Morning.
Logan felt an itch on his face. He lifted a hand and patted his face a few times, shifted his body, and tried to go back to sleep.
"Hee."
But the moment a bell-like giggle brushed his ear, Logan snapped his eyes open.
He glanced to the side and saw Jinx propping her chin with one hand, while the other hand used a tuft of her blue hair to sweep across Logan's face—deliberately brushing it over his nose.
Logan reached up and flicked her hair aside. All sleepiness vanished. He looked at her and asked quietly, "Since when are we this close?"
Jinx pulled her hair back and said casually, "We've always been this close, haven't we? When we were little, you even gave me candy."
"Did I?" Logan honestly couldn't remember. He sat up and rubbed his face.
His adaptability really was ridiculous. He'd accepted transmigrating, a cheat system, and getting targeted by Thresh all in a single day—so accepting that he'd woken up in the same bed as a volatile undercity crime princess didn't even feel that weird anymore.
Besides, compared to insane, compared to dangerous… could Jinx really be more dangerous than Thresh?
Of course not.
Jinx, however, looked unusually serious. "You did. I remember it clearly."
"And Logan," she continued, "get up. I'm hungry."
"So?"
"So you go buy food for me. I don't have money," Jinx said.
"I don't have much money either," Logan replied.
The pouch Marsen had left him was only enough to cover a few days of meals for one person. Add Jinx to that, and it'd be gone in less than two days.
"Fine, then I'll go get money." Jinx pulled out her gun and spun her finger around the trigger. Logan felt his soul leave his body—he was genuinely afraid it would go off.
And when he thought about Jinx's "ways" of getting money, Logan sighed.
Jinx, Vi—Zaunites in general—usually had only three ways to make money.
One: work honestly for the Pilties and earn some miserable hard-won pay from them.
Two: get a group together, break into a Pilty's home, steal something, and sell it.
Three: the oldest and most violent method.
And it was obvious Jinx's idea of "getting money" was the third.
"I get it," Logan said, standing up. "I'll get food. You wait here."
He grabbed the jacket off to the side and put it on.
Jinx sprawled out on the bed again like she owned it. At his words, she lifted her legs lazily, braced both hands at her narrow waist, and struck a pose that basically said yeah, yeah, I heard you.
Logan didn't say anything else. He turned and headed out.
————
On the way to the restaurant, Logan passed plenty of gang members. Looking at them—and thinking about Jinx currently lying on his bed—he felt helpless.
If Silco found out Jinx had been lying in Logan's bed, what kind of ending would Logan get?
Hmm.
Best-case scenario: shot dead.
Worst-case scenario: Silco has him used as shark bait.
Logan didn't doubt it for a second.
When he watched Arcane, he'd thought Silco was charismatic, even liked him as a character. But actually being in Zaun—with the memories of living here—Logan knew exactly what Silco had brought to this place.
Under violent rule, the people at the bottom feared Silco and hated him. Gratitude didn't exist.
Even if Zaun really did become independent someday under Silco, what about the suffering Zaunites were enduring right now?
How would that pain ever be repaid?
If you only looked at the result and ignored the process, you lost a lot along the way.
Sometimes Logan truly thought… if Silco and Vander could have fused into one person, it would've been perfect. Silco's iron-fisted methods paired with Vander's ideals—Zaun would have become truly united, not like this.
Reform required blood and pain.
But the ones paying that price weren't the people making the decisions.
"Hey—have mercy, sir. I haven't eaten in three days…"
"Sir, want shimmer? Latest batch. I swear it has no side effects!"
"No! Please don't take my child!"
Voices of misery poured into Logan's ears. Logan acted like he hadn't heard. He reached the restaurant, pushed the door open, and ordered two meals.
One boiled sump-snapper frog legs.
One loaf of bread mixed with gravel and impurities.
Carrying the food, Logan went home.
"Wow! Frog legs?" The moment he stepped inside, Jinx bounced up in front of him. She leaned forward, her small nose twitching as she sniffed the smell wafting from the container.
She lifted her head, bright blue eyes sparkling with excitement, and shouted, "I haven't had this in forever! How did you know I like this?"
"Silco won't let me eat stuff like this. Says it's dirty. He usually cooks for me himself, but his cooking is really not that great."
Jinx snatched the container, pinched a piece of leg meat between two fingers, held it above her head, opened her mouth, dropped it in, then chewed loudly.
Logan: "…"
"If you like it, good. Here's bread too." Logan handed her the bread.
"I'm not eating that. It tastes bad." Jinx glanced at it, disgusted.
The bread she ate normally came from Topside—soft, sweet, fragrant. This dry, hard undercity brick? No thanks.
Logan didn't care. He tore off a chunk and shoved it into his mouth, chewing.
Wood splinters. Dirt. Grit. He forced it down, then looked at Jinx and asked, "How many days are you planning to stay here?"
"You're trying to kick me out?" Jinx tilted her head. Her expression was calm—
But her hand froze mid-bite, and her body subtly turned toward him.
"Forget it," Logan said, rubbing his cheek, sore from chewing that awful bread. "Stay as long as you want."
"Yay!" Jinx lit up again. She reached for the frog legs, pulled out another leg, and held it out to Logan.
"Eat," she said.
Logan reached to take it, but Jinx pulled it away, then shoved it right back toward his face again, staring at him.
"Eat."
Logan blinked.
He opened his mouth. Jinx promptly "poked" the meat right in.
The frog meat was soft and greasy, with a hard-to-describe fishy stench. The texture was weird. When Logan closed his mouth, his lips brushed Jinx's fingers.
"It's… pretty good," Logan said, swallowing with effort.
Jinx beamed, delighted.
Logan went right back to gnawing his dry bread.
————
Deep night.
In the core of the Lanes—this area looked far richer than the outer ring. Crowds packed the center: merchants in top hats, tattooed gang members. Before a massive statue, people opened their mouths and drank the purple liquid that sprayed from the sculpture.
At the very center was a bar.
Its strange sign was covered in graffiti, making it look like one bright, glaring eye. Zaunites called it the Last Drop.
Past the flashing neon on the first floor, the pulsing music, the patrons huffing shimmer and getting high, a hard-faced woman with a mechanical arm walked straight up to the restricted second floor.
She knocked on the door.
A moment later, a low voice answered.
"Come in."
She pushed the door open.
The second floor of the Last Drop was covered in all kinds of strange graffiti. The desk, the books, the cups—everything had cute blue-and-pink doodles drawn on it.
On an old chair, a man sat quietly.
He wore a fitted vest over a red shirt. His hair was neatly combed, every strand in place. With his back to the woman, he held a mirror and was working on something.
Looking closer, you'd see he was applying makeup—painting over half his face. That half was covered in scars, but as his hand moved, the scars were gradually concealed.
He lifted the mirror slightly, angled it toward the woman behind him. Red eyes glanced at the reflection. He set the mirror down, reached across the desk, and found a lighter that had two smiling eyes drawn on it.
He placed a cigar between his lips.
The cigar lit.
He turned the chair around. Hands clasped neatly over his lower abdomen, he looked elegance itself.
"Back?" Silco asked.