It’s been two years. Two years since the Reapers took my sister from me. Two years since I followed them to the Walled City to look for her. Over these years, I’ve learned how to move like a ghost, make the most of my senses. That’s the only way to survive here: become something more than you are, or be invisible altogether.
I was invisible a lot when I was younger. There were only three years between me and my older sister, but Mei Yee was the one people noticed. Her face was round and soft. Like a moon. Her hair hung straight, sleek as midnight.
But being beautiful did no good on a rice farm. It didn’t help you wade for hours in muddy water, back bent under the hot shine of the sun, cutting rows of whipping grass. I was always stronger than Mei Yee. I knew I wasn’t beautiful: My feet were tough with calluses, my skin dark, my nose too large. Whenever our mother wound my hair back into a bun and sent me to the pond for wash water, I saw a boy’s face staring back at me.
Sometimes I wished it were true. Being a boy would be easier. I’d be stronger, able to overpower my father whenever the alcohol made him rabid. But most of the time I just wished for a brother. A brother to bend over the never-ending rice plants. A brother to stand up to my father’s drunken rages.
And, in my deepest heart, I wanted to be pretty. Just like Mei Yee. So I always tugged the bun out. Let my hair fall free.
My hair was the second thing I lost after my father sold Mei Yee to the Reapers. I knew from the stories that I wouldn’t survive in this city as a girl. The knife I used was dull. It was a bad haircut, full of awkward angles, one side slightly longer than the other. I looked just the way I wanted to: like a half-starved, dirt-streaked street boy.
And that’s what I’ve been ever since.
My elbows are raw, stinging by the time I reach my camp. I took the long way back, circling the same moldy, pipe-hemmed passages to make sure no one followed me. Long enough for the blood to scab over and split again. If I don’t put a bandage on it soon, the wounds will get red and puffy. Take weeks to heal.
I slide through the opening of my ratty tarp shelter, look through my belongings. It’s not much. A matchbook with a single flame left. A waterlogged, half-filled character workbook scavenged from a careless student’s satchel. Two oranges and a mangosteen snagged from an ancestral shrine. A blanket heavy with mildew and rat urine. One mangy gray cat that purrs and yowls. Does his best to make me feel less alone.
“Got lucky today, Chma.” I set the boots down. The cat slinks across the tent. Rubs his whiskers across the worn leather. Plops his downy body on the laces with a mine meow.
I reach out for the blanket. It’ll have to do. I tug my knife from my tunic, start to cut the blanket into strips. Try to ignore the stench and damp of the fabric.
Mei Yee always tied my bandages. Before. She looked over the cuts my father made, eyes soft. Sad. Her fingers were feather-gentle when they wrapped the fabric. She had to use the strips so many times they were stained the color of rust. But she always made sure they were clean. Always tied them well. Always took care of me.
But I’m alone now. And it’s a lot harder to tie your own bandages. I end up using my teeth, gagging on the taste of rat and rank. Mei Yee would be horrified that I’m using this rotten blanket to cover my wounds. Horrified I’m here at all.
Going after Mei Yee was never a choice for me. She was all I had. Without her, I had no reason to stay on the farm, taking my father’s blows. Watching my mother wither like our rice crops.
I don’t know why I thought finding my sister would be easy. I wasn’t really thinking at all when I jumped onto that rusted bike and pedaled after the big white van. I didn’t think when I sliced off my hair. Or when I first reached City Beyond and asked questions in my slow, country speech.
Now I know how young and stupid I was, thinking that I could just walk into this place and find her.
The Walled City doesn’t cover much land—it’s only as big as three or four rice paddies—but it makes up for all that with its height. Its shanties stack on top of one another like sloppy bricks, crowded so high they blot out the sunlight. Streets that used to be filled with day and fresh air are now just cable-shrouded passages. Sometimes I feel like a worker ant, running these dark, winding tunnels in a never-ending loop. Always looking. Never finding.
But I won’t stop looking until I find her. And I will find her.
Chma stops nuzzling his new boot-bed. His yellow eyes snap to the entrance of my shelter—wide. Ears pricked high. Fur bristling. I hold my breath, listen through the Walled City’s eternal song: the distant rumbling of engines; a mother yelling at her children through thin walls; dogs howling in an alley far away; an airplane roaring over the city every five minutes.
There’s another noise. Softer, but closer. Footsteps.
I was followed.
My fingers wrap tight around my knife. I edge over to the tarp flap, fear rattling high in my throat. My thighs cramp tight as I wait. Listen. My knife hand is rice white, shaking.
The steps pause. A voice calls out, husky and doubtful, “Hello?”
Not Kuen, then. But that doesn’t mean I’m safe. These streets are crawling with thieves and drunks. People who would knife you in a heartbeat.
“Go away!” I try to make my voice as throaty as possible. All male. All threat.
Through the slit in my tarp, I glimpse my visitor. A boy, older. He’s leaning against the alley wall with his hands stuffed in his pockets. One knee up. The sheen of water that always glazes the city’s walls soaks the fabric of his sweatshirt. But he doesn’t seem to notice or care.
His stare lights straight on the flap of my tent. His eyes—they’re different from most people’s here in Hak Nam—they’re dark brown, yes. But they aren’t the same savage cruel as Kuen’s. Or the deadpan glaze of the grandmothers who squat on the corners, gutting fish after fish. Day after day.
No. This boy’s eyes are more like a fox’s. Sharp. Shining. Smart. Wanting something very, very badly.
I’d better be careful.
“It’s Jin, isn’t it?”
My name. He knows my name. It’s enough for me to push the flap back, teeth bared. Ready for a fight.
“Get out of here.” I raise my knife. Some far-off streetlight glints, echoes the blade back into the boy’s stare. He doesn’t flinch. “This is my last warning!”
“I’m not going to hurt you.” The boy pushes off the wall. Pulls his hands from his pockets. They’re empty.
My teeth are still bared when I stop. Look him over again. Black hoodie. Jeans so new they haven’t even frayed. Pale, empty, outstretched hands. Then I study his face—his sharp-cut cheekbones. The tight pull of his lips. Arched, cocky eyebrows.
“How’d you find me?” My knuckles are all ache around the hilt of my knife.
“Mr. Lam told me you usually camp in this sector. All I had to do was look. And follow my allergies.” As if on cue, the boy’s nose scrunches. The ugly agony of a sneeze never freed. “Closest thing I’ve got to a superpower.”
Mr. Lam. I think back to the old shopkeeper. Toad-crouched. Collecting spit in a can. Guarding his shop of splintered furniture and antique coins.
And then my thoughts travel to the other stoop. Memories of shrimp and noodles. Eyes just as sharp as the ones watching me now. “You… you’re noodle boy.”
“The name’s Dai, actually,” he says. “I’m here to offer you a job.”
“I work alone,” I say quickly. I do everything alone: eat, sleep, run, steal, talk, cry. It’s the curse of the second rule: Trust no one. The cost of staying alive.
“Me too.” Dai doesn’t move. His stare is dead on my knife. “But this drug run is different. It takes two people.”
I’m no stranger to drug runs. I do them a lot for lesser drug lords, the ones who trade behind the backs of the Brotherhood. Hope not to get noticed. They pay me in bread crusts and spare change. But the real payment is going inside their brothels. I’ve looked into the faces of many drug-hazed girls, searching for my sister.
“What kind of run takes two people?” I ask.
“It’s for the Brotherhood.”
A drug run for the Brotherhood of the Red Dragon. Just the thought makes my heart squeeze high. Flutter like a dying thing. I’ve heard too many stories about the gang and its cutthroat leader, Longwai. How he carved out the tongue of a man he caught lying. How he chiseled a bright scarlet character into the cheeks of anyone who tried to cheat him. How he shot one of his own double-crossing gang members in the head, but only after whittling away at the man slowly, watching flesh fall away like wood shavings. How he laughed when he did these things.
“Since when does the Brotherhood use vagrants?”
“Longwai’s men keep getting arrested whenever they make runs into Seng Ngoi. He’d rather use street kids. One to do the run and one to sit in the brothel as collateral.”
Collateral. One of the many tongue-tumbling words I wrestled with when I first got to the city. Tried to get rid of my sun-slowed farmspeak. Didn’t take too long to figure out its meaning: “hostage.” Waiting, waiting, waiting with a blade to your throat. Your life held tight in the speed of another person’s legs.
“You’re a good runner,” Dai says. “Most kids don’t get away from Kuen.”
“So I’d run. And you’d sit. Risk Longwai’s knife?” My own knife is still high in the air between us.
“Yep. It’s good pay.” Dai jerks his chin to the shredded edges of my tarp. “You look like you could use it.”
He’s right. Good pay means I can spend time searching for my sister instead of scrounging for food and clothes. But tangling with the Brotherhood, even for just one drug run, is a bad idea.
There’s only one reason I’m considering this. Longwai is the single most important man in the Walled City, the leader of the Brotherhood of the Red Dragon. His brothel is the biggest. It’s also impossible to get into. Most of his girls serve important clients, people of power and influence in City Beyond. It’s the last large brothel I haven’t searched.
This could be my only chance to get in. To look for Mei Yee.
“You don’t look like you need the job.” The tip of my knife waves at his straight white teeth. His clothes without holes. Just the way he stands smells of money. “Not bad enough to risk your life.”
Dai shrugs. “Looks can be deceiving. You want to run or not?”
I should say no. Everything about this screams against the second rule. Trust no one. But if I say no, he’ll move on. Find someone else to do this crazy run. I’ll lose my chance to find my sister.
Good pay isn’t worth risking my life. Or trusting a stranger.
But Mei Yee is.
The tarp by my foot wrinkles. Chma’s silvered head pokes out, his poison-yellow eyes narrow at Dai. I look the boy over, too. There’s no trace of the Brotherhood’s dragon on him. No jewelry. No tattoos. Just a raised, shiny scar that snakes up his forearm. Knife work. It’s too ugly not to be.
Dai catches my eyes, shoves his hoodie sleeve down, hiding the mark.
Chma slinks over, wraps around Dai’s legs like a scarf. Lining those nice jeans with silver sheds of fur. His plumed tail climbs high into the air: a happy greeting. After a few circles, Chma settles over the boy’s feet. Tucking his paws into themselves with another solid mine meow.
If my cat can trust him, then I guess I can, too.
I nod. “Looks like you got a new friend.”
Dai’s sneeze is a sudden, explosive thing. Mr. Lam’s loogie times ten. He throws his arm to his face, but the damage is done. If anything can make a vagrant look less threatening, it’s a face full of snot.
I lower my knife. “When’s the run?”
The older boy finishes mopping his face, shoves his hands back into his pockets. Chma is still planted on the boy’s shoes. Purring.
“The run takes place in two days. Four hours after sunset. We meet in front of Longwai’s brothel.”
“I’m in.” And there it is. The second rule broken. Me trusting a boy with a scar on his arm. A hunt in his eyes. All for my sister’s sake. “But I want sixty.”
“Done.” He says this with a quick, desperate speed. Without even blinking.
I should’ve asked for seventy.
“I trust you’ll show up, Jin. If you don’t…”
“I’ll be there,” I tell him.
Dai nods and turns to go, dislodging his feline squatter with a gentle shake. I watch him leave with a heavy sigh. Part of it’s relief. Part of it is weariness. Now that Dai has discovered my camp, I’ll have to move. All my secrets, my terror, spill into the cool air. Misty and milk white. Like my sister’s skin.
When my breath cloud vanishes, the boy is gone. I stand in the yawn of my alley, fingers ever-tight around my knife. Alone again.