The Walled City

by Ryan Graudin

  I slip the glass back into my pocket.

  “Get Sing out of here!” Longwai yells at Nam. I’ve never seen him like this, so angry his face is flushed full of autumn colors.

  “But where—”

  “I don’t give a damn!” Longwai roars. “Put a bullet in her head for all I care! And fetch me another syringe while you’re at it.”

  Nam grabs Sing by the hair and starts to drag. The girl’s face shifts into a violent, ugly thing—as if she’s possessed. From the way she moves, I could almost believe it: kicking, clawing, screaming, twisting. Nam’s grip on her hair slides free and she’s off. Out the door faster than a mouse.

  Now. The time is now.

  My hand wraps around the glass shard again, pulls up, and out to strike.

  “What is all this?!”

  A new roar causes my arm to freeze, midair. It isn’t Longwai—the expression on his face is set and silent. He stares behind me, at the shadows crowding the doorway, blocking all ways to freedom.

  For once I’m thankful this glass is so small. It hides perfectly beneath my knuckles, betraying nothing. I hold it tight and look around.

  Osamu. My Plan B. Jin Ling did her job.

  The ambassador is in familiar garb. I’ve seen him wearing the same style of tuxedo since I was too young to really know who he was. What always stood out to me were his gold cuff links, how they twinkled under the torchlight in our rock garden as he sipped cocktails and flirted with every woman there. Including my mother.

  He doesn’t recognize me—I doubt he even sees me at this point. Osamu’s anger is bullish. So focused he didn’t even remember to remove his shoes at the entranceway. His shiny leather oxfords stamp into the reeking room, shaking every floorboard.

  “What’s going on, Longwai?”

  “Brothel business,” the drug lord bristles, but the yell has left his voice. I notice his free hand is tucked to his side. The one his gun is hidden on. “None of it concerns you.”

  I’m so close to Mei Yee I can hear her breath changing. It gets faster in a way that the threat of Longwai or a heroin needle couldn’t spur. It’s the closeness of him—the way a rabbit’s heart explodes under the stare of a hunter.

  The ambassador’s eyes travel up her arm, taking in Longwai’s fingers still on her wrist, the bulging vein, and Fung’s knots. “Mei Yee is my concern. I thought I made it very clear to you that she wasn’t to be touched.”

  “I’ve respected your wishes for as long as it’s been convenient. That time has long run out. Lest you forget, Osamu, I’m the one who owns this brothel and these girls. Mei Yee included.”

  The men stare at each other, like two silverback gorillas facing off on a single piece of territory. Ready to tear each other apart. A dramatic nature-show moment in the flesh.

  Mei Yee shakes beside me. I wish hard, hard, hard that I had my gun.

  Osamu reaches out, wraps his hand around Mei Yee’s wrist. Their skin is so different—hers white as snow, his covered with age spots and wiry hairs.

  “Name your price,” he says, and I think of all the many bruises I saw on Mei Yee’s skin that night at the window. How they match his touch exactly. I don’t mean to, but my grip grows tighter, pushes so my skin is torn apart by the glass.

  “It’s not about the money anymore, Osamu.” Longwai’s voice is both hard and peeling, like callused skin. “She’s up to something. Keeping secrets. I want to know what it is.”

  For a long moment all is stillness. There’s the quick avalanche of Mei Yee’s breaths. The old woman in her clingy silk, taking everything in like a spider on a web. And my hand tight on glass.

  “Secrets?” Osamu is looking around, eyes wide and clearing, like a man who just woke up. Glimpse by glimpse he swallows the room: the filthy pile of rags, Longwai’s gun, Mei Yee, me.…

  And then his eyes dart. Back and forth. Back and forth like one of those plastic table tennis balls, ricocheting between Mei Yee and me.

  “I see how it is,” he says softly.

  I feel the heat of my own blood swimming across my palm.

  “It’s information you want?” Osamu’s voice is a lake. Placid and calm on the surface, plunging to unknown depths. “You’re not going to get it from Mei Yee.”

  His eyes set like stone on my face. “This is the one you want. Sun Dai Shing. What is the heir of Sun Industries doing flirting with the likes of the Brotherhood? I’m sure he has more than enough secrets to keep you entertained for the rest of your miserably short career.”

  Goddamn Osamu. Not a very good Plan B.

  All the heat and threat that Longwai was pouring onto the ambassador shift, unload like dragon fire on my shoulders. The drug lord lets go of Mei Yee and draws his gun in a fluid, lethal, mongoose movement. The barrel stares at me—hard and unforgiving.

  Game over.

  He pulls the trigger.

  JIN LING

  I can’t keep up. The ambassador is gone. Vanishing into the Walled City before I can release my seat belt. Even that’s hard. My right arm bursts with pain. Weakness. There’s a dampness in Hiro’s shirt; my side’s bleeding again. Tears of pain fill my eyes. Make everything dazzle. The lights, the darkness, the flaring red lanterns of New Year’s. Everything is shining. Mixing together.

  I feel done. But my sister’s face, her voice, is the clearest it’s been in years. I see her smiling behind the steam-wisps of our weakened tea. I hear the lullabies she sang over me after Father’s thrashings.

  I think of Mei Yee and get out of the car. Leave the stink of rich cologne and leather. I’m walking, dragging through the Old South Gate. My walk feels like a twisted dream, into the heart of this unreal city. Through the last two years of my life: The sewer grate where I made my very first camp. The shops I stole from, the stoops I haunted. The window I used to peer into every few mornings to watch cartoons. The alley where I rescued a gray kitten from his vagrant tormentors. The second alley, where I rescued him again. Mrs. Pak’s restaurant and Mr. Lam’s junk store. Mr. Wong’s dentist chair. The hidden corners where I pitched my tarp. And on. And on.

  Over soon. It will all be over soon.

  The gun hangs heavy in my jacket pocket. All six bullets weigh my steps, make each foot forward seem more impossible than the next. I keep going. Because that’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done.

  Only this time—this crucial, final time—I don’t think I have the strength.

  My boots plow over puddles of ice. Step, step, pain. I stop. Lean against the apothecary’s door. Try to focus on the dozens of jars with dried roots and bits of animals through the bars. My vision is double—smears of light and color and dark.

  I’m almost there. One more turn and I’ll be at the mouth of the dragon’s den. It can’t be more than twenty steps, but it might as well be a completely different country.

  An empty can, riddled with rust holes, clatters down the street. Causes my neck to snap up, alert. I can’t see much. Just the fog of my breath and the dark. Blurring together.

  “There he is!” someone shouts, and I hear footsteps.

  One by one, I see them. They come from all directions. A ring of boys and rags and knives. Their faces are pale and whittled. Carved by flickering lights. So sharp and bony that I’m not even sure they’re human. Maybe they’re demons. Evil spirits come to swallow me down into the fires of the afterlife. To devour my soul for what I did to the jade dealer. To Kuen.

  My hand fumbles, sliding from the doorframe down toward my pocket. Toward the revolver.

  But there are more than six of them. Even counting through my double vision.

  One of the boys comes into focus. He’s squinting at me, lips screwed to the side. His blade is a sick shade of silver, slashing the night in front of him. “You sure it’s him? Looks different to me.”

  “Got new clothes is all. Nice ones, too!” a voice calls from my left.

  “Ho Wai’s right,” another boy says. “That’s him. The one that gutted Kuen.”

>   The boy directly in front of me steps closer. His knife moves with him; its edge hovers dangerously close to my throat. “Well, well, Jin.” A grin splits across his sharp, starved face. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  MEI YEE

  Longwai’s pistol points at Dai. I want to scream, but I can’t find my voice. Or maybe I do scream and I just can’t hear. The sound of the bullet leaving the gun pulses everywhere. Nothing—not the filthy gaps in the floorboards, not the makeup caked in the corners of Mama-san’s eyes, not the aching, bursting vessels of my heart—escapes it.

  So many things happen at once.

  Dai is falling, falling, falling down. He’s on the floor. Not moving. The floorboards under him seep out, stretch into a color like my curtain, like my nails. My ears hum and ring and scream, This can’t be right. Longwai steps over the body, the pistol is pointing down now. This time it’s aimed at Dai’s head.

  The ambassador’s fingers are around my wrist. He’s pressing the way he was before, breaking things unseen, calling up colors and hurt.

  But he’s not just pressing. He’s pulling, too, tugging me away from Longwai’s gun. Away from Dai. He yanks my wrist so hard my joint pops and sparkles pain. Sparks of light shiver like tadpoles across my eyes, follow me all the way out the door, down the hall, and into the lounge.

  I could’ve touched him. We were that close.

  “Hurry up.” The ambassador drags me through this nightmare of smoke and couches. And I don’t know how to fight him. Not when there was so much blood soaking the floor and I knew that Dai was there for me. No matter what…

  Sing didn’t make it far. She’s on the floor of the lounge, her face pressed hard into the rug. Longwai’s men are so busy with her that they don’t even notice as the ambassador drags me through the room.

  But someone in the lounge does notice. I stumble forward, watching Yin Yu watch me. The wrist I slammed into the door handle hangs limp at her side. Bangs fringe over her eyes, and I’m too far away to see the expression on her face. I can’t tell if she’s sorry or sad or completely vindicated. She doesn’t move as the ambassador takes me away.

  We’re out of the lounge, down the south hall, heading toward the door. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for days, stepping out and away from this place. Only the fingers on my skin were gentler, as warm and endless and electric as his eyes.

  We could’ve touched.

  And then there’s a noise that could end all other noises. Again it tears through everything: the winter air, the hallway’s floorboards, my chest. It makes the ambassador jump even though we both knew it was coming.

  The second gunshot rattles through my ears like cicada wings—over and over and over. Killing again and again and again. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if that could stop the noise. But all I see is Dai crumpled on the floor with Longwai’s gun at his head. No chance of running.

  “Let’s go.” The ambassador keeps tugging, as if I’m some stubborn donkey yanking against its halter. “Longwai might change his mind now that he’s done with the boy.”

  Done with the boy. His words freeze my bones. As if the air whistling through the front door is actually cold enough to fuse my muscles together. I’m more ice than girl.

  “What? Sad? Don’t try to hide it. I saw the way you two were looking at each other!” The ambassador’s hand crushes harder with every word, as if he can squeeze me back into submission.

  “You killed him.…” I don’t mean to say it, but the thoughts slip out. Shock words as sheet white and shaking as I am.

  “I just saved your life,” the ambassador hisses. Pain shoots through my wrist like a thousand needles jammed at once. “Yours for his. You’re mine. No one is going to stand in my way. Not Longwai, not Sun Dai Shing, not even you.”

  I wish he were wrong. That the tender blooms of courage and fight that have been poking out of the soil of my soul for the past few days hadn’t just been torched at the sound of Dai’s death. I wish I could stop him. Stop everything that’s happened in the past few hours.

  But some things just weren’t meant to be. No matter how hard and how fierce you wish them.

  JIN LING

  My whole hand is numb as it dives into the pocket of Hiro’s old jacket. I must be touching the gun, but it’s impossible to tell. My fingertips are clumsy and slurring. The way my father always was after bottle number three.

  All the boys are closer now. As if they’re the wheel and I’m the hub. Their knives could be spokes. Pointed against the jacket’s vinyl.

  “Where’d you get those clothes?” The vagrant they call Ho Wai edges in. Looks me over.

  “Probably the same place he got the boots!” the center boy says. “Now shut up!”

  “You shut up, Ka Ming!” Ho Wai barks back.

  I can feel the gun now. The boys—Ho Wai and Ka Ming—aren’t paying attention to me anymore. They’re facing off. Like a pair of beta dogs. Putting on their best displays of snap and snarl for the group.

  I take a breath of damp air. My sight is settling, coming together. There are eight of them—flanked around me like a half moon. Eight knives to six bullets and an unsteady hand.

  Not good odds. Best just to answer them.

  “I got these clothes from a house on Tai Ping Hill,” I say.

  Ka Ming and Ho Wai stop glaring at each other. All eight pairs of eyes are on me now.

  “No way.” Another boy to the left shakes his head. “He’s lying!”

  “How do you think I’m still alive?” I shrug. The vinyl of Hiro’s old jacket sings friction. “Dai took me there. It’s where he’s from.”

  “Tai Ping Hill? The rich people’s neighborhood?” Ho Wai frowns. His knife lowers just a hair. “Dai’s from there?”

  “Yeah…” I draw out my words. Let my mind work. If the boys were set on killing me, I’d be a corpse by now. Left to rot. But these boys… they don’t have Kuen’s claw and hate. They’re just starving faces. Looking for a way out.

  “Turns out he’s a rich kid. Has a huge house and all that.” I think of the cash Dai stuffed into my pockets. I wish I hadn’t given it all to the cabbie. My own money in the orange envelope is sitting in the corner of Dai’s apartment. Far from here. “And lots more clothes where these came from. You let me go and I can make sure you get some.”

  Wordless questions are thrown across the ring of vagrants. Glances bounce between knives and stone-cold faces. Most of them are aimed at Ho Wai and Ka Ming. It seems the spot Kuen left is too large to be filled by a single boy.

  “How do we know you’re telling the truth? That you aren’t just gonna run off?” Ka Ming’s knife slashes the air to each of his syllables. Reinforcing every point.

  I don’t have the energy to come up with any more excuses. Any more lies. “You don’t.”

  Ka Ming and Ho Wai look at each other. Stares sharper than razors. Thinking of all the reasons my life is worth keeping. Worth snuffing.

  Another, smaller voice pipes up behind me. Bon, the kid I almost stabbed. “C’mon, Ho Wai. It’s not like we actually liked Kuen anyway. I think Jin’s telling the truth. Dai did take him out of the city.… I followed him that day. He’s gotta have money.”

  Ka Ming’s arms cross over his chest, his blade no longer flirting with my throat. “Clothes are nice. But not as nice as cash.”

  “I say we keep ’im hostage!” Ho Wai barks. “Find Dai and get ’im to give us some cash to keep his little friend alive. That way it’s a guarantee, if Jin’s telling the truth.”

  Dai—my throat grows thick as I think of him, somewhere in those glowing red halls, risking his life to save my sister. He needs his revolver. He needs me.

  I don’t have time for this.

  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 l
ines 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 cuff links on the ambassador’s suit. As sharp as the daggers in their hands.