A ten-years-younger version, but Shin Minyeo all the same. That mischievous, playful glint in her eyes was unmistakable.

In her sleep, Abrial’s eyebrow furrowed. She muttered something unintelligible.

The tattoo on her collarbone glowed hotter.

In the dream, Shin Minyeo was still grinning smirkily at Shao Cheng, leaning her forearms on either side of the door frame. Shao Cheng stared at her, fear in his wide eyes. He shifted slightly, as if to run.

“It’s no use to run,” Shin Minyeo laughed, waggling a slender finger at him. “There’s no gate to our garden. That way we can discourage little rebellious thieves like yourself.”

Shao Cheng’s one unblackened eye darted around the garden. Indeed, there was no gate in sight! The whole garden was fenced in. He’d never be able to leave with all of these fruits and vegetables in his arms!

Shin Minyeo took a step towards him from the doorway.

Shao Cheng jerked, his eye growing fierce. He bared his sharp little teeth at her like a rabid dog.

“If you don’t let me take these things to my parents, I’ll bite you!” he growled. It seemed he had switched quickly from shocked fear to frenzied aggression. “I’ll bite your arm to pieces! You better not come any closer!”

Shin Minyeo stopped. She held up her hands, eyebrows raised. She seemed amused.

“I’m not coming to take your fruits away, kid. I just want to get a closer look at whoever was brave enough to climb our splintery fence. You’re Shao Cheng, right?”

Shao Cheng growled, holding his fruits and vegetables close to his skinny chest.

“Yeah, I am — so what?”

“So nothing, just asking. Wow, you’re feisty. Listen, Cheng ah, your palms are pretty badly wounded. Let me bandage them for you.”

Shao Cheng stepped back. A ripe golden pear slipped through his waist band and out his pant leg, rustling loudly into an eggplant shrub.

“No way!” he hissed, baring his teeth again. “You’re just gonna take all my fruit away!”

Shin Minyeo leaned against the doorframe, pouting playfully.

“First off, it’s technically not yours. Second, you’re so suspicious of me! Do I look that scary? Are you that scared of me?”

“No! I’m not scared of you!” Shao Cheng insisted fiercely.

Shin Minyeo smiled. “All right, then. If you let me bandage your hands, I’ll give you food. And you can take the vegetables.”

Shao Cheng’s face changed. His shining dark eye widened. An audible yowling noise came from his stomach.

“...Food?”

Something flashed across Shin Minyeo’s eyes — pity, maybe, or pain. It was too quick; in a blink, it was gone, replaced by the merry twinkling of her eyes and long lashes.

“Yep. Food! And fruits and vegetables. But only if you promise to let me bandage you.”

Shao Cheng gave Shin Minyeo a suspicious look.

“How do I know if you’re just lying so you can get the vegetables back?”

Shin Minyeo put a hand to her chin dramatically, as though deeply considering this. Then she dropped her hands and shrugged, eyes sparkling mischievously.

“I guess you can’t know. You’ll just have to trust me. But if I am telling the truth…I’ll give you a bowl of hot soup.”

Shao Cheng’s obsidian eye seemed to gleam with a thousand stars.

“...Hot…soup?”

“Mmhm. You wait here, come sit in the doorway. I’ll go and get the healing kit.”

After Shin Minyeo had disappeared back into the house, Shao Cheng cautiously went to the doorway. He peered inside the house first to check if someone was hiding on the other side to jump out and grab him. There wasn’t. There was no one else inside except Shin Minyeo, who was humming and rummaging in a drawer across the cottage. The cottage was more spacious within than it looked from the outside, with a large open window on one side, a low wooden table surrounded by several stools, and three beds opposite the table. Pots and pans were hung on the walls, and draping from the ceiling was a canopy of green plants in hanging baskets. Shao Cheng’s eyes widened with curiosity. He had never seen anything like these hanging plants in his life.

Shin Minyeo spotted him staring at the baskets.

“Oh, that’s right — people in Gongkua don’t do this, do they? In Geum, we grow plants inside, hanging them from the ceilings. Resourceful, right? It makes even more room for gardening!”

Shao Cheng scrambled back just outside the doorway when she spoke. He nodded slightly, then sat in the doorframe, hugging his collection of produce tightly, as though it were a collection of rare, precious pearls he was afraid someone might try to pickpocket from him at any moment.

At last, Shin Minyeo returned to the back doorway. She crouched down by Shao Cheng, grinning at him with crescent eyes.

“Give me your right hand,” she ordered, holding out her own smooth, pale hand.

Shao Cheng didn’t budge. He eyed her hand suspiciously. In a fierce voice, he said,

“You better not take my vegetables away once I let go. I’ll bite you.”

Shin Minyeo laughed, her laughter like the bright tinkling of silver bells.

“Yes, sir! But if you don’t give me your hand soon, I might start to tickle you…and then you would drop all of your fruits and vegetables at once! How could you protect them then?”

Shao Cheng’s face paled. Quickly, he released some of the pile of stolen produce, which slid out of his lap and to the floor next to him. He pulled the fallen fruits back to himself, gathering them beneath his knees protectively, then held out his right hand to Shin Minyeo.

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She took it gently. When she turned it over, her eyes softened, while her eyebrows creased.

Shao Cheng’s palm was painted red with blood. Small pieces of wood stuck up out of it, some straight up, others at angles. How he wasn’t crying at all from the pain was astounding. Though, everyone in the village knew Shao Cheng was routinely beat up. He was probably used to pain.

“I’m going to take the splinters out,” she said quietly. “It will hurt a little bit, so don’t look and tell me if it hurts too much.”

With a pair of thin wooden sticks connected at the ends by a joint, she pulled out each splinter carefully. Shao Cheng made no noise. The pile of splinters grew on the ground by Shin Minyeo’s ankle.

When she had finished, she brought a basin of water and wiped away the blood. She sprinkled a dark herb over his palm. Then she lifted it with gentle fingers, and held his hand up in the sunlight streaming through the doorway.

The herb steamed away in wisps of green smoke. When the last of it had lifted, Shao Cheng’s palm was smooth and clean, good as new.

Shao Cheng’s eyes sparkled with excitement. He stared at his palm a finger’s width away from his face, expression ecstatic.

“Magic!” he exclaimed. “You used magic to heal my palm! That’s so cool!”

Shin Minyeo was already on his other side, painstakingly pulling out the splinters in his left palm. She looked at him sideways, eyes curious.

“So it’s true, then — your family really is nonmagical.”

Shao Cheng stiffened. He hunched his shoulders, staring darkly down at the fruit secured beneath his knees.

“Yeah. So what?” he snapped.

Shin Minyeo returned her attention to his hand, sliding out a particularly nasty piece of wood.

“Nothing. I just wasn’t sure. But now that I’ve met you, I can confirm my suspicions!”

“What suspicions?” Shao Cheng sounded almost afraid, as if he expected the next thing to come out of her mouth to be a violent insult.

Shin Minyeo grinned. She reached out and pinched his cheek, making him jump.

“Nonmagical people are even cuter than magicians! And smarter, too.”

Shao Cheng shook her hand away violently. Then he gave her a peculiar look out of the corner of his eye.

“...Why aren’t you running away?”

Shin Minyeo pulled the basin of water closer. She took his hand in her palm, then began to wash it gently, wiping off the blood.

“Why would I run away? Are you a big, scary bear?”

Shao Cheng smiled slightly. This lady was kind of funny. But then his smile curved into a frown.

“It’s not funny! Everyone thinks they can catch some kind of disease from me and Mama and Baba because we’re spiritually dumb, or that we’re secretly evil spirits, or that they’ll stop being able to do magic and become as spiritually dumb as us if they touch us!”

Shin Minyeo sprinkled the dark herb meticulously along the cleaned wounds on his hand, her expression grim.

“What funny ideas people have in Gongkua,” she murmured. “Back in my hometown, there were no nonmagical people, but I heard that such people existed in neighboring villages. No one thought of being nonmagical like a disease — only a state of being. But here, everyone calls it ‘spiritually dumb’ and runs away. Look, I touched your hands, but did I lose my ability to perform magic?”

Shin Minyeo lifted his left hand into the sunlight, looking pointedly at Shao Cheng. The dark herb wisped up in trails of greenish smoke, leaving whole, smooth skin behind.

Shao Cheng stared reverently at the smoke, rubbing his palms together in awe.

“No,” he admitted.

“Then, there is nothing wrong with you,” Shin Minyeo said emphatically, unrolling a bandage. “It’s everyone else who has a problem.”

Shin Minyeo wrapped his palms in a light layer of bandages as security, since his skin was sensitive after being healed. Then she stuck her face close to his. She crossed her arms crookedly.

“Move your hair, Cheng-ah. Let me see your face.”

Shao Cheng shook his head, pressing his dark hair down over his bruised eye.

“No. I won’t.”

Shin Minyeo gave a dramatic sigh.

“If you don’t, I guess there won’t be any hot soup…or yummy chicken dumplings…”

“Dumplings?” Shao Cheng’s eyes shone, the size of walnut shells now.

Evidently, the offer of hot soup with dumplings was too much to pass up no matter what the trade was. Shao Cheng pushed up his hair and allowed Shin Minyeo to treat his black eye, as well as the bruises on his arms, and even the ones that hid on his soft, bloated hungry stomach beneath the rough burlap cloth of his too-small top.

When she had finished, Shao Cheng sat obediently on a stool at the low wooden table like Shin Mnyeo ordered him to. He held the fruits and vegetables he had gathered in a large basket she had found for him, clutching it to his chest protectively like it was a baby.

Shin Minyeo brought him a steaming wooden bowl she had filled from the pot boiling in the hearth. From a plate, she stuck in as many dumplings as could fit without making the soup spill over, then she placed it in front of Shao Cheng along with a pair of chopsticks.

“Dumplings…”

He stared at the soup with wide eyes. Unaware of what he was doing, he leaned over the bowl, breathing deeply the savory, spicy smell of the soup and feeling the warm steam brush his cheeks and nose. His mouth and eyes watered at the same time.

“Are you going to eat, or just smell and stare at it? Is it a statue, or what?” Shin Minyeo teased, sitting on the stool across from him and resting her chin on her palm with a crooked smile.

Shao Cheng jerked out of his daze. Ravenously, he swiped up the chopsticks and attacked the bowl, slurping and chomping, hardly chewing before swallowing each dumpling. The soup was hot and savory, with a slight sweetness, and a spiciness that evened everything out. Tingles of joy shivered all throughout his small body, warming him from the roots of his hair to his grimy toes.

He finished the bowl in minutes, setting it down and wiping his mouth on his rough burlap sleeve. A burp burst from between his lips.

Shin Minyeo snickered.

“Good, hmm? Slow down next time, or you’ll choke. If you choked, you couldn’t eat any more dumplings!” Shin Minyeo watched Shao Cheng’s expression. He was looking at the bowl longingly, still hugging the basket of fruits and vegetables tightly with one arm. Pain flashed across her face, but it quickly turned into a smile.

“Here. Noona will get you another bowl.”

When she set another bowl in front of him, full of dumplings and steaming with fresh, hot spicy soup, he attacked it the same way, devouring meat and dough as if it was water. This time, he looked satisfied as he set the empty bowl down, a contented grin shining on his face and revealing his pointy little teeth.

“You still haven’t asked my name, Cheng ah,” Shin Minyeo pouted, resting her chin on both palms. Her eyes sparkled playfully. “But that’s okay. I’ll tell you anyway. I’m Shin Minyeo. Just call me noona. I can be your big sister.”

Shao Cheng scowled, suddenly aware of his surroundings after such a heavenly meal.

“Who said you call me by my first name?” he snapped. “And you’re not my big sister! I’m not calling you that!”

Shin Minyeo sighed dramatically. “You can call anyone who acts like a big sister your noona in Geum. You don’t have to be related by blood! Call me noona next time you come, okay? The front door’s over there.”

Shin Minyeo pointed. Shao Cheng stood quickly with his big basket, stumbling towards the door.

He turned around suddenly, a suspicious frown on his face.

“What d’you mean, ‘next time’? Are you going to bring me back here when there are more people and beat me up?”

Shin Minyeo scrunched up her nose.

“No, silly. Come again if you want hot soup and dumplings. I’ll make it for you. Okay?”

Shao Cheng’s cheeks blushed pink. His eyes shone.

“I can come back for soup? And dumplings?”

Shin Minyeo’s eyes flashed with pain again; then it was gone. She smiled at him sideways.

“That’s what I said the first time, silly. Didn’t you hear?”

“Thank you! Thank you—um, noona!” Shao Cheng exclaimed joyfully. Then he turned and scurried out the front door and away towards home.

Shin Minyeo stared, blinking in shock for a moment. Then a twinkling smile spread across her face.

“He actually called me noona,” she laughed quietly. Her smile dwindled. She stood and went to clean up the small piles of bloodstained splinters left by the back doorway, along with the herbs and bandages she had used to heal Shao Cheng’s various bruises and wounds. As she picked them up, her nose wrinkled with disgust.

“Some people,” she muttered. “Some people…I don’t understand them. How can you beat a little boy and call him evil just because of something you’ve heard?”

Her face rippled like the surface of a lake. The whole cottage blurred into a fog, which thickened and darkened to a pitch black.

Then the dream was gone.