The Walled City

JIN LING

My next few runs are smooth work. There aren’t so many shadows in City Beyond, but I’m learning that the same tactics work there. Make no noise. Walk with your shoulders hunched. Keep to the sides of buildings. Do all this and no one will notice you. Not even the police who circle the Walled City. Vultures with handcuffs and guns.

I haven’t seen Yin Yu again. There are other girls: faces trapped in makeup and forced smiles. Every time one of them walks into the lounge, my heart jolts. Every time, I think it’s Mei Yee. Every time, I look and realize it’s another nameless girl. Another not her.

Every time, I look. Every time, I hope. I won’t stop until I find my sister.

Chma greets me before I reach our alley, my belly still warm and full of the pumpkin porridge Dai bought. I think it’s strange that he’s so free with his money, but he doesn’t seem to mind. We haven’t been back to the rooftop. After every run, he takes me somewhere new. Today we sat across from Mrs. Pak’s storefront. Watching her beat rice noodles into long, thin strands; teaching her daughter to do the same. We ate in silence and dark, positioned just right so we could see pieces of a cartoon program flickering through a family’s window: a cat and a mouse chasing each other. The cat was a terrible hunter. Not like Chma. He let the mouse run between his legs, skip across his back. The kids inside giggled, pointing at the screen and munching on a plate of rice cakes. I couldn’t laugh with them. I kept imagining how hungry the cat was. How quickly he would fade in real life.

Something about the way my own cat moves makes me slow. He hops to my side, an angry howl in his throat. His eyes glow through the dark. Electric and wide. All his back hairs stand straight.

I look around, but there’s nothing. Just a crumpled plastic bag rolling down the street. It tumbles by rows of hurried, spray-painted characters. None of them dried before the red paint dripped down. The walls look as if they’re bleeding.

I walk closer to the mouth of my alley. Chma slides in front of my feet so fast I almost trip. He yowls again. Not a mine meow, but something more urgent. With more tooth and hiiiiiiiisssssss.

Something’s wrong. He never acts this way.

My fingers wrap tight around my knife.

Don’t be afraid, I tell myself. It’s nothing. Probably just a monster-size rat.

As soon as I round the corner, I know I’m wrong.

My camp lies in ruins. The tarp is destroyed. Its battered blue body scattered in pieces all over the alley. The cuts on the edges are jagged but clean. A knife did this.

My blanket. The melted half of a chocolate candy bar Dai gave me. The workbook of characters I was trying my hardest to learn. The set of hole-riddled slippers I snagged from a door stoop. My matchbook. All of it’s gone.

Wind barrels into my corner, whipping pieces of tarp all over. I shake, full of anger and chill. A deep breath reminds me of the envelope at my chest. Nothing I lost was important. I have my money and my knife. I have Chma.

“Nice boots you got there.”

I snap back around. My knuckles grow white against my blade.

Kuen stands at the alley’s entrance. His burly body blocks the streetlamp’s weak rays. He stands by himself, but I know he’s not alone. Kuen’s never alone.

My feet start a slow, sure retreat.

“They’ve been useful.” I hate how my voice shakes. Kuen leers at my willowy frame, focused on how thin my shoulders are. He doesn’t pay attention to where my feet take me. “You want them back?”

The smile on the street boy’s lips twists. Turns into something ugly. “You, Jin, have been a pain in my ass. Ever since you showed up from Beyond. I think it’s about time we took care of that.”

Shadows gather behind Kuen. First heads and then torsos. Other, slightly less hulking boys. Their bodies block the way out. Make sure I don’t run. Running is my biggest strength. Everyone knows that. Kuen planned this — used his brain for once.

Kuen’s hand slides to his hip, where I’m sure there’s a knife as sharp and nasty as mine. He’s stronger than me, no question. All the boys are.

I count my steps back. Three. Five. Eight. Each one makes Kuen’s lips curl wider. Shows more teeth. They’re yellow and sharp. Too many for his mouth.

Ten steps. I pause, my calves grow hard like rocks. I pray to the gods that I counted right. If I look up, Kuen will know.

I crouch close to the ground. Then, with all the energy in my screaming, cramped thighs, I jump.

I’ve practiced this move before. When sweltering summer nights wouldn’t let me sleep. But I always knew where the grip was. The exact spot on the jutting tin roof where my fingers could clasp and pull. Drag me, inch by painful inch, to safety. But that was when I was looking. When there wasn’t a seething boy and his army of knives just feet away.

But the gods and their spirits must be watching over me tonight, because somehow my hands find the rusted dip of metal. My fingers latch onto the tin edge. Pull.

It always feels like this when I’m running. As if I’m not in my body anymore. Some savage survivor takes over, does things I can’t. She can leap over ten-foot gaps and jump into a half-filled Dumpster from three stories up. She can squeeze through impossible, crushing spaces. And she can pull my full weight onto a slanting roof with only her arms.

I hear Kuen cursing, lunging forward. My body jerks. Strains under the weight that isn’t mine. A look over my shoulder shows Kuen, beet-faced and spitting, his hand wrapped around my right foot.

The sight is so terrifying that I might have let go, but the survivor holds tight to the roof. She lifts her free foot. Brings it down onto Kuen’s face with a gut-twisting crunch. If I hadn’t been wearing his boots, I might not have been able to break his nose.

The vagrant lets go, howling in pain. I don’t pause to watch his face run scarlet with blood. The other boys in Kuen’s gang are close, frozen by their leader’s animal wails. They won’t be still for long. And they, the survivor reminds me, can still climb.

I hoist myself onto the sheet of slanting, rippled metal. Climb as far as I can. For some reason, this section doesn’t connect with the other rooftops. It’s a forgotten, lonely stretch. A metal island jutting into a sea of cinder block walls. I have the high ground, but I’m still trapped.

“Ged ’im!” Kuen gasps under blood and broken face. “Someone ged ’im, dammit!”

The tin around me shudders as the first boy starts to climb. He’s smaller than the rest, even tinier than me. A skeletal wisp. One of the bigger boys has hoisted him up so he can reach the metal.

I stay close to the edge, where I can bottleneck them. Keep them away with quick swipes of my knife. I glare at the boy, flashing my blade. He pauses, his feet still digging into his pack member’s shoulders.

“Bon! Get your ass up there!” one of the other boys crows.

Bon. I know the name. I look closer and realize I know the boy. The last time I saw him he was just a kid. A kid kid. Not more than six or seven. Scrawny. Freshly orphaned. Begging for rice on a street corner. He looked so pitiful that I handed him one of the oozing mangosteens I’d filched from an ancestral shrine.

Not much has changed. He’s still scrawny. Long meals away from bright button eyes, cageless ribs. His face is the same — smudged in dirt, terrified.

But now he’s a part of Kuen’s pack. Now he’s dangerous.

Instead of sneaking him bruised fruits, I have to stab him if he keeps climbing. I don’t want to. I want him to let go of the roof’s edge. I want him to drop back to the ground and walk away.

I make my eyes hard and shake my head. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

For a moment I think my wordless pleas work. Bon hangs on bony arms, exaggerated joints. Looking as if he wants to fall. But the others keep calling under him. Their yells blend into a terrible chorus. It’s the threat, the courage of the pack. Bon takes all this in, licks his lips. Starts to pull.

I have to stab him. Kill this boy I once tried to save. I am so sorry, so scared. But the survivor doesn’t wait. She holds the weapon and jerks her arm back. Ready to slice.

There’s a noise so loud — so all over—it almost makes me drop my knife.

The pack shrinks back, one solid motion. Bon grips the tin’s edge, his face colorless with fear. Kuen is the only one who hasn’t moved. His hands keep clutching his bloody mess of a nose.

I look over toward the bone-shaking sound. Dai stands in the street, his arm raised so everyone can see the revolver. He points the gun straight into the alley. Kuen’s pack backs into the wall. Their feet trample all that’s left of my camp.

“I have a bullet for each of you, even with that one gone.” He looks straight at Kuen. “I thinks it’s best if you leave. Now.”

“This nud a yer bidness!” The pack leader snarls fury and tears. “Dat wat stoled from me—"

“It’s plenty of my business, Kuen,” Dai says, interrupting him. His manner is sharp, cold. Like a razor’s edge. “Believe me. I’ll shoot you if you don’t get out of here.”

Kuen slinks away. His elbow stabs the air like a bird’s broken wing, trying to stop the blood. His followers give Dai a wide berth as they disappear down the street. Bon is the last to leave the alley. He darts out faster than a dragonfly.

My knife hand is shaking. Haunted by the possibilities of what could’ve happened if Dai hadn’t shown up. I’m glad, so glad, I didn’t have to stab Bon. But this feeling is short-lived. Kuen’s not finished with me. And the city’s boundaries are tight enough to guarantee I’ll see him again. Soon.

Dai stands, looking down the street. He clutches tight to his gun, every knuckle painfully white. His hands are shaking, too.

“You okay?” When he looks up, I realize that I’m still crouched at the edge of the sloping tin sheet. I slide off slowly.

Test each limb to see if anything hurts. An angry red line throbs through the crease in my palm. I must have cut it on the edge of the tin.

“I’m fine.” I wipe the blood onto my tunic. Another smear. Another scar.

Dai has moved to the middle of the alley. He’s poking the tarp’s tattered carcass with his foot. My throat squeezes when I see the gun, still there, in his hand. “What are you doing here? Were you following me?”

“Just checking up on you.” Dai glances up from the rubble. His eyes are so dark, like tar. The adrenaline of the moment swirls behind them. Something like terror and… sadness?

“Look who’s being protective now.” I slip my knife back into my bindings. Cross my arms. “I was doing fine on my own!”

“Were you?” He glances at the outcast roof. Something about his face seems raw. Shaken. “It was a good plan. But I’m not sure how long you would’ve lasted up there.”

I swallow when he tucks the revolver into the waist of his jeans. It disappears. A skeleton of danger, power, buried under fabric and denim. I never would’ve guessed what Dai was hiding there. There are plenty of guns floating around these streets, but they never belong to vagrants. Guns are expensive. Impossible to steal. It’s usually members of the Brotherhood whose fingers pull the triggers.

But Dai can’t be Brotherhood. Can he?

No… No one in the Brotherhood would feel bad about firing a bullet. Their hands wouldn’t shake as Dai’s do now.

“Where’d you get that?” Dai seems different now that I know he has a gun. He looks a few inches taller.

“Mr. Lam’s shop.”

“How’d you get past him and those bars?”

“I bought it. With money.”

My lids narrow. Not even all the cash stuffed into my orange envelope could buy me a gun. Where did Dai get the money?

He knows I don’t believe him. “I’ve been making runs for a while now, Jin. I’ve got stuff saved up from over the years.”

Something doesn’t sit right. It doesn’t fit together. The gun, the nice meals. His clothes without holes. Dai shouldn’t have as much money as he does. Not if he’s just a drug runner. Not if he’s telling the truth.

Questions edge my crooked teeth. Ready to sink into the meat of Dai’s lie. Rip it apart. Hound the truth out of those cornered fox eyes. I open my mouth to attack.

But the questions don’t come. I think of the gun in his jeans. The one he just fired to save my life. Pumpkin porridge sits heavy in my belly, still warm. A reminder that I haven’t been hungry for days.

Dai might not be telling the truth. But he’s given me every reason to trust him.

I breathe deep. The bindings squeeze against my budding chest. The girlhood I keep hidden to survive.

Everyone in the Walled City has secrets. I might want the truth, but I need my sister more. I can’t risk losing my only way into Longwai’s brothel. Not over this.

I exhale. My breath turns to steam, clouds the air between us. “You’ve had a gun this whole time?”

“I don’t want people to know. But I guess all that’s gone to shit now.” He sighs and grabs a fistful of hair. The clump is so black it’s almost blue. His hands still shake. “I’ve never fired it before.”

“Guess I should feel special,” I mutter, and kick at a lone tarp piece. It flops on the alley floor like a dying fish.

The older boy gives me an odd look. The blue plastic shred licks the edge of his shoe. He kicks it back to me. “They didn’t leave much, huh? You should come stay at my place.”

“I can’t.” My reply is automatic. Ever since the night I rolled off the bamboo mat I shared with Mei Yee, I’ve slept alone. Too much can happen when you’re asleep. Dead to the world.

Dai shakes his head. “Don’t be stupid, Jin. You saw the look on Kuen’s face — he’ll be looking for you.”

Dai’s right. It’s exactly the kind of thing someone like Kuen would do. He didn’t strip me of my tarp to use it. He destroyed it. Took away another piece of my armor for survival. And now that I’ve gone and messed up his pretty face…

Chma settles in the slight break between my legs. His bushy tail twitches back and forth like the hands on those fancy fake watches the street hawkers sell.

“We’ve got a good thing going over at Longwai’s,” he goes on. “I don’t need you getting cut to pieces in some alley.”

“I can take care of myself.” I bend down and pick up my cat. My hurt hand throbs against Chma’s fur. I don’t even have a blanket to wrap it in.

“Stubborn, aren’t you?” There’s no humor in the way he says this. “What do you suggest I tell Longwai next time I see him? That you got knifed in the back because you were too proud to sleep somewhere safe?”

He’s right. I am too proud. Too proud, too tired, too cold. I can’t save myself. Not this time. I have to follow Dai back to his shelter. If I want to live the night, I have to trust him. Let him protect me.

I let out another cloudy breath. “Fine. I’ll go to your place.”

I squeeze my cat tighter. Holding him helps keep me from shaking. Chma seems to know this, because he doesn’t try twisting his way out of my grasp. He lies as limp as a dead thing on my shoulder while I follow Dai to some mysterious corner of the city.

DAI

The gun in my jeans weighs tons. My hands are in my pockets, trembling like a dog spooked by a foghorn. Shivering and burning from the power of the metal.

I’ve carried the same gun for two years, but this is the first time I’ve pulled the trigger. The first time I’ve fired a weapon since the night that changed everything. I had no choice. I had to fire it. Unleash a shot that tore the air apart, unraveled every nerve in my body at once.

My emotions are like pounds of overcooked rice noodles. Spilling everywhere. Impossible to gather back together again. I blame them for my split-second decision to bring Jin back here.

Of course, if I were following my old rules, I would’ve stayed out of the alley altogether. Kept walking with my head down. Let nature run its course, the way it did when Kuen pounded Lee’s face in.

But, like Jin said himself, he’s special. I need him.

Questions are all over the kid’s face when we stop at the gated door. Of course he always thought I was a vagrant, surviving on drug runs and luck. A persona I’m now shattering by pulling oil-stained keys out of my pocket.

The door to my apartment building is identical to almost every other door in this city. It’s barred, crammed between a seafood restaurant packed with smoking diners and a dimly lit noodle-maker’s shop. First I unlock the gate, then the door behind it.

“This… this is your home?” The boy blinks.

Home. The word fills me with an ache. I shove the door open with a rusty squeal. The stairwell behind it never really grows less ugly. Its walls are soaked with water, crumbling like a sand castle on its last legs. A few years ago someone decided to paint them green, but only patches have lasted. Even those are peeling off in rot and curls, like a snake shedding dead skin.

Not home. Never home.

“I’m just staying here awhile.” My answer climbs the steep, narrow stairs.

Jin follows in silence, but I can still feel his questions. The apartment, the gun, the money for these things… none of them add up in his mind. Not that they should; my story isn’t the easiest equation.

Maybe it was a mistake to bring him back here. Tsang would certainly have my head for it. He’d call it something like a “leak” or a “compromise.” But Tsang’s an asshole, and there’s no way I was going to leave the kid stranded in that alley. Not with Kuen’s wolf pack circling, waiting for my gun to disappear.

The old rules are changing.

We climb the thirteen stories to the second gate. I unlock the door and let him in.

I try to see the apartment through Jin’s eyes. A single room covered in yellowing coin-size tiles and more peeling green paint. No decorations, furniture, or food. The only signs that a person lives here at all are my pile of essentials in the corner and the charcoal marks on the far wall.

Jin steps into the room, cradling that cat like a little girl would hold a doll. He shucks off his boots and stares at the emptiness. His feet make soft sticking noises on the tiles as he walks over to the window where the veranda is and looks out. The window and its veranda are the only things I don’t absolutely hate about this apartment. Every once in a while a breeze will dip down from the open sky, and around noon there’s a crescent of sunlight that hits the tiles.

But, like every other veranda in every other Hak Nam apartment, mine is covered in bars. They’re supposed to keep thieves out, but on my darker days all I see is the cage that’s keeping me in.

“You’re not a vagrant, then.” Jin turns, lets the cat down. I can feel my nose starting to itch. Damn allergies.

“Never said I was.”

“But if you don’t work for the Brotherhood or a gang… how did you get this apartment? What do you do?”

What do I do? What a question. I feel like I’m taking an exam, holding my pencil over a row of bubble answers. Trying to pick the best one.

A) Stay awake for days at a time to avoid my own nightmares.

B) Sit on the edge of Hak Nam’s rooftops, waiting for a wind that’s strong enough.

C) Always wear my hoodie so I never have to see the scar on my arm.

D) Lie to a beautiful, desperate girl to save my own skin.

The truth is all over this list, but none of the choices is the best answer. So I write in my own half-truth, cheat a little. “You know. I’m a runner. Freelancer. I find jobs and take them. Or give them to people like you.”

He’s looking around again, eyes as wide as the cat’s. They scour this place like my grandmother’s willow broom, picking apart every groove in every tile. It’s odd how I feel like so much is hiding here when the only things that are mine are the T-shirts and jeans and jacket stacked in the corner. And, of course, because it’s the one place I don’t want him to be, the cat plants his pounds of fur and dander straight on the folded fabric. I’ll be gracing the world with my nasal linings for months.

“By all means”—I glare at the cat—“make yourself comfortable.”

The animal yawns — white fangs, sandpaper tongue — and stretches as long as he can over my jacket. Jin ignores him.

His stare is on the far wall, where the charcoal marks grin at us like rows of rotten teeth.

“What are all those lines?”

I look to where he’s pointing and remember that I don’t have months. Just days. Thirteen. It’s not a tight number, but it certainly feels that way when I think about it, squeezing like a rope around my neck. I bring a hand to my throat. “It’s a… calendar. Of sorts.”

Jin’s eyes grow thin with study. His head tilts just a few degrees. “Who are you?”

More bubbles. More terrible, true choices.

A) Not a good person.

B) A selfish bastard.

C) A murderer.

D) A liar.

E) All of the above.

There’s no writing in this answer.

I look at the kid again. Ever since I pulled the trigger, my whole body has been on pins and needles, waiting for my brother’s ghost to shine through. But Jin’s face stays Jin’s. Though some of the fierceness is gone. His expression is softer, less like that of a tiger about to maul my face off and more like a pampered shih tzu’s.

Something about the way he’s standing feels off. I can’t seem to place it. Maybe it’s the smear of still-bright blood on his shirt. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t like him asking. I don’t want him looking at me like he looked at the room, trying to pick me apart and figure me out. Finding the dirt between the cracks.

“Sun Dai Shing,” I tell him. All of the above.

“Sun,” he repeats my family name. It echoes over the marked tiles, through the window, to the bars. Ties my past and my present prison into a neat little bundle.

I walk over to my pile of stuff, like I could actually run from the fading sounds. The cat doesn’t move, just voices his opinion loudly when I root through the things. There’s a first aid kit somewhere in here. A scarlet pouch with a white cross crammed full of things I never use. (Tweezers and tongue depressors don’t do much when your hurts are inside.)

“What’s that?” Jin blinks at the pouch.

“Let me see your hand.” I nod at the kid’s fist. It’s clenched against his chest, tight as a furled poppy. He offers it slowly. Fingers blooming to show the still-oozing gash striped across his lifeline. An ill omen, my grandmother would have called it.

“It’s not bad.”

Not bad. The cut is so deep I’m surprised the kid can still bend his fingers. He needs stitches and a tetanus shot. Not some flimsy cloth and a bottle of peroxide.

But they’re all I have.

The peroxide fizzes and foams over Jin’s cut like a rabid wolf. It has to hurt like a bitch, but the kid’s face stays tough. Under this light, I can see all his other scars, spreading up his arm like lace. Some are shiny and white. Others, angry and red. Just like mine.

But Jin probably didn’t deserve his marks.

I wrap the gauze tight and knot the fraying ends. Jin eyes the bandage, flexes his hand in and out. In and out.

“Try not to move it,” I tell him.

“It’s fine.” He clenches his hand into a fist again. Tough as nails.

I wish I could be fixed that easily.

“Right. Well, it’s late. We should crash. Pick a spot anywhere. If you can move the king from his perch over there, you’re welcome to use my jacket as a pillow.”

I reach out and flick the light switch. The room pitches into a startling darkness. I can’t see Jin’s scars anymore. Or the lines on the wall.

“Dai?” Jin’s whisper is light and high. Not like him at all.

“What?”

There’s a pause as I fumble through the dark to the center of my room.

“Thanks.”

You’re welcome. The answer sticks inside my throat like an octopus tentacle. I can’t bring myself to say it. Not when I know the real reason I did all these things.

Tonight I don’t bother unzipping my hoodie and using it as a pillow. I lie flat on the floor, curl my knees up to my chest. In my mind I map out where the wall with the marks is. I turn my back to it.

JIN LING

My hand has stopped hurting. I keep it close to my chest. My finger brushes the bandage — the cleanest one I’ve ever had.

Sleep comes easy when there’s a roof. Four walls. I make my bed in the far corner, back to the tiles. Chma has left Dai’s laundry pile in favor of my warmth. He curls against my full belly, rattles me with a lullaby of purrs.

No knives. No rats. No hunger. Just rest.

And Dai.

The older boy lies in the middle of the room. Coiled like a snail. Hidden deep in his shell. His breaths echo all over. Remind me — even when the dreams start edging in — I’m not alone.

I could get used to this.