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 lines 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.