The Walled City

MEI YEE

Since the ambassador’s last visit, my life seems all stillness. The door stays locked, and Yin Yu is the only person I see. Every day she comes in to clean my room and collect my dirty clothes, hanging new silks in my wardrobe. She slips in a few extras: a cross-stitch, a sticky bar of rice candy, some gossip from the other girls. Things to free up the endless sludge of hours.

“How much longer?” I ask her. It doesn’t matter if they’re made of ivory or cinder block — the walls around me already feel tighter than I can bear. “Has Mama-san said anything?”

Yin Yu’s eyes slide toward the door. She’s not supposed to talk to me. “I don’t know. She still has a bruise, from where Master hit her.”

Mama-san still has her bruise. How long has it been since Longwai’s strike? Weeks? Months? Only days?

“It can’t be too much longer.” I say this without thinking.

Yin Yu comes a little closer to my bed, pretending to smooth out the wrinkles in the sheets and fluff the decorative pillows. “I’ve been in Sing’s room a few times. It’s bad, Mei Yee. Really bad. They’re still injecting her…”

This last sentence makes her voice break. I hear the edges of tears in it.

When Yin Yu leaves, I lift the curtain and stare through the glass. It’s still black. It’s always black. I sit and stare at my spotty reflection until my vision turns blue.

The boy hasn’t been back for me. During the first day of silence, I tried to list all the reasons he wasn’t there, behind the glass. He could’ve gotten stabbed. He might have forgotten about me.

I know I’ve tried to forget him. But his face is there, just behind my closed eyes, as clear and strong as it was that night through the window. His eyes go deep, stir the heat in my stomach, my chest. So unlike the way the ambassador stares. The difference between them is rice wine to water. I feel drunk just thinking about it.

But I’ve seen what drunkenness does. I’ve cleaned Jin Ling’s blood after my father’s wasted beatings. I’ve watched Sing’s blood dry on her skin after her binge of freedom.

If I know what’s best for me, I’ll stick with water.

Tap, tap.

Here I am, wrapped up in sheets and night, when the window rattles. Whispering in its fragile glass language:

Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

I’d been trying to sleep. My brain is filled with fog and half-woven dreams where I was braiding Jin Ling’s long, beautiful hair. I can’t decide if the sound is real or if I’ve wanted it so badly that phantoms are rising from the gray matter of my brain.

But when I peel the fabric back, it’s those eyes of flaring dark I meet.

“There you are,” the boy says.

I almost start when my nose presses into the metal. I hadn’t realized how close I was. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

“I’ve been busy with… things.” His mouth pinches.

“You look tired.” I don’t know what makes me say this. It’s true. There’s a deeper shadow nested between the boy’s lashes and his high-edged cheekbones. But I would never say such a thing to the ambassador. Maybe it’s the safety of the metal and glass between us. Or the orange flare of the coals in my chest. “You didn’t eat more of Mr. Lau’s shrimp, did you?”

The boy blinks, as if by fluttering his lids he’s actually shuffling my words, rearranging them into something his weary mind can grasp.

“No. No shrimp.” There’s a taut in his lips — fossils of an almost-smile — before he goes on. “I don’t sleep much. The past catches up to me too fast. I haven’t had a good night of shut-eye in two years.”

“That’s all I can do in here.” Sometimes I sleep so much that I wake up tired. But dreaming for hours is better than staring at the door. Waiting.

" Too bad we can’t trade that, too. Longwai doesn’t give you much freedom, huh?”

Longwai. The sound of the master’s name jars me like the first lurch of an oxcart. Reminding me that the boy isn’t here just to chat. He isn’t here to stare through the grating with his crystal-dark eyes and make my insides hot. He wants something.

“The last time you were here, you asked about the Brotherhood. Why?” I’ve thought about this almost as much as I’ve thought about him. No matter how hard I stretch my mind, I can’t seem to imagine what he wants. Or why.

He stays still, weighing my question like precious spices, sifting and sorting the pieces he’ll answer. I try my hardest to follow, try not to get distracted by the curl of those lashes. They’re perfect for catching raindrops.

“I brought you something,” he says finally. “From the outside.”

His arm comes up so fast that I flinch away from the window without thinking. But what I thought was a fist is actually a flat palm, knuckles straight and unfurled, offering. In his hand — coiled in perfect shades of cream and rust — is a seashell. The exact same spiraling shape as one of the chocolates. It looks so other in his palm — strong and fragile all at once.

“I didn’t stay long,” the boy says quickly, “but before I left I heard you liked seashells.”

The ambassador has given me many gifts: silk scarves, artisan candies, jewels that glow like cats’ eyes. All lavish, all extravagant. Many worth more than my father could earn in a year. But none of them has made my throat swell the way this simple seashell does.

“It’s—" I stop speaking as soon as I start. There are so many words that could fill the gap: beautiful, flawless, perfect. Just as there were so many wishes in my soul. I could never pick only one.

The boy doesn’t prod. His palm twists, places the sea-shell on the window’s ledge as carefully as one might handle a fledgling. “It’s called a nautilus.”

Nautilus. The word sounds funny. I want to say it out loud, perfect it, but my throat is still tighter than a straw.

“I asked about the Brotherhood because they have something I need. I think your information can help me get it.”

I look up from shell to boy. “What?”

“I think… it’s best for both of us if I don’t tell you.”

Again, the voice in my head — the sensible, docile Mei Yee — is telling me to pull away. To let the red fall. To wait, always wait and play it safe. But the window is like a magnet. I can’t look away from the seashell, how the boy’s fingers still linger against its curves. The rain is gone, but there’s still dirt under his nails.

Fear brews strong, but my curiosity is stronger. “What do you want to know?”

“A lot of things. We’ll start off simple, though. Names.”

What seemed so light and airy before is now a very real weight on my chest. This is information I might actually have to find… “Whose names?”

“Longwai’s leaders. The top tier of the Brotherhood. I need to know their names,” the boy explains.

Even when I wasn’t trapped behind this door, I never saw much of the Brotherhood. I’ve never been allowed near the meetings the leaders of the Brotherhood hold twice a week, where they talk business and drink vast amounts of plum wine.

But if I tell my visitor how much I don’t know, he’ll disappear through the valley of trash. I’ll never see him again. He might even take the shell with him.

My insides are now equal parts fire and fear. I’m playing with flames — my fingers are tingling with the cold just behind the glass.

Names. That’s all the boy wants. Just syllables strung together like herbs drying from rafters. Sounds to mark out faces from a crowd. But somehow it seems like something more. Something dangerous.

“Why should I help you?” I try to sound tough, the way my little sister always did when she came nose-to-nose with the province bullies.

But the boy isn’t a bully. He’s weighing my question again, his hand curling tighter around the shell’s coils.

“I can get you out.” His words howl through the glass, prickle my skin like an old sage’s prophecy. Tempting and haunting, but somehow impossible. Out. Outside. Under stars and rain. Over dirt. Beyond these walls.

There is no escape. There is no escape. There is no escape.

Or is there?

In this moment, staring at this shell, anything seems possible.

“They meet here twice a week. Every three or four days,” I tell him. I’m not sure which days. All of them run together here because we’re always working. “There’s about ten of them.”

“And their names? "

“I don’t know. If I decide to tell you, it’s going to take me a while to get into one of their meetings.”

His face is all frown. Even still, he looks handsome. “I don’t have much time. I’ll give you four days.”

Four. He says the number with an expression that makes it look as if someone is prying his fingernail off. I feel the same way, but for a different reason. Four days. That’s nothing. Mama-san could keep my door locked for months. Any promise I might make comes up dry. It’s just as well. They’d be spoken out of thrill, out of nautilus dreams. “I’ll… try…”

“I hope you do,” he says, and lets go of the seashell. It almost doesn’t fit on the edge of the concrete, but the boy balanced it well. It’s there to stay, less than an inch from the glass. If the window were shattered, I could reach out and touch it.

“If it isn’t safe, I’ll put a flower in the window.”

“I’ll be back.”

“Wait—" I call out, but the boy hasn’t moved. He’s still just beyond the glass, a fingertip away. “I told you about when the meetings are. Tell me something. Please.”

The boy’s eyes drift down to the shell, remind me that he doesn’t owe me anything. Not even something. But his words — he can’t know how I’ve held on to them — how I’ve spent hours imagining Mr. Lau bent over a bucket of spoiled shrimp. Peeling their skins off with hands of practice and calluses.

I need more.

“I watched the sun rise yesterday,” he tells me. “I’ve had insomnia for two years, and it was the first time I’d ever thought about going up and watching the daybreak.”

“What was it like?” My voice is eager — hungry for colors and light and everything I don’t have. Everything this boy has seen.

But he doesn’t tell me about how the pink of the sun spread like afterglow on the cheeks of the sky. Or how the clouds chorused brighter than he could stand.

“Beautiful,” he says instead, his voice hesitant and hazy. “Sad. It made me wish I were somewhere else. Someone else.”

I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t. He’s given me everything he can.

“I think everyone wishes that,” I tell him. I know I do.

He’s still looking at the shell. The edges of his mouth screw tight. And I just want him to smile. To let the years and strain and weary insomniac nights he gathers inside fall away.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I offer. “I’m glad you’re you.”

His lips twist more. It’s not a smile, but not a grimace, either. “I have to go. I’ll be back in four days.”

He turns. I let the tapestry down and look at the vase standing guard by the door like a lone soldier. Its flowers are shriveled, fighting off death’s brown edges.

I should start watering them.

DAI

I don’t leave right away. I didn’t really have to go, just needed to get away from so many dangerous feelings, bull’s-eye words. Instead, I stand and stare at the shell. It’s a flawless thing. Almost too perfect. When I was younger and the summer days grew too long, my mother and Emiyo used to take us walking along the seashore to look for shells. My plastic pail was always filled to the brim with chipped oysters and hollowed-out crab carcasses. Things Emiyo always chucked in the garbage when we got home.

I never found anything as perfect and whole as this.

It makes me wonder where Tsang got it. He doesn’t strike me as the walk along the seashore with your pants rolled up searching for treasures of the sea type. Besides, I’m not even sure nautiluses live around here. (My brother would’ve known. It would be an encyclopedia factoid he gleaned from his I love dolphins and want to be a marine biologist phase.) Tsang probably bought it from the gift shop at Seng Ngoi’s Grand Aquarium or from a grungy stall at the night market.

Most likely it was made in a factory with chemicals and synthetics. It’s probably not even a real shell at all. As glamorous and hollowed-out and fake as me and my promises.

My stomach churns, and for just a minute I want to rap on the window again. I want to look through the lattice and tell the girl it’s all a mistake. I can’t promise her freedom. I can’t even free myself.

But I don’t. Maybe it’s because I think I really can pull this off. That against all the odds, all of Longwai’s men and their guns, I can get the girl out. Fill the emptiness of her eyes. Of my own echoed stare.

Beautiful. Sad. It made me wish I were somewhere else. Someone else.

Was I talking about watching sunrises or seeing her? I’m not so sure.

Whatever the subject matter, it was the truth.

So is this: I’m not a good person. I’m a selfish bastard, needing and taking, leaving her behind with nothing but trinkets. Just like Osamu.

I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re you.

Salt words rubbed in a wound. Stinging like a few dozen obscenities strung together. If the girl has any sense at all, she’ll forget about the names. Forget about me. And a small part of me — the same hint of Dai that wishes we’d met in a completely different life, the pieces of Dai the window doesn’t reflect — hopes she does.

I shove my hands into my pockets, where they twitch and tap and curl into fists. I walk away.