Enduring Like the Plum in Winter

竹子 (Bamboo): 三

Ruomei stepped back and crossed her arms, trying to follow where each little thief ran off to, but they all scattered in different directions.

"Hey!" Ruomei reached out to grab the nearest one by the back of his jacket, but the little boy kicked at her and wriggled out of the sleeves, free again in a flash.

Ruomei dropped the jacket and pushed up her own sleeves. So they wanted a fight, did they?

She stretched out her hand, ready to use magic to trip the boy, and maybe send a pile of baskets to fall on his head for added humiliation. Before she could do so, however, a red spark suddenly shot out from the right side of the street, hitting her wrist with a painful shock.

"Ow!" Ruomei looked around, but couldn't find the source.

"Ruomei? Are you okay?" The fruit-seller's wife had paused in her cleanup of the fruit and was looking at Ruomei with concern.

"I'm fine." Ruomei waved her away. "Don't worry about me." Once the other woman had turned her back, Ruomei extended her hand, ready to try again.

Once again, she was smacked with a red spark, the hit feeling every bit as painful as a pebble from a slingshot. Ruomei gasped and clutched her hand to her chest, rubbing at her sore wrist as she again checked for whoever or whatever was attacking her.

There – a flicker of black fabric around a corner was the only glimpse she had of her attacker before it disappeared.

"Hey! Come back here!" Ruomei shot after the person, ignoring the surprised cries that resounded as she suddenly ran off. If it meant being able to prevent someone from hurting the fruit-seller and his business, she would deal with the misunderstandings and try to clarify everything later.

The figure was fast, darting between stalls and slipping between carts and crates in the street. As Ruomei followed, she noticed that all eyes were turned to her only as she gave pursuit, and no one seemed to take note of her black-hooded quarry unless the person ran into someone or something.

Ruomei used an upturned bucket as a step to launch herself up and over a slow-moving cart, trying to catch a glimpse of the person's features. Was it someone from another realm, making themselves invisible to mortal eyes?

As if sensing Ruomei's suspicions, the cloaked figure suddenly pushed off the side of a wooden post and leapt over one of the market stalls, out of view. Ruomei grumbled under her breath – if she were to pull off a similar feat, the mortals here would surely realize she wasn't human.

Opting for a less-obvious course of action, Ruomei swung around the next corner to double back in the alley behind the stalls – only to just avoid a fist headed straight for her face as she did so.

Understanding mortals wasn't the only thing Lisong had been teaching Ruomei lately. She jumped back, her hands coming up to block the next flurry of punches and kicks from her attacker. The cloaked figure pressed forward tirelessly, and it was only when Ruomei managed to hook a foot around the back of the person's leg that the punches stopped in favor of a backflip out of reach, the hood of the cloak falling back in the process.

In the silence that followed, Ruomei and her adversary stood facing each other, breathing heavily, each waiting for the other to make a move.

"Why don't you just stop already?" Ruomei called out, studying her opponent. It was a woman, the same age as if not younger than herself, with a slight frame and a narrow, angular face. The woman's hair was braided back into a long ponytail, and a pair of red earrings dangled to halfway down her neck, still swinging from the force of her earlier movements.