Jin Ling leads the way again and I follow, my mind numb. Trying not, not, not to think of Dai and those final, awful moments. What he gave up so I could be running and twisting through these streets behind my sister.
I’m so busy trying not to think of this when Jin Ling stops, motions for me to be quiet. We’re in a sliver of space. It couldn’t even really be called a proper alleyway with how tightly we’re wedged in here. The cinder block scrapes against my back, my chest. If I breathe too hard, it will crush.
I want to get out because the stones feel as if they’re suffocating me, but Jin Ling doesn’t move. She stays wedged by the final opening and watches. The tower of free air in front of us is suddenly blocked, crammed full with a man’s face. A dragon inked in savage scarlet.
Fung.
My heart stops, but Longwai’s man doesn’t. He passes our gap, dragging something behind him. There’s the awful scrape, scrape of plastic and deadweight against the ground. My throat is lined with vomit, but I stand on my tiptoes, catch a final glimpse of the body bag as it’s jerked past our hiding place.
I try to swallow back the sick, try to breathe, but the walls won’t let me. Jin Ling slips her hand in mine, squeezes tight. As if she knows that her presence is the only thing holding me together.
The dragging sound stops too soon. Fung’s grunt creeps into the alley as he lets the bag down, brushes his hands off.
“This is what comes of crossing the dragon,” he growls at the body before his boots start their scuff back in the direction he came. “Better luck in the next life.”
Jin Ling and I wait long minutes between the cinder blocks, listening and watching. Finally my sister edges out into the wider street nose-first, like a mouse emerging from its hole. Pulling me out only when she’s sure it’s safe.
The bag isn’t even two arm’s lengths away, a pile of sad black plastic. I don’t want to look at it, the way it’s shoved into a corner where a door stoop meets a wall. As if it actually contained garbage and not the boy who woke me up. Set me free.
My sister creeps up to the plastic and kneels down. Her fingers out and touching.
“Jin Ling—” I don’t know what to say except that I can’t be here. I’d rather remember Dai as the life outside the window. Not as the body in the trash bag, kicked to the curb. “Please.”
Jin Ling frowns, her fingers digging deeper into the crumpled plastic. She starts tearing. The black splits apart easily under her nails. Like some sick cocoon: no wings, only death.
I catch a glimpse of skin—as white and hard as a china plate—and look away.
Jin Ling keeps tearing and the plastic keeps ripping. I keep looking at my bloody slippers, trying to ignore the sick emptiness of my stomach.
“Mei Yee…” There’s a rustle and the pulling stops. “Look.”
My eyes stay down, take stock of shredded silk and numb toes. I can’t look up. Don’t make me look up. This hurt—red skin and glass stab—is so much easier to take.
“I can’t—I can’t see Dai like this,” I whisper.
My sister swallows. “It’s not him.”