She stood before the mirror. Noir Street was quiet in the morning. On the second floor of the brothel "Crimson Chamber," the light filtering into the empty private room was weak, and only the oil lamp on the wall dimly illuminated Aria's face. Gaunt cheeks, eyes etched with deep shadows. And yet—the fever was gone. Lisetta's words echoed in her mind. *Hope will kill you.* Aria slowly put strength into the corners of her mouth. The woman in the mirror twisted her lips into a crooked smile. No. This wouldn't please the customers. More natural. Part her lips slightly, narrow her eyes. Once more. *(I am smiling.)* Japanese murmured in her heart. There was no emotion. Just a confirmation of the action. The angle of her lips, the degree her eyes were open, the way she let out her breath. It was like the task of pasting someone else's face onto her own. "[whispers] Does it feel good?" She tried saying it aloud. A hoarse, tiny voice. "[whispers] Harder. Please, be rougher." The woman in the mirror mouthed the same words. Her face—was smiling. "[whispers] Please... finish. I beg you." The words slipped out smoothly. There was no shame. No humiliation, no resistance, nothing. Just a sequence of sounds vibrating the air. Aria did not look away from herself in the mirror. *(This is fine. This way, I won't break.)* The guiding principle Lisetta had given her. It wasn't about killing her emotions. They simply didn't need to exist from the start. It was different from the terrified obedience at the Greive estate. Different from the desperate clinging to Zahal. Something more fundamental. A choice for survival. Aria made the smile again. This time, it traced a slightly more natural arc than before. Her lips were beginning to memorize the shape. That night, her first customer was a merchant with a thin face. In the dim room where the oil lamp's flame flickered, Aria knelt before the man. Wordlessly, she undid his belt and pulled down his undergarments. She took the exposed penis into her mouth without hesitation. She ran her tongue over it, coated it with saliva, and took it deep into her throat. "[gentle] Ahh... that's good." The man's hand stroked Aria's black hair. Aria lifted her face. With her mouth wet with semen and saliva, she smiled. "[gentle] Does it feel good, Master?" The words slipped out smoothly. Just as she had practiced. A fawning, yet not overbearing, pitch of voice. The merchant's penis swelled hard in her mouth. Smiling, Aria moved her tongue, tracing the ridge on the underside of the shaft, sucking on the tip of the glans with her lips. Her hands no longer trembled with fear as they once had. Her face no longer twisted with shame. She simply performed the prescribed actions in the prescribed order. The man's hips shuddered, and he released his semen into Aria's mouth. The lukewarm, cloudy fluid flowed down her throat. Still smiling, Aria swallowed every last drop. With her finger, she wiped a single drop of semen that trickled from the corner of her mouth and gently licked it clean. "[gentle] Thank you for the meal." She performed each of these actions while gazing intently into the man's eyes. The man exhaled with satisfaction and handed over a silver coin. The next customer was a mercenary. The one after that, a peddler. Aria offered the same smile to everyone, spoke the same words, and serviced them with the same actions. In exchange for the paralysis of her emotional起伏, her movements became astonishingly smooth. She returned the reactions the customers wanted, mechanically and precisely. Within a few days, she became the talk of the regulars on Noir Street. "[excited] You know Number Seventeen at the Crimson Chamber? She's great. Real quiet, and she'll do anything." "[excited] Yeah, I asked for her the other day. Her smile is cute. She never makes a disagreeable face." It was clear in the ledger, too. In the office on the first floor. Under the oil lamp, Curtis was running a quill pen. The nervous expression on the thin manager's face softened slightly as he followed the numbers. "[cold] Inventory Number Seventeen... Number of operations this week: thirty-seven. Revenue: seventy-four silver coins. Depreciation rate: zero." He set down his pen and traced the numbers in the ledger with his finger. The average for the other prostitutes was twenty-five times a week. Aria's operation rate was clearly outstanding. Just when he thought she had broken down, she had finished repairs and was performing better than before. "[cold] Functioning without issue, I see." Curtis wrote in the ledger: "Inventory Number Seventeen: Rank B Plus. Continued monitoring unnecessary." Without even looking at Aria's face, he finalized the assessment. It was no different from confirming the operation of a machine—and to him, that was indeed the case. Late that night. After seeing off her last customer, Aria stood alone before the mirror in her room. The oil lamp's flame flickered quietly. The distant bustle of Noir Street echoed low. Gazing at herself in the mirror, Aria slowly tried to summon a memory. *(The university... the ginkgo tree-lined path.)* Japanese murmured in her heart. But—it wouldn't come. The scenery of yellow leaves glowing in the sunlight. That alone had a hazy outline. But there was no sound of wind. No scent. Someone should have been walking beside her, but their face—she couldn't remember. *(My friend's... name.)* Only an outline existed. The eyes, nose, and mouth were all blurred, refusing to form a clear image. A face she had once laughed with. In the cafeteria, in the lecture hall, on the campus lawn—but now, like a faded shadow picture, only the shape remained. *(My mother's... voice.)* Only the texture of her voice remained faintly at the bottom of her memory. A gentle, slightly low voice. But—she couldn't hear the words. What had they talked about? What had she said to her? They must have been important words, but only the sound echoed hollowly, devoid of meaning. Aria gripped the frame of the mirror. Her fingers turned white. The more she tried to remember, the more her memories slipped through her fingers like sand. They crumbled when she tried to grasp them, receded when she tried to chase them. Her past, which must have once been vivid, was now—scattered in pieces like fragments of a faded photograph. Aria no longer even had the energy to piece them together. "[whispers] I don't care anymore." She murmured it in Japanese. Those words held neither sadness nor pain. The Japanese that had once been a refuge for her heart was now just a sound. Not a vessel for emotion, not proof of resistance—just the fading trace that she had once been someone. Even that, she no longer cared about. It was then. In the hallway, faint footsteps stopped. Her long, dark crimson curls swaying, Lisetta stood before the door. In her hands, she held a bowl of soup for a late-night meal. Her pale purple, grayish eyes wavered for just a moment. A foreign language heard through the gap in the door. *(...Aria's words?)* It was a language Lisetta couldn't understand. But its sound—was the same as the words Aria had murmured in her fever when she first came to the brothel. Something at the root of her secret. Lisetta stood frozen before the door. *(Should I ask?)* For a moment, her hand almost reached for the door. But—she stopped. This brothel had an informant system. Curtis deliberately destroyed connections between the prostitutes, picking up trivial information and punishing them for it. If she learned Aria's secret, it would one day become a blade that choked her own neck. And more than anything— *(Hope will kill you.)* The words she herself had said to Aria. Aria was now choosing resignation, trying to survive by it. To step in there would be to deny her choice. Precisely because Lisetta knew the danger of hope better than anyone—she had no right to obstruct the path of resignation Aria had chosen with her words. Without a sound, Lisetta bent her knees and gently placed the soup bowl she was carrying on the hallway floor. A faint wisp of steam rose. She stood up and walked away without looking back. Her dark crimson hair swayed in the oil lamp's light and vanished. Inside the room, Aria was still gazing at the mirror. Unaware of the presence beyond the door. The next morning. When Aria left her room, a ceramic bowl was sitting on the hallway floor. Its contents were completely cold. There was no way to confirm whose hand had left it there. "[whispers] ..." Aria picked up the bowl and stared at it for a while. *(Something warm...)* The film of oil floating on the surface of the soup was beginning to congeal. The steam had long since vanished, but still—when it was placed here, it must certainly have been warm. Clutching the bowl to her chest, Aria stood motionless in the hallway. As she herself was losing her outline as a human being, someone had definitely—without words, without giving their name—offered something warm. That fact sent a faint ripple through the very bottom of Aria's dried-up heart, a place that shouldn't have been able to be touched. To call it an emotion—the tremor was far too small. Slowly, Aria took a sip of the cold soup. A thin taste, the saltiness gone. But—only the trace of warmth lingered, just a little, at the back of her throat. At the end of the hallway, Lisetta stopped her feet for just a moment. Her pale purple, grayish eyes looked at Aria's back. Immediately, she left without a sound.