The boy doesn’t even have to knock. I feel him there, behind the glass, waiting.
I pull back the curtain, press my face against the grating. Something about the boy is different. I stare through the gaps in the metal, taking in the set of strong shoulders under his sweatshirt. That’s the same. So is his hair, with its ends fringing by his cheekbones and jaw. He still looks chilly, with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
It’s nothing on the outside. He’s the spitting image of his previous selves—like a painting rendered the exact same way three times. The difference is in his eyes and the way he steps close.
Like someone lost who’s found his way again.
He’s not the only one. I’m not the girl who sat behind this glass a week ago—breathless, afraid. I know all the things I want the most, the wishes I would make if Jin Ling were here. If the stars fell.
And I’ll do whatever it takes to get them.
“Hello.” His voice is changed, too. Each word is strong, confident. They echo through my heart like brass, shake me to the core.
“I found what you’re looking for.” It’s hard not to be loud, but this news needs so much more than a whisper. “I was right. Longwai keeps it in his quarters. In the top drawer of his desk.”
My words come out so fast I’m surprised the boy can even understand them. But he does. I know because I can see his eyes fill, brim over with the same light that’s flooded my veins.
“His upstairs room?”
“Yes,” I go on, spurred by the hope in his face. “The stairs are at the end of the east hall. By Mama-san’s room.”
The boy shuts his eyes, rests his head on the far cinder block wall. Still close enough that I can pick out each and every one of his sweeping eyelashes. His hands, I notice this time, are clean, dirtless. Though one of his fingertips is dusted black, almost as if it’s covered in soot. I wonder what made such a mark.
I’m so engrossed in these little details, so lost in the features of my boy, that his voice, when he does speak, startles me.
“I don’t know what to do,” he says with his eyes still closed.
“You need the ledger, don’t you?”
“Yes. It’s… part of a deal I made with some important people. People who can get you and me out of here.”
“How are you planning to get it?”
“I-I don’t know,” he says again, shoulders bowing. “I had a plan. But things fell through. My partner got stabbed.”
Pain. Disease. Death. Longwai wasn’t lying about the Walled City’s streets. My breath dices into dozens of pieces. It takes me a moment to pull it back together, speak without a voice made of shake. “And if you don’t get the book to these important people… what happens?”
“Nothing good.”
Which means he’ll stay out there and I’ll be trapped in here. Choking on incense smoke and covering my bruises in powder, both chances at a different life ruined. I look over my shoulder at the door. At the cypress tree that will never grow.
I look back to the nautilus shell and the boy behind it. His eyes are still shut, his face turned skyward—as pale and flaring bright as a comet’s tail. My fingers curl harder into the grate, longing for the other side, where he is.
Just one of my wishes.
Whatever it takes.
“I’ll do it,” I tell him. “I’ll get the ledger.”
The boy’s eyes snap open, catch mine. The light behind them is gleaming, ferocious.
“If they catch you taking that book… if Longwai discovers what you’re up to…” The boy’s face looks grim, like a man who’s just discovered he has only a week to live. “It’s too risky. He’ll end you. And I can’t let that happen.”
My skin shivers from the same want, the same need, that was in the ambassador’s fingers. Trying their best to pummel, press, shape, and mold. Cramming me into his tiny, gravelly pot. Making me into something I’m not.
This is the only way.
And in my head I’m watching Sing twist, scream, and shout. I hear the slick of the needle under skin, see the dreamy look steal over her face. I feel the darkness of the hall pressing in, whispering the chorus: I need it. I need it. I need it.
Wishes cost so much more than dying stars.
“I know,” I say, because I do. “But I can’t live like this anymore. Sometimes an end seems so much better than my now. If there’s any way out, any open door, I have to take it.”
“Even if it seems impossible? Even if there are dragons behind it?”
Even then. I don’t say it out loud, because the boy asked in a way that meant he already knew.
We’re staring at each other. Eyes holding eyes. His gaze shatters glass, pierces metal. It hums through my body, charged and electric. Full of shine and hope and possibilities.
“I’m Dai,” he says. “My name is Sun Dai Shing. What’s yours?”
Dai. It’s not the name I would have picked for him. It’s too short, too blunt, too foreign. But I let it tumble around in my head for a moment. Let it settle into his hair, eyes, and skin. The more I think about it, the more I stare, the more it starts to fit.
The boy—Dai—shifts so the streaked sapphire light of the far streets falls off his face. My eyes strain, struggling to pierce the new dark between us. I open my mouth, but no sound comes out, as if my throat is a drought-stricken well.
I am nameless.
Dai leans back into the light. Something about its eerie, electric blue comforts me. I start to breathe, pretending that the air around me isn’t stuffed with incense and men’s sweat. I think of the mountains instead. Of the ginkgo tree and how my mother called me by my name over and over.
It shouldn’t be this hard to say my own name. But I think of the last few times I let my name slip to ears who did not deserve to hear it. To Longwai, who says it in a spider-creep way. To Osamu, who says it as if he knows me.
This boy standing across from me, with his folded hands and shadowed face, isn’t Longwai. He isn’t Osamu. He’s Dai. And he trusted me with his name. So I must trust him with mine. With everything.
“My name…” I push past the hoarseness. My words become steadier, as clear as Dai’s bottomless, electric eyes. “My name is Mei Yee.”