I’m going to regret this, but I gave her my word, and unlike Han, I’m going to keep it.

The next day when training ends and I leave the field, I see Ada waiting for me from across the block. Chen sees her, but I say goodbye to him before he can make a foolish comment.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her as I wipe the sweat off my neck with the hem of my shirt.

“Practice,” she says.

“I just finished a whole day of training.”

“I know,” she says. “Are you thirsty?”

I look at her hands, which are empty. “No.”

“All right.”

 We walk back to the house together without speaking. I reach to open the door, but she refrains me.

“Are you going to teach me?”

“Right now?”

Her gaze is firm. I can’t reject her. Although my bones creak and my muscles ache, I nod, and she leads me to the same alley where we had hidden. I investigate the floor for a sharp object, but unlike the other alley, this one is empty. “I’m not quite sure how to teach you.”

“What about fighting with weapons?”

“You won’t always have weapons with you. Like right now.” The back of my ear itches. I scratch it. “You’ll have to make do with yourself.”

“Then teach me wushu.”

I’ve barely even grasped the concept of wushu, yet she wants me to teach it. I scoff. “I don’t want to teach you something that complicated.”

“Just teach me something. Please.” Her eyes are stretched with despondent fear. I lift one of her arms and angle it in front of her body, then use her other arm and position it in a similar fashion.

“Block,” I say, mimicking her stance. “Like this.”

She tightens her arms. I shake my head.

“Not too tightly. Looser.” I skim my hand down her arm to settle her down. She shivers. “Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Stay loose,” I say to her. I fix her arms again. “Block. This is your most important part.” I point to her torso, and then her face. “Those are the places you can block the easiest with your arms. So if someone tries to hit you – “ I give her a slow punch, and she panics to stop it “ – make sure you catch it.”

“It won’t be that slow, will it?”

“No.”

“Faster, then.”

I step back to punch her for real. My fist hits her arm, and she yelps. “Are you okay?” I ask her. She bites her lip to keep herself from screaming. I can imagine how hard her arm must be throbbing. I hit it harder than I planned. “Does it hurt?”

“Of course it hurts, you dunce!” She waves her arm away from her body as if it’s spitting fire. “I can’t do this.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“Do I look strong to you?” She cries out. “Look at me. All I do is stay home and cook and clean. Nobody ever taught me how to be strong. Nobody ever told me how to fight. All I know is how to understand that I’m easy to hurt. That’s all I know.”

“You know more than that.”

“I don’t.”

“You know that Zee isn’t my real name.” I step forward and force her to look at me directly. “You know that I’m not a stranger who passed out during a brawl. You know that. I know you do.” Another step. “Why do you trust me to teach you? What if I were a person looking for people to kill? What if I were a monster that wanted to destroy? Would you be able to stop me? You couldn’t. Because all you know is that you’re easy to hurt.”

She whispers, “I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m not!” She screams so loudly that my ears ring. “I’m not! I can do more than that! I can run the fastest out of anybody here and I can beat anybody in a game of shadow tag and I … I know how to leave Shin!”

I seize her arm and roughly pull her closer. “What?”

“I … Zee?”

“You said you know how to leave Shin. How do I do that?”

“I – “

“How do I do that?”

She stares up at me. It’s in that second of silence that I realize she can’t reply to me because, in that second, I had become the person I only pretended of being. But this needs to be me. This needs to be me.

“Zee.” She swallows. “You said you wouldn’t let anybody hit me. But, Zee, you’re hurting me.”

My hand shakes, but I can’t let go.

“Zee. Or … no. Whoever you are.” She places her free hand on mine. “I don’t know where you’re from. But here, you’re Zee. Okay? You aren’t anybody else right now. Please let go of me.”

I let her hand lift my fingers off her arm one by one. The rhythm disarms me, and I relax as soon as she steps away. A red imprint of my fingers colors her arm like sloppy paint. She rubs it and keeps her head down.

“Let’s go home,” I say. I hear her follow me out of the alley. As we leave, she tries a question.

“Is that what that place is to you?”

I don’t answer.

-----

It rains the next day. Chen and I and the rest of our group run around the field in tender ground churned up by our feet. Mud splatters our ankles, and water drips down our faces and mixes with our sweat. It’s hard to breathe when it rains.

They serve us lunch, but the bread is sodden, and the soup is too aqueous. We try to practice wushu, but the rods slip out of our hands. Even the official is exasperated, so much so that he tells us to do push-ups instead of throw knives.

As I lift my body with my arms, by fingers melt into the supple ground. After ten push-ups, my hands have been swallowed by the Earth. I glance at Chen, who is slowly doing his push-ups. The arm that he injured quivers, but he pushes through gallantly. He flashes me a smile when he sees me watching. I look away.

He’s foolish to work his arm only days after it has healed, but there isn’t much he can do but listen to what the official says. I am as helpless as he is. To go against the official is to fight the system. I’m not going to risk being beaten by group one’s trainees again, nor am I going to risk Chen acting carelessly to protect me.

In what I view as consideration, I neglect everyone but myself.

Having followed the orders of people that don’t appreciate me with at least an expected brotherly affection, I’ve grown audacious. Tonight, when I am sure that Ada and her mother are asleep, I am going to use my time of rest to explore Shin.

After I shower, I use a string of old rags to make a carrier for my knife. After I tie it around my waist and tuck it between my shirt and the waistband of my pants, I lean against the closed door of my room. I fall to the floor and wait until the only sounds I hear is the sound of rainfall, which hasn’t ceased since this morning. When two hours pass and I am sure that the house has fallen asleep, I stand up and carefully open the door.

I test the floorboards with my feet. I step on the areas that won’t utter a squeak and reach the front door. Bracing myself for the rain, I hunch my shoulders and escape the house.

I’m drenched and cold after fifteen steps from the door. Although I move from beneath one awning to another, the rain captures me. While the caress of rain is uncomfortable against my newly washed skin, I disregard the inconvenience and weave around the houses.

I have to find landmarks in order to remember the places I’ve been so that I don’t get lost in an endless repetition of homes. I use the alleys as routes between neighborhoods until I find a stone wall different from the one at the training camp. I brush the palm of my hand over the grainy texture and stare up. It’s hard to see with the rain falling into my eyes, but I think the wall is three times as tall as I am. The houses are too far for me to use as a ramp, and without trees or other fixtures, I can’t reach the top of the wall to see what’s on the other side.

I keep my hand on the wall as I follow its shape. It stays straight for ten minutes, and then it curves left. I keep following the wall for the next hour, but I find nothing unique that will enable me to leave urgently and conveniently. I am as trapped as I was before, but back then, the fact was unbeknownst to me.

Alone, I can’t leave Shin. I’m stuck here.

And I realize something that I chose to disbelieve. Han might never come back for me. He probably never planned to. He made the decision to leave me here with a mission, but it was never in his mind to save me when the mission was over.

I could never claim that I was once a Night, either. No one would believe me, not without the tattoo.

I’m nobody. I am neither a member of the Nights nor a resident of Shin. I’m a wayward stranger without a past to come back to or a present to accept. I’m like this rain that drips from my hair and through the lashes of my eyes – small, and unwanted.

I let out a sharp laugh. I have finally become the waste that Han assured me I was.

It was true. I was the weakest in my division. Even now, I am one of the worst wushu practitioners in group four.

“Then teach me wushu.”

Yet perhaps I am not as talentless as I was made to believe. If at least one person thinks I am knowledgeable enough to teach what I learned, then I can be more than I was determined to be. I can be myself – the renovated upgrade.

That’s what I will do. I will practice wushu even after my arms and legs have grown limp with sore feelings. I will learn until my mind overflows with experience. And when I see Han and the Nights – that is, if I ever see them again – I will prove, not only to them but also to myself, that achieving the final goal was worth the wait.

That’s a promise.