I don’t bother to look for him in Eastern Heaven Dining Hall. I’ve never seen him eat there, probably because everything they serve has meat or other animal parts in it. He’s never come to tea anemone hour, either. It occurs to me that he might like sitting in the gondolas to eat his meals, like the first time I met him. After midmeal, I skate toward the entrance to the academy. It’s hard to see because the mist in the Season of Spirits collects everywhere into thick forms that float above the pearl and gather around us. It’s one of the two seasons when everyone doesn’t have to wear smoked spectacles against the gleam of the pearl. I’m almost at the gondolas before I can see that they’re empty.
Cricket said that Hisashi almost never goes to classes. Attendance isn’t mandatory, but how will he perform well at his Motivations, Recitals, and Composition projects? Even if he wants to devote to architecture, they post the rankings in every discipline publicly. Who wants to finish last?
That afternoon, I leave wu liu class as quickly as possible to skate to the site of the boys’ wu liu class. As I cross the Conservatory of Wu Liu, the pearl is doing something that it never did during the Season of Spouts. It makes noises as I skate across it, little sighs and whistles, like steam escaping from the pores of the world.
When I get to the boys’ training court, I peer at the crowd of boys coming out. However, at that moment, the thick mists part and sunlight pierces through. It stabs into my eyes because I didn’t bring my smoked spectacles and because the sun is intense, since it’s summer in the world. My eyes are watering trying to see the boys in this light, but I definitely don’t see Hisashi. I should be irritated, but the beauty of the scene before me quells that.
With the golden beams and slats of light slicing through the tumbling mists and sweeping across the academy, Pearl Famous looks like the capital of heaven.
* * *
Finally, three days after the Chairman’s interrogation, I skate through a great tumbling cloud, like a cauliflower lanced with rays of sun that looks as if it’s illuminated from within, to find Hisashi on the other side of it, skating in the other direction. I skate over to him.
“Where did you get that?” he says when I show him the trinket. “It’s so heavy.” I grow alarmed when I see he’s alarmed.
“Your fath—the Chairman gave it to me. What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think Suki used something like this to attack the pagoda?”
“No, but this is bad. I remember now that I heard about an employee of New Deitsu who was given one of these,” Hisashi says slowly. “He was never seen again. I thought maybe it was some kind of poison.”
“Poison? I put it in my mouth!”
“No! You should go get checked by Doctor Dio.”
“Who?”
“The healer at the Hall of Benevolent Healing.”
Oh, her. I don’t want her to try to remove my nose for study, like she tried with Mole Girl.
“No, thank you. I don’t feel any different. It don’t think it’s poison. When I put it in my mouth, it felt strange, so I skated under the Arch of Chi Retuning just in case. I feel fine.”
“Still. Aiyah, why did you put it in your mouth?”
“Because I wanted to find out more about it!”
“That’s a good reason to put something in your mouth?”
“Yes, a wonderful reason. Doesn’t the Arch of Chi Retuning cure everything?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you put it in your mouth and find out?”
* * *
All throughout midmeal at Eastern Heaven Dining Hall, I feel better knowing that I’ll have Hisashi to talk to about the vandal attacks and the mysteries surrounding the pearl. I know he’ll help me in any way that he can.
If only there were some way that he could help Cricket as well. He didn’t do too well in the boys’ second Motivation. Vertical Battlefield is all about jumping skill, and Cricket is a weak jumper. Our parents didn’t choose an apt name for him. He finished twenty-seventh.
I decide to check on him during White Hour, the hour after midmeal when no classes are scheduled. It’s officially intended for rest, but students with discipline and ambition and a future in wu liu take the extra hour to train so that rivals don’t pull ahead of them.
I skate to the boys’ practice court at the Conservatory of Wu Liu, but he isn’t there. Ten thousand years of stomach gas. He needs the extra training more than anyone. Where can he be?
I skate across the Principal Island looking for him. On a little islet just northeast of the Principal Island sits the round structure that is the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character. A group of students is gathered at its entrance. The figure in the center looks like Cricket. But why would Cricket be surrounded by other boys? Are they making fun of him? I skate faster.
As I near, I see that, in fact, it is Cricket, but the boys aren’t taunting him. They’re listening carefully as he lectures.
“The walls inside are lined with a ramp that spirals around the figures in the center,” he says, pointing to the half-carved miniature sculpture of the temple in his hands. “The ramp makes the structure more pliant in earthquakes, but if anything damages the ramp, the whole structure will come toppling down around it.”
“Cricket, what do you think you’re doing?” I yell out. All the boys turn to look at me. Cricket shrinks like a snail that has been dusted with salt.
“Peasprout, please,” he whispers.
The other boys leave us, but I almost want them to stay and hear this.
“Why aren’t you
