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.