Things seemed to return mostly back to normal between Abrial and Finley after that. They began to eat meals together again, and Abrial accompanied Finley to some of her camp duties once more, talking aimlessly and spinning her daggers while Finley crushed and mixed herbs for the infirmary tent and directed sunlight to the neglected sections of the gardens. Abrial continued to teach at Instructor Wei’s lessons, while Finley continued to attend Bi Gho’s lessons—she had become a sort of assistant to Bi Gho by now. At first, Abrial felt awkward returning to the blade fighting clearing after what had happened the last time she’d been there, but Wu Dafu greeted her friendlily, as though nothing had happened, and both Ya Syaoran and Dieter ignored her, as usual. She and Wu Dafu avoided each other almost automatically. Over a few days, the awkwardness lifted, and Abrial felt more comfortable at the lessons again.

The gaggle of boys who had been following Abrial everywhere dissipated suddenly as well. Most of them had been there to witness the event with Wu Dafu, Dieter, and Ya Syaoran, and out of a sense of awkwardness or embarrassment or fear, those who had been eyeing Abrial for her beauty and strength avoided her now instead.

One day, Wu Dafu approached Finley and Abrial as they sat eating breakfast in the east dining tent. Ya Syaoran stood beside him, arms crossed and dark eyes rolling.

“Abrial,” Wu Dafu set down his bowl and said seriously, after asking permission to sit and eat there. “Can we still be friends? I don’t expect anything more from you—I just…” He rubbed the back of his neck, smiling apologetically. “I don’t want things to be awkward between us forever because of what happened earlier. You're a really cool blade fighter and person, and I don’t want what happened to ruin our friendship. But if not, I understand!”

He looked so sincere. Next to him, Ya Syaoran slurped noodles loudly, seeming to not pay any attention at all.

Abrial grinned. “Let’s be friends.”

Wu Dafu smiled, relieved. “Thanks, Abrial! What’s your name, by the way?” he asked brightly, turning to Finley.

Finley chewed her noodles and swallowed, staring at him with an uncomfortably unwavering hazel gaze.

“Finley Fellner,” she said, sounding cold. She did not ask for his name.

“Okay,” Wu Dafu said, laughing nervously. “Nice to meet you, Finley Fellner. Ah Ran, are you finished? Let’s head out!”

He grabbed Ya Syaoran by the wrist and left quickly, glancing back at Abrial and Finley.

Abrial frowned, slurping her noodles.

“What’s with him? He left so fast.”

“I do not know. He probably has somewhere to go.”

“Mm, probably.” Abrial lifted her bowl to her lips and swallowed all of the chili oil broth in one gulp. She placed it firmly down on the table with a bang and smacked her lips, sighing in pleasure. “Let’s go climb some trees when you finish!”

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Though things had returned mostly to normal, there was one thing Abrial had noticed seemed off between herself and Finley.

Finley seemed hesitant to touch her at all.

Like, at all!

When Abrial was new to the camp, Finley had led her everywhere by the wrist, as though afraid she would lose Abrial in the maze of tents. When they happened to eat side by side in the dining tents, their knees had touched naturally. At night, if Abrial ever woke up because of a strange dream, when she opened her eyes, Finley would be sleeping facing her, not too far away.

Now, if they happened to touch when passing a dish of rice at a meal, Finley’s hand would recoil slightly, then reach out again to take the bowl. At night, Finley slept all the way on the other side of her mat, on her left side, facing away from Abrial. It made Abrial feel colder; Finley’s nearby presence had always been comforting, whether here at the Wei camp, or back at the house when she and Finley had spent the large part of every day together, at lessons in the courtyard, wandering through the gardens, playing silly games or telling stories. The distance Finley kept wasn’t huge, but it bothered Abrial. But then, maybe she was imagining it all.

One night, Abrial was staring at Finley’s back with a slight frown, wondering about this. Her own shining dark hair was spread over her cylindrical pillow like the gleaming tributaries of a river reflecting the dark night sky.

She’s so far away, she thought blurrily, eyelids drooping. Why does she keep sleeping all the way on the other side of the mat? I can’t even reach out to touch her…

Some time after she had drifted into sleep, a dream came to Abrial. It was one of those strange visions again…

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Shao Cheng was trudging down the dirt road of his village, holding his left eye. When he pulled his hand away for a moment to flick his dark hair out of his pale face, his eye was revealed. And it was looking nasty.

Clearly, he’d been beat up again. The skin around it was a deep purple, and the actual eye had been swollen totally shut. There were red marks that would soon darken to bruises on his wrists that the sleeves of his too-small burlap shirt were too short to cover. Judging by his change in height, he must be about ten years old by now.

As he approached the round stone cottage at the end of the village, separated from all the others by a noticeable distance, he slowed down. He sucked in a deep breath, then coughed violently. It was a nasty cough. It sounded like he’d been beat up inside as well as outside by those bullies this time, somehow. Immediately, he stifled the cough with both hands, continuing to hack muffledly into them.

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Once he had stopped, he removed his hands from his mouth, breathing heavily. He swept down some of his unruly black hair over his blackened eye, tried fruitlessly to pull down his beige sleeves to cover his bruised wrists, and forged on towards the house.

There was a strange noise drifting out of the house window. The closer Shao Cheng came, the clearer it sounded.

His one visible obsidian eyes widened.

It was a hiccuping, gasping sound, punctuated by sniffles. Like the sound a suffering animal makes when it gets caught in a trap.

Crying.

His mother was crying.

Shao Cheng knew that if he went straight in the door, his mother would definitely wipe her tears away and pretend everything was all right, like she always did. So, instead, he crept up to the round cottage around the side. Crouching down like a panther, he crawled beneath the window, pressing his ear close to the cool, rough stone wall.

His mother’s sobs were clear now.

“Yuze,” she moaned. Shao Cheng shivered, his heart dropping to the pit of his stomach. He had never heard her sound so miserable! Sure, he’d heard her cry before, but not like this, with her voice cracking and wobbling.

“Yuze, what do we do? None of the townspeople will purchase our products any longer, and all of the surrounding towns have caught the rumor that we are spiritually dumb. How can we continue to buy food? How can we feed ourselves? Ah Cheng will starve if things go on like this…You know, I have even considered selling my body on the street! But not even that would help! No one would touch a spiritually dumb woman…”

Shao Cheng’s father’s voice floated out the window, firm and somewhat grim.

“Don’t say such things, Lin Lin! I promise we will not starve. I will travel further this time, to a town that has not heard about us yet, and sell our tapestries and gourds there. I will come back with enough money to buy food through the winter, and I will do the same when the spring arrives. Okay, Lin Lin? Look at me…Look at me, don’t cry…”

His mother’s sobbing slowed, turning into softer sniffs. She murmured, her voice carrying to Shao Cheng’s ears through the window like breath on a breeze:

“I am worried most about tonight, and this week. We are almost out of food, and no one in the village will lend some rice or even their trash for us to eat. How will we feed Ah Cheng tonight? This morning, I told him to suck on persimmon seeds, because I would give him hot food later tonight…But you know I have no meat, or anything to cook hot for him…”

“I will go out into the hills and catch something,” Shao Cheng’s father’s voice came firmly. “It will be all right.”

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The dream changed.

Shao Cheng was creeping along a fence behind another stony cottage, hiding in the shadows of the shrubbery. It seemed to be the same day, still daylight; he still wore the same burlap shirt, and his unkempt dark hair still hung down over one eye, partially obscuring the nasty purple bruise.

He peered through the wooden spokes of the fence into the garden beyond. An abundance of plants grew lushly within, creating a sort of jungle of fruits and vegetables: he counted bright yellow squash plants with curling vines, small red tomatoes like little jewels, spiky green bitter melons growing along wooden poles taller than himself, violet eggplants and even a thin, gray-trunked tree bending with the weight of round, golden pears. There were orchid flowers here and there among the fruits and vegetables, adding an air of divine beauty to this small backyard garden.

Shao Cheng had passed this garden many times when going to and from his house. It was built behind the house of that family who had traveled here from the kingdom to the east, Geum—which was why it was the only other cottage set apart from the rest of the village. No one likes a spiritually dumb person, but no one also likes an immigrant.

Shao Cheng craned his neck back to see the top of the tall wooden fence. His stomach dropped when he saw that the tops of the fence pickets were carved to sharp points, probably to keep thieves and clever animals out.

He crept around the side of the round cottage. At the window, he crouched down to listen.

His heart soared.

No one was speaking inside. No one was home, or they were all sleeping!

Perfect for stealing!

He snuck back to the garden deftly. Like a dexterous little panther, he gripped the fence pickets, pulling himself up and supporting himself by sticking his bare feet between pickets. The splintery wood sliced at his hands, and he could feel slices of wood slipping beneath his skin. He didn’t mind. With laser-focus and slightly shaking muscles, he reached the top of the fence, where he swiftly swung over the pointed picks, scraping an elbow, and whooshed to fall into the soft undergrowth below.

He lay there for a moment, feeling the numbness fade away from his palms to be replaced with searing pain. He lifted one hand to his face. It was painted scarlet, with jagged pieces of wood poking out of the skin.

It was no big deal. He scrambled to his feet. At the speed of light, he began to hop around, snatching up vegetables and fruits and stuffing them into the front of his shirt like it was a basket. When his shirt front was full, he used one hand to support the bundle, and the other to jump and pull juicy golden pears from the pear tree and stuff them into the waist of his pants.

When he couldn’t possibly hold anything more, he snapped one more pear off a low-hanging branch with some difficulty and bit it, holding it in his teeth.

This would surely be enough to feed him and his parents for a week, at least! And after a week, Baba would have returned with money for food from selling his gourds and Mama’s tapestries. He and Mama were going to weep tears of joy when Shao Cheng burst in the door with all this!

Shao Cheng turned, obsidian eye scanning for the gate. He would be able to unlock it from the inside and get out without having to climb again.

As he lifted his foot to set towards the fence, a voice spoke from behind him:

“There’s lots of vegetables and fruit out here, isn’t there?”

Shao Cheng’s whole body jerked in shock. Several fruits rolled out of his makeshift shirt basket, crunching into the leaves below, while his teeth bit down forcefully on the pear in his mouth, sending the pear falling to the earth and leaving a mouthful of honey-sweetness on his tongue.

Shao Cheng did not turn around. He remained frozen, shoulders hunched up by his ears, pants and shirt front stuffed with stolen produce.

“Are you a stone statue? Turn around, silly, your noona is talking to you. It’s disrespectful to not answer, you know.”

Slowly, heartbeat racing in his ears, Shao Cheng turned around. His one visible obsidian eye was wide as a silver coin. It reflected the image of a young woman.

Standing at the back door of the round, white stone cottage, was a young woman who was maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. She was smiling smirkily, a mischievous, playful glint in her dark eyes. She wore plain burlap clothes with an apron over her front, and her pretty dark hair was tied up in a loose bun.

She was Shin Minyeo.