After all I’ve been through, all that’s been done to me, I thought I had no more tears left. But the sight of my sister — the sound of her saying my name — is enough to break me. The water wells up, salty and free across my cheeks. “You came for me.”
Jin Ling doesn’t fit so well in my arms anymore. She’s almost as tall as I am. Her face buries into my shoulder as it did when we were little, but she has to bend over to do it. And I feel her bones more easily, despite the jacket she’s wearing.
When we finally pull apart and face each other, I study her. Not so many freckles anymore. And she’s grown into her nose. And—
“Your hair,” I gasp, and laugh through the rest of my tears.
“I cut it.” She swallows and smiles, but her voice is shaky. “When I first came to find you.”
“First?”
“I chased the Reapers’ van when they took you,” Jin Ling explains. “I cut my hair so I could pass as a boy. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”
I don’t have the words. I look at her — my fierce, fighting little sister — and tuck a strand of her hacked hair behind her ears. The thought of her cutting it all off and coming here to look for me is too much. Impossible, even though she’s here now, saying it.
But I remember the way Jin Ling made her wishes. How she said I wish we could be together forever with the bite of a tigress. Nothing would be impossible enough to keep her wishes from being fulfilled. Not even the Walled City.
“How did you find me?” I say this and then stop. Know. I see the answer on my sister’s face, feel it on the insides of my chest where I’m crumbling to pieces.
My freedom cost so much more than a dying star.
“Mei Yee…” Jin Ling is looking at me again. “The boy, the one who came up to your window…”
I shut my eyes. It’s so, so cold, but I can’t even shiver. People only shiver when they remember what it means to be warm.
“Dai.” I say his name, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t bring him back to me.
“Yes,” my sister says. “What happened to him?”
“Dai.” I say his name again, but the empty space is still there. Jagged-edged and howling, like the hole in my window, letting winter’s chill slip in. I don’t want to say what I’ll say next, because if I do, what I saw will be real and true. But even words unsaid can’t take back two bullets from Longwai’s gun. “Dai’s dead.”
JIN LING
My sister’s words are like a knife to the gut. Hot and fast. Nothing but pain. It takes a minute for their truth to sink in. For the burn to start.
“The ambassador came and accused him of having secrets,” Mei Yee says. Her eyes are closed. Lids fluttering and white like moth wings. “Longwai shot him.”
Dead. Dai.
Those two words sound so alike, but I refuse to believe they go together. They don’t fit. I was just with him. In the alley. He looked so strong. So sure. So red and alive under the light of the window.
But he knew it was coming. You get your sister out. Get as far away from this city as possible. Don’t look back. He knew I’d have to do this without him.
Mei Yee breathes out beside me. Her breath sounds like the shudder of dead leaves, the rip of paper. I hear it and remember that she’s wearing nothing against the cold and her silk slippers are in bloody shreds. Dai might be dead, but my sister is alive. And I mean to keep her that way.
“Here.” I shrug off the jacket. Hand it to her. It’s drenched in my sweat, my blood, but the fabric still smells like lemon and green tea. Like Dai’s house. “We have to go.”
“Where?” Mei Yee whispers.
I don’t want to go back to Dai’s apartment. Face the vast, empty grunge of those tiles. The two black marks that will never be erased. But my orange envelope is there and Mei Yee needs good shoes. Proper clothes. And I have a feeling that Chma will be there, waiting. I can’t lose him, too.
But after that?
I think of our father’s house. Our mother’s herb garden littered with bottle caps and liquor glass. Hollow windows and doors. I imagine Father leaned against the doorjamb. Waiting. Cheeks redder than the setting sun. Fists curled. And Mother behind him. Always behind him.
I’m not ready for that fight. Not with a burn in my shoulder. A gun in my hand.
I don’t know where we’ll go. Somewhere far, far away from here. Somewhere we’ll never, ever have to look back.
“We’ll figure it out,” I tell her.
MEI YEE
Jin Ling leads the way again and I follow, my mind numb. Trying not, not, not to think of Dai and those final, awful moments. What he gave up so I could be running and twisting through these streets behind my sister.
I’m so busy trying not to think of this when Jin Ling stops, motions for me to be quiet. We’re in a sliver of space. It couldn’t even really be called a proper alleyway with how tightly we’re wedged in here. The cinder block scrapes against my back, my chest. If I breathe too hard, it will crush.
I want to get out because the stones feel as if they’re suffocating me, but Jin Ling doesn’t move. She stays wedged by the final opening and watches. The tower of free air in front of us is suddenly blocked, crammed full with a man’s face. A dragon inked in savage scarlet.
Fung.
My heart stops, but Longwai’s man doesn’t. He passes our gap, dragging something behind him. There’s the awful scrape, scrape of plastic and deadweight against the ground. My throat is lined with vomit, but I stand on my tiptoes, catch a final glimpse of the body bag as it’s jerked past our hiding place.
I try to swallow back the sick, try to breathe, but the walls won’t let me. Jin Ling slips her hand in mine, squeezes tight. As if she knows that her presence is the only thing holding me together.
The dragging sound stops too soon. Fung’s grunt creeps into the alley as he lets the bag down, brushes his hands off.
“This is what comes of crossing the dragon,” he growls at the body before his boots start their scuff back in the direction he came. “Better luck in the next life.”
Jin Ling and I wait long minutes between the cinder blocks, listening and watching. Finally my sister edges out into the wider street nose-first, like a mouse emerging from its hole. Pulling me out only when she’s sure it’s safe.
The bag isn’t even two arm’s lengths away, a pile of sad black plastic. I don’t want to look at it, the way it’s shoved into a corner where a door stoop meets a wall. As if it actually contained garbage and not the boy who woke me up. Set me free.
My sister creeps up to the plastic and kneels down. Her fingers out and touching.
“Jin Ling—" I don’t know what to say except that I can’t be here. I’d rather remember Dai as the life outside the window. Not as the body in the trash bag, kicked to the curb. “Please.”
Jin Ling frowns, her fingers digging deeper into the crumpled plastic. She starts tearing. The black splits apart easily under her nails. Like some sick cocoon: no wings, only death.
I catch a glimpse of skin — as white and hard as a china plate — and look away.
Jin Ling keeps tearing and the plastic keeps ripping. I keep looking at my bloody slippers, trying to ignore the sick emptiness of my stomach.
“Mei Yee…” There’s a rustle and the pulling stops. “Look.”
My eyes stay down, take stock of shredded silk and numb toes. I can’t look up. Don’t make me look up. This hurt — red skin and glass stab — is so much easier to take.