Kaede had better run.

The Chou brothers can't let her escape (even though technically they already have, multiple times) (it wasn't their fault, though). Their reputation is on the line! Furthermore, it's difficult to obtain food, they have to go to the Spirit Wilds and there've been very few volunteers lately. They need to feed their staff and family and selves, and there's an order. Food needs to be distributed through some means, they don't have enough food to just give everyone otherwise they would.

Roof after roof, balcony after balcony, falling down to street level and climbing back up, they chase her.

"Nobody steals from the Chou brothers!" one of them calls after her.

"Really?" she calls back over her shoulder, "Because I just did!"

"You're dead, Kaede!" a different brother says.

"Actually," she says, jumping onto a stone fence that blocks off a rather high drop and turning around to face them, "I feel quite alive!"

And she drops.

The brothers run after her and jump, too, assuming it's safe to do so from her attempt.

It is in fact safe!

...for her. She holds onto a clothesline and bounces up to a balcony—

—but the three brothers are rather much heavier than she is. They do manage to hold onto enough lines for long enough (before they snap with their combined weight) that they don't immediately go splat, but they do fall rather ungracefully.

She hops off the balcony to the street level, blows them a kiss, and spins around to resume running.

After a couple of seconds to get their bearings they get back on their feet and resume running in the direction Kaede went.

...but she's nowhere to be found.

...which is rather embarrassing. They keep looking anyway, for another fifteen minutes, but eventually give up. They make their way back to the palace, grumbling.

She watches most of this in amusement from a perch beneath a roof, but after they're thoroughly lost she makes her way to her little hideout.

Her little hideout is more like a shack in the woods than anything. When she walks in, there's a boy younger than her and an old man who's half tree waiting for her.

"Kaede! Did you steal from the Chou Brothers again?" the boy asks.

"Yep." She drops the sack of food on the ground. "Eat to your heart's content." She grabs some of it and walks over to the old man.

Who takes the offered food with a grin. "Hmmmm delishious," he says with his mouth full.

She smiles wanly at him and sits in the middle of the shack to eat something herself.

"Sometime you're gonna get caught," says the boy.

"I know."

"And banished to the Spirit Wilds."

She shrugs. "Comes with the territory."

"...do you just not care?"

"Of course I care," she snaps. "Doesn't look like I have a choice, though, do I?"

"...we could... could..."

"Could nothing, and you well know it." Sigh. "I... know it sucks. But it is what it is. We've got nothing, and they have the one system for getting something: join them in the Hunt. But half of the people who go don't come back."

"That's not—true—is it?" But the boy glances at the spirits-touched man, who's acting oblivious to the conversation around them, and swallows dryly before looking down at the food Kaede brought and bringing some of it into his mouth.

"Mmm. It's true—for us. We have no training in using fire, and we're all half-starved, and the only ones who join this harebrained trek are the ones too poor and desperate to have literally any other options, and then if anything goes wrong we're bait, left behind while the guard can flee. And then if we're lucky, we manage to come back half tree, but if we're not, we die then and there or become a spirit's plaything."

"...and so you'll keep stealing from them until you get unlucky and get sent away with no chance of coming back."

"And so I'll keep stealing until I have enough food to eat every day for a whole week and hopefully that will be enough nutrition that I can join the Hunt and have a better chance of surviving."

"—wait, what?"

"The bread will keep. Most of it. The cheese will keep. The fruit—less so, but it is what it is. I'm not bringing all of it here, to the two of you. I'm saving up."

"So we could have been eating more all along?!"

"Not all along. I've only been doing this recently. But yes. If I can get enough from the Hunt then I can help—help all of you. Pull myself from my bootstraps, I guess."

"You really are kind of crazy, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Guess I am."