A month has passed, and I haven’t seen the tiniest indication that Han will find me. I wish he had told me when he would come. I wish he had told, so that I’d know I could trust him.

But I stay in the same place, every day, pretending today is yesterday so that I can fool myself into thinking that it hasn’t been a month, but twenty-nine days; and that it hasn’t been twenty-nine days, but twenty-eight, and so on.

I stop counting when I hit zero.

The air grows cold, and the trees feel it every time a breeze comes and slaps away their wrinkling leaves. I feel it, too, when I gasp for air, only to cough right after because of its frigid bite. During lunch, our soup swiftly turns cold. My fingers crack as they grip a knife, a spoon, or a rod.

We have been practicing with rods since yesterday. They are as heavy as I remembered them to be, and while my hands are still unaccustomed to their weight, I work through the exercises otherwise relaxed.

I’ve established a system for myself. I breathe in between strikes. Forward. Inhale. . Exhale. Turn. Inhale. I remember better when I take things slowly. I make sure to reenact everything even after the moon has risen. Instead of entering the house, I stay outside and practice what I have learned from the morning.

I can feel myself improving. My steps are more powerful, and my arms are steadier. Before, my position in group four was in the back, where I could barely hear the official, let alone see him. Now, I’ve moved up a row. Granted, one row isn’t a large difference, but I have advanced, and that’s evidence that I am learning.

I start to love wushu lessons. I might even love it – dare I say it – more than I loved learning about the art of knives when I was with the Nights. The knife was an extension of me. It did all the things I was unable to do. With a flip of the wrist or a trick of the fingers, I could hit any target I chose. I was good at that.

But so was every other Night. Wushu is different. Wushu relies solely on me. I can’t be successful unless I decide to be successful. It’s not as simple as raising my arm. Sure, that is a talent in itself – being able to fight with a knife is a craft that I am sure few people here in Shin have mastered. But it isn’t me, not in the way wushu has become.

When I return to the Nights - and I will return - I’ll be the only one who knows wushu. That, more than anything, will give the Nights a marvelously new perspective of me.

“Zee.”

It’s Ada’s mom. She has an apple, as well as a cup of water in her hands. “Did you eat breakfast?”

“No,” I say, taking the apple. She offers me the cup, but I turn away, pretending I didn’t see it. I spare a glance back, and I can see the rejected look in her eyes. My heart contorts, but I leave the house before I can give in to my conscience’s impelling to apologize.

I bite into the apple, but it’s sour, and I spit it out. I hate sour apples. When I arrive at the camp, I give the apple to Chen, who gives it a scrutinizing sniff.

“What did you do to it?”

“Don’t judge the apple,” I say. He’s just decided to take it when our official commands us to run. I have to jog thirty-five rounds with the stupid apple in my hand. In the end, Chen doesn’t want it anymore because it has turned brown, so I throw it away.

“Why didn’t you eat it?”

“It went bad,” I tsk.

“Ah. It wasn’t the same person who gave it to you, right?”

If he thinks joking with me is a good idea, I glower at him to make sure he knows that it isn’t. He looks down before he can even see the face I’ve cruelly made especially for him.

The training combined with the unusually warm heat begets significantly arduous work. When the sun sets to rest, I am too lethargic to walk properly. My feet scrape the floor and excite the dust behind me. I lift my head, ready to overcome the remaining few minutes toward the house, when I see a scuffle near the alley where I found Ada days ago. My instincts seize me, and I bolt toward the group. In the middle of it all I find Ada fighting with five other girls. She has more than a ‘cleaning bruise’ on her face. I start to say something, but her expression gives me pause. Even though she is snarling at her enemies, she looks fearful and frail.

“Ada.”

Her head snaps up. She sees me, but she isn’t given time to respond due to an irritated girl who delivers a rude punch to Ada’s jaw. I lunge forward to halt the fight, but being surrounded by such abrasive girls deters me. I untangle the knots of arms and hair without forming a fist until I catch Ada and pull her to the side.

“What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” She shouts. “Go home. Take your warm bath.”

Her sardonic tone irks me, so I vehemently pull her closer by the belt around her waist. “Do you even know how to fight?”

“I know how to hit,” She says, raising a hand to slap me, but I block her arm. She stares at me, stunned.

“If you keep going, you can’t hide this as a cleaning accident anymore.”

“Is that her?” A voice asks. We both turn to see a boy leisurely walking toward us. I have never seen him before, but he is wearing the same clothes that I am.

One of the fighters, a girl with long braids and a crooked mouth, points to Ada. “She’s the insolent prick who keeps stealing from our garden.”

“You stole from them?” I whisper through clenched teeth.

“One time. Okay, twice. I was going to stop. We weren’t doing well with food, okay? Especially since you came.” She narrows her eyes. “You eat like a monster.”

“Don’t you know anything about conduct?” The boy says. He’s taller than me, and while that shouldn’t daunt me, it still does. “You don’t steal.” He steps forward. “Not from me.” Another step. “Not from my family.” Two more. “Not from us.”

“I don’t care that you’re an official’s son,” Ada says. “You’re a trainee. Just like everybody else.”

“And you’re a captive of Shin just like everybody else is,” he replies, “so don’t think that because you’re a girl, I’m going to save your face.” He’s right in front of her now, and his savage smile is so wide that I can see each of his crooked teeth. “Hit me.”

I can sense Ada tremble, but she doesn’t react to him.

“Come on. You hit my sister, right?” He points to the girl with the braids. “Then you can hit me.”

“She doesn’t know how to hit,” the girl derides.

“Try it,” he presses. “Come on. One swing. Just one.”

Don’t do it, I think, knowing what he’s planning. I shouldn’t care. Ada insulted me.

She lifts her arm, and he smoothly shields himself from it and uses his free hand to hit her. I immediately intercept his fist right before it slams her face.

“What are you doing?” He snaps at me. He releases Ada’s arm, so I release his hand. He punches me in the gut, and I keel over. “Aren’t you that new trainee? The one who got beat up by 2A?”

I ram into his torso, but he’s too strong for me. He pries me off of him and punches me again, this time in my side. I wish I had the knife on me. I look around, searching for something I could use as a weapon, and then I find it – a long shard of glass right at his feet.

“Hey. Don’t you know group four is for the runts? Nobody ever graduates from there. Everybody .”

I eye the glass. If I reach out, I can grab it. One swift, seamless motion.

“You can try all you want, but you’re never going to get into group one. You’re just a stupid pawn.”

I smirk. I was a runt with the Nights. I’m not going to settle as a runt here, too. I grab the glass and bring it down on his foot. He screams, and I stand and grab Ada’s hand before he can kick me.

We run through alleys and around houses in the black night as some of the girls chase us. Although I’m tired, my adrenalin fuels me with enough energy to flee. I almost want to smile at the entire ordeal. I haven’t felt this excited since Han would lead me in a practice duel.

“You better tell me where to go,” I say to Ada, “because I don’t know anything about this place.”

“Turn left over there. There’s a space in the wall that we can hide in. They won’t see us; it’s too dark.”

I follow her directions and head toward the corner. I skid, having almost passed it, and turn left. “Where?” I yell, but Ada pulls me into the space and slams me into the wall. She’s right about it being dark. I can’t even see my hand. Ada places her hand around my mouth, and we wait as the sound of pounding feet enters the alley.

“Where are they?” A girl asks.

“I can’t see a thing.”

“Forget it. I’m not walking down this. Let them deal with their own issue.” I wait for the footsteps to recede, and then I strip Ada’s hand away from my mouth.

“I don’t eat like a monster,” I say. “I don’t even ask for food at your home.”

“I know,” she says. “I was angry. Okay? I was angry.” She sighs, and it’s only then I realize how close we are.

I pull away from her as much as the space allows and let go of her hand. I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. The fatigue has found me again, and this time, it’s almost impossible to repel it. “I don’t get it,” I say. “Girls usually walk around being nice and pretty.” That’s the image Han created for me, anyway. There was a disappointing lack of ladies at our camp. I never had a girl to imagine or fancy. Han would tell me they weren’t much.

“They can’t fight,” he said, “but they’re fun to look at.”

I try to look at Ada to remind myself of what she looks like, but of course, it’s too dark.

“Where did you come from, the Capital?” She snorts. “This is Shin. Nobody here tries to look pretty or be nice.”

That’s a relief. If there was a sudden influx of pretty girls in my life, I might feel at a disadvantage with my insufficient knowledge of them. One is enough. Ada isn’t very pretty – well, she is, but –

“I don’t know why you in. I could have handled that.”

I laugh. “No, you couldn’t have.”

I can feel her indignation. “Is it because I’m a girl?”

“It’s because you don’t know how to fight.”

“Who said I couldn’t?”

“When someone knows how to fight,” I explain, “they don’t form a fist like that.”

She doesn’t reply, and I smile to myself.

“You’re very interesting.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re not as strong as you act.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” she grumbles.

“Not at all. I think you can be. You just don’t know how to, yet. Yet!” I say when she smacks my arm. “I’m sore there.”

“All right, so I can’t fight. But everybody in Shin knows a guy who can teach them a little bit. Some girls even go to watch them train. They get crates and stand on them so they can see over the wall.”

I’ve never noticed.

“But I don’t know anybody. I mean, I didn’t. So I was the little ‘kid’ everyone picked on because I was the only girl in Shin who didn’t know how to fight.”

“And so you stole from the garden.”

“Well, yes. I was craving apples.”

“So I ate a stolen apple.”

“No. The one I gave you wasn’t stolen. I don’t even know how they found out about me stealing two or three apples. The second time, I stole more from their garden. I saw my mum counting our cash the night before, and we didn’t have a lot. So I got food. That’s all. Just that night.”

The first time must have been that night when I left my room to get a glass of water. She was acting strange back then. “I could help,” I offer without thinking.

“You? You’re at the camp all day. You can’t help earn money.”

“You’re losing money.”

“We’ll live,” she says decidedly. “What else am I supposed to do? It’s two birds with one stone, Zee. I get money. And in a way, I can learn to fight.”

“At this rate, you’ll steal again, and your mom might live, but not you. Not if you don’t know how to fight. They’d kill you.” I know they would. That trainee didn’t hesitate to hit a girl, while I struggled to split the fight.

“I don’t know,” she says, irritated. “Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do. I’ll steal from gardens and get beat up so we can eat. Is that so bad? What do I need this face for, anyway? I’m not going to need it. There isn’t anybody in this rotten place that I would ever like, and there isn’t anybody who would ever like me, so if I have to get hit a few times then I’m going to let them – “

“I won’t let them.”

It’s as if the person who spoke wasn’t me. I search the alley for the stranger who had been standing there, waiting to say those words. But I know it was me, because Ada asks, “What did you say?”

“I’m not going to let them hit you,” I repeat. “I can’t let them do that.”

She’s silent again, and I beat my head with my hand, angry with myself for losing control of my thoughts.

“You mean that?”

I backtrack. “Well. Yes. However, I know a method that may be different from what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“That I’ll fight them for you?” I guess. “Which I will, if I need to. But first, I can help make sure you’re not the ‘runt’ of Shin anymore.” I understand how that feels all too well.

“How?”

“I’ll teach you,” I say, “to fight.”