“This is her choice,” he says softly, “and thanks to you, she’s free to make it.”
My window-boy is right. No matter how much I want to grab Mama-san by the wrfst and take her to a safe place, I can’t. The choice is hers alone.
“Are you ready to go? " he asks.
Our hands come back together, tight. I can’t tell if I’m the one clinging to him or if he’s the one holding me. I think — maybe — it’s both. I look over to the girls and my sister. To the road that’s folding open — ready to take us out and away.
I choose not to stay in the dark.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
DAI
I support Jin Ling’s weak steps with my good arm, taking her all the way to the Old South Gate. Just like before. Only this time her blood isn’t on my shirt, and I don’t have to run. I’ve got all the time in the world.
Mei Yee walks on my other side, by my wounded shoulder. It throbs whenever she presses too close, but I ignore it. Some things are worth the hurt.
The rest of the girls trail behind her — an exodus of wide eyes and shiny dresses. I can only imagine the look on my father’s face when I knock on the door of 55 Tai Ping Hill this time. I’m guessing he’ll have something to say and I’ll have something to say back. We’ll seesaw the way we always do, and in the end, the girls will stay. All twenty of them.
Of course, it’s not a permanent solution. But right now I’m not thinking much further than the next twenty-four hours: a visit between Dr. Kwan and my shoulder, a good dose of pain meds, a hot meal, and a firm mattress.
And after that…
I don’t know, but I have a feeling it’s all going to work itself out.
An extra silhouette has joined us, bobbing tailless over rubbish heaps and door stoops. When the shadows run out, he trots close to my ankles, yowling louder than any cat should.
“Don’t worry.” I look down at Chma when our strange procession reaches the rusted cannons. He leaps up on top of one of the ancient artifacts, piercing me with his yellow headlight eyes. “We won’t leave you behind.”
The streets of Seng Ngoi are alive, pouring over with parades and happy drunks. Everything is bright gold and vibrant poppy-petal red. There are lanterns and sweet cakes and children dancing with new shoes, delighted to be up past their bedtime. One old man walks past, offers me a swig from his bottle of rice liquor. I shake my head, but he smiles anyway, showing his absence of teeth.
“Happy Year of the Snake!” He takes a swig of his own and teeters off into the festivities.
It’s too much for Mei Yee. I can tell by the stun on her face. She’s staring at the flare and color of the street, fingers half covering her eyes to shield them from the brightness. The sky is no longer black, but streaked with every color. Fireworks thunder and sparkle above us, showering the streets of Seng Ngoi like magical rain. We stand and watch them, even Chma.
“They’re beautiful,” I hear Mei Yee whisper, even though each boom of color makes her jump like a nervous rabbit. “This whole place is so beautiful. A city of lights.”
“In a few days I’ll take you to see the sea,” I promise.
The colors of the evening’s celebration flash over her face. She smiles and looks over at me. Sees me. My heart is full and burning — brighter than this night. “I’d like that.”
I look down and realize that despite all the noise and chaos around us, Jin Ling has fallen asleep. She’s leaning into me — every ounce of her featherweight — her face smudged and shameless against my hoodie. Reminds me of how tired I am. How tired all of us are.
I look at Chma and my two girls. I take in the fires of the sky. Fresh colors to mark a new year. A new day — day one of the rest of my life.
Our lives.
Let’s get started.
Epilogue
180 days later
MEI YEE
The first time Dai took me to see the sea, I couldn’t speak. The sun was shining off the waters like the fireworks that had laced the sky so many nights before. It glittered and gleamed all the way to the horizon. So much water spreading out in all directions.
The waves were small that morning, lulling and calm. The water stretched under the sky like a mirror, reflecting the infinite. I felt that same wide vastness inside my chest, washing in and out of me. Wind — stiff with winter and salt — licked against the leather jacket Dai’s mother gave me, but I didn’t shiver. I stood on the edge of the world and wanted more.
So I come back — again and again — and the sea always calls the way it did that first time. Singing with the gentle hush and lap of waves. Whispering possibilities with every tide.
Our world changed fast after the New Year. It took Dai’s gift of persuasion and a small army of taxis to get all of us up to Tai Ping Hill. He walked up to the mansion with his good shoulder set, as if he was ready for a fight. The people who opened the door — Mr. and Mrs. Sun — ran out and hugged him instead.
What followed was a chaos of days and doctor visits and phone calls and Mrs. Sun and Emiyo bursting through the front door with more shopping bags than their own weight combined. Clothes in all sizes, for all the girls.
But Dai’s mother didn’t stop there. She sat with us in the rock garden, listened to our stories. When we told her — when she asked about our homes, our parents — that we could not go back, she understood. And then she went to work.
And so a new charity project was born, funded by Sun Industries’s generous donations, managed by Mrs. Sun herself. A boarding school was founded for all the children the Walled City spat back out — Longwai’s girls and ladder-ribbed vagrants — complete with classes and counselors and doors that lock only from the inside.
Even all this didn’t stop some of the girls from leaving. I thought that final night in Hak Nam — when I stood under the streetlamp and watched Mama-san vanish — that all our choices had been made.
But it’s not just one choice made in one moment. It’s every time I wake up in my dormitory room sweating from nightmares of needles and Sing’s screams and Jin Ling has to grab my arm and tell me I’m safe. It’s every time I feel the fear washing up, creeping into me for no reason at all, even though the sky is blue and Dai is laughing at one of Jin Ling’s jokes. It’s every time I see a man with silvering hair and think that maybe Ambassador Osamu hasn’t really gone missing as all the news sources say he has, that maybe he’s just biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to come for me.
The counselors Mrs. Sun hired to talk with us, they tell me these things are normal. Symptoms of something called PTSD. And most of the time I believe them. But sometimes, sometimes, I hear Mama-san whispering: It’s not our world. People like us belong in the shadows.
And sometimes, sometimes, I wonder if maybe she’s right. If I do not deserve the wide of the sea or the electric hum in Dai’s eyes, which crackle and spark in my heart, or everything Mrs. Sun is giving me.
The other girls feel this, too — this war of choices. Yin Yu was the first to slip away. Our fourth morning at the Suns’ house, we woke up and her mat was empty. All the clothes Mrs. Sun had given her were left in neat folds. More empty mats followed, and — later — a few dormitory beds: girls from the other halls. Always, always they end up back in Hak Nam, surfacing in scarlet-lamped doorways, back to the old ways. Back to the shadows.
The counselors tell us this is normal, too. Every two weeks they go with Mrs. Sun back into the Walled City — issue their invitation with cups of icy, sweet yuen yeung and smiles. They have not come back with any of the missing girls, but they do come back with news: more Security Branch raids, a wave of evictions. Slowly, steadily, the government is draining the city, preparing its body for dissection. I haven’t been back to Hak Nam, but every once in a while, its picture will appear on the folds of Mr. Sun’s newspaper. It looks the same as ever: bricks on bricks and bars on bars. Openings gaping like sockets in a skull.