JJ had spent enough money to know when a bill was trying to become a weapon.
Her wrist panel kept flickering between sponsor damages, Name Office witness fees, and a polite estate notice asking whether she had been abducted, killed, or merely irresponsible. The question came with a timestamp, a risk chart, and the kind of neutral phrasing rich people paid other rich people to use when panic would have been more honest.
She ignored it.
The accountant sent a second notice within nine seconds. The wording had changed from concern to audit preparation.
JJ stared at the line. Then, because she was tired, angry, and apparently becoming the sort of woman who made worse decisions when asked politely, she typed back that the estate should define duress before accusing her of it.
The reply came too quickly and identified her current expense pattern as qualifying behavior.
Yun-Jin sat on an overturned filing crate beside her, one arm wrapped around her ribs and one boot braced against the Lost Property counter. She looked half dead and fully offended by the room, which JJ respected. Offense was healthier than collapse.
"Your panel is bleeding pink in a way money should avoid."
"It is posting collateral, which is finance pretending to be medical."
"That sounds worse when you explain it with confidence."
"Most family money sounds worse when explained honestly."
The accountant sent a third notice.
Yun-Jin read the message upside down and made a sound too small to be called a laugh.
"Your accountant has better survival instincts than most officers I know."
"He once talked my aunt out of buying a vineyard after the seller called it spiritually burdened."
"Was the vineyard haunted, or did rich people make grapes dramatic?"
"Financially haunted, which is the version that keeps sending invoices."
Yun-Jin laughed, then pressed one hand to her ribs and paid for it. JJ’s smile faded before Yun-Jin could hide the pain.
"Save your laugh for a time when it stops trying to break you."
"Save your fortune for a time when it stops trying to break you."
"That was annoyingly clean for someone bleeding through discipline."
"I practice on officers who think pain makes them concise."
Ty stood near the black case, watching his missing finger as if staring could bully it into explaining itself. Omina argued with the clerk in a voice that had already chosen paperwork as a weapon. Heissman had found a form titled SO YOU HAVE BEEN INCONVENIENCED BY PURPOSE and was reading it with academic disgust.
JJ lowered the panel brightness before Ty could look over.
Yun-Jin noticed. Of course she did.
"Tell me how bad the bill is before your face lies for you."
"Bad enough that I am grateful math cannot develop grudges."
Yun-Jin glanced around Lost Property, where the floor had tried to eat names and the clerk treated misery like a filing category.
"In this place, I would phrase that gratitude carefully."
"I withdraw the statement before arithmetic hears me."
Her panel refreshed again. Sponsor witness acceptance had finalized. An estate hold locked across one account. A public face dispute surcharge waited in pending review, polite as a knife under a napkin.
Yun-Jin’s eyes narrowed.
"Can you pay what the panel is trying to avoid showing me?"
JJ wanted to say yes. Yes was easy. Yes kept fear out of other people’s hands. Yes was what sponsors said when fighters looked at them.
Her panel chose that moment to show a private estate figure with too many digits in red.
"Some of it, which is the version of yes that accountants hate."
"That answered a question you wish I had asked."
"It is the answer I can say without handing you my panic."
Yun-Jin leaned back and winced.
"You people are impossible in a very expensive direction."
"Which people are being accused while I still have money?"
"The ones who would rather bankrupt a province than admit feelings in plain language."
JJ laughed before she could stop herself. It hurt somewhere under her sternum, a place no one had hit.
"That accusation is unfair enough to be personally offensive."
"It is close enough to annoy you because it found the bruise."
"I am currently bankrupting myself in a contained and deeply supervised manner."
"Yet belongs in the report if you keep talking."
The word sat between them with teeth.
JJ looked toward Ty. He had no face right now, only skull, flame, and the awful patience of someone being asked to prove he belonged to himself. He turned the ticket in his hand. The empty finger joint flexed once.
"He would tell me to stop paying before the account starts bleeding."
"He would, because he thinks sacrifice becomes cleaner when he does it first."
"Then he would spend his body on the same problem and call it morally different."
"Also accurate, which makes him exhausting in several directions."
"I hate how easy he makes generosity look stupid."
Yun-Jin smiled faintly.
"That sentence would have landed harder if your eyes believed it."
JJ looked back at the panel because answering Yun-Jin would have opened too many doors.
There were too many women in Ty’s life now. That was the cheap way to say it. Arena gossip would say it worse. Jade had history, grief, proof, a death mark, and the impossible moral weight of being the woman he was trying to return to. Yun-Jin had blood, command debt, and the kind of honesty that made lies look underdressed. JJ had money, access, hunger, and a terrible habit of calling sacrifice strategy when her chest hurt.
None of that was simple enough to fit inside romance.
Her panel chimed again and tried to make the next threat sound administrative.
If Earth accepted Zunoder as Ty, sponsorship could be routed toward the publicly recognized body.
JJ sat very still.
Yun-Jin saw the change.
"Tell me what changed before your panel bills us for silence."
"If Earth accepts Zunoder as Ty, he can argue my sponsorship followed the body."
Yun-Jin’s hand went to her weapon.
"Then we kill him and let the forms catch up."
"Tempting, but murder leaves gaps the office can invoice."
"I can live with gaps if he stops talking."
"The office cannot, and unfortunately the office is the room."
Ty looked over.
"What happened to make both of you look expensive?"
JJ shut the panel.
"Zunoder found a route into the sponsor claim."
Ty’s skull angled.
"That is the kind of answer people give before saying the worse answer."
"If Earth accepts his face, my money can be argued toward him."
Ty crossed the space in three steps.
"Drop me before he can use your estate as a road."
The words hit harder because he spent them like a cost.
JJ stood.
"I refuse to make abandonment look like strategy because a thief in your skin found a billing trick."
"You are not paying for the man wearing my stolen body."
"Stop using the voice that makes people feel cleaner for leaving you."
He stopped. That surprised them both.
Yun-Jin looked away, which was almost kind. JJ lowered her voice anyway.
"You are allowed to tell me when I am ruining myself. You are not allowed to make yourself easy to abandon so I feel cleaner."
Ty’s flame dimmed.
"Jade is paying too, and you know she would tell me this is different."
"I know, which is why I am angry at both of you."
"Yun-Jin is also standing here with broken ribs and opinions."
"I am also stupid now, apparently. Congratulations on making sacrifice contagious."
Heissman lifted the inconvenience form.
"For the record, I was insufferable before meeting him."
Omina looked over from the counter.
"That claim has strong evidence and multiple witnesses."
The clerk stamped something.
The stamp agreed with unnecessary force.
For three seconds, the room breathed.
Then JJ’s panel rang with an incoming public claim.
TY HOCKENSON - EARTH RECOGNITION SOURCE
JJ stared at the name until the letters blurred. The estate system knew authorizations, public labels, and where money could be routed if enough frightened people agreed on the wrong thing. It left no field for romance, grief, or stolen bodies. Compared with that, a monster felt almost honest; teeth at least gave you a place to aim.
Yun-Jin pushed herself upright.
"Leave the call unanswered until we know whose door it opens."
"My face is under stress, not contractually binding."
"Your face is rich and guilty enough to sign documents."
JJ almost laughed. The sound got stuck. Ty was looking at the panel like it had become another body part he needed to cut away from himself before it hurt someone else.
"Do not ask me again to make you easier to discard."
Ty’s flame shifted.
"Dropping me would protect you from the claim."
"It would make me cheaper, and that is a different kind of damage."
The panel answered itself. Zunoder’s voice filled Lost Property, soft with Ty’s mouth.
"Sponsor. How much did you pay for the wrong half?"
Inside the black case, the missing finger began to tap.