by Ryan Graudin
“Move!” The word I scream is as effective as the bullet I fired last time. The kids scatter, a blurry movement of rags and half-drawn knives. Away, away—vanishing into shadows and the alley’s mouth.
The ground at my feet is the worst color red. Puddles that were once sludge-brown swirl dark with it. Dozens of streams of blood twist over the concrete like feeder roots searching for good soil. Reaching for me like nightmares.
For a moment I forget how to breathe.
Jin looks smaller than I’ve ever seen him. He’s curled up on his side, pale and done. His clothes are so soaked with scarlet that I can’t tell where the blood is actually coming from. Or if he’s even still breathing.
There’s no question Kuen’s dead. He’s gaping like a fish on ice, hands still reaching for the knife in his chest.
Blood. Blood everywhere. My boots slosh through it. I almost drop my gun into the thick red sea at my feet as I kneel down, turn Jin over.
Things grow unsteady for a moment. Shadows flicker like fire at the edge of my eyes. Memories of the night that changed everything flash back, mirror images of now. Too strong to swallow down. The blood. The cold tang of death in the air. My hand clutching a gun. Three broken bodies at my feet. Three murder charges to my name. Three reasons I can’t leave Hak Nam.
But this is different. This is now. And this time, the boy is still alive.
My hands come up crimson and sticky. I look down at Jin. Too much blood. Too much. Just like my dreams. Even if it isn’t all his. He might still be alive, but not for long. Not if I don’t do something.
There are no doctors in Hak Nam for something this serious. An apothecary with dried fungus and powdered sharks’ fins won’t close up this knife wound. And my first aid pouch would just drown under all this blood. What Jin needs is past the Old South Gate. Beyond the rusting cannons. Into a land of law and justice. Where I can’t go.
Get rid of the boy. You don’t need him anymore.
Tsang’s right. It’s not like Jin will be running after this, not before ten days is up. He’s useless to me now. I should just walk away, keep going. Leaving this broken, hurting kid behind. Out of sight, out of mind.
But they’re never really out of mind, are they? My brother and Lee and the girl with the dragging hair… their faces haunt my dreams, their last words whisper and swirl. Like they were meant just for this exact moment.
My brother: You’re a good person.
Lee: Please! Don’t leave me!
And the girl whose escape went wrong: Only silence.
I look back down at Jin, notice just how white and sharp his face is. Like marble. Like the silent, dragged girl. Like death.
I can’t save them all. But Jin… Jin is special. And I don’t think I can handle another ghost.
My body doesn’t feel like mine anymore as I slide my arms under Jin’s back. The stick of blood burns my bare fingers. My insides twist with its scent of salt and iron.
My thoughts are spinning, trying hard to stay in the now as I lift the small boy to my chest, careful not to nudge the knife still lodged into his side. He’s lighter than I thought. Almost nothing. No wonder he’s so fast.
The Old South Gate is choked with people, running errands and making the most of their morning hours. They duck in and out of Hak Nam, hair slick with wet, shoulders flecked with hail. The storm has died down since I left the roof. Pellets—most no bigger than pastry sprinkles—line the street gutters and sidewalk gaps like cake icing. So thick they look like snowdrifts.
I keep to the edge of the street. Most who pass don’t even give us a second glance. Those who do simply frown and walk on. Bloody vagrants—just another part of Hak Nam’s status quo.
The cannons sit, taunting me with rust and invisible barriers. Visions of handcuffs and life sentences. Can’t stop. Don’t stop. I breathe air like courage and keep walking past the ancient arsenal, under the wooden gable, and into the strange, fresh layer of white.
I thought it would be different, the first time I stepped back into my hometown. I envisioned my return from exile as a loud, busy thing. Not a quiet, unnoticed slip into the streets.
Now that I’m actually out of Hak Nam, I don’t know what to do. I stand here, getting tap-tap-tapped by the last of the hail, and realize that I expected someone to stop me. I never really planned to get this far.
I can’t take Jin to a hospital. There will be too many questions, too much bureaucracy and paperwork. They’ll let the boy bleed to death before he’s processed. Plus, there’s the possibility of cops. (Tempting fate is one thing, walking straight into its jaws is quite another.)
There’s only one place I can go. One place where both of us will be safe. At least for a little bit.
The taxi driver I wave down is an old man with silver hair and wide, ugly glasses. He stares like an owl, black eyes tightening with fear when he realizes what I’m holding.
I manage to pull out a wad of cash. It’s a lot. My month’s stipend—meant for food and an apartment. Way more than he’d make in a week of taxi runs.
“No questions.” I wave the notes at him. “Do you know where Tai Ping Hill is?”
It’s a stupid question, because every citizen of Seng Ngoi knows where its richest neighborhood sits. But I find I’m usually more prone to stupid questions when I’m holding dying people.
For a moment the cabdriver looks like he’s about to slam his foot onto the gas pedal and put as much distance between us as his engine can manage. But his eyes have latched onto the cash. The pack of bills I’m holding is thick enough to convince him otherwise.
“What address?” He waves me in, trying not to make a face at how much blood I’m smearing across his leather seats.
“Fifty-five.” I toss the bills to the front and look down at Jin. His skin is as ghastly as the hail mounds outside. I can feel, just barely, his chest shuddering. Up. Down.
The cabdriver mutters to himself, words I can’t completely hear over the chipper buzz of the radio. A woman’s silky voice is sliding through the speakers, telling us this is the coldest, wettest winter Seng Ngoi has had in over a decade. I listen to her report and then some song by a popular, peppy girl band as the cab wheels its way to Tai Ping Hill.
Whenever I think about this place, I imagine it in the height of summer. When the hibiscuses burst into color—bright patches of red, yellow, and white lining the road up the hill. The roadside is so thick with evergreens and bamboo stalks you can pretend you’re standing in a forest and not on a hill in the middle of a thriving metropolis. I think of the cicadas, how they clung to the red pine branches and chirped long into the night.
I’m so busy imagining how this place should be that when the cab stops, I’m startled. Through the fog-etched doodles on the window, I see it: the gate. It looks exactly the same, towering iron spikes set at the end of a long drive. Flanked by stone columns. Number fifty-five.
It feels like the hail that fell outside is tearing into my chest as I stare. This place looks unchanged. Untouched by my absence. But there’s something different.… Like the bars are meant to keep me out.
“You getting out?” the cabdriver almost shouts, and I remember the urgency of everything. My hoodie is soaked through, heavy with blood that is and isn’t Jin’s.
My arms ache with the boy’s weight as I climb out of the cab. Like he suddenly gained thirty pounds during the car ride. The taxi spins away, its tires spraying gravel and hail in their haste.
I trudge over to the keypad, hoping the entry code is still the same. My forefinger leaves smudges of blood against the sterling buttons. But I hear a beep and the churn of chains. The gate tugs apart. I move through before it’s open all the way, leaving shallow pink steps in the hail drifts.
With so much still and white around it, the mansion looks like something from a movie set. It’s too large and perfect with its ceramic roof tiles and high walls. I blink all the way to the wide, snaking veranda. Expecting it to disappear any minute.
&nb
sp; I don’t have to knock. The double doors swing wide. The man behind it looks distinguished, older. His hair is peppered with far more gray than it was the last time I saw him standing on this veranda.
“Dai Shing!” His stare centers on Jin, crumpled in the crook of my arms. His skin goes white as chalk, the way it did on the night that changed everything.
“Hello, Father.”
The water is scalding, pouring over my hands and burning the crevices between my fingers. Jin’s blood washes down the marble sink—first scarlet, then a lighter, rosewater pink. I watch it swirl away, leaving the basin as white as before. Like it was never there.
This washroom looks the same, with its neat wood floors and the rice-paper dividers lined with ancient calligraphy. Everything here looks the same: the foyer, the living room, the rock garden. Like my two years in Hak Nam were just some lucid nightmare.
I glance down and realize that my hands are still curled under the stinging water. When I pull them out, they’re raw pink and shivering, like momiji leaves caught in an autumn gale.
I shrug out of my hoodie—still heavy with unseen red—and hold it gingerly. Everything here feels too clean. Or maybe I’m too filthy. My faint pink footprints on the wood floor suggest the latter.
In the end, I toss my sweatshirt into the sink, where the faucet is still spewing. Water bubbles up around it, the same color as the hard cinnamon candies my grandfather used to slip me when I was a boy.
“Dai Shing?”
I look over to the sliding door. Its copper lock gleams impossibly bright—the kind of luster you’d never find in Hak Nam.
“Is that you? Really?” The voice behind the door is my mother’s. She has the same accent as Osamu, but it’s softer coming from her lips. If I close my eyes, I can imagine her face: eyebrows arched too perfectly, like a master calligrapher brushed them onto her skin; cheeks pale and powdered; lips painted the color of subtle, dark wine. She’ll be biting them, the way she does when she gets nervous.
I reach for the latch, let the door slide open. There she stands, the mother I remember. She steps into the light of the washroom, and I see time’s mark. More lines and creases by her eyes. The black of her hair is false, a darkness created by chemicals and dye. It’s only when I study her that I feel like two years really have passed.
“Oh, Dai Shing. You’re home.” Her voice is tragic and light. Her arms stretch out, thinner than I remember—just skin, bone, and blue veins like streets.
I back away from her embrace. “Don’t… don’t touch me.”
“But…”
“There’s… there’s blood.” The explanation shakes out of my lips.
Her gaze travels down, like she’s seeing the bloodstained mess of my T-shirt for the first time. And the scar. Still there, always there. Bulging and bright. A quiver passes over her face, rests on her lips. I know she’s thinking of the same night. How the red on my shirt was tenfold. Some of it mine.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers. Her arms wrap around me: blood, stains, and all. “You’re my son.”
The only one left… I swallow back this thought, think instead about how I’m ruining her Gucci blouse. Sure enough, when she finally pulls back, there’s a watery pink mark across the white silk.
She doesn’t seem to notice. There are tears in her eyes as she stares at me. “Why did you come back?”
That’s not the question she’s really asking, because the answer is obvious. It’s splattered on my shirt and stretched out in my parents’ guest suite, trying not to bleed to death. What my mother can’t understand, what she really wants to know, is why I would risk it.
I don’t think I can tell her. Partly because I can’t cram it into words, but mostly because I’m not so sure myself. The morning’s adrenaline is gone—taking with it all the sharp clarity of emergency.
All I know is that I couldn’t, wouldn’t, let Jin die. I’m not the ruthless criminal Tsang thinks I am, the one I’ve pretended to be. I won’t add another body to my count.
“Is the doctor here yet?” I have no idea how much time has passed in this steam-filled washroom.
“He’s with the boy now.”
“Good.”
“I’ll go get some clothes from your old room.” My mother slides the door open wider. Steam slips out, reminding me that the world outside is clear. Cold. “And I’ll ask Emiyo to bring you some tea.”
She walks away before I can answer. Before I can remember and remind her that my old clothes won’t fit anymore. Too much time and too many inches have stretched out since I last lived here.
This revelation echoes through me. Painting every corner of every room I walk through. I’m changed. I don’t belong here anymore. This isn’t my world.
All my time in Hak Nam—all those years standing on the edge of the rooftops, standing and staring—I’d been wishing, longing, striving for this place. Or so I thought.
Coming home isn’t the answer. It doesn’t bring me peace.
So what is my freedom? My escape? What will fix me?
The door to the guest suite is shut. Emiyo has already mopped up the blood. The floorboards are still slick with wet. I never knew what clean smelled like before Hak Nam, but now I can’t ignore the sting of chemicals and lemons in my nose.
I stand in the last spots of wet and listen. For words, sounds… anything that might tell me if my friend is alive or dead. My ears are rewarded with a mess of footsteps and sharp orders. I can’t make sense of them; they’re jumbled, full of terms I don’t understand. They never slow, the frenzy leaks under the door, mixes with the lemons. I can’t stand still, so I pace, start walking circles around the sitting room. My fingers drum anxiously over the dark stains on my jeans.
My mother never comes with clean clothes, but Emiyo appears after a bit. A tray of green tea balances in her practiced hands.
“Master Dai?” She clears her throat and the teacups rattle. It’s the set Mother brought from her home country. Fired in kilns, painted with visions of lily pads and lotus blossoms.
“Please, just Dai,” I correct her. Even when I was younger, the term master set me on edge. Now it just feels like an absurdity.
Emiyo simply smiles at me, like she knows better but won’t dare to say it. “Your mother sent these down.”
Tucked under her arm is a set of clothes. A white button-down dress shirt and slacks. Clearly my father’s.
The maid places the tray down and holds the bundle of clothes out to me. Her eyes flick away and I follow them. In all my pacing, I streaked up the floor again.
“Thanks, Emiyo.”
“It’s good to have you home, sir.” Our maid bows. “We missed you.”
She’s being so nice. They all are. With their hugs and smiles and fresh clothes. Acting like nothing ever happened. Forgotten and forgiven. I wish I could look at myself with the same rose-colored glasses.
Emiyo bustles out of the room before I can manage a reply. I finally allow myself to stand still, hands clutched tight around the expensive dress shirt. I’m just contemplating putting it on when the door to the suite slides open. The man striding out is immediately familiar: Dr. Kwan, our family physician. His sleeves are rolled all the way above his ashy elbows. The rest of the shirt is almost as stained as mine.
Dr. Kwan pauses in front of me, doing a double take before he asks, “Where is your father?”
“I don’t know.” I hadn’t seen him since he rushed away to dial Dr. Kwan. But right now that’s the least of my concerns. “How’s Jin?”
He sighs, like he’s inconvenienced by the question. “She’s doing better. Lost a good deal of blood, but I got her stitched up. The knife missed all her major organs. It was a clean cut. I’ve already called the hospital for some blood bags. She’ll need transfusions.”
“Oh good. I—” The doctor’s pronoun choices catch up with me. Barrel over, drill into my thick skull. “She?”
I realize my mouth is hanging open, but I don’t care enough to shu
t it.
She. Her. It takes another minute for the words to sink in.
There’s no way…
Maybe I say this out loud. Or maybe the doctor reads my face. “You didn’t know? She went to pretty good lengths to hide it. But yes. She’s definitely a female.”
Jin’s a girl.
And here I was thinking I was the one with all the secrets.
9 DAYS
MEI YEE
I cannot sleep. Every fiber, every muscle of my body, is still full, floating high with window thoughts. When the boy left, my mind went with him, dashing through imaginary streets, all the way home.
I’m running down the dirt road, past fields and fields of grass as bright and green as a liquor bottle. Past the stray dogs that beg at farmers’ steps for clumps of dried rice. Past the distant violet ridges of the mountains. I pass my father—back bent and splotched with sweat—knee-deep in the rice field’s murky waters. I pass my mother—hanging laundry to dry under the breadth of her ginkgo tree, arms mottled dark with storm cloud bruises. I go all the way until I reach my sister, so we can be together again. Just as she wished.
Would I go home if I found a way to get past these bars? Or would I go see the sea? The expanding-chamber possibilities are terrifyingly endless, just like its waters. The thought of being out in the world—alone—is enough to make me stop breathing.
But would I be alone? There’s the boy and what he said: I want you to see it, too. Something about his voice, his eyes, makes me think I’m not the only one whose insides are smoldering.
But I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. And the longer he’s gone, the more these things start slipping, the way a dream fades with each waking hour of the morning.
My restless body is twisting, turning under every one of these thoughts when the humming starts. It’s like the noise a spirit would make—soft and keening. It curls under my door, calls me to where she is.