The Walled City

MEI YEE

I cannot sleep. Every fiber, every muscle of my body, is still full, floating high with window thoughts. When the boy left, my mind went with him, dashing through imaginary streets, all the way home.

I’m running down the dirt road, past fields and fields of grass as bright and green as a liquor bottle. Past the stray dogs that beg at farmers’ steps for clumps of dried rice. Past the distant violet ridges of the mountains. I pass my father — back bent and splotched with sweat — knee-deep in the rice field’s murky waters. I pass my mother — hanging laundry to dry under the breadth of her ginkgo tree, arms mottled dark with storm cloud bruises. I go all the way until I reach my sister, so we can be together again. Just as she wished.

Would I go home if I found a way to get past these bars? Or would I go see the sea? The expanding-chamber possibilities are terrifyingly endless, just like its waters. The thought of being out in the world — alone — is enough to make me stop breathing.

But would I be alone? There’s the boy and what he said: I want you to see it, too. Something about his voice, his eyes, makes me think I’m not the only one whose insides are smoldering.

But I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. And the longer he’s gone, the more these things start slipping, the way a dream fades with each waking hour of the morning.

My restless body is twisting, turning under every one of these thoughts when the humming starts. It’s like the noise a spirit would make — soft and keening. It curls under my door, calls me to where she is.

The hallway is wrapped in dark, its lanterns hanging dim and smokeless. The sound — a thin, waiflike song — slips through the cracks of Sing’s door, slides through Mama-san’s lock. It brings bumps like small mountains over my flesh.

When I draw close, the wailing stops. There’s scrambling, the sound of slippers on floorboards, and the heavy thud of palms against wood shaking the door.

“Please! Please, give me more.” Sing’s voice is loud. Too loud. “I’ll be good! I promise!”

I’m frozen in the hall, looking at all the dead lanterns. They hang in rows, still and bulbous, like crimson moons that have been harvested and strung up to dry.

“Just one more! Please!” Sing screams. “I’ll do anything! Anything you want!”

The door shudders again. The rage behind it grows as if there isn’t a girl there anymore, but a wildcat that’s hissing, spitting, snarling to get to her cubs. But there are no cubs. There’s only me, and somewhere in this maze of lanterns and dark there’s a needle waiting to slide into Sing’s veins and give her another few hours of relief.

“I need it!” Her growl falls apart into a sob. “Please!”

And in these words I hear all that Sing has lost. No matter how many times Mama-san brought a belt across her back, no matter how many men ducked in and out of her bedroom, Sing always managed to stay strong. Always dreamed.

I need it.

I.

Need.

It.

Her words echo and swell and flood, become the blood and marrow of this dark hall. So loud that I don’t hear the footsteps that bring Fung to my side. He looms over me like a nightmare — a shadow stretched extra long. There’s a syringe in his hand and a twist on his lips. His eyes are dark, dark, like the lumps of spent coals my mother used to dump behind our shack.

My body is all tremble, waiting for his shout or the quick slap of his hand, but Fung does neither. He stares a moment longer. The dark, dark eyes and the dragon above them betray nothing.

“You should go back to your room,” he growls.

I obey. Walk back to my bedroom and its window full of bars.

There’s no room for dreamers here. No room for risk.

And there’s no room for me out there. Not really. As I told the boy: I can’t go home, not even to see my sister. My father is waiting there, with a thirst and an itch and an empty wallet. He’d sell me again and my mother would watch again, her bruised eyes heavy with tears.

And I don’t even know where the sea is. Or what I would do if I managed to reach it.

The ambassador does not make my heart sing, but I know every freckle on his body. I know his favorite dish is eel sautéed with mushrooms and bamboo shoots. I know he always hiccups three times in a row. I know he is the youngest child of two factory workers. I know that he’ll still give me the apartment.

The boy won’t even tell me his name.

I bury my head deep in my pillow, but I can still hear Sing. Her screams barrel through the door, punch into my eardrums like metal chopsticks. Haunt me with all the possibilities of needles and failure, what the unknown might actually cost.

Maybe I really am my mother’s daughter.

JIN LING

At first I think I’ve died. I open my eyes. Find my body swaddled in white cloth. Clean and crisp, like a burial shroud.

The room around me is nicer than anything I’ve ever seen. The floor and the ceiling are glossy, dark wood. Electric, rice-paper lanterns cast soft halos of light onto sparse, sleek furniture. Even the walls are pieces of art — painted with cranes and stunted fir trees.

It’s not until I try to move that I realize I’m alive. The pain is still there. Hot and white. By my shoulder blade. There’s a throb in my neck, too — reminders of all the places Kuen’s knife went. Something tugs my hand and I realize there’s a needle taped just under my skin. A clear tube snakes out of me, going all the way up to a full red bag. Blood.

I rest my head back on the pillow. Blink at the rafters. If one thing’s certain, it’s that I’m not in the Walled City. No place there is this nice. So how did I get out? How am I even alive?

“Oh good. You’re awake.” My thoughts are interrupted by a man’s voice. A brassy one, like a temple gong.

I recognize him immediately. The way he stands in the doorway, shoulders set, is the exact same. There’s no hood, but I know it’s the man who met Dai at the edge of City Beyond. The one with the money.

“How are you feeling?” The man stays by the sliding door, hands tucked behind his back. I have to squint to see the finer details of his face. I’m not used to so much bright light.

“Confused.” I keep scanning the older man’s features. He’s not pudgy or disfigured, like Longwai. He has wrinkles, but his face is sharp and sly. Like a fox studying a chicken coop.

Dai looks just like his father.

“I’ll get the nurse.” The man starts to turn.

“No — wait,” I call out, and immediately regret it when the pain flares. “Is Dai here?”

The name does something to the man. Changes him. He no longer looks so sharp — the difference between the hunter and the hunted. He turns out the door, trying to hide it.

I wait in silence, wondering if the man will come back. I flex my hand, stare at the bag of blood. The thick red looks weird, hanging in a pouch, far from bodies and hurt. Almost like the sauce Mrs. Pak puts on her chicken dishes.

It takes me a moment to recognize Dai when he walks in. He’s dressed like a rich man: white shirt, pressed pants, hair combed out of his face. He looks as if he belongs in one of those giant metal skyscrapers. All he needs is a briefcase.

But then he shoves his hands into his pockets and I remember who Dai is. The boy who sits on rooftops, his feet dangling, baiting fatal heights and concrete endings. The boy who spends hours under Longwai’s knife, waiting for me to run back. The boy of scars and secrets.

Dai walks all the way to the edge of my bed. I know what he’s going to say. I can tell by the way he’s looking at me, eyes wary.

“You’re a girl.”

“And you’re rich.” My reply is thick, terse. I can’t believe that, after all the things he’s kept from me, he’s actually angry.

Dai shrugs; his fists stay deep in his pockets. There’s something tucked under his arm. Something long and flat and the same color as my boots. I can’t get a good look at it, because he’s turned away. He isn’t looking at me or the mess of tubes around the bed. He stares at the fancy room. Stuff that belongs in a museum. “Didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

“Neither did I.” I feel a scowl coming on. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I…” He licks his lips, digs for the right word. “I’m impressed, actually. That’s not an easy secret to keep.”

I don’t know what to say, so I close my eyes. My side is full of throb and pain.

“Why did you hide it?”

One eye opens, giving me a view of Dai’s clean-cut face. His lips are almost a frown, which means his question is serious.

Talking hurts, but I do it anyway. “You’ve seen what happens to girls in that place.”

“I mean… why did you hide it from me?”

“Same reason you hid all this, I guess. We all have our secrets. Had,” I correct myself. “Besides, would it really have changed anything?”

His lips press together and he gives a small shrug. “So why do you want money to buy time with one of Longwai’s girls? What do you really need the cash for?”

Dai’s questions come fast. Rapid-fire bullets. They make me uneasy. I don’t like being the one who gives up all the answers. I shouldn’t be. Not when Dai’s biggest deception is all around us.

“I’ll tell you only if you give me some answers.” Lightning pain forks into my side. I grit my teeth. Wait for it to pass. “Where are we? Who are you?”

I expect him to dodge my questions. Like every other time. Instead, Dai tugs a high-backed wooden chair over to my bed. He sets what he was carrying down on the floor. And just for a moment I glimpse it. A book.

“It’s a long story.” He perches himself on the lacquered wood. It doesn’t look comfortable.

“That’s good. Seeing as I’m stuck here.” I lift up my needle-stuck hand, wave it at him. The scarlet tube coils with the motion. “You want answers, you got to give them.”

Dai sighs. It’s a heavy sound, full of years and silence. Something he’s carried for a long, long time. Something he’s ready to put down.

“I grew up here, in this house… It was pretty much all I knew for thirteen years. Tutors. Mercedes. Private schools. Trips abroad. Of course, I was a kid then, so I didn’t really know how good I had it.”

I can’t even begin to picture the life he’s describing — the world I’m staining just by lying here. What’s even harder to imagine is how Dai lost it. Why doesn’t he live here anymore? What happened to his tutors and expensive cars?

I ask him.

“I’ve told you before about my brother.” Dai swallows. “The one you remind me of. His name was Hiro.”

Was. This word feels like another strange drug pumped into my body. It makes me want to puke. I knew this story wasn’t a happy one. I just didn’t know it would be so close to mine.

“I lost him.” Dai’s head dips down between his knees. Hands muss up his hair. The way he isn’t looking at me makes me think he’s crying.

“We were two years apart. I was older, but Hiro had a better head on his shoulders. He was a good kid: straight As, star athlete, and all that. He could’ve been anything he wanted. I was trouble. Stealing cars for joyrides, cheating on tests, sneaking some of my father’s liquor… if anything was against the rules, I probably did it. When we were little, Hiro would always follow me around and tell me not to do things. Like those little shoulder-angels in the cartoons. Sometimes I even listened to him.”

He talks and I see Mei Yee. It’s not the good times: the nights we huddled under the ginkgo tree and watched fog break over the mountains, or when our mother steeped used tea leaves and served us weak amber water in chipped cups. No. What I see is the last time. The night the men came. The terror on her face. The ripping, shredding awfulness in my chest. The same awfulness I hear in Dai’s voice.

“When I turned fourteen, Mother and Father sent me off to boarding school on the other side of Seng Ngoi. Mostly the kids there are rich and bored… But there were a few in my year who were trouble. All the boys broke the rules. It was kind of what you did. We smuggled in cigarettes and liquor. Dirty magazines.”

He pauses again. “I was young. Stupid. I started hanging around boys who were getting involved in things way over their heads. Blackmailing other students for money. Dealing drugs. It was fun. A rush. A sense of power. Other boys looked up to me. Wanted to work for me.

“It was good my first two years. No one got caught. We’d built our own little kingdom inside the school. Nothing could stop us. But then Hiro came to school. It didn’t take him very long to figure out what I was doing. As soon as he found out, he tried to talk me out of it, like he always did. But I wouldn’t listen.

“Anyway, we got into a big fight about it, just before one of my night runs to pick up the next month’s supply of drugs. Hiro tried to stop me from going — he grabbed my hoodie and told me I was a good person. I tore away, left him at school, thought that was the last of it.

“We used Longwai as a supplier. His men would meet us out in Seng Ngoi and make the exchange. It was me and the mayor’s son who had to go pick up that night. The kid — his name was Pat Ying — was really jumpy. He’d already taken a few hits before we snuck out. I liked to go on the runs clean. Have my head in order.

“Hiro followed us that night. I didn’t know until…” Dai pauses. His eyes glitter with almost-tears. Behind them I see the tension of that long-lost night. How dark the streets were. The anger and fear fighting a cage match in his chest. How much he loved his brother. The heavy, heavy guilt that now bends his back. Breaks his voice.

“Things went… bad. There was a squabble over how much. Pat Ying got cocky and started arguing with Longwai’s man. Pat Ying pulled out a knife, and I tried to stop him. He was too high to realize it was me, sliced my arm open.” Dai winces at the memory, and I remember the scar that snakes up his arm.

“Longwai’s man had a gun. The knife was enough to get him to pull it out and start shooting. Everything happened so fast. And my arm hurt. And suddenly Hiro was there, yelling. There was so much sound and then Hiro was on the ground. Pat Ying, too. And I couldn’t see any blood. But there was the gun — right there, by my feet. Longwai’s man dropped it somehow. I’d never shot a gun before, but something about seeing my brother on the ground not moving made me pick it up. Longwai’s man jumped at me, and I didn’t even think about it. I just pulled the trigger.”

Dai closes his eyes. I can’t tell if he’s remembering or fighting. Maybe both.

“And when it was done, there was just me holding the gun. Everything was on the ground. The drugs. The cash. Hiro and Pat Ying. The man I killed.

“Hiro—" His brother’s name hangs in the air for a moment, heavy with memory and sadness. “He was only fourteen. He could’ve been anything he wanted… He had his whole fucking life ahead of him! He believed in me, thought I would make the right choice. He died in my arms instead.

“I didn’t know what to do. Pat Ying was dead, too. Both he and Hiro were shot with the gun I was holding. Longwai’s man, too. I came back here, to the house. Told my father what had happened.

“I was sixteen. Old enough to be tried as an adult. Old enough to go to jail. My father knew all of this. Knew they would come for me. He didn’t even think twice about taking me to Hak Nam. I’d never even seen him drive a car before…

But he shoved me in the back and took me to the Walled City. He told me to wait there until he could straighten things out, since the police couldn’t arrest me there. I waited and waited. At first he came back every week to the Old South Gate with money and news. But the weeks dragged on and he couldn’t clear my name. My prints were on the gun and three people were dead by its bullets.

“I’ve been a fugitive for two years now. If I step out of Hak Nam, the police can arrest me, take me to trial for murder and drug dealing. Even with my father’s influence, I don’t think it’ll end well.”

His story’s a lot to take in. It makes my head spin. I’m dizzy without even moving. “So… you killed one of Longwai’s men and now you’re working for him? Aren’t you afraid he’s going to find out? And if your dad’s giving you money, then why are you working at all? Why take the risk?”

“We never used names. I know Longwai could still trace it back to me, if he looked into it closely enough. I’m just hoping he won’t.” Dai swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. There’s more to this story.

“Jin—" Dai catches himself. “Is that your real name?”

“Jin Ling.”

“Do you know why Hak Nam is the way it is? Why it’s exempt from the law?”

It’s hard to shake my head in this immense fluff of pillow. I try my best.

“It used to be a fort. That’s why there are cannons by the Old South Gate. About a hundred years ago foreigners came and bought up the city; but because Hak Nam was a fort, it wasn’t a part of their contract. Governments got switched around and new laws were made, but Hak Nam was just forgotten. None of the politicians or police paid attention to it, so it grew and grew into what it is now.”

His talk about governments and politicians sounds like a foreign language. Hard to understand. I follow it as best as I can. Nod anyway.

“The foreigners’ contract is scheduled to end at New Year’s. A new city council has formed to guide the transition. They’ve decided to take over Hak Nam and demolish it. They just passed an ordinance that allows them to go into the Walled City and clean it out. Raze it to the ground. As soon as the New Year arrives, they’re sending in the Security Branch to take it back.”

I try to grasp what he’s saying. No more Walled City. No more Longwai. No more chances to find Mei Yee. “But… what about the Brotherhood? It’s Longwai’s city… He’s not going to just roll over without a fight.”

“The ordinance has been kept very secret. Only a few officials know about it, so word doesn’t get back to Longwai. They want to take him by surprise. But even if they arrest Longwai and the other Brotherhood members, the Security Branch has to have evidence to hold them. Right now they don’t even know who to arrest. The Brotherhood keeps a pretty tight hold on its list of members.”

“So how do you know about the ordinance?” I ask.

“It’s no secret to the Security Branch that I’m camped out in Hak Nam. They know that the New Year’s eviction is going to put me in a tight spot. And they know I have connections in the Walled City. They approached me a few weeks ago and offered me a deal: a complete pardon in exchange for a single piece of evidence.”

“What’s that?”

“Longwai keeps his records the old-fashioned way. Names. Bank account numbers. Deals. He writes all of it down in a book. His ledger. It will be the Branch’s biggest piece of evidence against the Brotherhood. Something they can use to put the gang under for good. Longwai and his men have been arrested a few times, whenever they travel outside Hak Nam, but the Branch has never been able to hold them. Their eyewitnesses always bail; they’re too scared to testify. Afraid of what Longwai will do to them and their families if the courts can’t hold them.”

Afraid. They should be. All I can think of is the drug lord’s shiny hook scar, how the dragon on his sleeve shimmered when he laughed about a man being stabbed. “Why don’t they just send a policeman to get the book?”

“They can’t. Not yet. They have no legal jurisdiction in Hak Nam. If they sent an undercover cop to grab it, it would become illegally acquired evidence. Useless in court. And if they wait until they take the city back, they’re afraid Longwai will see them coming and destroy it.

“I’m the loophole. If I get the ledger for the Security Branch, it stands as legitimate evidence. The Brotherhood has no chance of getting out on bail. I have to steal the ledger and hand it over to the Branch by New Year’s.”

Steal the drug lord’s ledger? Just the suggestion shoots fear through my aching spine. No wonder they’re offering Dai complete freedom. The job’s impossible. “And if you don’t?”

“Longwai and his thugs walk. And I end up in jail.” He gnaws his lip. His foot bounces against the floor, the way it did in Longwai’s brothel. “Or worse.”

“So that’s why you’re sitting during my runs? You wanted a way into the brothel because that’s where he keeps the book…” I trail off.

He nods. “I’m sorry I wasn’t completely honest with you. I thought… I thought I could do it alone. They made me swear under oath not to tell anyone. If word gets out, if Longwai finds out about the raid, then it’s pretty much over.”

I should be angry. Furious. Dai put me in even worse danger than I realized. Failing a drug run is nothing compared with this. But the wrath, the fury I expect, doesn’t come. I know, if I were Dai, I’d do the same thing. I guess, in a way, I have. I made him sit so I could try to find my sister.

“How long until New Year’s?” It should be soon; the air’s been cool long enough. This time every year City Beyond dresses in red and sets the sky on fire. Paper dragons dance through the streets. Lucky children — the not-vagrants — run around in new shoes, waving bright red envelopes of cash. Throw firecrackers on the ground to scare away the Nian: thief of children.

“Nine days.” He spits the number out like a burning coal.

“Those were the lines in your apartment…” I realize.

“But you — you’re not in the Walled City now.”

“No, I’m not.”

Those three words tell me how much he’s risked, bringing me here. His freedom. His life for mine. It’s a strange, warm thought. My whole life I’ve always been the protector — the one rescuing people. I did it alone.

“I don’t think the Branch will arrest me now,” he explains, seeing the look on my face. “They want the ledger too badly.”

“But it was still a risk.”

Dai shrugs. The movement looks funny under his dress shirt. Stiff. Uncomfortable. “I–I couldn’t let you die…”

“Yes, you could have.” I glance back at the blood bag. It seems emptier, the top frothing with beet-red bubbles. Life pouring back into me. “Most people would’ve walked by the alley. But you didn’t. You saved me.”

The look on his face. It’s as if I just stabbed him or something.

“Thank you,” I add.

He holds my words for a minute. Tasting them. The longer they sit the less wounded his face looks.

“You’re welcome,” he says finally, before changing the subject. “Your turn. I gave you my answers. How about yours?”

Suddenly I’m exhausted, heavy in the bed. As if Dai’s whole story just landed on my chest. Pushing. Weighing.

“It’s not such a long story, really,” I begin. But then I start talking. I tell him everything. About the rice farm and how hard my father’s fists hit. About my sister and that night with the Reapers. I relive every moment through my words: leaping onto the bike and following their van. Cutting my hair, becoming a boy. Looking, looking, always looking for my sister. Fighting tooth and nail. By myself.

My story’s longer than I thought. Even Dai looks tired by the end.

“You think your sister’s in Longwai’s brothel?”

“I’ve looked everywhere else,” I tell him. “What do you think will happen to the girls there? After the New Year?”

“Depends. If I get the ledger and the Branch arrests the Brotherhood, then they should go free.”

“And if you don’t?”

“The Branch might get a hold of Longwai for a time, but he’ll find a way to wriggle free, like he has in the past. And without the ledger’s membership lists, the Branch won’t be able to net the entire Brotherhood. There will be men left to… redistribute the Brotherhood’s assets. Get the girls out and start the brothel somewhere else.” Dai’s face looks paler. As if the blood going into my veins is getting sucked from his own arm. “Your sister. What’s her name?”

“Mei Yee.” This is the first time in years I’ve said her name out loud. “Her name is Mei Yee.”

Dai’s hand moves over the bed, finds mine. Finger to finger. He’s careful not to touch the tape or the tube or the needle. There’s a strength to the way he cups my hand. His skin is startling and warm. Human.

“We don’t have to do this alone, Jin Ling. I’ll help you find your sister. If she’s there, we’ll get her out.”

This is what it must feel like to have a brother. I think of all the times I used to wish for one. When my back ached over rows and rows of uncut rice. When my father’s words all slurred into one and his knuckles split into me. When the Reapers came and there was no one strong enough to stop them.

I stopped wishing for that long ago. When the last of my mother’s pregnancies ended in blood and I realized if she brought a boy into the world, I’d have to protect him, too.

But now Dai is holding my hand and I don’t have to be the strong one. I don’t have to be alone anymore. I squeeze his fingers in mine. The needle bulges in my veins, tugs against the tape. Stinging hurt.

“And I’ll help you get the book,” I promise. “Before the New Year.”

Nine days fall over Dai’s face. His hand flinches back. “You need to rest. Dr. Kwan says you need to stay in bed for at least two weeks. And nothing strenuous for about a month after that.”

What he doesn’t say out loud — what’s written all across his expression — is that I’m going to be here for a while. I want to fight it, but right now even breathing hurts.

“I brought you something to pass the time.” He bends down, picks up the book from the floor. A thin layer of dust coats its cover. He wipes this off. Hands the book to me. “Star maps.”

It’s weighty, this book. Heavy with so many things I don’t know. So many things I want to learn. I set it on my chest, flip through pages that smell like gloss and years. The writing is in a language I don’t recognize, cramped and squiggled. But there are pictures: velvet blue and white spiderweb lines. Connecting dozens of dots. If I squint close enough, I can recognize them.

“Cassiopeia’s in there,” Dai says. “If you get through that, there’s plenty more like it upstairs. Oceanography, zoology, archaeology. A whole bunch of — y words. Hiro never could decide what he wanted to be…”

His sentence wilts. Sad. Like my father’s fields after rainless days and weeks. I try to turn a chunk of pages, look for my rice scythe, but the burn under my shoulder flares. Makes my teeth grit.

Dai stands. His chair scrapes softly across the floor. “I’ll have a nurse come in. Give you something for the pain.”

I let the book of star maps slide to my good, fireless side. My eyes are shutting, surrendering to inevitable sleep. Never in my life have I been so, so tired. But there’s one question I haven’t asked. One answer I need to know. “Wait… did… did you see Chma? Is he okay?”

“Chma?” He pauses.

“Kuen cut off his tail.” I see the knife. Chma’s slick, wet stump. I’m angry all over again.

“You killed a boy for your cat?” It makes the fight seem too simple, too brutish when Dai says it like that: a boy for a cat. A heart for a tail.

Not such a fair trade this time.

Dai reaches the door, shakes his head. “I didn’t see him.”

He leaves. I stare straight at the pitch-black ceiling. All I see are Kuen’s blank eyes, staring at nothing. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe my hand just slipped.

But he’s still dead. Because of me.

Kuen is dead. And I’m alive.

So why does it feel as if I’m the one who lost?