My heart burns hotter than my stitches. I’m sick and murderous and ready to run.
The light sinks back into red. Voices trail off with footsteps, cut short by squealing hinges. Dai is on his feet, pulling me up. I feel like I’m moving in a dream: exhausting muscles and will, but not really going anywhere.
“Come on, Jin Ling.” Dai tugs harder and I’m standing. “You have to go.”
“We’re just going to leave? But Mei Yee—"
He cuts me off. “You heard Longwai. Fung’s coming.”
I can’t think straight. Not with the pain. Not with his tugging and pulling like this. “But Mei Yee. The book. We can’t leave!”
“Jin Ling. Look at me.”
It’s the only thing I can do. Everything else is spinning like a child’s toy top. I choose a point, the wrinkling gap of skin between his eyebrows. Focus on it.
“We are not leaving. You are.” Dai digs deep into his jeans’ pocket. Out comes a small wad of bills. “You get out of here and you take a cab back to Tai Ping Hill. Go to number sixty-two. Ask to see Ambassador Osamu.”
The ambassador? The one who would show up for Mei Yee? Use her… My mouth goes dry at the thought. My shoulders start shaking.
Dai’s hand grips tighter, steadies me. “Tell him Mei Yee is in trouble. He needs to come get her.”
“That’s all?”
“It’s enough. It will get him to come.” He crams the money into my jacket pocket. “It will give us the distraction we need to make things right.”
I feel undone. My head is spinning the way it was that first day in the Suns’ guest suite. The world lurches even when I’m standing still. “And what are you going to do?”
Dai’s walking again. His arm guides me like an ox pulling a plow. Trash churns under our boots while we make our way to the main street. When we reach the end, Dai lets go of my arm.
“The best place for me right now is inside that brothel.”
I don’t think I hear him right, but his hands return to mine. Metal — cold and hard — brushes my skin. Weight falls, sudden, into my fingers. I look down and realize what Dai has given me: his revolver.
“Keep this for me.” He presses the gun into my palm. Heavy, heavy power in my grasp. “If Fung finds it on me, I’m done.”
“No! I’m not leaving you here. I promised—"
Dai shoves the gun harder into my hand, cuts me off. “I know what you promised. And I know what I promised. But there are two of us, Jin Ling. That’s two chances to get your sister out. If we go in there together, that’s screwed; and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you go in first.”
“But, Dai—" His name falls out of my throat. “Longwai. He’ll kill you.”
The older boy keeps talking. Doesn’t miss a beat, “If he does… don’t worry about the ledger. You get your sister out. Get as far away from this city as possible. Don’t look back.”
That was always the plan. But suddenly it feels like an impossible thing to do by myself. There are no words. I just look at the older boy. My throat is thick and my side hurts. My hands are heavy with his gun. His last protection given to me.
I’m shaking again. “I–I don’t know how to use it.”
“Pull the hammer, pull the trigger,” he says sharply. “There are six shots, so save them until you can’t anymore.”
I don’t want to leave him here. Alone. Without a weapon. I want to stay with him and fight. But my splitting side tells me that’s no longer an option. I have to go. I have to let Dai do the things I can’t.
“Get your ass back here fast. Osamu’s, too.” He swallows. Looks over my shoulder. Where the entrance to the brothel lies.
I don’t know if I can do this. But I have to. My fingers close tight around the gun.
“Remember. Tai Ping Hill. Number sixty-two. Ambassador Osamu.” Dai drills the information deeper into my skull. Not that he needs to. Every word is already there, blazed in challenge and fire. “And take these just in case.”
He presses the keys to his apartment into my hand and lets go. Pushes me away. “See you soon.”
I hope he’s right.
I’m running, even though my side splits and I don’t remember telling my feet to move. The gun is tucked deep in my jacket, slowing me with its impossible weight. Every step is awful. But my boots keep pounding. Through streets and shortcuts. All the way to the Old South Gate.
MEI YEE
Half of me expected to be taken to the lounge, made an example of right there and then. I was ready for it — ready for the belt to choke up my arm. Ready for the syringe to slip into my vein and introduce me to an entirely different universe. I was ready for other things, too — the hard nose of a pistol against my head or the dead-thin edge of a knife across my throat. I was ready for it to end.
The only thing I wasn’t prepared for was Sing’s room.
Keys shake in Mama-san’s bird-boned hand as she twists the lock, shoves the door open with her hip. Even with all the powder and paint, her face is clear; every horrible emotion she’s ever felt is strung across it like prayer beads. I’ve never seen her like this, not even when Sing was bloodied and broken on the floor.
I think of that night. Of the snap and the scream when we left her alone with Longwai. Of the bruises she tried so hard to bury with powder and sharp-tongued words. It doesn’t matter that she’s holding those keys. None of them lets her outside. She’s just as trapped as any of us.
With the open door comes a smell not even incense can mask. Urine and waste and sick. The air is thick with it, clawing into my nose, down my throat. I smell all the days Sing has been here, rotting beneath a single flickering lightbulb.
The room is bare, stripped of all furniture and decor. The only thing that isn’t walls or floor is a pile of filthy pillows in the corner. Sing’s body — wasted from a fortnight of heroin and little food — melds almost invisible into the poor light and stained fabric. She’s stretched across the floor with a stillness like death.
Mama-san seems not to notice, her nose long used to the stench. She looks at me and her face hardens. “You stupid girl!”
I expect questions. Or maybe a slap. But not this. Mama-san is glaring at me, lips pursed and coated with her fiercest shade of paint.
“You could have gotten out of here. If you’d played it right. You had the ambassador wrapped around your pinkie finger.” She holds up her smallest nail. It’s the same color red as her lips. “You had the chance and you wasted it. Threw it away like it was nothing!”
“I didn’t do anything.” I flip the switch inside me. The one I use when the ambassador crawls into my bed. The one that makes me feel dead inside and out. “Yin Yu is jealous of me. She’s spreading rumors.”
There’s no guilt shifting through my veins when I say Yin Yu’s name. Not this time.
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand? Where there are rumors, there’s hope. And when there’s hope…” Her finely filed scarlet nail points to the heap on the floor. Where skin and bone and pillow stew in what’s left of Sing. “It’s not allowed in a place like this.
“Stupid,” Mama-san mutters, and shakes her head. She doesn’t even look at me again before she pulls the door shut.
There’s even less light now. I feel as if I’ve been sealed up inside a tomb.
Stupid. Mama-san’s word echoes in the new dark. Claws at me with its hints of truth. I never should have told the girls. Never should have expected them to have the same trust in a boy they’d never met…