I’m in a nightmare.
“Small hong-fist double toe jump!”
That nightmare that every student knows.
“Yin-yang health-form triple-stamp double jump!”
The one where you are taking an examination on things that you’ve never studied.
“Monkey-fist triple-scissor heel backflip!”
And everyone can see your wrong answers.
Except it’s not a nightmare. It’s wu liu class.
“Thousand Cleaver Goddess Sliding Across a Placid Sea!” shouts Sensei Madame Liao.
As all the girls start doing this move, which I’ve never even heard of before, I’m realizing that the wu liu moves I learned in Shin only constitute a tiny fraction of what most of the students here already know. And Supreme Sensei Master Jio announced that we’ll be doing Lady Ming’s Hand-Mirror. My opponent and I will take turns copying each other’s moves back and forth in an ever-lengthening string of different moves, until one of us makes a mistake. I’m never going to learn all these moves in time. I bow to Sensei Madame Liao to request permission to visit the toilet.
I leave, go in a stall, and close the door.
It’s not just the idea of having to copy moves that I might never have seen before during a Motivation. It’s also the pressure that this training is putting on my skate blades. I run a finger along the edges to check for any damage. Luckily, there aren’t any nicks. I’m relieved to see the spring formed by the dragon tail curling up and under my heel is undamaged. I was worried with all those jumps. Sixty-three jumps this morning! Blades cost as much as three months’ rice. In Shin, we have to make the blades last a year. The rich students here at Pearl Famous never have to worry about such things and learned moves using dozens and dozens of steps each. They didn’t have to limit themselves to moves that emphasize gliding and their own center of gravity to propel them forward to conserve steps.
Suki said I won the first Motivation because I was lucky. And in a way, she was right. It didn’t involve combat, only racing on rails and leaping. Combat is what really eats up steps. And I could use whatever steps I wanted instead of having to copy moves that I’ve never seen before but that everyone else already knows how to do.
How can I face this Motivation? I don’t know if I can even face the rest of today’s class. Maybe if I sit in here long enough, class will end and they’ll all leave without me.
Stop it, Peasprout. I straighten up and collect my emotions. So it’s going to be difficult. That’s nothing new to me. I need to go back and show those Pearlians that Shinians don’t give up.
I reach into the box of paper wipes in the stall to wipe my nose. Instead of squares of white paper, there is a stack of something strangely shaped and colorful. I take one out.
Ten thousand years of stomach gas! It’s one of those paper dolls of me dressed like an assassin with the words Peony-Level Brightstar Chen Peasprout, the Stealthiest Skater in Shin! printed in gold logograms above my head, stamped with the imperial seal. Who put them here? It must have been Suki or one of her friends.
I snatch the papers dolls out of the box, claw them to tatters, and throw them all down the toilet.
As I watch the dolls disappear, I realize just how devious Suki’s stunt is. It’s not just the insult—it’s the implication. Stealthiest Skater in Shin. As stealthy as a spy. Just like Suki accused me of being in front of all the other girls.
I think back to Suki whispering, “It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to look like it’s true.”
I go into the other stalls. Every single one of them is stocked with a thick stack of the paper dolls. She’s probably placed them in the girls’ bathrooms throughout the whole campus.
When I finally come out of the toilet, all the girls are kneeling on the pearl and looking at me.
“Well, hurry along,” says Sensei Madame Liao. “You’re the last one.”
It seems that while I was in the toilet, she tested the girls individually. In front of everyone.
Doi looks at me, expressionless, but Suki smiles her evil smile, her tongue poking into her cheek.
I face Sensei Madame Liao, ready to see what move I have to try to copy. She says, “Open-palm blossom foot single-toe jump.” She performs the move. I’ve never seen it before, but I’m relieved because it’s just a simple half spin with feet together, one skate extended farther than the other, and hands open for balance. She’s being easy on me.
“Use your stealthy powers!” says a girl. A giggle passes through the crowd.
The girl who interrupted me was not Suki. Has everyone else already seen the paper dolls?
“Silence!” cries Sensei Madame Liao. “Begin, Chen Peasprout!”
I attempt the blossom double jump, or whatever it is. As soon as I land, everyone bursts into laughter.
I must have failed on my very first move. A move that the other students have probably been doing since they were seven years old. Even worse, I thought I did it right. Are you supposed to land on both skates, not just one? I’m so ignorant of these moves; I don’t even know when I’m doing them wrong.
Class ends and the other girls sit, unscrew and snap the blades off their skates, and toss them into the trash bin. They take out new blades from packs of six and fasten them on their skates.
The amount of money that all those perfectly good blades they are throwing away cost could have fed our whole wu liu temple back in Shin for years. A memory of Nun Hou comes to mind, during the bad winter when I was eight, in the kitchen, scraping the grains left in the bowls when she thought no one was looking, after she had told me she wasn’t hungry and given me her rice.
It’s not just wasteful. It’s offensive. If being rich means skating through life so blindly, then I’m glad I grew up poor.
I wait until almost all the girls are gone and the rest aren’t looking. I paw through the bin to see if any of the blades will fit on my skates. The sockets connecting the blade to the boot are all differently shaped. I’d have to buy an entire new boot, and not just one but two, to match.
I look up to find that Sensei Madame Liao has been watching me. Heat flushes into my cheeks. So this is what it’s come to. Me, the greatest skater in Shin, picking through the trash of these Pearlian students. How stupid I was to think that I could find my way here, let alone achieve top ranking and get the lead in the Drift Season Pageant.
She skates to me and says, “There is much that you never learned.”
“I can learn all those moves before the second Motivation.”
“That’s impossible.”
Her words hit me like a stone fist.
She continues, “But you don’t need to learn the moves. You only need to learn how to copy what you see when you see it.”
“How is that any different?”
“Those birds that Sensei Madame Phoenix uses for her newspapers. They can sing the whole ‘Pearlian New Year’s Song.’ They can repeat all the words in sequence without understanding what the words mean. It’s like copying a sequence of logograms upside down, even if you can’t understand the words. You just have to learn to make your mind bend enough to hold these new forms.”
“How?”
“Chi.”
I nod to indicate my understanding, and Sensei Madame Liao skates away.
I have no idea what she means. Command of Chi is essential to wu liu, but how will it help me win the Motivation? Chi? Logograms? Birds memorizing “The Pearlian New Year’s Song”— Wait, that’s it! She’s talking about Memory Palace meditation!
I skate off to the Skybrary at the Conservatory of Literature to research it.
I learned about Memory Palace meditation during my studies, but I never had the chance to read a book like the Treatise on Chi Practice and the Visual Music of the Memory Palace that I found in the Skybrary. It must be a very advanced book because I had to execute two third-gate nightingale loops to reach the shelf where it was stored.
The book teaches how to turn information you want to remember into things such as songs, the layout of a house, silhouettes, and other patterns in your mind, in order to train your memory to memorize long sequences of details instantly. I need to practice these meditation techniques every free hour between now and the second Motivation.
That afternoon, I skate to the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness filled with hope. I’ve brought sheets of paper and a charcoal pencil. I’ll write a sequence of random numbers on one side and then, after meditating, see if I can reproduce it on the other side of the paper. Luckily, almost no one ever uses the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness.
I arrive and sit in one of the squares near the center of the eight rows of eight and begin to focus to start my Chi practice. Just as the gong in the clock pagoda begins to toll the hour before evenmeal, someone comes racing in.
Doi.
We both stiffen. She has not so much as looked at me since the horrible class with Sensei Madame Yao.
“What are you doing here?” she demands.
“I’m trying to meditate,” I reply. Who is she to be taking that tone?
“Meditate in your dormitory chamber then,” she says. “I need to use the squares.”
“There are sixty-three other—”
“I need all of them.”
“I got here first!”
She turns toward the clock pagoda as the gong finishes sounding the strike for the hour before evenmeal. Her face bunches with urgency and anger. She opens her mouth.
“Please,” she says. A softness comes into her face that reminds me that this is the sister of the boy who was kind to Cricket.
I shouldn’t have to, but I get up. However, I don’t leave entirely; I walk to one side of the square. I want to see why she needs the whole place to herself.
When she understands that I’m not going to leave the square while she does whatever she’s going to do, she begins to scowl but then covers it with a smile and a bow. She says. “Forgive me; you don’t have to leave, but could I please ask you to stand near the entrance to the square?”
I skate to the entrance. Doi stands with her back to me in the lower left corner of the grid. She stands there gathering her focus with her hands cupped in front of her as if about to receive a thrown ball. Her Chi practice must be very advanced, because she finds her focus also immediately. Maybe I can learn something from her.
She steps to the next square and stands for a moment, then moves to the next square. Sometimes she makes a cross with her skate in the sand of the square before moving on to the next square. She quickly proceeds through the eight columns of eight squares. When she is finished, she goes to the end farthest from the entrance where I stand and looks back for a moment at the pattern. She seems satisfied with what she sees. She kicks the frame, making the sand in the squares shudder and clearing the marks she made in some of the squares.
When she has completed this lucky times and is about to kick the frame again, we hear shouts of excitement from outside the square.
“There’s been a letter orb! From Shin!” It’s the girl with the honking voice. “It’s probably from the hostages! There’s going to be sooo much trouble!”
Suki will find some way to use this against me. I can’t let Doi see this affecting me, though, because I’d just look guilty. However, Doi seems more upset than I am. Is it because people are blaming her father for putting the mayor’s sons in this position by sending them to Shin as goodwill ambassadors? Doi abruptly skates out of the square after Honking Girl.
I try to go back to practicing my Memory Palace meditation, but I’m too distracted to do any real Chi work before evenmeal. I’m about to kick the frame of the boxes to clear the squares of sand when I notice something. The pattern of squares that have a mark in them forms a strange picture. It looks like a box with ears and little feet. I draw it on the back of the paper that I brought to practice number memorization on. It looks like the form of a logogram, but unlike any I’ve ever seen. What could it mean? As I slip the paper back into my pocket, Doi comes racing back in. She frowns at the sand, then at me. She kicks the frame and clears the pattern from the squares.
This must be something related to preparation for the second Motivation. Some secret technique that she doesn’t want her rival to learn. That’s why she was so angry to find me here. But it seems like there was some time limit on it. I recall that certain wu liu maneuvers can only be done at a certain hour. Doi was pressed for time, so she performed it in front of me even though she clearly wasn’t happy about it.
I have no idea what it means. All I know is that somehow, this holds the secret to how I can make it through the second Motivation. And I’m going to find a way to make Doi teach it to me.
I know the key to convincing Doi is to present myself as an ally against Suki. But to do that, I need to find out why they hate each other so much, so I can decide the best way to insert myself between them. I need to find out what happened between them at Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters.