Around threequarter sun, Yins head starts bobbing when she almost falls asleep. All the sense in her legs is completely gone by now, even the tingling is no longer vexing her. Her entire body is consumed by a weird kind of numbness when her eyes finally close. Her rest however, is short-lived. A scream, followed by the sound of something heavy falling in the water, reaches her ears and her head jolts up, startled. As her eyes search the source of the sound, she notices her two guards standing there, eyeing the situation, unsure of what to do. Yin's sharp eyes see a girl four stone's throws away, splashing in the water of a pond with fear written all over her face. 

"Do something, she can't swim!" Yin yells at one of the soldiers, stating the obvious.

They look at each other, wondering whether it was wise for one of them to leave. Their punishment for leaving her would be worse than the current situation she was in. Yin irrably hits one of them on the armorplate of his leg to get their attention. They turn to her and scowl at the girls rudeness and the soldier kicks her in the gut. Yin falls backwards, but doesn't stop yelling.

"IDIOTS, SHE'S DROWNING! ARE YOU COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR MINDS! SAVE HER!" she yells at them, but to no avail, they angrily glare at her. Yin glances to the girl while facing them.

"I'm going to regret this," she mumbles and she sighs. 

With a grunt she pushes herself up to stand and starts running towards the girl. The numbnes in her legs almost make her collaps to the ground and black dots dance in her vision when the blood rushes from her head. Behind her, the soldiers watch her completely thunderstruck, before they yell for her to stop. Yin bites through the pain in her legs and continues running for the girl, who watches her with fear in her eyes before she goes under again.

Somewhere hidden away from the four people inside the courtyard, an archer draws her bow silently. The head of the arrow is laced with strong poison, able to kill anyone withing hours when only a small quantity is applied. She takes aim, quietly realeases her breath and lets go of the arrow. It whizzes through the air almost soundless, going straight for its target. 

While she is running, Yin hears the arrow whizzing through the air, it's coming straight at her. Already knowing it was going straight for her heart because of her well-trained hearing and common sense, she turned last minute. The arrow struck her heart by a hair, piercing through her shoulder instead. Yin curses when pain blooms from her shoulder all the way to the tips of her fingers. Grunting with every step she takes, she keeps running to save the girl. Blood gushes out of the wound, staining her white nightgown a dark shade of red. Yin is aware the arrow would get in the way when grabbing the woman, so she breaks its shaft close to her skin and throws it away.

All the while, the archer had been watching with her hand curled stifly around the handle of her beloved bow, she had always gone hunting with it. It had been a gift of her grandfather and was ingraved with the typical patterns originating from the Wastes of Pyquan. The damned woman has survived yet another attack! The archer decides to leave before anyone finds her.

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A graceful dive and a few strokes later and Yin grabs the woman and yanks her upwards, towards the surface. The clear water of the pond turns crimson red around her shoulder, leaving a trail of color, shaped the way ink looks when dropped in water. Yin gulps for air when breaking through the surface and cries out in pain. She had strained her shoulder too much when yanking the woman, who was wearing heavy robes, up. With a few powerfull strokes of her legs, she reaches the shore. Quickly Yin gets up and pulls the woman up against the base of the blossoming tree that stood beside the pond, all the way grunting from the effort. Not very softly, Yin slaps the woman on the cheeks to get a reaction from her. She briefly opens her eyes less than a quarter thumb wide when they flutter closed. Then Yin notices that her chest is no longer rising and she stars compressing her chest before doing mouth on mouth. After repeating this process a few times, the woman chough up water and her eyes flahs open. 

"I thou- though I would die... thank you" she breathes. 

Yin really looks at her face for the first time since she saw her and recognises her.

"Ain't ya a concubine for the Emperor too? Think I seen ya before..."

At first she looks at her saviour, dumbfounded for her lack of elegance while talking, then a warm smile spreads on her face.

"Concubine-to-be actually... but I ain't ever seen the guy before! No way in hell I'm marrin' him!" she exclaims, using the same dialect as Yin. 

"Ya from Bushin-province too? Hm, I like ya. The name's Wei Yin, just call me Yin though, I don't like the formal speech one bit," Yin rattles on, this might have been the longest sentence she has ever uttered to a woman since entering the palace. It was nice having someone around who thought about things the same way she did and talked the same way, Yin feels a strong connection with the woman.

"My name's Yamamoto Nui, call me Nui! Thanks a bunch for saving my life back there! I thought I was a goner, really, saw my life flashin' before my eyes!" Then she did something unexpected of a girl, a commoner, from Bushin-province, one of the poorest and lowest provincens of the Tékaguo Empire, she kowtowed before her. Especially in the Bushin-province, no-one really paid attention to etiquette and rituals, that's why Yin is startled.

"Nui, please get up! Nobody's ever done that before!" Yin exclaims while grabbing her hands in her one hand, her other arm hung beside her body motionlessly. 

The soldiers that had long arrived just watch the scene unfold. Two concubines-to-be, supposed ladies, were talking to eachother like farmers! And one was shot in the shoulder, but acted like nothing happened! The soldier on her left noticed her motionless arm and the blood still gushing from her wound. 

"Thanks so much, Yin, I owe you! What?! You're hurt! When did this happen?!" 

"While I was running to save you... maybe I should go get it treated now," Yin said with her face as emotionless as a spotless satin sheet. On the inside, she was panicking slightly. The bleeding still hadn't stopt, which was unusual. This could only mean the arrow was laced in poison.

Yin gets up from her squatting position slowly, to prevent the blood rushing from her head too quickly. After the first steps she takes, she collapses on the ground. No food, no rest, weakened muscles, blood loss and the poison, all of it combined was too much on her. 

"Miss Yin!" both of the soldiers cry out. They might have been very rude towards her, if something happened to her on their watch, they were dead. The soldiers rush her to the physician, leaving a startled Nui behind. On their way, they cross lieutenant Lu Zhen, who immediately follows them when he sees the blood and her pale face. Without knockin, the three of them barge in the room, finding the physician snoring on the ground.

"Old man, wake up!" Zhen yells at him and shakes him.

"Wae- What?!" he grogilly asks and rubs his eyes. The moment he sees Yin, he awakened fully.

"What-"

"Arrow to the shoulder, probably with poison, she managed to tell us before she lost consciousness," Zhen cuts him off. 

The physician nods and gets to work to save Yin once again.