Wishes cost so much more than dying stars.
“I know,” I say, because I do. “But I can’t live like this anymore. Sometimes an end seems so much better than my now. If there’s any way out, any open door, I have to take it.”
“Even if it seems impossible? Even if there are dragons behind it?”
Even then. I don’t say it out loud, because the boy asked in a way that meant he already knew.
We’re staring at each other. Eyes holding eyes. His gaze shatters glass, pierces metal. It hums through my body, charged and electric. Full of shine and hope and possibilities.
“I’m Dai,” he says. “My name is Sun Dai Shing. What’s yours?
Dai. It’s not the name I would have picked for him. It’s too short, too blunt, too foreign. But I let it tumble around in my head for a moment. Let it settle into his hair, eyes, and skin. The more I think about it, the more I stare, the more it starts to fit.
The boy — Dai — shifts so the streaked sapphire light of the far streets falls off his face. My eyes strain, struggling to pierce the new dark between us. I open my mouth, but no sound comes out, as if my throat is a drought-stricken well.
I am nameless.
Dai leans back into the light. Something about its eerie, electric blue comforts me. I start to breathe, pretending that the air around me isn’t stuffed with incense and men’s sweat. I think of the mountains instead. Of the ginkgo tree and how my mother called me by my name over and over.
It shouldn’t be this hard to say my own name. But I think of the last few times I let my name slip to ears who did not deserve to hear it. To Longwai, who says it in a spider-creep way. To Osamu, who says it as if he knows me.
This boy standing across from me, with his folded hands and shadowed face, isn’t Longwai. He isn’t Osamu. He’s Dai. And he trusted me with his name. So I must trust him with mine. With everything.
“My name…” I push past the hoarseness. My words become steadier, as clear as Dai’s bottomless, electric eyes. “My name is Mei Yee.”
DAI
All breath leaves my lungs at the sound of her name. My back is against the wall, the water glaze is leaking through my shirts. Creep and chill. The winter is getting too much for just a hoodie. I should’ve thought to wear my jacket.
This is what I think about while I stare at the girl’s face. Maybe because it’s easier to wrap my mind around it. Warmth — a jacket — is something I can control. Something I can manage.
But this… her… she’s more than warmth. She’s fire, a soul, a name. Mei Yee reverbs through my head, my veins. Lodges like shrapnel in the far reaches of my chest. More powerful than a pound of C-4. Uncontrollable.
Mei Yee. Who grew up on a rice farm surrounded by mountains. Just like Jin Ling.
What are the odds?
I study her face again, searching for traces of sisterhood. It’s not a perfect resemblance, but the harder I look, the more I see it. The way her lip quirks to the side when she’s nervous. The thickness and slant of her lashes.
But it could be that I’m seeing things. Mei Yee isn’t the rarest name, and a lot of times the brothel girls change theirs. I think of the placards on the doors. How the scarlet characters became almost invisible in the light.
There’s no way I can know for sure unless I ask.
I push off the wall. “Do you have a sister?”
“I did,” she says. “Before. Why do you want to know?”
That’s enough. Enough for me to know. Her words are sad, but they don’t carry the loss of death. They don’t hold the same hollowness mine do when I talk about Hiro. Mei Yee’s sister is still alive, somewhere. And I’ll bet that somewhere is my father’s mansion on Tai Ping Hill.
I can still feel Jin Ling’s taped hand squeezing mine, straining at the sound of my oath. It seemed like such a solid, simple promise — up there on the hill, surrounded by gates and carp ponds. Here on the ground it’s a different matter.
For a moment I consider telling her. But if Mei Yee isn’t the sister — or worse, if she is and I can’t get her out — I can’t give her false hope. It’s too cruel.
“Just a question.” I try to say this as dismissively as possible. My heart is thrumming, struggling to work out this excitement. This fear.
My excuse to get into the brothel is now crippled, on bed rest with Jin Ling, which means the book is out of my reach. And without the ledger, I can’t guarantee Mei Yee her freedom. I can’t get the book without Mei Yee. I can’t get her out safely without risking her life. Without flinging her forward like a queen on a chessboard.
I think of the silent girl with dragging hair. The bloody, tattered escape gone wrong. My heart squeezes high in my throat.
I don’t want to risk it. Risk her. But that’s probably me just being a selfish bastard.
Funny how quickly things turn.
Mei Yee’s fingers poke through the grating like tiny white seedlings. Tender, seeking out the sun. They push through so far I can see her nails, coated in slick red-hot paint. The color looks wrong on her. Too violent and bright.
“I’ll get the book,” she says, not quietly.
“We’ll do it together,” I tell her. “I don’t want you snatching Longwai’s ledger first chance you get. He’ll miss it for sure. We’ll need a way to get it out. Plus you’ll need a distraction to get up there and back without being noticed.”
My mind is like one of those mechanical windup clocks Hiro used to collect and take apart (in his the way things work are cool and I want to be an engineer phase). Only this one isn’t scattered in pieces across his desk. It’s working, whirring at its utmost speed. “How much time will you need? To get the keys and get upstairs?”
“Depends. Mama-san keeps the keys close almost all the time. Except…” Mei Yee pauses, twisting a hand along her lush starless-black braid. It wraps around her wrist like a rope. “Except when Yin Yu has them.”
“Yin Yu? "
“One of the other girls. She cleans rooms for Mama-san, which means she has access to the keys.”
“Do you trust her?”
Mei Yee’s hand stops wrapping. I can’t see her wrist anymore, swallowed in shiny, beautiful black. “Yes. If — if I can tell her why. Do you have money?”
Her question catches me off guard. “Some.”
“The other girls can help, too. The ledger’s pretty small. But it still won’t fit through this grating.” Mei Yee nods at the crisscross lattice. Not much besides a finger or two could slide through those gaps. “It’ll have to go out the door. When I take it, you should buy time with a girl named Nuo. Wait in her room and I’ll drop the book off there.”
“These girls, Nuo and Yin Yu, how do you know they won’t betray you?”
“A few weeks ago there was another girl, Sing. We knew she was going to run. Some of us even tried to stop her. But we never gave her away.”
“Silence is different from actively stealing,” I tell her. “But tell them if we get the book, I can get all of them out.”
Mei Yee looks at me. The way she stares, without blinking, reminds me of kids at the zoo. I must be the animal, stuck on the other side of the bars, doing and saying things she can’t completely understand.
“Is that true?” she asks finally.
I swallow, think of all of Tsang’s ash and apathy. The police don’t care about the girls, that’s for sure. But once the book is out, once all the arrest warrants are in place, once I hand over Longwai’s ass on a platter, there will be no one left to lock the girls’ cage. No one left to keep them from running.
I nod. “I can’t tell you more, because the secret is too big. But yes. Get the book and all of you will be free.”