My knuckles tighten hard around the gun.
MEI YEE
Outside is a strange, new world where the air is threaded with an endless braid of smells: incense, seafood, decay muted by cool. Darkness is everywhere, pouring into the street corners and alleyways, crowding against the lines of electric shop signs. And the sounds… I’m sure there are more sounds, but all I can hear are both gunshots. Over and over again. They boom and crack with every heartbeat. Still ringing and singing the impossible in my ears.
Dead. Dai’s dead.
He can’t be, thrums my heart.
But he is, cries my mind. He is.
The thin silk of my dress means nothing to the winter air. Its chill curls into me the way a cat settles onto its master’s chest. All the warmth Dai gave me is gone. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t hold on to it.
But the ambassador is still holding on to me, pulling me hard down the street. The numb of shock is wearing off. My wrist throbs and my silk slippers are useless against these paths of gravel and glass. My feet collect blood, cuts, and regrets with every step.
Osamu won. He got his wish while watching mine die, in a metallic flare of gunfire. And I could have stopped it. If I’d said yes all those days ago, Dai wouldn’t have come for me no matter what. He wouldn’t have stared down the barrel of Longwai’s gun. He wouldn’t be dead.
We turn a sharp corner, my wrist bending in agony. The ambassador stops, and I jostle hard into the stiff fabric of his suit, see the reason we’ve halted.
There’s no room for us to keep going.
The path of cinder block walls, shop entrances, and hanging pipes is crammed full of street kids. The ones Longwai used to tell us about. They look nothing like Dai. They’re stick and bone, pale as ghosts, and hung with rags.
Staring at us with nine pairs of hungry, dead-coal eyes.
“Out of my way!” the ambassador growls. His free hand waves as if he’s swatting away a swarm of flies.
But the boys don’t move. It doesn’t take long for me to notice their knives, how they glint against the darkness.
“Move, you little bastards!” The ambassador’s roar is barrel-chested. It rattles the pipes above our heads and shivers the glass around my feet, but it doesn’t move the boys. The only thing that changes is their eyes. The hunger that was so leaden is now a gleaming thing. As bright as the golden cufflinks on the ambassador’s suit. As sharp as the daggers in their hands.
JIN LING
Years of empty doors and hollow corners. Months of dark and black. Nights of shivering wet and dead rats roasting on a spit. Days of running and stabbing and running and snatching and running.
It was not for nothing. There’s a moment where I can only stand and stare. Wonder how I ever doubted I would find her.
The first thing I see is her dress. As red as dragon scales under the streetlamps. Brighter than blood. Her hair is longer now. Braided to her waist. Her face is smoother, sadder. There’s a heaviness in her eyes. A weight on her shoulders that wasn’t there before.
But she’s still my Mei Yee. Still my beautiful, beautiful sister.
My sister is a beauty, but the ambassador’s a beast. Full of hot air and smoke. Puffed big and bad for show. For all his bellowing, Osamu reeks of fear. Vagrants know the scent well. The knives honed in on my throat now point at him. Eight strong.
“I’m a government official and my men are just behind me. If you don’t move, I’ll have them shoot you all on the spot,” the ambassador snarls.
“He’s lying.” I speak clearly. Loudly. My hand is still tight on Dai’s gun. “It’s just him.”
The ambassador notices me for the first time. His eyes pop almost out of their sockets. Like a rat skull crushed by a boot. “You! You set this up, didn’t you, you little—"
My hand comes out of the jacket. It’s not shaking or spinning like the rest of me. The revolver’s barrel points straight at the ambassador’s chest.
The gun does something eight knives can’t. The ambassador falls silent. His face turns as pink as raw meat. Full of very real fear.
The revolver stays steady, but all my insides are shaking.
Do it. Do it. Do it.
But my finger won’t move. Won’t pull the trigger. I stare at the ambassador’s meaty face, and all I can see is Kuen’s leer. So horrible, blank, and red after what I did to him.
And just like that, my chance is gone. The ambassador clutches my sister. Hides behind her like the coward he is.
MEI YEE
The ambassador is unraveling, like a ball of yarn no one can catch. All the perfectly selected masks he put on for me, for Longwai, have been shucked away like played cards. Now he’s just standing in the cold — the age spots on his face are tinged purple, the way my bruises were — staring at the boy and his gun.
There’s something brutal, something familiar about the boy with the gun. He’s staring at the ambassador the way Jin Ling used to stare at my father: eyes full of poison, fists full of fight.
I think of my sister and find myself staring harder at the boy.
It can’t be… Not here…
The ambassador tugs me tight to himself, crushing me into his girth so that it’s my body blocking the bullet’s path. As soon as this happens, the boy’s features change, soften into the face I saw so many nights just by moonlight. When we shared the window together, hunting stars.
It can’t be… But it is.
The sight of my sister is the strength I need. She fills my insides with steel and bravery and the impossible. My freedom, my escape, is right in front of me. And I’m the only one who can seize it.
The ambassador’s arm is locked around my throat. His hand is just by my shoulder, the tendons cording and taut. I sink my teeth deep, deep beneath his skin.
He howls and the taste of his blood fills my mouth: all salt and bitterness. His arm yanks away and I rush past the boys and their knives. They don’t pay any attention to me. They close in around the cursing ambassador. I can see the ridged bones around their eye sockets. The knobs of their knuckles, too big around their knives. I think of the stray dogs in my old province. How hunger hollowed out their bones and created fierce, desperate creatures. Beasts that knew no fear.
My sister grabs me by the hand and starts pulling. We’re running down the street, sliding into a dark alleyway, when the ambassador’s screams start in earnest.
I’m not sorry.
Sometimes, when Father’s rage became too unhinged and his hits were murderous instead of battering, we would hide. Jin Ling always led the way: out the door, past the ginkgo tree, into the vast maze of rice field rows. We would dip waist-deep into the water, slink like the snakes that actually lived in those long waves of green.
I feel like that now. But instead of rice fields, Jin Ling leads the way past walls of slime and over hills of trash. Through gaps I didn’t even notice until she slipped into them, pulling me after her with urgent strength.
The ambassador’s screams are long gone by the time we finally stop. Jin Ling is breathing hard, much harder than she should be, and sweat drips from the hacked ends of her hair despite the cold. She’s still holding my hand, fingers wrapped tight around my thumb, the way she used to cling to me when she was first learning to walk.
We stop in a dark, empty corner and look at each other. Wordless. We stand, stuck in the moment. Staring and trying our best to believe.
“Mei Yee.” She says my name and holds my hand so hard I don’t think she’ll ever let go. “It’s me.”