Chapter Four: A Ledger Without Numbers

“Then stop looking at my home like a warehouse.” Yanci removed his bloody coat and revised his judgment solemnly. “It is efficient.” Jibai laughed despite himself. The ledger contained no sums, only thirty years of dishes, tide times, and seat numbers. Its final four pages had been torn away. The latest entry read: White Jade Soup, midnight, Orchid Room, seat nine. “The dishes are an index?” Jibai asked. “My mother matched Tideborn House menus to old corporate archives. Time represents year, seat represents drawer.” Yanci reached the entries from seven years ago and frowned. “But this ledger was designed to be useless to outsiders. Without the original menu, no one can decode it.”