My Sworn Sister's Cousin-by-Marriage Walked Into My Teahouse novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Back Door
A police raid chases Lin Qiao into Wen Jinyu's teahouse, and the two hide pressed together among the tea barrels. The sergeant announces she stole a ledger, and Qiao whispers that she did.
The knock on the back door came after the last customer had gone and the shutters were already barred.
Wen Jinyu was counting the day's coins into a tin when she heard it.
Three knocks, then two, the way her sworn sister used to knock when they were girls.
She wiped her hands on her apron and drew the bolt.
A tall woman stood in the rain with a leather satchel hugged to her chest.
Her black hair was cut to the jaw and plastered to her cheeks, and her round steel glasses were streaked with water.
Her blue cotton gown was soaked through at the shoulders.
"Wen Jinyu?" the woman said. "Ruolan sent me. I have a letter."
She held out a square of paper folded very small.
Jinyu took it, pulled her inside, and bolted the door behind her.
The kitchen was warm from the stove, and the stranger stood dripping on the stones.
Jinyu unfolded the letter by the lamp.
It was Ruolan's neat hand.
It carried the plum-blossom seal she had used since the day they swore their oath at the City God Temple.
"Jinyu. This is Lin Qiao, my husband's cousin on his mother's side."
"Which makes her your cousin by marriage, so you will have to put up with her calling you Aunt. Keep her."
"Don't ask about the ledger until she tells you."
Jinyu read it twice.
"Ledger?" she said.
The woman pushed her glasses up her nose with two ink-stained fingers.
"It's a long story," Lin Qiao said. "Can I tell it sitting down?"
"You can tell it when you've dried off."
Jinyu was reaching for a towel when the whistle sounded in the lane.
It was a police whistle, long and shrill, and it was followed by boots.
Many boots, running on wet stone.
Qiao went rigid.
"They followed me," she whispered. "I swear I lost them at the temple."
Jinyu looked at the door, the bolt, the lamp, the wet footprints on her clean floor.
Then she grabbed Qiao by the wrist.
"Not the kitchen," she said. "They'll look at the kitchen first."
She pulled her across the room to the narrow door beside the stove and shoved it open.
The tea storeroom was no wider than a wardrobe.
It was stacked to the ceiling with wooden barrels, camphor chests and burlap sacks of leaf.
Jinyu blew out the lamp, stepped in after her, and pulled the door shut.
Pitch dark.
There was nowhere to put two grown women except against each other.
Jinyu's back met a barrel, and Qiao's front met Jinyu.
She felt the whole length of her at once.
There was the cold wet cloth, the satchel crushed between them, and the hard hammering of a heart that was not her own.
"Don't breathe so loud," Jinyu breathed.
"I'm trying."
"Try harder."
"You're standing on my foot."
"That's not my foot. That's a sack of Longjing."
Qiao made a small helpless sound that was almost a laugh.
Her breath smelled of rain and orange peel and landed warm against Jinyu's jaw.
Out in the kitchen, the back door shook under a fist.
"Police! Open up!"
Jinyu put her hand flat over Qiao's mouth.
She felt lips part under her palm and close again.
She felt the quick damp heat of the breath that came through her fingers.
Her own heart had begun to knock against her ribs for reasons that had nothing to do with the police.
The back door gave way with a crack.
Boots crossed the kitchen.
A lantern swung, and a thin line of yellow light slid under the storeroom door and lay across Jinyu's shoes.
Qiao's hand found Jinyu's waist in the dark and held on.
Neither of them moved.
"Nobody here, Sergeant," a young voice called from the kitchen. "Just flour and a pot."
"Check the cupboards."
Cupboards banged.
The light stopped moving, right outside the storeroom door.
The latch rattled once.
Jinyu counted her own heartbeats and lost count at nine.
Then a heavier voice spoke from the front hall, bored and unhurried, the voice of a man who had done this before.
"Leave it. The owner's a respectable woman. We'll deal with her in the morning."
The boots went through to the front hall.
The back door was dragged shut, and a constable settled outside it, humming to himself.
In the dark, Jinyu slowly lifted her hand from Qiao's mouth.
Neither of them stepped back.
"Thank you," Qiao whispered, so close Jinyu felt the words.
"Don't thank me yet. I don't know what you've done."
From the front hall, the sergeant's voice came again, muffled through the walls but perfectly clear.
"A warrant is out for one Lin Qiao, junior bookkeeper at the Hengtai Bank. She stole its ledger and twelve hundred yuan."
"Five hundred yuan for whoever hands her in."
Jinyu stood very still with the thief pressed against her in the dark.
"Tell me that isn't you," she said.
Qiao's hand tightened on her waist.
"I can't," she said. "I took it. All of it."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend