Yu Shou was in the main corridor, looking exhausted but alert. He’d been awake all night monitoring the situation, his fourteen-year-old frame showing the strain of trying to manage two hundred traumatized children alone while Shuyin and her husband were at the penthouse.

"You should rest," Yuyan told him gently. "I can watch them for a while."

Yu Shou shook his head. "Your stepmother gave me specific instructions to keep everyone safe. I can’t sleep while that responsibility rests on me."

"Then at least sit down," Yuyan insisted, gesturing to a chair in the corridor. "I’m just going to talk to some of them, see if anyone needs anything. You can supervise from here."

Yu Shou considered, then nodded gratefully and settled into the chair. "Be careful. Some of them are... unpredictable. Their trauma makes them react in unexpected ways."

Yuyan understood. She’d spent months in a coma, poisoned by people whom she doesn’t know of until now, and the experience had taught her that trauma manifested differently in everyone. Some people withdrew into themselves. Others lashed out. And children, especially, often couldn’t articulate what they were feeling, so it came out in their behavior instead.

She started with the younger children’s rooms first. In one of the guest bedrooms, three girls sat together on a large bed, maybe six, seven, and eight years old. They looked up when Yuyan entered, their eyes carrying a wariness that broke her heart.

"Hi," Yuyan said softly, staying near the door so she wouldn’t seem threatening. "My name is Yuyan. I live here with my father and stepmother. We wanted to make sure you all had breakfast. Are you hungry?"

The oldest girl, the eight-year-old, spoke for the group. "We already ate. The man with the strange eyes brought us food earlier." She meant Yu Shou, whose supernatural nature sometimes showed in his gaze.

"Good," Yuyan said, smiling gently. "Is there anything else you need? Clean clothes? Books to read? Toys?"

The youngest girl, barely six, whispered something to the eight-year-old, who translated. "She wants to know when we can go home."

Yuyan’s chest tightened. She moved closer, slowly, and sat on the floor near the bed so she was at their eye level rather than looming over them. "Can I ask... do you have homes to go back to? Families who are looking for you?"

The eight-year-old’s expression hardened in a way no child’s face should. "We were sold," she said flatly, the words carrying weight beyond her years. "Our parents sold us to the bad people who kept us in the basement. They got money, and we got put in the dark place with no food."

Sold. The word sat in the air like something poisonous. Yuyan had known intellectually that some of the children had been sold by their own families, Shuyin had mentioned it yesterday, but hearing it directly from a child’s mouth made it viscerally real.

"I’m so sorry," Yuyan said, her voice thick with emotion. "That should never have happened to you. What your parents did was wrong. You didn’t deserve it."

"Where will we go if not home?" the middle girl asked, speaking for the first time. Her voice was small and frightened.

"My stepmother is arranging for you to go to special places," Yuyan explained carefully. "Places with doctors and people trained to help children who’ve been hurt. Places where you’ll be safe, and fed properly, and no one will ever lock you in the dark again. They’ll help you feel better."

"Will it hurt?" the youngest asked in her tiny whisper.

"The healing?" Yuyan considered how to answer honestly. "Sometimes talking about scary things can hurt at first, like pressing on a bruise. But the doctors there are kind, and they’ll go slowly, and eventually the hurt will get smaller. That’s what my mother tells me about healing from bad things." 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

She stayed with the three girls for a few more minutes, answering their questions about the mansion, about what would happen next, about whether they’d be separated (she didn’t know, but promised they could ask to stay together). When she left, they seemed slightly less frightened, though still carrying the weight of betrayal that came from being sold by the people who should have loved them most.

In the next room, Yuyan found two boys, maybe nine and ten years old, sitting in tense silence. They looked up when she entered, and she could see the difference immediately, these children hadn’t been sold. They carried themselves differently, with an anger that spoke of something stolen rather than given away.

"Hi," she said, using the same gentle approach. "I’m Yuyan. I live here. I wanted to check if you needed anything."

The older boy spoke immediately, his voice sharp with suspicion. "When can we leave? When can we go back to our families?"

"You were kidnapped," Yuyan said, understanding dawning. "Not sold. Your families are looking for you."

Both boys nodded, relief and pain mixing in their expressions. "We were taken from the street," the younger one said. "I was walking home from school and someone grabbed me, put something over my face that made me sleep, and when I woke up I was in that basement."

"Me too," the older boy added. "Three months ago. My parents must be so worried. They must think I’m dead."

Yuyan felt tears prick her eyes but blinked them back. These children needed her to be strong, not to cry with them even though she wanted to. "My father has involved a special team," she said. "They’re going to work on finding your families and reuniting you. It might take some time because there are so many of you and the records were..." she paused, choosing words carefully, "...not kept properly by the bad people. But they’re going to try."

"What if they can’t find them?" the younger boy asked, fear evident in his voice.

"Then you’ll go to the safe places with the other children, and the search will continue," Yuyan promised. "They won’t stop looking. And maybe your families are already at the police station, already giving information, already trying to find you too."