“The other girls will help,” Mei Yee says, swift and certain.
“Just — be careful.” My chest feels tight. Even trusting these two girls, these two sisters, is a stretch. Adding other, faceless girls into the mix seems too much. Too many variables, too many chances for something to go wrong. “Be discreet.”
“When will we do this?”
Involving the girls changes a lot of things, but the biggest of these is the timetable. Before, when it was just my (and, I guess, Jin Ling’s) neck on the chopping block, I wanted to find the ledger as soon as possible. But I could run, and the girls… they’re mice snapped tight in a trap. If Longwai finds out who stole his book, he can — he will — crush every one of them.
And even if I acted alone — bought time with a girl or angled for an invitation — I wouldn’t put it past Longwai to punish the girls anyway, take his rage out on those who would fight the least. There are too many things tying us together. For better or worse, we’re all tangled now.
This is the only path we can take.
The turnaround has to be quick — so that Longwai won’t even realize his book is gone before the cops beat down his doors. Our swipe has to be at the last of the final minutes.
“New Year’s Eve. Five days from now. I’ll come to your window right before I swing back around to the lounge. I’ll distract Longwai and your Mama-san long enough for you to get upstairs and out. Then I’ll buy Nuo’s time and wait in her room until you drop the book. I’ll leave, and Longwai will be none the wiser. Then I’ll come back for you.”
Mei Yee swallows. “What about between then?”
“Keep him downstairs, smoking. Until midnight hits.”
“How do I know you’ll come back?” It’s the question of a girl who’s been left behind. Again and again and again.
The braid unravels from her wrist, and I see a mark there. A spoil of color in the midst of flawless white. Too odd to be a shadow, smudged like the ink fingerprint of a criminal. The signature of a certain middle-aged selfish bastard.
Goddamn Osamu.
I look at her face and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that her father sold her for pocket change. Or that she could be Jin Ling’s sister. Or that my freedom, my life, now rests in her hands. Or that the seashell was made in a factory.
Even with her bruises, I’ve never seen anything as perfect and whole as her. As Mei Yee.
“I will come for you. No matter what it takes.” These are the words of a goddamn hero pouring out of my mouth. The best of me — the part she woke — reaching to her through the glass.
I don’t know if I’ve spoken truer words in my life.
I only had a few years with my grandfather, but there are some memories of him I can’t shake. How he always froze at the sound of any airplane. How he always clutched a cane — the veins of his right hand bulging out like teal worms as he walked.
I was five when I finally became brave enough to ask him about his knee.
His chin trembled — cloud-white beard hair shuddered like the wind was combing it. “A long time ago, long before you or your mother were born, I was in a war. Did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“I was a pilot. Not the fighter kind, mostly dropped supplies to the men on the ground.” He paused. Both hands gripped the cane, all his weight falling on that single piece of wood. “I was on a mission when my plane got shot down. I survived, but I was torn up pretty bad. Got a whole piece of metal stuck under my kneecap. I never could walk right after that.”
It never made sense to my young mind, how a hurt from so long ago could keep a man from walking right. Stay with him the rest of his life.
But now that I’m older, now that I’ve fought my own wars and fired my own guns, I understand. There’s a hurt in my heart as I walk away from Mei Yee’s window, like the flare of an old war wound. An ache I can’t really explain. An ache that won’t let me forget.
I thought I spent these two years erasing. Getting rid of my pain, pushing it back to a place only nightmares could touch. But it was really just a deep freeze: hurt suspended in time.
I walk the old paths. Past factories and mills of exhausted humans working tireless machines. By the corner where a toothless old man huddles in a moth-gnawed blanket, hands cupped out like a bowl of flesh and knobby-boned joints. Past the prostitutes slouched in their doorways, shoulders bare to the winter. Children dash by, barefoot. I wonder who they’re running to. Or what they’re running from. If they’re playing or fleeing.
I used to walk this track without feeling a thing. On and on and away. I looked at these faces — wrinkled, painted, deadpan, scared, hollow — and felt nothing. Not even a pinprick. Now my heart feels ready to explode with hurt. Hurt for Jin Ling and Bon and Lee and Kuen and Chma and all the starving things on these streets.
But it’s not just hurt that’s waking. The ache goes even deeper, sears like lava in my bones. An anguish that makes me feel unbearably awake, alive. The agony of her, wedged inside my heart. Shrapnel that will never, ever leave.
I’m not very hungry, but when I pass Mr. Kung’s glowing oven of cha siu bao, I buy a bagful. Their heat bakes through the paper, lighting up my fingers and palms. I think of Jin Ling. I should tell her — find a phone and call Emiyo.
Or maybe I shouldn’t. She’s supposed to be on bed rest — a rule she’d break in a heartbeat if she found out. And if my plan doesn’t work, if we don’t get the ledger… it would be better for Jin Ling to never know in the first place.
A long, low howl erupts at my feet. Loud enough to make me stop and hope that I heard right. All through my walks, I’ve been scanning the streets. Looking, looking, looking for a feline sans tail.
I look down. At first all I see are puddles swallowing the electric lights of shops and spreading them like gold at my feet.
Brrrrooow?
I look to the side, by my right boot. Chma’s yellow eyes glare back at mine. He slides over my leg, brushing my jeans with long, matted fur. The stuff of sneezes. It’s speckled with dried clumps of blood. I see the stump Kuen’s knife made. I’ve come across worse, but my stomach doesn’t act like it.
“What are you on now? Your fifth life?” I ask, and kneel down in the middle of the street. Chma’s dusky-pink nose pushes into the bag of stuffed buns. His whine grows longer, louder. I reach into the bag and pinch apart one of the buns. Chma swallows it alclass="underline" dough, juice, and meat. It’s gone in seconds. He noses the ground and then blinks at me.
More. It’s not so much a question as a demand. Voiced with about as much authority as a tailless cat can muster.
“You pompous little—"
Chma! Chma! My term of affection is cut short by the animal’s sneeze. He even manages to look dignified with a glaze of snot on his nose. Chma!
Seems Jin Ling was right. Cat sneezes do sound different.
I pull out more cha siu bao and wish again Jin Ling could be here. To see all that she’s lost found again.
2 days
JIN LING
I’ve never slept this long. Nights in the Walled City are short. Dreamless. But here — swallowed in feathers, sheets, and tubes — I can’t tell what’s dream and what’s reality. So many faces pass. Some visit and talk: Dai, my mother, Mei Yee. Others — the nurse and Dai’s father — just stare and fill the room with their footsteps. Sometimes I feel Chma curled against me, warmth and purrs. Other times my father looms over the bed. When he disappears, I wake up soaked in sweat and shivering.