I’m not a good person.
If people need proof, I’ll show them my scar, tell them my body count.
Even when I was a young boy, trouble latched onto me like a magnet. I pounded through life at volume eleven, leaving a trail of broken things: vases, noses, cars, hearts, brain cells. Side effects of reckless living.
My mother always tried to reason goodness into me. Her favorite phrases were “Oh, Dai Shing, why can’t you be more like your brother?” and “You’ll never get a good wife if you keep acting this way!” She always said these on repeat, trying not to let her cheeks turn purple, while my brother stood behind her, his body language the exact dictionary entry for I told you so: arms crossed, nose scrunched, thick eyebrows piled together like puppies. I always told him his face would get stuck that way if he kept tattling: an adulthood damned by unibrow. It never really seemed to stop him.
My father’s chosen tactic was fear. He always set his briefcase down, yanked his tie loose, and told me about this place: the Hak Nam Walled City. A recipe of humanity’s darkest ingredients—thieves, whores, murderers, addicts—all mashed into six and a half acres. Hell on earth, he called it. A place so ruthless even the sunlight won’t enter. If I kept messing up, my father said, he’d drive me down there himself. Dump me off in the dens of drug lords and thieves so I could learn my lesson.
My father tried his best to scare me, but even all his stories couldn’t cram the goodness into me. I ended up here anyway. The irony of the whole thing would make me laugh. But laughter is something that belongs to my life before this. In the shiny skyscrapers and shopping malls and taxi-tangle of Seng Ngoi.
Seven hundred and thirty. That’s how many days I’ve been trapped in this cesspool of humanity.
Eighteen. That’s how many days I have left to find a way out.
I’ve got a plan—an elaborate, risky-as-hell plan—but in order for it to work, I need a runner. A fast one.
I’m not even halfway done with my bowl of wonton mein when the kid zips past my stoop. He’s there and gone, running faster than some of the star track athletes at my old school.
“Kid’s at it again.” Mr. Lam grunts the last of his mucus out of his throat. His turtle gaze ambles back down the street. “Wonder who he snitched from this time. Half the shops round here lost stuff to that one. Never tried these bars, though. Only buys.”
I’m just putting my chopsticks down when the others barrel past. Kuen’s at the front of the pack, cross-eyed with focus and rage. I struck him off the list of prospective runners a while ago. He’s cruel, ruthless, and a bit dumb. I’ve got no use for someone like that.
But this other kid might just fit the profile. If I can catch him.
I leave the rest of the noodles on the step, yank up my sweatshirt hood, and follow.
Kuen’s gang jogs for a few minutes before coming to a stop. Heads swivel around, their eyes wide and lungs panting. Whoever they are looking for, it’s clear they lost him.
I slow and duck to the side of the street. None of the breathless boys see me. They’re too busy cowering away from a royally pissed-off Kuen.
“Where’d he go? Where the hell did he go?” the vagrant screams, and kicks an empty beer can. It lands against a wall with a tinny crash; an entire family of cockroaches explodes up the cinder block. My skin crawls at the sight. Funny. After all I’ve been through, all I’ve seen here, bugs still bother me.
Kuen doesn’t notice the insects. He’s fuming, lashing out at trash and walls and boys. His followers flinch back, all of them trying their hardest not to be the inevitable scapegoat.
He turns on them. “Who was on watch?”
No one answers. Not that I blame them. The vagrant’s knuckles are curled and his arms are shaking. “Who was on the damn watch?”
“Lee,” the boy closest to Kuen’s fists pipes up. “It was Lee.”
The kid in question throws up his hands in instant surrender. “I’m sorry, boss! It won’t happen again. I swear.”
Their leader steps forward, closing in on a trembling Lee. His fists are tight, thirsty for a fight.
My hands dig deep into the pockets of my hoodie. I feel kind of bad for Lee, but not bad enough to do anything about it. I can’t afford to get involved in other people’s problems. Not when I’m running out of time to solve my own.
Kuen looks like he’s about to punch the poor kid’s face in. None of the others try to stop him. They cower, stare, and wait as the oldest vagrant’s fist rises level with Lee’s nose. Hovers still.
“Who was it? Huh?” Kuen asks. “I’m guessing you got a look at him.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Lee nods furiously. It’s pitiful how eager he is, how much Kuen’s cowed all these boys. If they lived in a civilized world—played football, sang karaoke with their friends—they’d probably have a different leader. One with more brains than brawn.
But this is the Hak Nam Walled City. Muscles and fear rule here. Survival of the fittest at its finest.
“It was Jin. He’s stolen a bunch of stuff from us before. A tarp. A shirt,” Lee goes on. “You know. The one who showed up from Beyond a few years back? The one with the cat…”
Kuen snarls. “I don’t care about his damn cat. I care about my boots!”
His boots? I look down and realize the hulking boy is barefoot. There’s blood on his feet from his race through the filthy streets. Nicks from glass shards and gravel. Maybe even discarded needles.
No wonder he’s so pissed off.
Lee’s back is ramrod straight against a wall. His face is all scrunched, like he’s about to cry. “I’ll get those boots back. I promise!”
“I can take care of that myself.”
The older boy’s fist falls. The thud of knuckle on jaw is loud and awful. Kuen keeps punching—again and again—until Lee’s face is almost as dark as his greasy hair. It’s a hard thing to watch. Way more unsettling than a few bugs.
I could stop it. I could reach for my weapon, watch Kuen’s gang scatter like roaches. My fingers twitch and burn with every new punch, but I keep them shoved deep in my pockets.
Kids die every day on these streets—lives sliced short by hunger, disease, and knives. I can’t save them all. And if I don’t keep my head down, do what needs to be done in eighteen days, I won’t even be able to save myself.
This is what I tell myself, over and over, as I watch the kid’s face break apart, all blood and bruises.
I’m not a good person.
“Take off your boots,” Kuen snarls when his fists finally stop landing.
Lee is on the ground now, whimpering. “Please…”
“Take them off before I beat the shit out of you again!”
Lee’s fingers shake as he unlaces his shoes, but he manages to get them off. Kuen snatches them up, puts them on his own bloody feet. The vagrant starts talking to the rest of the boys while he ties his new boots.
“Any of you guys know where this Jin kid camps?”
All he gets in response are shaking heads and blank stares.
“Ka Ming, Ho Wai, I want you two to find out where he sleeps. I’m gonna get my boots back.” Kuen’s last sentence is more growl than not.
The street bursts alive with yells. At first I think it’s Lee, but the battered, barefoot boy is just as surprised as the rest of them. They look down the street all at once, necks whipping around like those meerkat animals that used to pop up on my brother’s favorite nature show.
The yells are from elsewhere, back where my noodles are getting cold on the door stoop. So many grown men screaming all at once can only mean the Brotherhood.
Time to get out of here.
Kuen’s pack must be thinking the same thing, because they start an instant, scrambling retreat. Away from the screams. Away from Lee. Away from me.
“Please! Don’t leave me!” Lee reaches out, his whimper beyond pathetic.
“Don’t bother coming back to camp.” Kuen spits down at the boy, now outcast, before he disappears for good. I can’t help but wonder what will happen to the battered boy. If he’s anything like Kuen’s other boys, his familial status reads orphaned or parents too broke to fill his rice bowl. Kids with roofs and hot food have better things to do than play survival of the thuggiest. No parents, shoeless, broken face, winter in full swing… Granted, it’s a mild one (it always is), but chilly temperatures still bite when you don’t even have socks.
Lee’s odds aren’t looking too good.
I start walking with my hood up and my hands shoved in my pockets, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. I blend into the dark of a side alley just as the Brotherhood men pass. The girl they’re dragging is more blood than skin. Her hair is loose, weeping all over the ground. Her dress is sheen and silk: one of the brothel girls. She must’ve been trying to run. What I’m seeing is an escape gone wrong.
The wonton mein kicks up hell in my gut. I push away, farther into the dark bowels of the city, leaving the girl to face her fate.
I can’t save them all.
Jin. The one with the cat. It’s not much to go on in a hive of thirty-three thousand people, but Mr. Lam seemed to recognize him. My first lead. I’ll have to move fast, find him before Kuen sniffs out where the kid keeps his tarp. He must be a loner, which means, considering what just happened to Lee, that he’s smart. Smart and fast. Plus he’s lasted a few years on the streets—which is hard to do in Seng Ngoi, let alone this hellhole.
Just the kind of kid I’m looking for. One more step to my ticket out of this place.
Here’s hoping he’s willing to play the part.