The Walled City

JIN LING

It took two days to find a replacement tarp. Two days of picking through disgusting piles of rubbish. In the end, I had to go to Mr. Lam’s shop. Use the money in the orange envelope.

And now that I have a tarp, there’s no perfect place to pitch it. My favorite spots are claimed. Some by the older vagrants. Men and women who cram into the warmer corners with wadded newspapers and moth-eaten, mildewed coats. Others by groups of twig-limbed orphans. Who watch me pass with hungry, wide eyes. Bare-toothed snarls. I walk quickly. Head down, hoping none of them remember my face. Hoping word doesn’t get back to Kuen. Other spots, by the water spigots and sewer grates, are too exposed. I need a place that’s out of the way. Hidden from Kuen’s pack.

For two days I’ve avoided the thug. Not an easy task. Even in this maze of corners and ever-night. He’s on the hunt: Three times I’ve slipped into a shopfront or alley crack, watched his pack pass. They’ve spread out, roaming the streets in pairs. Raking every walkway and back again. Knives glinting.

Kuen’s out for blood.

I just have to stay one step ahead of him.

So I keep walking. Searching for a place out of sight. Safe. I stay off the main streets. Away from the grandmothers gossiping around soap tables, dealing black cards and coaxing fortunes from one another’s palms. Away from mothers kneeling by water stations, scrubbing sauce stains out of their families’ shirts. Away from the factory men standing long hours, pouring liquid plastic into molds.

But eyes are everywhere. Even in the loneliest corners. An old man shuffles by, picking out scrap rods for recycling the way a sparrow selects straw for a nest. He tosses them into his wheelbarrow with a crash that makes me shiver. Walk faster. Around another corner. Too fast. No pausing to listen for other steps.

I see the boys first. Two of them, walking slow. Combing the stoops and barred windows with eyes and knife-points. My feet are still in a hurry, still rushing forward when they see me.

The closest boy stops. His nose scrunches, then flares. “It’s him!”

The survivor kicks in. She twists my hips midstep. Lights blur. Gravel hisses under my feet. Lunge, lunge, stretch. I’m running before I can even see where this street will take me.

There are no gaps or alley cracks for me to vanish in. The corner I turned is long behind. This stretch belongs to storefronts and gated stairwells. One of these apartment doors swings open. Nearly catches me in the face with white grating.

Get off the street! The survivor doesn’t hesitate. She jumps. Into the doorway. Past the startled old tenant with the key in his hand. Up, up, up the steps.

This complex is like Dai’s. With stairs that wind up like a never-ending paper clip. Noise carries far in the hollow space. I hear Kuen’s two boys panting and plodding up the steps. I take my precious, flapping tarp, spread it wide, and let it fall. Curses and the sound of wrestled plastic push me higher — past door after gated door. Ten floors of this.

And then, the end. The final door. This one isn’t gated. It isn’t even really closed. There’s no fight when I slam into it, burst into the open free.

Water. Everywhere. Falling from the dark, dark sky. Bursting like freckles across my face. Drumming the puddles at my feet. Wet sinks into my boots. My steps slosh, slide through rising pools, past someone’s abandoned sunbathing umbrella, between two trashed mattresses. All the way to the ledge.

This building’s rooftop is shorter than the others around it, stunted by at least four stories. There’s only a single edge, a gap where the fourth wall doesn’t fuse to the building I’m standing on. It’s too far to leap across. And I’m not even really sure what I’d jump to. All the windows in front of me are flat, barless.

The only way off is down. Where raindrops shimmer, dim, and die. Swallowed by the canyon. It’s not all black. Verandas jut out the side, their slanting tin roofs clinging like fungus to the far wall. But getting to them…

It’s a drop that makes my hairs bristle and rise.

Behind me the stairwell door smacks open. Both boys spill out into the rain.

“Gotcha!” The first boy sees me on the ledge, slows down. His steps don’t splash anymore. His blade stays straight. “Kuen’s been looking forward to seeing you, Jin!”

Fight or flee. I look away from their knives. To the slippery, wet metal roofs. To the fall.

“He’s got plans for you,” the boy goes on. Steps closer. “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes for all the porridge at Mrs. Pak’s.”

“Or boots!” His partner snickers.

I can’t make the jump. It’s too far. Too wet.

And I can’t fight the boys. Not without getting cut or killed.

The survivor turns back to the edge.

She jumps.

My stomach is high, high, high in my throat. My hands are clawing, scrabbling at air as empty as my gut. The rain around me catches the window lights, twinkles like stars. They look almost still. But we’re falling together.

My boots meet the tin first. Their City Beyond soles grip through the wet. Stick. My knees crumple and my hands splay, steady me.

I made it. For a few seconds I’m frozen in my frog-squat.

Stunned. My chasers’ curses fall with the rain. I look up and see the first boy has sheathed his knife. But he’s not walking away. He stands on the ledge with nervous lips, wide legs.

He’s going to follow me.

I scramble to the edge of the roof. All around are laundry lines and pipes. None of them appear strong enough to hold me. Every veranda is barred. There’s a crossway between the two buildings, woven together with bamboo and wire. Reaching it would take another jump.

This time I don’t hesitate. Kuen’s boy is crouched, ready to spring. We take to the air at the same time. Desperate birds, clipped wings, deadweight.

I land. The bridge sways. Bows low. I grip the wire edges, pull myself up, run into the new hall. Its lamps are old, shuddering just like the bridge. On and off again. I’m not sure if Kuen’s boy made the jumps. If he’s still behind me. I run as if he is. Flying past doors like cages. Loafing bags of trash. Walls cramped with mildew and weeping paint. Under the ill light, everything looks black and white. Like a nightmare.

It ends in another stairwell. Another choice. Up or down?

A shout from the other end of the hall cuts my debate short. Kuen’s kid made it. His silhouette grows. Moves too fast in the flickering light. Like some kind of shadow monster.

I choose up. My thighs are screaming now. Knit too tight. Cramped with fire and flash. My lungs feel so full and empty at the same time. Starving for air, unable to hold it. I fight all these things up the steps. All the way to the second rooftop.

This is the highest level. Where everything is open and wide and wet. I don’t know where I’m going, but my feet fly. Through dripping clotheslines of faded shirts and pants. Past rows of potted plants, their stems bent by rain. Through towering antenna forests. Past a pair of pitiful nightingales, left in their domed cage by some forgetful owner. So drenched even their song sounds heavy, soaked.

One foot in front of the other. On, on, on. That’s what the survivor demands. That’s what I give her.

But then I see something that makes me slow. Stop.

Dai. He’s hunched on the ledge. Where we sat so many mornings ago. With stuffed buns and sunlight. He’s staring out, out. The way he was that morning. At the skyscrapers, thick and tall as a bamboo forest. Their windows twinkling madly through the falling rain.

He must have come to watch the sunrise. He’s out of luck. There won’t be one today. Not with this storm.

Dai might be out of luck, but mine has turned. There’s no way Kuen’s lackey will come after me once he sees the older boy. The one who pointed a gun at him just days before.

I’m right. My pursuer swipes through a string of sopping jackets and jeans. Halts. His eyes narrow, aim straight at Dai’s still-turned back. We stand across from each other — tense, panting, staring — waiting.

Kuen’s boy steps back. Slowly, slowly. Behind the laundry. Gone.

Dai has saved me again. Without even knowing it.

I let out a deep breath. My knees are shaking.

“Jin?” I turn back to see Dai staring at me. His hood is pulled up. All I can see is his face, all the dozens of drops sliding over his skin. There’s something behind his expression. Some feeling that hasn’t completely washed away. Sadness, anger, need. I can’t pinpoint it, and the fact makes me uneasy.

I don’t go near his ledge. There’s too much slick and wet up here. One slip could sling me off. Dai’s legs dangle the same as last time, waving over the streetlights of City Beyond. Reckless and wild. As if they want the fall.

“Where’ve you been?” His eyebrows fold into his face. “I was getting worried.”

Was he? I look at his face again. There’s too much emotion there. Too much raw. I can’t tell if he’s lying or not. My instincts are going soft.

Dai’s many secrets still cram my head. As thick and blurring as the rain around us. While I’m here, I can at least try to ask for the truth. Dai’s truth.

He turns his face away. Back into the flush of falling rain. I take a deep breath. Too deep. My lungs shudder. As if they’re drowning. “I saw you.”

His shoulders grow still, and I realize there’s another reason I’m standing so far away from him. I want room to run if things go sour. If I uncover some secret Dai can’t let me live with. If he’s really as unstable as I think.

“I saw you,” I say again, “with that man. The one who gave you money a few nights ago.”

For a long time Dai doesn’t move. Drops smack into the soak of his sweatshirt: pellet drumbeats. He’s a temple idol, crouched and constant. I start wondering if the wind stole my words away.

But then he turns. The look on his rain-stung face tells me he heard every word.

“Who is he?” My boots dig against the wet, wet rooftop. Ready to run again. My knife hand tucks inside my tunic, bandage gripping the hilt. “Why is he giving you money?”

Dai just looks at me, his lips pressed flat. They’re a strange shade of blue. He’s been up here in the frigid rain way too long.

“Why can’t you leave?” I try again. “If it’s so dangerous for the Brotherhood to know who you are, then why do you stay here?”

He stands, faster than he should on such a steep ledge. Then he moves closer to me, mouth pulled tight.

For every step he takes, I take one back. “You’re someone important, aren’t you? Why else would you try to hide it from the Brotherhood? You act like a vagrant so they don’t ask questions. Hide out in the open.”

Dai shoves his fists into his pockets. Under the crescent shadow of his hood, I see that his lips aren’t a razor line anymore. They’re wrinkling and curving. Messing up his face. I wait for them to break apart. To tell me I’m wrong.

But he stays quiet and keeps walking. He steps around and away from me. His steps splash and slosh to the closest ladder.

I don’t mean to, but I run after him. My hand slips from my knife. Reaches out. Snags the edge of his soaked sweatshirt. “I need to know, Dai—"

“No,” he cuts in, “you don’t.”

He’s both right and terribly, terribly wrong. I don’t need to know. But I do. I need a rock, an anchor. As much as I tell myself I don’t, I need this trust.

Because I’m tired. Tired of running. Tired of always looking over my shoulder. Tired of fighting. Scraping by. Being alone. I’m tired of gangs and drug runs and empty searching. I want, so badly, to believe that Dai is good. That he deserves my trust. No matter what.

I want to feel safe.

Dai tries to keep walking, but I don’t let go. My boots slide. Make a wake. He drags me a whole yard before he stops and looks over his shoulder.

“Let it go, Jin.” He yanks his sweatshirt out of my fist. His arm flies back into a terra-cotta pot. It spins off its ledge, dashing the ground with dirt, shards, and withered leaves. “It’s better for you if you don’t know.”

“How?” The air around me shivers. I realize I’m screaming. My shriek shreds through the curtain of drops — too tight, too high. “How is it better?

But if Dai notices how thin my scream is, how much I sound like a girl, he doesn’t show it. He doesn’t show anything. His expression is floating and still. A drowned thing.

“What you saw… it doesn’t change anything about what we’re doing at Longwai’s. I trust you’ll stay quiet about it.”

Trust. The word feels sour on my tongue, like rotten meat. The boy in front of me says it so fast, so flippantly. As if it’s something he perfected long ago.

My mind spins fast. Even if Dai refuses to let me in, I can still use what I saw.

“If I stay quiet and keep running, then I want more money.”

“More money?”

“Yes. I need enough to let me buy time with one of Longwai’s girls.” I look past him when I say this. My eyes focus on the ruined pot. Its spilled dirt looks a lot like blood. Swirling dark and spattered in the water.

His eyes narrow in a weird, frowning way. “You want time with his girls?”

“Yes.” I try to make my voice sound extra throaty. Full of gravel.

“Why?”

“You have your business, I have mine. If you don’t want me to tell Longwai, then you’ll give me the cash.”

“Fine. I’ll give you half of my cut. But don’t expect me to join.” Disgust threads his words. I realize how awful my request sounds. Part of me wants to tell Dai what I’m looking for. Why I live in this awful, reeking maze. But secrets still wrap tight between us. Mine cling to me, his to him.

He moves for the ladder. I don’t try to stop him.

And everything changes. The drops on my face become harder. Bite instead of sting. The rumble of the storm grows and swells. There’s white. White all around.

Hail. It tears and claws. Rattles against the rooftop. The nightingales are shrieking now. The potted plants shred instead of wilt. Clothes drop from the lines like autumn leaves.

Dai’s hunched form is fuzzy as he works his way onto the ladder. The air between us is blur and haze. Like a busted TV screen.

But I do see him pause, just before he disappears altogether.

He screams over the pound and pummel of ice, “There’s a run in two days! I’ll see you then!”

Then he’s gone. I should leave, too. Before Kuen’s lackey decides to come back with more knives.

The hail beats down with a new fierceness. White and cut and slice. It falls so thick I can’t see the lights of City Beyond. I can’t even see Dai’s ladder. For the shortest moment I’m not in a city at all. I’m alone. Again and always. The air around me so cruel and free.

Dai. Feeling safe. That’s not what matters. That’s not why I came here. Not why I’ve survived.

I’ll get through this storm. I’ll find my sister.

MEI YEE

The window-boy is tired. As soon as he appeared behind the bars and glass, I snuffed the lanterns so I could see his face more clearly. His cheeks and the snub of his nose burn with color, mixed bright by wet and cold. His dark eyes are shiny with water, the skin beneath them grayer than the rest of him.

But the sight of him still catches me — makes me prickle like cold skin meeting steam. Like panic, but stronger. It overwhelms everything: the ambassador’s promise, the bruise on my hip, the Brotherhood’s gold-toothed laughter. There’s just the boy and his seashell. Me and my painted ceiling tiles. My brittle vase of flowers.

“I did it,” I tell him, even though I wasn’t planning on it. For hours I’ve been weighing the names. Their risk. It doesn’t feel like such a small thing anymore.

The boy breathes out hard. His breath clouds everywhere, reminds me of the mists that blanketed the rice fields in the most magical hour of dawn. For a moment it’s so thick I can’t even see him. It gathers on my window, rolls down like tears.

“I needed some good news this morning,” he says through the ribbons of water and window fog. “I’m tired.”

“Too many sunrises?”

“Not enough,” he answers.

My hand rests over the window grating. There’s a chill seeping through the glass, coiling around the bars. Winter creeping through the cracks like ants, slow and steady and gnawing.

The boy feels it, too. He’s all shiver in his black zip-up hoodie. It’s soaked through, like the many rags I used to clean out Jin Ling’s cuts. It’s little wonder his teeth are chattering.

I wish I could reach through the window. Not just to grab my seashell or feel the rain. I wish I could touch the boy, give him some of the warmth that’s sweltering through my room, making me sweat.

Another impossible wish.

But even if I can’t give him warmth, I can give him the names. Try again to bring a smile to his face. If he’s handsome when he’s frowning, I can’t imagine what he looks like with a real, true smile.

“There were ten men there last night. And the mast — Longwai.” Saying his name feels like the worst of sins, but I speak it and the boy doesn’t flinch. “They didn’t always use names. I only caught four of them.”

The boy doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t frown, either. He’s looking at my fingers laced through the window’s grate, as if he knows just how badly I want to reach through. “Which ones?”

“There’s Fung. He’s the one with the dragon on his face. He collects tributes for Longwai every month. And it’s his job to… to deal with people who don’t pay. They call him ‘Red Pole.’ "

The boy nods. “Go on.”

“And Leung. He keeps track of a lot of the drug runs. There’s a man with gold teeth named Nam. I don’t know what he does. They called him the ‘Incense Master.’ " The unease planted in my stomach by the Brotherhood’s sickly sweet opium fumes so many hours ago grows into a fullblown ache.

I don’t have to do this. I can roll away. Pretend none of this ever happened. That I never really dreamed of seeing my sister again. Of visiting the sea. I can sit and wait and tell Ambassador Osamu yes.

These thoughts cause me to shift against the bed. My hip bone shoots pain. Remembers the harsh press of the ambassador’s hand.

“Fung. Leung. Nam.” The boy counts the names off. Three fingers poke out of his sleeve. “Who’s the fourth?”

My breath feels stale in my body. I stare at his fingers, pronging through the cold air like antlers. They’re smudged with dirt, knuckles raw and nails bit to the quick. I think of the way they held my seashell, so carefully, as if there were still life inside it, building chamber after chamber.

Those aren’t fingers that bruise.

“Chun Kit,” I say, breathless. “The last name is Chun Kit.”

“Good,” the boy says. “You’re right.”

“You… you knew?” A feeling swells up in my throat, like a balloon stretched to burst.

“Yes.” The boy nods. Hair as dark as a raven’s wing falls like feathers against his cheeks — softens the angles of his face. “I was testing you. To see if you really could get the information. You did well.”

“So the other six names… you don’t need them?”

“Well, yes. I do need them. In a sense.” The boy bites his lip, something he must do often because the skin there is dry. “Tell me, was there a ledger?”

“Ledger?” The word rolls, fat and clumsy, off my tongue.

“It would probably look like a big notebook,” the boy explains. “It’s used to keep track of numbers and names. Official Brotherhood business.”

I think back to the meeting, to the scarlet book that sat in the drug lord’s lap. The one full of his black-ink scratchings. “The m — Longwai had a book. He was writing in it.”

“Could you see anything he was writing down?”

“Yes,” I pause, feeling the burn of shame stain my cheeks. “But I… I can’t read.”

“That’s okay,” the boy says, his voice soft. “The book… where did Longwai put it when the meeting was over?”

“I…” My voice fades out as I think back to the end of the meeting. The men didn’t linger. Most of them left through the front hall. A few went to the girls’ rooms. And Longwai… I strain my thoughts, trying to remember where the master had disappeared to after the dismissal. I’d been too busy trying to cement the four names into memory. “I don’t remember. He probably took it to his office.”

“His office?”

“It’s on the second floor. I think. I’ve never been up there,” I say.

“Do you think you can find out? For sure?”

Eavesdropping for names is one thing. But rummaging through the master’s office… the game — the risk — has taken a plunge that makes my stomach lurch.

He must see this in my face, because he doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Look, I know… I know what I’m asking is dangerous. I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I had any other choice. But I need this. I need your help.”

Need. His voice cracks at the word with a desperation that can’t be faked.

“Why?”

“Because every morning I wake up and wish for a different life. And this is the only way I can have it. This is the only way I can go home.” His voice is so raw, like his knuckles. It makes my hand press hard against the grate.

Home. That word flares in my chest, hot like a coal. I want to drink in the green of the rice paddies and distant mountain slopes. I want to find my sister and hold her in my arms. I want to be back watching for stars.

“We’re… we’re not supposed to think about home. It just hurts.” The way the boy is looking at me as I say this, I know he understands. The same bittersweet golden agony barbs through his chest. “But I do it anyway.”

“Where is your home?”

“I grew up in a place where there’s lots of rice. And mountains. And herds of water deer that leap like fish through the morning mist.” I pause, realize I’ve gone off track. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t go back. My father… he would just sell me again.”

The boy’s eyes go sharp. I can see his jaw working. Back and forth in an unheard grind of teeth. “Your father did this to you?”

“I wasn’t much help on the farm. The rice crops were failing. We were starving.” I hate that I’m making excuses for him. The man who left more scabs and bottle caps than he could count. We were starving, but he was thirsty. I know he drank away all the coins my flesh bought for him long ago.

“That’s no reason—" The boy stops. I know he wants to say something more, something laced in fire and flame. But he holds it back. Lets it burn inside. “So where will you go? When you get out?”

I don’t know the answer to his question. My stare settles back on the shell. I search the chambers of my heart for something, anything to tell him. But they all feel empty.

He follows my gaze down to the nautilus. Finds an answer for me. “I know you want to see the sea.”

His hand comes up against the glass, mirrors mine. So close. Not even an inch apart. I shut my eyes for just a moment, pretend that the metal weave and cold between us don’t exist.

“I want you to see it, too.”

My eyelids open and he’s still there. Eyes endless and brimming, night’s void crammed full of stars. If I look just close enough, I can see myself in them. A tiny, trembling constellation. Just like the ones Jin Ling and I once traced.

“I’ll try,” I whisper. To find the ledger. To see the sea.

His smile stretches all the way to his eyes, where I am. The sight is radiant. That’s the word Wen Kei always uses to describe the sun over the waters. I wonder if they’re at all the same.

The boy’s head jerks to the side, as if some distant voice just called his name. His name. I still don’t know it. I don’t know it and I feel closer to him than I do to the client who slides under my sheets every few nights.

“I have to go.” The boy starts to move. “I’ll be back in a few days.”

“Wait.” I press my cheeks into the bars, will him to stop. “I don’t even know your name.”

He pauses midstep, his foot hovering over the broken ribs of a rice-liquor bottle. “Next time. As long as you tell me yours.”

And then he’s gone. All that’s left is the nautilus and window tears and my fingers against the lattice, still reaching.

JIN LING

The hail doesn’t reach the lower levels. Heat leaks through windows and pipes. Swallows the pellets before they land. By the time I reach the bottom of the ladder, I feel incredibly warm. A feeling that vanishes at the first sound of his voice. “I was wondering when you were gonna come down.” My fingers freeze around the final rung. Stuck. Every muscle in my back clenches tight.

“No big kid and his gun to protect you now, you little shit. He’s long gone.” I hear the sneer in Kuen’s voice. It drips from every word. " ’S just you an’ us.”

Kuen’s lackey must have run back. Told him where to find me.

I turn and jump at the same moment. Land in a crouch. Like a spider flung from its web.

He’s right. It’s just us on the street: me and Kuen. Blood still crusts his face. Days old and dark. It looks like a dragon tattoo. Curling and twisting around his swelling purple nose. His mouth is the only thing that isn’t puffy and bruised. It’s still snarled. Teeth shiny and yellow.

But then I see what’s in his arms and I forget all about his ugly face.

Chma is fighting — a mess of gray fur and squirm. Kuen’s elbows crush tighter. My cat growls. The sound is low. All over. I hear it and my stomach drops like a stone.

“Let him go.” As soon as I say these words, I wish I hadn’t. They shiver through the street. Betray my weakness for everyone to hear.

Kuen spits a word that sounds like vermin. Seizes Chma by the scruff. My cat howls, claws, and writhes, but Kuen holds him far out. Like a sack of garbage. His free hand grabs the blade by his waist. A clear, silvery threat.

I start to move, but I’m too far away. I can’t reach him in time.

Kuen’s knife is fast. Flashing. Chma’s angry growls turn into something too close to a human scream. It shreds the air, punches my chest.

I have no chance. I’m small and alone. There are probably dozens of his followers, more knives, hiding in the dark. But I don’t stop.

Kuen must’ve expected me to slow or turn. He isn’t ready when our bodies collide. My weight barrels him over. Drags us both to the hard ground. Even though I charged, I’m not really ready. I’m anger and impulse. Thrashing, hitting fists. But my knuckles are no match for Kuen’s knife.

And, like most boys, he’s stronger.

Kuen grunts and rolls to the side. I fall off his chest. My right shoulder slams hard into concrete. Somewhere in the chaos I hear Chma’s screaming. He’s still alive. Alive, but in agony.

Then Kuen is on top of me — muscle and violet-splotched flesh. From the corner of my eye I see the glint of his blade. Trimmed red with Chma’s blood. It’s falling, slicing through the air between us. Right down to my throat.

Years of being under my father’s mad fists taught me how to dodge. Avoid the worst blows. I twist. The metal draws a thin line of fire down my neck. Pain bursts like boiling water across my skin. My left fist flies up. Catches the street boy’s broken tender puff nose.

Kuen screeches, falls off me. I scramble away as far as I can. Stumble to the end of the street.

Other boys appear. I expect them to be jeering and angry, but the wrath I saw in Kuen isn’t there. My eyes flick fast through them, searching for Bon. He’s nowhere to be found. The rest look anxious, almost scared, as they watch their leader spring to his feet. He comes at me with a beastly roar.

The cut on my neck throbs. Clears my head of the anger haze. I leap to the side. Somewhere in the middle of jumps and pain-crafted curses, I find Chma. He’s curled by a pile of trash. His beautiful, downy fur is soaked with red. I can’t spot the wound, but then he moves and I see.

His long, sweeping tail is gone. Just a bloodied stump.

My first thought: He’ll live. My first action: pulling out my knife.

There’s no dodging Kuen the second time. He’s reined in his wild rage, harnessed the pain into focus. His arms stretch wide. There’s no side to step into, and I’m very aware of his followers at my back. All escapes are gone.

My calf muscles coil and spring. My body is a feather, light and spinning. Everything passes slowly. I see every detail of this filthy street. The chip on Kuen’s second tooth. Limp, wet cigarette butts stewed with syringes and shattered bottles. Roaches skittering over mildewed walls. Chma, limp as a discarded scarf, eyes glowing yellow with pain.

Then all of it’s gone. Blurred by my landing. Kuen’s chest is bulky, hard as a board. I hit him. He shudders and steps back. His ankle catches on something, tugs him back to the ground.

There are sharp jabs of pain as we fall: glass, jolts, and fingernails. My knife is thrashing, trying to hit whatever it can. His blade is flashing, too. It whistles through the air. Sings of death.

There’s an explosion of heat in my side, searing. Too much for silence. I open my mouth and scream, scream, scream.

It’s over. For a moment that’s all I can think. Kuen’s knife is in me, sawing sinew and bone. Carving a path for my blood. The pain is awful. Everywhere. I wait for it to leave. I want my opponent to rip the metal out and stab again. End it.

But the new pain doesn’t come. The old wound stays: a flower of flame and pain just under my arm. My vision flickers: blurry, sharp, blurry. If I could make my scream into words, I would beg. Why hasn’t he pulled it out?

I look over. See the reason.

Kuen lies next to me. Mouth red-bright, eyes open. They’re rigid, so still. My knife is deep in his chest. Only the hilt shows.

My sight mists over. Colors bleed into one another. Red, gray, black. They swirl. Spinning around and around. Until only shadows are left. The black becomes everything. And then it’s all gone. Even the pain…

DAI

I shove my hands into my pockets as I walk. Away from the window. Away from her. My teeth are still chattering from my sit on the rooftop. When I took in all that wet and cold and waited for the fall that never came.

My feet might be on solid ground now, but I still feel like I’m plunging. Or maybe it’s more like I’m being pulled. The girl’s eyes have latched onto me the way Jin’s fist wrenched my hoodie. Both begging for truth.

I don’t know how much longer I can keep lying to them. The truth is catching up to me. Especially when I’m outside the window — talking about home and needs and wants.

“Dai!”

So I wasn’t imagining it. Someone was calling my name while I crouched at the window, searching for me with a single, crowing syllable.

“Dai! Dai!”

I find the voice in the form of a boy skulking by an empty handcart. It takes me a few seconds to recognize his drawn, bird-like face. He’s one of the youngest vagrants, a part of Kuen’s gang. Bon — the one Jin almost stabbed.

“Yeah?”

The kid looks scared. When I step forward, he slinks back, shoulders slumped. “Your friend, Jin. He’s in trouble.”

Suddenly I don’t feel so cold. My skin flushes hot under my hoodie’s soaked fleece. My hand slides back to the heavy, leaden form of my gun. “What?”

“Kuen — he’ll kill me if he knew I told you,” the boy sputters, flustered. His skeleton face is a strange mix of color. He struggles for his next words. “But I… I like Jin. I don’t want him to die.”

Something about the way the kid says this makes me realize how small he is. He belongs in grade school. Practicing his sum tables and stenciled characters. Kicking a football with his friends at lunch break.

I can tell, just by looking at him, that he’s too young. Too nice. He hasn’t mastered the rules of survival: keep your head down, let people die. No matter how much you like them.

And right now, I’m glad he hasn’t.

“They were waiting for him to come down from the roof when I came to find you,” Bon goes on. “And Kuen’s mad. Real mad.”

Oh hell…

“Where?” I don’t need any more convincing. Not after seeing what that vagrant did to Lee. “Take me. Now.”

Bon vanishes into a side passage nearly too narrow for my grown form to weasel through. Sweat mixes with the rain slick on my face as I leap after the boy. He darts and weaves faster than a rat through the streets, finally stopping at the edge of another dead-end alley. Bon’s eyes are big onyx buttons as he points, wordless.

I step in, gun out and ready. I see the anxious cluster of heads, hear the confused voices of Kuen’s gang gathered around, and I have the awful pit of a feeling that I’m too late.

“Move!” The word I scream is as effective as the bullet I fired last time. The kids scatter, a blurry movement of rags and half-drawn knives. Away, away — vanishing into shadows and the alley’s mouth.

The ground at my feet is the worst color red. Puddles that were once sludge-brown swirl dark with it. Dozens of streams of blood twist over the concrete like feeder roots searching for good soil. Reaching for me like nightmares.

For a moment I forget how to breathe.

Jin looks smaller than I’ve ever seen him. He’s curled up on his side, pale and done. His clothes are so soaked with scarlet that I can’t tell where the blood is actually coming from. Or if he’s even still breathing.

There’s no question Kuen’s dead. He’s gaping like a fish on ice, hands still reaching for the knife in his chest.

Blood. Blood everywhere. My boots slosh through it. I almost drop my gun into the thick red sea at my feet as I kneel down, turn Jin over.

Things grow unsteady for a moment. Shadows flicker like fire at the edge of my eyes. Memories of the night that changed everything flash back, mirror images of now. Too strong to swallow down. The blood. The cold tang of death in the air. My hand clutching a gun. Three broken bodies at my feet. Three murder charges to my name. Three reasons I can’t leave Hak Nam.

But this is different. This is now. And this time, the boy is still alive.

My hands come up crimson and sticky. I look down at Jin. Too much blood. Too much. Just like my dreams. Even if it isn’t all his. He might still be alive, but not for long. Not if I don’t do something.

There are no doctors in Hak Nam for something this serious. An apothecary with dried fungus and powdered sharks’ fins won’t close up this knife wound. And my first aid pouch would just drown under all this blood. What Jin needs is past the Old South Gate. Beyond the rusting cannons. Into a land of law and justice. Where I can’t go.

Get rid of the boy. You don’t need him anymore.

Tsang’s right. It’s not like Jin will be running after this, not before ten days is up. He’s useless to me now. I should just walk away, keep going. Leaving this broken, hurting kid behind. Out of sight, out of mind.

But they’re never really out of mind, are they? My brother and Lee and the girl with the dragging hair… their faces haunt my dreams, their last words whisper and swirl. Like they were meant just for this exact moment.

My brother: You’re a good person.

Lee: Please! Don’t leave me!

And the girl whose escape went wrong: Only silence.

I look back down at Jin, notice just how white and sharp his face is. Like marble. Like the silent, dragged girl. Like death.

I can’t save them all. But Jin… Jin is special. And I don’t think I can handle another ghost.

My body doesn’t feel like mine anymore as I slide my arms under Jin’s back. The stick of blood burns my bare fingers. My insides twist with its scent of salt and iron.

My thoughts are spinning, trying hard to stay in the now as I lift the small boy to my chest, careful not to nudge the knife still lodged into his side. He’s lighter than I thought. Almost nothing. No wonder he’s so fast.

The Old South Gate is choked with people, running errands and making the most of their morning hours. They duck in and out of Hak Nam, hair slick with wet, shoulders flecked with hail. The storm has died down since I left the roof. Pellets — most no bigger than pastry sprinkles — line the street gutters and sidewalk gaps like cake icing. So thick they look like snowdrifts.

I keep to the edge of the street. Most who pass don’t even give us a second glance. Those who do simply frown and walk on. Bloody vagrants — just another part of Hak Nam’s status quo.

The cannons sit, taunting me with rust and invisible barriers. Visions of handcuffs and life sentences. Can’t stop. Don’t stop. I breathe air like courage and keep walking past the ancient arsenal, under the wooden gable, and into the strange, fresh layer of white.

I thought it would be different, the first time I stepped back into my hometown. I envisioned my return from exile as a loud, busy thing. Not a quiet, unnoticed slip into the streets.

Now that I’m actually out of Hak Nam, I don’t know what to do. I stand here, getting tap-tap-tapped by the last of the hail, and realize that I expected someone to stop me. I never really planned to get this far.

I can’t take Jin to a hospital. There will be too many questions, too much bureaucracy and paperwork. They’ll let the boy bleed to death before he’s processed. Plus, there’s the possibility of cops. (Tempting fate is one thing, walking straight into its jaws is quite another.)

There’s only one place I can go. One place where both of us will be safe. At least for a little bit.

The taxi driver I wave down is an old man with silver hair and wide, ugly glasses. He stares like an owl, black eyes tightening with fear when he realizes what I’m holding.

I manage to pull out a wad of cash. It’s a lot. My month’s stipend — meant for food and an apartment. Way more than he’d make in a week of taxi runs.

“No questions.” I wave the notes at him. “Do you know where Tai Ping Hill is?”

It’s a stupid question, because every citizen of Seng Ngoi knows where its richest neighborhood sits. But I find I’m usually more prone to stupid questions when I’m holding dying people.

For a moment the cabdriver looks like he’s about to slam his foot onto the gas pedal and put as much distance between us as his engine can manage. But his eyes have latched onto the cash. The pack of bills I’m holding is thick enough to convince him otherwise.

“What address?” He waves me in, trying not to make a face at how much blood I’m smearing across his leather seats.

“Fifty-five.” I toss the bills to the front and look down at Jin. His skin is as ghastly as the hail mounds outside. I can feel, just barely, his chest shuddering. Up. Down.

The cabdriver mutters to himself, words I can’t completely hear over the chipper buzz of the radio. A woman’s silky voice is sliding through the speakers, telling us this is the coldest, wettest winter Seng Ngoi has had in over a decade. I listen to her report and then some song by a popular, peppy girl band as the cab wheels its way to Tai Ping Hill.

Whenever I think about this place, I imagine it in the height of summer. When the hibiscuses burst into color — bright patches of red, yellow, and white lining the road up the hill. The roadside is so thick with evergreens and bamboo stalks you can pretend you’re standing in a forest and not on a hill in the middle of a thriving metropolis. I think of the cicadas, how they clung to the red pine branches and chirped long into the night.

I’m so busy imagining how this place should be that when the cab stops, I’m startled. Through the fog-etched doodles on the window, I see it: the gate. It looks exactly the same, towering iron spikes set at the end of a long drive. Flanked by stone columns. Number fifty-five.

It feels like the hail that fell outside is tearing into my chest as I stare. This place looks unchanged. Untouched by my absence. But there’s something different… Like the bars are meant to keep me out.

“You getting out?” the cabdriver almost shouts, and I remember the urgency of everything. My hoodie is soaked through, heavy with blood that is and isn’t Jin’s.

My arms ache with the boy’s weight as I climb out of the cab. Like he suddenly gained thirty pounds during the car ride. The taxi spins away, its tires spraying gravel and hail in their haste.

I trudge over to the keypad, hoping the entry code is still the same. My forefinger leaves smudges of blood against the sterling buttons. But I hear a beep and the churn of chains. The gate tugs apart. I move through before it’s open all the way, leaving shallow pink steps in the hail drifts.

With so much still and white around it, the mansion looks like something from a movie set. It’s too large and perfect with its ceramic roof tiles and high walls. I blink all the way to the wide, snaking veranda. Expecting it to disappear any minute.

I don’t have to knock. The double doors swing wide. The man behind it looks distinguished, older. His hair is peppered with far more gray than it was the last time I saw him standing on this veranda.

“Dai Shing!” His stare centers on Jin, crumpled in the crook of my arms. His skin goes white as chalk, the way it did on the night that changed everything.

“Hello, Father.”

The water is scalding, pouring over my hands and burning the crevices between my fingers. Jin’s blood washes down the marble sink — first scarlet, then a lighter, rosewater pink. I watch it swirl away, leaving the basin as white as before. Like it was never there.

This washroom looks the same, with its neat wood floors and the rice-paper dividers lined with ancient calligraphy. Everything here looks the same: the foyer, the living room, the rock garden. Like my two years in Hak Nam were just some lucid nightmare.

I glance down and realize that my hands are still curled under the stinging water. When I pull them out, they’re raw pink and shivering, like momiji leaves caught in an autumn gale.

I shrug out of my hoodie — still heavy with unseen red — and hold it gingerly. Everything here feels too clean. Or maybe I’m too filthy. My faint pink footprints on the wood floor suggest the latter.

In the end, I toss my sweatshirt into the sink, where the faucet is still spewing. Water bubbles up around it, the same color as the hard cinnamon candies my grandfather used to slip me when I was a boy. “Dai Shing?”

I look over to the sliding door. Its copper lock gleams impossibly bright — the kind of luster you’d never find in Hak Nam.

“Is that you? Really?” The voice behind the door is my mother’s. She has the same accent as Osamu, but it’s softer coming from her lips. If I close my eyes, I can imagine her face: eyebrows arched too perfectly, like a master calligrapher brushed them onto her skin; cheeks pale and powdered; lips painted the color of subtle, dark wine. She’ll be biting them, the way she does when she gets nervous.

I reach for the latch, let the door slide open. There she stands, the mother I remember. She steps into the light of the washroom, and I see time’s mark. More lines and creases by her eyes. The black of her hair is false, a darkness created by chemicals and dye. It’s only when I study her that I feel like two years really have passed.

“Oh, Dai Shing. You’re home.” Her voice is tragic and light. Her arms stretch out, thinner than I remember — just skin, bone, and blue veins like streets.

I back away from her embrace. “Don’t… don’t touch me.”

“But…”

“There’s… there’s blood.” The explanation shakes out of my lips.

Her gaze travels down, like she’s seeing the bloodstained mess of my T-shirt for the first time. And the scar. Still there, always there. Bulging and bright. A quiver passes over her face, rests on her lips. I know she’s thinking of the same night. How the red on my shirt was tenfold. Some of it mine.

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers. Her arms wrap around me: blood, stains, and all. “You’re my son.”

The only one left… I swallow back this thought, think instead about how I’m ruining her Gucci blouse. Sure enough, when she finally pulls back, there’s a watery pink mark across the white silk.

She doesn’t seem to notice. There are tears in her eyes as she stares at me. “Why did you come back?”

That’s not the question she’s really asking, because the answer is obvious. It’s splattered on my shirt and stretched out in my parents’ guest suite, trying not to bleed to death. What my mother can’t understand, what she really wants to know, is why I would risk it.

I don’t think I can tell her. Partly because I can’t cram it into words, but mostly because I’m not so sure myself. The morning’s adrenaline is gone — taking with it all the sharp clarity of emergency.

All I know is that I couldn’t, wouldn’t, let Jin die. I’m not the ruthless criminal Tsang thinks I am, the one I’ve pretended to be. I won’t add another body to my count.

“Is the doctor here yet?” I have no idea how much time has passed in this steam-filled washroom.

“He’s with the boy now.”

“Good.”

“I’ll go get some clothes from your old room.” My mother slides the door open wider. Steam slips out, reminding me that the world outside is clear. Cold. “And I’ll ask Emiyo to bring you some tea.”

She walks away before I can answer. Before I can remember and remind her that my old clothes won’t fit anymore. Too much time and too many inches have stretched out since I last lived here.

This revelation echoes through me. Painting every corner of every room I walk through. I’m changed. I don’t belong here anymore. This isn’t my world.

All my time in Hak Nam — all those years standing on the edge of the rooftops, standing and staring — I’d been wishing, longing, striving for this place. Or so I thought.

Coming home isn’t the answer. It doesn’t bring me peace.

So what is my freedom? My escape? What will fix me?

The door to the guest suite is shut. Emiyo has already mopped up the blood. The floorboards are still slick with wet. I never knew what clean smelled like before Hak Nam, but now I can’t ignore the sting of chemicals and lemons in my nose.

I stand in the last spots of wet and listen. For words, sounds… anything that might tell me if my friend is alive or dead. My ears are rewarded with a mess of footsteps and sharp orders. I can’t make sense of them; they’re jumbled, full of terms I don’t understand. They never slow, the frenzy leaks under the door, mixes with the lemons. I can’t stand still, so I pace, start walking circles around the sitting room. My fingers drum anxiously over the dark stains on my jeans.

My mother never comes with clean clothes, but Emiyo appears after a bit. A tray of green tea balances in her practiced hands.

“Master Dai?” She clears her throat and the teacups rattle. It’s the set Mother brought from her home country. Fired in kilns, painted with visions of lily pads and lotus blossoms.

“Please, just Dai,” I correct her. Even when I was younger, the term master set me on edge. Now it just feels like an absurdity.

Emiyo simply smiles at me, like she knows better but won’t dare to say it. “Your mother sent these down.”

Tucked under her arm is a set of clothes. A white button-down dress shirt and slacks. Clearly my father’s.

The maid places the tray down and holds the bundle of clothes out to me. Her eyes flick away and I follow them. In all my pacing, I streaked up the floor again.

“Thanks, Emiyo.”

“It’s good to have you home, sir.” Our maid bows. “We missed you.”

She’s being so nice. They all are. With their hugs and smiles and fresh clothes. Acting like nothing ever happened. Forgotten and forgiven. I wish I could look at myself with the same rose-colored glasses.

Emiyo bustles out of the room before I can manage a reply. I finally allow myself to stand still, hands clutched tight around the expensive dress shirt. I’m just contemplating putting it on when the door to the suite slides open. The man striding out is immediately familiar: Dr. Kwan, our family physician. His sleeves are rolled all the way above his ashy elbows. The rest of the shirt is almost as stained as mine.

Dr. Kwan pauses in front of me, doing a double take before he asks, “Where is your father?”

“I don’t know.” I hadn’t seen him since he rushed away to dial Dr. Kwan. But right now that’s the least of my concerns. “How’s Jin?”

He sighs, like he’s inconvenienced by the question. “She’s doing better. Lost a good deal of blood, but I got her stitched up. The knife missed all her major organs. It was a clean cut. I’ve already called the hospital for some blood bags. She’ll need transfusions.”

“Oh good. I—" The doctor’s pronoun choices catch up with me. Barrel over, drill into my thick skull. “She?”

I realize my mouth is hanging open, but I don’t care enough to shut it.

She. Her. It takes another minute for the words to sink in.

There’s no way…

Maybe I say this out loud. Or maybe the doctor reads my face. “You didn’t know? She went to pretty good lengths to hide it. But yes. She’s definitely a female.”

Jin’s a girl.

And here I was thinking I was the one with all the secrets.