so,” Swire sighs. This sounds as close to an agreement as the two of them can get over the topic, and if Swire wants to continue living here, she might as well play nice for now. Maybe in the future… well, that’s something she can think about some other time. “By the way,” she remembers to say, before she would have turned around to return to the bedroom, “you made a mistake there.”
Ch’en’s hand, which had been rapidly scribbling notes on one of the blueprints, comes to an abrupt stop. “What?”
“The exhibit for replicas is on the second floor, not the third.” Swire leans down and points at where Ch’en had written 3 instead of 2. The mistake had been so glaringly obvious to her, she’s a bit surprised Ch’en hadn’t noticed, but then again it is pretty late, and Ch’en must be tired from the day’s work.
Ch’en stares at where she’s pointing until Swire draws her hand back, by which Ch’en then moves her gaze up to Swire herself. Her expression is as unreadable as always, made even less decipherable with only the faint light of the desk lamp to go by, but Swire thinks she sees a hint of disbelief in her eyes. “You’re right,” Ch’en says, at length, her voice even quieter than usual. “But how did you…?”
“Ah, I visited that museum a while back,” Swire says, feeling more than a bit pleased with herself. Is this the first time she’s seeing Ch’en taken aback? “It was after you returned that dinosaur fossil or whatever, actually. I wanted to see it for myself, so I took a little trip.” It had been hell trying to come up with a decent excuse to go out for almost the whole day, though; she’d ended up telling her parents some ridiculous story involving a local school and an educational tour, and by then her explanation had grown convoluted enough that they said yes, more to make her shut up than anything.
Ch’en blinks, slowly. “That was months ago.”
“Yeah, I know.” Swire grins. She’s not sure she keeps the smugness out of it all that well. “Told you I’ve got good memory.”
It’s that, of all things, that has Ch’en finally opening up to her a bit more—at first it’s mostly just her asking Swire for a cup of coffee whenever she sits down to work, or if she can take over preparing lunch or dinner on her own because Ch’en has to leave to study her target and their location. They’re small things, and not really things Swire should be as happy to do as she is, but it’s progress all the same. Once, Ch’en even invites Swire to come along with her on one of her trips, and Swire has to keep herself from bouncing in excitement the whole while even though all Ch’en does is take notes and type things down on her phone.
“Since we’re already out, let’s go get food too,” Swire suggests, though it isn’t so much a suggestion as it is something for her to say while dragging Ch’en to the nearest restaurant. Ch’en sighs but doesn’t protest, although she gives her wallet a long look after checking the menu.
“We should go out more often like this,” Swire says, in between bites of their food. It’s not like Ch’en is a bad cook—she’s fairly good, for someone who rarely has any decent ingredients in their kitchen cabinets—and Swire doesn’t mind being tasked with meals either, but there’s just something about getting to sit back, relax, and eat something without worrying about setting the fire alarm off. “It’s fun, right? And I think they’re calming down a little. The search parties, I mean, so it isn’t as dangerous.”
Ch’en snorts. “It will be dangerous, if you keep talking so loudly like that.”
“Psh. You’re always working.” Swire pokes her arm, the one outstretched over the table. Ch’en stiffens, like she might pull away, but even when Swire leaves her hand close to Ch’en’s elbow, the tension leaves Ch’en’s shoulders and she resumes picking at her food. A step forward? “When you’re not at the casino doing casino stuff—”
“You make it sound like I work as a dealer there. I don’t, in case you forgot.”
Swire decides to ignore her: “—then you’re working on plans for your next job. At least like this we can relax a little, right?”
Ch’en makes a considering noise. “Sure.” When Swire can’t figure out what she’s agreeing to, Ch’en adds, “Whatever you want. When we’re free. You can bring us wherever or something. I don’t mind.”
“Now we’re talking. I mean, Ah-Ch’en,” Swire says, the small endearment escaping her so naturally she almost doesn’t notice her slip-up, “have you seen your closet? Well, I guess you have, because you open it everyday, but have you really looked at your clothes? You need to get some colors in there. If I have to see another all-black ensemble, I’m going to be sick all over you.”
“That,” Ch’en says, “is disgusting.”
“Yeah? At least it won’t be all-black anymore.”
“Why do you care about my clothes?”
“Do I need a reason to brighten up something I see everyday?” Swire crosses her arms, already pulling up an image of their immediate surroundings in her head. “Let me see. There should be some good clothes stores nearby. Mm, we passed by one a while ago, there was a nice dress on display—”
“I am not wearing a dress,” Ch’en interrupts.
“Don’t be silly. The dress will be for me. You, I was thinking of the jacket that was next to it. Come on, let’s go! Afterwards we can get you some shoes from the store on the other street.”
Ch’en lets herself be dragged outside as soon as they’re both done eating, and though Swire leads them to the clothing store she’d mentioned, she can’t help but feel Ch’en’s gaze on her the whole while. “What is it?” she eventually asks. “You’re making me nervous.”
“It’s nothing.” Ch’en pushes the store’s doors open for the both of them. “Just… You weren’t lying about your memory. Isn’t this the first time you’ve been in the area? But you know it so well already.”
“Heh.” Swire preens. “Why would I lie to you? I really am good at remembering things.” Her parents had noticed the same thing, once, and tried to use this to convince her to take up the family business. With her memory, she would make an excellent keeper of virtually any records the company needed to take care of. In response, Swire had extended her years at university until her parents gave up, and so she’d been delegated the role of an heiress sitting pretty in the manor, which was still fairly awful but marginally better than being stuck doing an office job.
Now she’s here, offering her memory-retention services to a renowned criminal. There’s something exceedingly funny about that, Swire has to admit.
Ch’en says nothing else, looking thoughtful, so Swire begins sifting through the clothes on display to pick more for Ch’en than just one jacket. When she shoves Ch’en into the dressing room and has her try on everything Swire had picked out, Ch’en mumbles and grumbles but changes anyway, making snide comments about how lace would only snag on the edges of windows or how this belt would just clink noisily while sneaking around. “Oh, come off it,” Swire huffs. “You can stay in all-black on jobs. But I want you to at least wear something different every now and then when we go out together!”
Ch’en frowns. “Ugh,” she says, emphatically. Then, before Swire can shoo her back into the changing room, “Why do you want to go out so much anyway?”
“Huh?” Swire blinks. She hadn’t quite expected that question, if only because it’s the sort of question you just don’t… ask. “I mean… do I need a reason? I think it’s fun, and I like spending time with you.” She can feel her face warming even as she speaks. Normally she’d never say this sort of stuff out loud… but with Ch’en, being direct and straightforward seems to work best. “Why do you ask?”
“Is that true?” Ch’en presses.
“Uh, why the heck would I lie about this?”
Ch’en pauses, picking at the hem of the jacket she’s trying on. Then, speaking slowly, as if giving herself time to change her mind and stop talking, “I thought you only wanted to stay with me because I seemed like a better option than your family. And because you… thought what I did was inspiring, or something. Since when did you like me?”
“What—” Swire sputters, before her logic catches up to her brain. Obviously Ch’en must mean like her as a friend, right? It seems a bit too soon for Ch’en to realize—no, wait, Ch’en isn’t realizing anything—damn it, she’s getting a headache. “Isn’t that kind of obvious?” Swire manages to return, tacking on a strained laugh at the end. Ch’en only raises an eyebrow. “I mean, yeah, both the reasons you just mentioned are true. I prefer living with you than with my parents, and I like watching you do your thing. But… we live together.”
Ch’en is quiet. Swire gives herself a moment to arrange both her thoughts and words into something more coherent than random strings of nonsense. “I like you for you, Ch’en,” she eventually says. “Not as the phantom thief or as, like, my landlord. But for you.” For the Ch’en who taught her how to fold clothes, the Ch’en who sleeps on the couch so Swire can take her bed, the Ch’en who had taken to preparing two mugs of instant coffee in the mornings—but Swire doesn’t say any of that, partly because it’s embarrassing and partly because she hopes she doesn’t need to, for Ch’en to understand what she means.
For a while Ch’en is quiet, staring contemplatively at Swire, who does her very best to not look as uncomfortable as she feels (a talent she has unfortunately honed throughout countless family gatherings). Then, abruptly, she returns to the dressing room without a word.
Swire stares at the closed curtains, feeling rather clueless. When Ch’en reemerges, she’s back in her regular clothes, the jacket she’d just been wearing slung over her arm. “I want this.”
“Oh,” Swire says. “Okay, well, you’re the one with the money here,” she reminds Ch’en, though Ch’en is already striding towards the cashier.
Swire loses track of how much time they spend outside, with her flitting from store to store and Ch’en trailing along behind her, grudgingly carrying all the shopping bags, but by the time they begin making their way back to the train station, it’s already growing dark. “Should we buy takeout for dinner too?” Swire asks, still a little giddy from all her purchases. She’s always loved the feeling she gets after a shopping trip, even if for the first time she’s had to rely on someone else’s wallet rather than her own.
At least Ch’en doesn’t seem to mind, and half the stuff they bought are for her anyway—she’s even wearing her new jacket already, after mumbling about how cold it is. “Sure,” she agrees easily enough, adjusting her grip on the shopping bags.
Now that Swire doesn’t need her hands free to sift through clothing or open shop doors, she can probably take a few of the bags from Ch’en. “Here,” she says, extending her open palm towards the bags. Carrying these around were one of her earliest exercise regimens, and she can certainly say the ease with which she can hold on to grooves in house walls is partially thanks to how many times she’s had to hold on to several different shopping bags at once.
But Ch’en just blinks blankly at her, before moving all the shopping bags to one hand and taking Swire’s hand with her now-free one.
Distantly, Swire hears her brain make a small, pathetic sound that may have been it finally giving up on its job.
“Where do you want?” Ch’en asks, apparently oblivious to Swire currently malfunctioning right beside her. “There are a lot of good places in the train station… Swire? Are you alright?”
“What?” Swire says, dumbly. When Ch’en just stares at her, she hurries to pull herself together, or at least as best as she can when Ch’en is still holding her hand like it’s no big deal. Let Swire repeat that: Ch’en, holding her hand. Why is she doing this? Why, in the name of every single god in existence, did Ch’en even think Swire was asking to hold her hand when she stretched her arm out?
Ch’en tilts her head, and then, inexplicably enough, her lips quirk up in an unmistakable smirk. Not a smile. A smirk, smug and knowing. “Oh,” she says, slowly, “are you shy?” And then she tightens her grip on Swire’s hand. “This is just to make sure you don’t get lost.”
“I—I—I don’t get lost!” Swire sputters, finally managing to say something more than what she’s sure would have been another ‘what?’ “Y-You even noticed it yourself back then, didn’t you? I’ve already got every part of this place memorized! You don’t need to hold my hand!”
“Well,” Ch’en says, “if you insist.” Then she drops Swire’s hand like it had been nothing more than a light touch.
Swire stares at her. “You… were messing with me just now, weren’t you?” she asks, bringing her hand close to her chest like she might catch something from the other woman. “The great phantom thief has a sense of humor after all! Even if it’s seriously twisted. Now will you let me help with the shopping bags already?”
Ch’en sniffs. “No, I’m fine. Come on, let’s get going already.”
“What? But at least let me—hey, wait, don’t just go off by yourself!”
They get some takeout from a small noodle stand in the train station, because at this time of the day it’s one of the few places that isn’t crowded with people having dinner. On the train ride home Swire has to keep herself from nodding off—the last thing she needs more of is Ch’en’s teasing, which she never imagined Ch’en was even capable of, with how serious she is all the time.
Of course, this is nothing to the ever-observant Ch’en. “If you’re sleepy, just sleep,” she says, and even goes as far as to shift closer to Swire on the seat. “Do you want to use my shoulder?”
“Oh, shut up,” Swire mutters, feeling her face heat up. Ch’en’s shoulder is warm, pressed up against hers, and she has to try very hard not to think too much about it.
When they step out of the station—Ch’en had conceded to let Swire carry the takeout boxes, at least—they make it exactly two steps out onto the streets before the rain begins. At first it’s barely even a drizzle, so light that Swire thinks Ch’en might be going crazy when she looks up at the night sky and mutters something about the weather, but then a few minutes later it’s already beginning to escalate into a steady shower that Swire realizes is only going to get worse. “Oh, come on,” she groans, guiding Ch’en under the awning of a nearby coffee shop to take temporary shelter. Hopefully her nice boots aren’t splattered with mud already. “The worst thing that can happen is those clothes getting wet!”
“These?” Ch’en looks down at the shopping bags. Some are sealed but others aren’t, and Swire feels lightheaded just thinking about the various possibilities, none of them good. “What’s the big deal?”
“What’s the big deal? You’re killing me here, Ah-Ch’en.”
“What’s with the nickname?”
“Hm? Isn’t it cute?” Swire grins when Ch’en shifts in place, her expression barely having changed but still clearly taken aback. Right. Her making fun of Ch’en is much more familiar than the other way around. “I mean, doesn’t it sound nicer like this?”
Ch’en frowns. “It sounds…” She seems to search for words for a moment, then decides on, “Derogatory.”
“But it’s cute!”
Ch’en rolls her eyes and says nothing more. Instead, she sets the shopping bags down on the ground for a moment and shrugs her jacket off, which has Swire raising an eyebrow—one would think it common sense to keep a jacket on during a rainstorm. But then Ch’en steps forward and drapes her jacket over Swire’s shoulders instead, bringing their faces unnecessarily close together as she fastens the clasp over Swire’s neck.
Swire’s heart ricochets off the bones of her ribcage.
“What?” Ch’en says, sounding genuinely nonplussed when she steps back and presumably sees whatever stupid expression Swire has on her face. “You might get sick.” Then she tugs the hood over Swire’s head.
Swire’s heart now decides to drop straight down to her stomach and lie there, occasionally twitching like a dying animal desperately fighting for life.
“Swire?” Ch’en prompts, now sounding genuinely concerned.
“Right! Right.” Swire swallows, turns away, reflexively tugs the jacket tighter around herself. It’s a size larger than she’s used to, and with her hands too full with the takeout boxes to slip her arms through the sleeves, it hangs loosely down her back, the clasp around her neck the only thing keeping it from being blown away by a strong wind. “Sorry, I… I was… t-thinking. Uh. Anyway, let’s—let’s get going!”
Ch’en ends up absolutely drenched once they return to the apartment, dripping puddles onto her own floor, while Swire just has to flick a few stray droplets off her face and wipe her legs down—Ch’en’s jacket had absorbed most of the rain, surprisingly enough. They chuck the takeout in the microwave, have a nice warm dinner of noodles after two equally nice warm showers, and when the rain still doesn’t let up by the time they’ve cleared the kitchen counter, Swire is looking forward to heading to bed and curling up under nice warm blankets, or as warm as her thin blanket can be anyway. (She thinks about asking Ch’en to join her, because surely it can’t be comfortable to sleep out here on the couch, but also thinks about Sleeping With Ch’en and instantly rescinds that idea.)
“You’re not going to sleep yet?” Swire asks, when she comes back from hanging their wet clothes up to see Ch’en seated on the couch, arranging a familiar array of papers and records atop the coffee table. “The weather’s so good for sleeping in.”
Ch’en shrugs. “I have something to work on. Did you forget we went out today primarily to take notes for it?”
Swire did, but she’s not going to tell Ch’en about that. She plops down on the couch next to Ch’en instead, ignoring Ch’en’s startled look. “’Course not. Wow, your handwriting is so neat. Bet teachers loved you back in school.” Did Ch’en go to school? Surely even phantom thieves aren’t exempt from compulsory education, and Ch’en seems too bright not to have studied before.
“Er,” Ch’en says. “Thank you. I think.” She turns back to the diagrams on the table, though now she seems more distracted than earlier. Swire marvels, briefly, at the sight of a distracted Ch’en. Unexpectedly enough, she says, “Swire.”
Swire blinks. “What is it?”
“Can you look over this for me?”
At first Swire’s stunned, and for the umpteenth time today she wonders several different things—if she’s dreaming, if she’d heard Ch’en wrong, if her dinner earlier had been drugged and she’s currently on some psychedelic trip right now—but then, when she realizes she’s awake, had heard right, and is certainly not high, she grins and nearly snatches the map out of Ch’en’s hands. “Well, would you look at that? I thought you’d never ask!”
Ch’en rolls her eyes. “Don’t get full of yourself.”
“How can I not? The great Ch’en is finally asking for my help!”
“Since you’re already freeloading off me here,” Ch’en retorts, “I figured I might as well put you to some use.”
Swire slaps a hand over her chest, pretending to swoon like a lady in the Victorian era. “Oh! How crass of you to put me to work! So much for being a gentlewoman, you cruel, cruel slave driver.”
“Just because I treat women right doesn’t mean I can’t make you work.” But Ch’en sounds almost fond when she says this, and when Swire rights herself to look in her face, she can practically feel her heart arrested by the faint smile on Ch’en’s face, wine-red eyes lit a beautiful scarlet hue in the lamp light. “Will you look at it now? It’s the area of the city we just left, around the museum I plan to return the artifact to. I need to know if all the marks are correct.”
Swire pores over the map in earnest, and does the same with the other blueprints Ch’en hands her throughout the night. She hardly even notices time passing until Ch’en stands up, sweeps the papers into a neat pile, and moves to switch the lamp off. “What? Hold on,” Swire protests, “we’re not done yet, are we? I haven’t even finished this one!”
“You can finish it tomorrow. It’s late.”
Swire pouts. “You better not change your mind about me tomorrow and not let me help again. I like doing this, you know.”
Ch’en’s hand stutters over the lamp switch, a movement Swire wouldn’t have noticed if she hasn’t already grown accustomed to Ch’en’s every little habit. “I know,” she says, softly, though it doesn’t sound like she’s sure about that. “I wish you don’t. This isn’t a game. What I do has very serious risks and repercussions I can’t always help you out of.”
Swire sighs. “I know,” she mirrors, not unkindly. “But you still do it, don’t you? Even with all the dangers?” At Ch’en’s slow nod, Swire says, “It’s the same for me. I still want to help you.”
With only the desk lamp as their light source, it’s difficult to accurately decipher the look on Ch’en’s face. They sit there in silence for a while, Swire refusing to break eye contact despite how she can feel nervous sweat dripping down the back of her neck, until Ch’en finally sighs and turns away to turn the light off. “I wish you wouldn’t,” she says, almost too soft to hear. In the darkness of the evening, Swire can’t even guess at what expression Ch’en might be wearing right now, but her voice sounds more vulnerable than Swire has ever heard her before. “But thank you.”
Ch’en is absolutely insufferable the entire walk to the mansion. “Remember,” she says, for what feels like the hundredth time, “if anything, anything, happens, stay in hiding and out of sight. Pretend you don’t know me. Pretend this is just like last time, when you were just following me around and watching from afar—”
“Ah-Ch’en, please,” Swire groans, throwing her hands up in the air, “you have literally told me this five times. I get it, okay? I memorized your exact words half an hour ago!”
Ch’en looks dissatisfied, but thankfully doesn’t repeat her friendly reminder for what would have been the sixth time. “I’m only worried.”
“I know,” Swire sighs, “and that’s real sweet and all, but can we get a move on already before the night ends and you have to reschedule your heist?”
While Ch’en had asked for Swire’s help with planning throughout the past week or so, she had still vehemently refused to let Swire do anything during the job itself. She had, however, conceded to letting Swire come along as long as she stayed away and did absolutely nothing aside from follow Ch’en around, just like how they were before they began living together. It was still annoying, but Swire figured that was the best she was going to get for now and accepted.
“I wish you won’t treat me like I’m an incompetent,” Swire huffs, crossing her arms. They’re close to the street where they’d agreed to split up (or, more accurately, where Ch’en will run ahead and Swire will trail her from a distance), so she tries to make it quick before they have to go. “Don’t you remember the first few times I followed you? I was pretty good, wasn’t I? And nothing went wrong!”
Ch’en frowns. “You got caught by security.”
“That was one time. Out of, like, a total of six cases. Isn’t that a pretty decent record?”
“Is it?” Ch’en mumbles, and Swire belatedly remembers she’s talking to someone whose record is probably spotless. “Fine, fine, I’m sorry. It’s just even more dangerous if someone catches you, since I’m sure they’ll recognize you as the… ahem, how did they put it? The poor young woman I kidnapped.”
Swire groans again. “Quit it! Some of the articles say I put up a fight, you know!”
“Right,” Ch’en says, though she’s still sporting that smug little smirk Swire only ever sees her wear when she’s making fun of Swire. “Alright, we’re here. Remember—”
“I’ll be careful, sheesh! Get going already!”
Once Ch’en has once again vanished into the darkness, Swire allows herself a deep, shaky breath. She might be a little more nervous than she let Ch’en see, but she’s sure it’s just her nerves. It’s been almost a full month since she last followed Ch’en on a job like this, after all, and the last time had ended up with her nearly getting arrested or worse, so sue her if she’s a tiny bit anxious. But she’ll be fine—Ch’en’s plans are detailed to the point, and with Swire’s help she’s sure nothing will go wrong.
Well, aside from a myriad of possibilities, but Swire’s not going to think about that. She swallows, then takes off down the streets after Ch’en’s shadow.
The mark this time is some vase from the 15th century, located in the treasury of a collector’s mansion—just like the last guy Swire remembers, he hadn’t skimped on security, and she winces internally when she sees how guards surround the perimeter of the property. She catches a slip of movement circling around back, where Ch’en must be entering through the second-floor window, the one place where there won’t be guards waiting to shoot her once she steps foot inside the mansion proper, but Swire feels anxiety bubble up inside her anyway when she thinks about how even that can go wrong. The guards may have changed positions… or they may have realized their mistake and stationed someone there…
No, what’s the matter with her? She never worried like this when she was watching Ch’en do her work from afar in the past, right? So why is Swire so nervous now? If she could just pace back and forth she might feel a little better, but unless she wants to get discovered again and cause trouble for Ch’en again, all she can do is stay crouched in the bushes, wiping her sweaty palms over and over on the sides of her shirt.
Maybe, her mind suggests, she hadn’t been worried back then because she only knew about Ch’en, the phantom thief—Ch’en, the criminal, the hero, the vigilante. But now Swire knows about Ch’en, as Ch’en.
The guards are mumbling amongst one another, but Swire’s too far to either hear them or read their lips, so she watches as a few break free from their positions to head to the back of the house. Her heart is beating so loudly it feels ridiculous that no one else but her can hear it. Did something happen? Did they catch on to Ch’en entering from there after all? What should she do? Ch’en had told her in no uncertain terms to stay hidden, and even to run away if the situation gets dire, but Swire would sooner die than just leave Ch’en here. Maybe she can cause a distraction, get the guards’ attention just long enough for Ch’en to slip out of whatever trouble there may be? Swire’s sure she can do that much and pass it off as a fortunate accident if Ch’en gets on her case about it later. She crouches even lower to the ground and starts searching for a big enough rock…
“Swire? What are you doing?”
Swire almost jumps out of her skin, and the only thing that keeps her from shouting Ch’en’s name for all to hear is the last modicum of self-control and common sense within her. “C-Ch’en!” she hisses instead, blinking rapidly to make sure she isn’t hallucinating. She hadn’t even noticed Ch’en leaving the mansion, much less somehow making her way to where Swire is hiding. All while hauling a cloth bag over her back. “When did you…?”
Ch’en looks faintly amused. “Did you think those guards went around back because they’d caught me? Come on.”
“I wasn’t worried!”
“Really? You made a very convincing worried expression just now.” Ch’en peers over the hedge, then nods. “We can get to the museum now. Come on.”
Running through the city streets with Ch’en is, at least, something marginally safer and devoid of security guards. Swire’s snipped her hair a little shorter than usual, so she lets her hood down and stuffs her cap in her bag before letting her hair free behind her, relishing in the feeling of the wind rushing through it as she trails behind Ch’en’s shadow. She’ll definitely never grow used to this, the hard pavement under the soles of her shoes and the city lights blurring in her peripheral. The best part now is that Swire doesn’t have to be quick, doesn’t have to check her phone every few minutes, doesn’t have to sneak back in her own bedroom later and lie in bed feeling the adrenaline drain away from her—no, after this, she and Ch’en will be going back to the apartment, going back home together, and there’ll be countless other nights like these, evenings where the city feels like it’s theirs and theirs alone.
Or, at least, Swire hopes there’ll be more nights like these, and that Ch’en doesn’t ever get tired of her, the same way Swire won’t ever get tired of this. She tips her head back for a moment, inhales a breath full of city air, and wishes this could last forever.
When they get to the museum, Ch’en slows down enough for Swire to catch up beside her. “Stay safe,” Ch’en says, softly, as they emerge from the alleyways into the wider main street.
“That’s my line,” Swire mumbles. “You ever think about how your concern might be misplaced sometimes?”
“Do you always have to be such a handful?”
“It’s what I do best, Ah-Ch’en.”
It may have just been a trick of the light, but Swire thinks Ch’en smiles at that, just for a moment. “I’ll be back soon,” she says, and then, miraculously enough, leaves for the museum without another reminder to remain hidden. Swire feels almost cheated—she’d had a few more witty lines saved up to retort with in case Ch’en tried reminding her again.
Swire watches Ch’en disappear into one of the windows, the entrance they’d agreed she’d use while they were planning, before hiding herself in the alleyway they had just come from. She has to put her hair up and back under her cap, just in case, but Swire doesn’t feel the same anxiety she had a while ago back at the mansion; even if Ch’en does get caught, which sounds highly improbable, she highly doubts the museum security would do much of anything. They’re the ones who directly benefit from her, after all—not only do they get something new to exhibit, the resulting publicity from having the phantom thief return some historical artifact to them results in fatter paychecks for everyone. Swire’s read more than a few articles where museum or gallery workers admit to having been working the night Ch’en dropped by for a visit and yet had been very suspicious when asked why they hadn’t raised any alarms.
More importantly, how will they celebrate when they get back home? Swire entertains herself with thoughts about what sort of dinner they can get for takeout on the way back. There aren’t many restaurants that are still open this late in the night, but she has been craving some greasy fast food recently…
Footsteps draw her out of her thoughts. Swire retreats further into the alleyway’s shadows but squints into the darkness, and feels her heart leap into her throat when she recognizes the uniforms of the people who pass by her: the security guards who had been stationed outside the mansion just minutes ago.
“Are you sure this is the place?” one of them grunts. Swire, at least, doesn’t have to strain her ears to hear them; they seem wholly unconcerned by being overheard. “There are a hundred other museums that thief could have gone to.”
“Dunno, but the informants said the vase she’d stolen fits best in this one. Honestly, hell if I understand what they said. Let’s just move it and do our job.”
Swire’s blood runs cold, long after the guards leave her field of vision and their footsteps fade away. A trap. Someone, whoever they are, had set a trap.
Her first thought is to call Ch’en, but Ch’en doesn’t bring her phone on jobs like these for obvious reasons; Swire’s next thought is to rush out and take down those guards by herself, but while she may have the element of surprise, she isn’t exactly confident in two-on-one, much less two armed adult men against one unarmed her. Besides, what if there are other guards on their way to the museum as well? She’ll have a much bigger problem on her hands then. No, getting Ch’en out of there is what she has to somehow pull off, and yet… how?
Is the only way to sneak inside herself? She memorizes all the security measures and knows how to avoid activating them, but Swire’s still nowhere near as skilled as Ch’en is. Besides, the last time she’d tried ‘helping’ Ch’en out on a job, she’d just ended up causing trouble. Maybe she really should just listen to Ch’en, should just stay put here and wait for Ch’en to escape even this trap, successful as always…
…Yeah, like hell Swire is doing that.
There’s no time to think of a more refined plan, but refining has always been more of Ch’en’s thing—improvising is Swire’s. She runs back down the alleyway, weaves through its twists and turns until she nearly runs into the gate of barbed wire at the end. Gritting her teeth, Swire scales the wall beside it, ignoring the stinging pain in her fingertips when they scrape against the chipped brick, and hops neatly into the other side. This should be directly behind the museum, and while there thankfully aren’t any guards here, this isn’t where she needs to be.
Swire peers out from a small gap between alleyway and building wall, and winces when she instantly spots at least five guards in the same uniform from earlier milling around outside. The room where Ch’en will be placing the vase in is in the center of the floor, which means no windows for her to see this. Even their agreed-upon exit route, a window on the opposite end of the floor, has a small group of guards standing directly beneath it.
She reaches up to tie her hair in a tight ponytail, more to have something to do with her shaking hands than anything, and grins. Now or never.
Swire darts out from her hiding place, then ducks behind another nearby building, not too quickly to not be seen, but not too obvious for them to get a good look at her. It works—one of the guards, the one who had been facing her direction the most, startles and brings his gun out. “Who’s there?” he barks; then, when Swire remains silent, he motions to the two others with him and they begin creeping closer to her.
Alright. Alright. She just has to remain calm. Calm, calm, calm. Swire can’t even swallow the thick knot of anxiety back, because even her gulp might be audible, and races for the other side of the building just as the guards reach where she is.
“That must be her! The phantom thief!” one of them shouts, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. If Swire weren’t nervous enough to be sick, she would pump her fist in the air in victory. “Everyone, down here! After her, before she gets away!”
Swire can’t help the low, slightly hysterical laugh she lets slip, but she’s far away and the guards are riled up enough that it doesn’t matter. She vaults over fences, dives through decorative bushes, and generally races around the museum like a wild animal until she returns to the gate of barbed wire in the alleyway—she clambers up the wall again, just barely managing to swing herself over the other end when a handful of guards round the corner, guns cocked and bullets flying. Swire ducks so fast she wonders, briefly and deliriously, if her heart will shoot out from her mouth; a bullet lodges itself in the wall, right where her head had just been seconds before.
For a second she just looks up at it, at the tiny crater in the wall, and realizes she had very literally dodged a bullet there.
Then she’s up and running again, practically bounding through the streets while the guards try to knock the gate of barbed wire down behind her. Swire is, at least, confident she can lose them in the maze of alleyways and hopefully emerge onto the main streets unscathed, but she’s not so sure that matters when there are so many guards, they could simply split up and cover all the passages until they inevitably find her. Swire almost laughs again, the laugh she imagines convicted criminals laugh when they’re on the execution stand, but she has to save her breath for running.
Despite being chased down by people ordered to shoot to kill and nearly no way out of this situation, Swire grins again. She doesn’t let her hair down—she hasn’t quite lost all hope just yet—but she savors the kiss of the wind on her cheeks, every thump her feet make on the concrete, the way her lungs seem to expand to take in every single particle of oxygen in the air. Despite the situation, despite the danger, despite the very real risk of her not making it out of here alive, she had chosen to do this—and the feeling swimming in her veins right now, this is the freedom she’s been chasing.
Through some miracle Swire tumbles out through one of the alleys and onto the main street, blessedly empty aside from a few startled civilians—the guards must still be trying to make their way through the labyrinth she’d just left behind. Now what? They’d agreed to reconvene here, obviously, but Swire can’t have Ch’en going here just for the guards to arrive at the same time. But if she tries to get back to the museum, she risks running into yet more security, and she won’t have a ready escape route then—
A hand wraps around her wrist. Swire very nearly screams before another hand slaps itself over her half-open mouth. “Swire,” a familiar voice hisses, tugging her to press flat against the building behind them, “what did you do?”
Swire exhales the heaviest sigh of relief she’s ever let out and brushes Ch’en’s hand off her face. “I helped you, that’s what! Did you have to give me a heart attack like that!?”
Predictably enough, Ch’en ignores her. “How could you do something so—so—reckless?” she hisses, pulling on Swire’s wrist and leading her down the street, looking over her shoulder with every other step.
Swire huffs. “You can say stupid, it’s fine.”
“That was dangerous,” Ch’en says, whirling around to glare at her. They’re not exactly far from the museum—in fact, they’re just a street away from it—and Swire wants to point out how standing here to lecture her is pretty dangerous too, but Ch’en doesn’t let her get a word in. “Why didn’t you just listen to me? I told you not to get involved! Stay put, stay hidden, stay safe!”
“And just let you get hurt instead?” Swire shoots back. Ch’en looks like she’d been expecting that, because she hardly even pauses before opening her mouth again, but Swire hurries to speak before she can retort. “No, listen to me for a sec here! How would you feel if our positions were reversed? If I was in trouble and you could do something about it, even if it would be dangerous? You don’t even have to imagine that, because you did it before already, didn’t you? When the authorities caught me and you helped me out of there even if you had to give yourself away to the police?”
Ch’en looks taken aback, if only for a moment. “That—That was—”
“Don’t say it was different,” Swire cuts in. “It wasn’t. And you know it.” She sighs; then, when Ch’en doesn’t say anything, she softens her voice and speaks again. “I get it, okay? You want me to be safe. I’m not as skilled as you, not as good at getting in and out of places, not as strong in a fight. But I want you to be safe, too. Did you know the guards had surrounded the museum just after you went in?”
Ch’en visibly flinches at that. “Surrounded? You exaggerate. Weren’t there only a few of them near the entrance?”
“Because I led most of them away,” Swire says, unable to keep herself from puffing up a little. “They thought I was their phantom thief and chased me down those alleyways. The ones who were left behind must have stayed just in case. There were a bunch right below the window you were going to leave from, you know, until I distracted them! So, can I get a thanks for that yet, or are you going to wait until we get back home?”
“Home?” Ch’en repeats, an odd tremble to her voice Swire doesn’t remember hearing before.
“Yes, your apartment,” Swire says, wondering if Ch’en has gotten her different places of residence mixed up or something. Right, she never did elaborate on those, did she. “We’re fine, aren’t we? We got out okay, we’re unharmed, you returned that vase, and now we can go home?”
Ch’en still looks shaken. “How are you not scared at all?”
“What?”
“You act like almost getting shot and killed by those guards is nothing to you,” Ch’en says, speaking slowly, like she’s trying to pick and choose her words as she talks. “But I… When I saw them chasing you, I…” She swallows, turns away, reaches up to run a hand through her hair. Swire’s never seen her this ruffled before, her calm composure so thoroughly cracked. “Thank you,” she finally says.
“…What?” Swire repeats, no less confused than earlier.
“I said thank you,” Ch’en says, stepping forward and taking Swire’s hand—no, wait, her wrist. Not her hand. Swire’s brain feels like a scrambled egg. “Alright? Will you let it go now? I thank you, because I hadn’t noticed the guards, and I only thought of you as someone to protect rather than someone—by my side—and—and someone who would stay this long, and—this really isn’t getting any easier to say.”
Swire blinks several times before she can come up with a coherent response. “What,” she says, “are you trying to tell me, exactly?”
“You have to be sure you want this,” Ch’en says, sounding just the slightest bit fidgety. “I mean it. This life is dangerous, and I understand if you decide you want it now but back out later. You can still live with me, away from your family. Our lives would never be safe, we could be jailed or killed at any moment, we would earn no money from it, and… and,” Ch’en mumbles, “my apartment isn’t the best. I know you’re more used to your manor. I can pay the bills, but I don’t have the money to afford luxurious meals and clothes everyday. But if you’re fine with that… if you still want to stay…”
Swire runs Ch’en’s words five times in her head, commits them to memory, then reaches down to take Ch’en’s hand in her own, properly. Ch’en blinks, her cheeks going a conspicuous shade of pink, but says nothing. “So, like, that first part was about getting to help you on these jobs, right?” Swire asks; she can barely hear herself over the jackhammer beat of her heart.
Ch’en nods once. For some reason Swire feels vindicated when she feels how Ch’en’s hand isn’t as steady as it always is. “And that second part,” Swire says, unable to stop the smile climbing up her face, “it’s about being with you? Like… you, you?”
“I didn’t make that clear?” Ch’en asks, her voice the tiniest bit faint.
Swire opens her mouth, even if she doesn’t have the slightest idea what to say, when loud shouts and yells echo from down the street, and the first guard stumbles out of the alleyway. “Let’s get out of here first,” Ch’en says, tightening her grip on Swire’s hand and tugging her down the road. She sounds a little relieved, like she hadn’t been entirely ready to hear what Swire’s answer would have been, and Swire can relate; she herself hadn’t known what she would answer with either.
Or, more accurately, she does know how she feels—she just doesn’t quite know how to put it into words, when all this time she’d never thought she’d ever get an opportunity to say it aloud.
They both pretend to have forgotten about it on the walk home, all the way from leaving the vicinity of the museum to getting takeout from a chicken restaurant to the climb up the stairs of the building to Ch’en’s apartment. Swire peppers the otherwise-tense silence with light chatter, congratulating Ch’en on another job well done and rambling on about other chicken restaurants she remembers eating from before, and Ch’en, for her part, nods along to whatever she says, though she seems too distracted to actually contribute much to the conversation.
They have incredibly late dinner on the kitchen counter as always, the takeout boxes scattered around them and Swire tearing at the chicken without bothering with utensils, eating with her bare hands—even this feels liberating, because back with her family her parents insisted on proper table manners for every meal. Ch’en seems as preoccupied with the food as she is, wolfing it down like chewing is for people with more time than she has. This time Swire doesn’t even try to say anything, and the quiet settles on them uncomfortably, like a blanket on a hot summer day.
“Well,” Ch’en suddenly says, nearly startling Swire into dropping her chicken leg, “I think I shall. Sleep for tonight.”
“Eh?” Swire says, stupidly.
“It’s been a long night,” Ch’en says robotically, staring straight ahead as she speaks. She doesn’t so much as turn her head in Swire’s direction, which would have been normal if they had still been in the beginning phase of their cohabitation. “You should go to bed as well. I think we’ve had enough excitement for the day.”
“Hey, hold on a minute. Are you just going to pretend what you said earlier didn’t happen?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Swire hops off the kitchen counter before Ch’en can, planting both hands on the edge and making sure Ch’en can’t escape. Well, Ch’en can probably still escape—Swire is no contingent of highly-trained soldiers, which Ch’en deals with on a monthly basis—but Ch’en falls still and does nothing to move away. “Don’t be a coward now, Ah-Ch’en,” Swire says, her voice low and teasing. “Are you scared of what I’ll say?”
Ch’en glares down at her, though there’s no real heat to it. “You are the last person I would ever be scared of.”
“Yes,” Swire says, and has to pretend her voice hadn’t wobbled just now.
Silence. Ch’en stares at her. “Yes… what?” she eventually prompts, sounding genuinely confused.
“Oh, come on!” Swire groans. “Yes, I want to be your partner in crime or whatever! And yes, I also want to—to—do I have to say it?” she huffs. When Ch’en just continues staring at her like Swire is speaking in some alien language, Swire gives in and says, through gritted teeth and warm cheeks, “Yes, I want to be with you! Okay? Sheesh! The way you’re looking at me, it’s like you’re an English teacher demanding I speak in complete sentences—”
“Swire,” Ch’en cuts in, “can I kiss you?”
For a moment Swire is certain her brain had finally been fried from overuse and shut down on her, and now her malfunctioning nervous system is conjuring hallucinations for her when in reality Ch’en is probably rushing her to the hospital right now or something. But when she just stands there, staring at Ch’en’s waiting face, it becomes very apparent she is not hallucinating, her brain is working perfectly fine, Ch’en had really asked her that, and Ch’en is also still waiting for an answer.
“Uh,” Swire says, which is not very attractive but, at least, a start, “do you really have to ask me that anymore?”
“Consent is important,” Ch’en says. She moves off the counter to stand properly and reaches down, slowly, as if giving Swire time to move away (like hell), then very gently takes Swire’s waist in her hands. Once again, Swire’s mind threatens complete shutdown. “I want you to be sure,” she says, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “I want you to want this. To want…”
She trails off, but Swire can hear To want me as loud and clear as if Ch’en had spoken the words anyway.
“Yes,” Swire says, at last. Ch’en’s eyes widen. “Yes,” Swire repeats, a little desperate now, because her face feels like it’s on fire and if she has to deal with this embarrassment any longer she’s going to explode, “you can. I mean, I want this. I do. I—”
Ch’en moves in.
She kisses so sweetly and carefully that Swire almost has trouble believing it’s Ch’en kissing her—but she says ‘almost’ because, well, it’s not that hard, really. Ch’en has always been like this, sweet and careful and gentle, opening doors for her, lending Swire her jacket on a rainy day, trying to protect her every chance she gets, and—and Swire’s chest feels ready to burst with the yearning she’s been holding in this whole time. She throws her arms around Ch’en’s neck and kisses back, tilts her head to slide their lips closer together, grabs a fistful of Ch’en’s hair and feels more than hears the half-startled, half-pleased gasp Ch’en makes in her mouth.
When they draw back, Ch’en looks so delightfully breathless Swire wants to kiss her again, right away, before she’s even caught her own breath. “You have… to be sure,” Ch’en says, though it’s hard to take her seriously when she can’t seem to look away from Swire’s lips. “I don’t want this to end anytime soon. Alright? You—”
“You talk too much,” Swire says, and shuts Ch’en up the best way she knows how.
This sweetness on her tongue, this swell of emotion in her lungs—this, too, she knows is freedom.