I skate to them. I never minded Hisashi’s lack of the traditional physical traits desirable in boys his age. Now I’m grateful for it, because he’s showing Cricket that a boy who doesn’t have a rumbling voice and a muscled form can still be a champion of wu liu. He’s showing Cricket that heroes come in all shapes and sizes.
I babble at Hisashi and I’m saying something about “My gratitude—” and “What you did for Cricket—” and “The beauty of your wu liu—” and he’s turning so red that he looks more girlish than ever, but I don’t care, because I’m telling him he’s “the bravest, truest boy I’ve ever met—” and at this moment, I worship this boy, this “generous and humble and brave—” boy, not for the courage of his wu liu, but for helping Cricket see that those gifts are still alive in himself and just waiting to be born.
I stop, because my eyes begin to mist, and Cricket’s eyes begin to mist, and I don’t know if Hisashi’s eyes begin to mist, because I’m too emotional to look him in the face.
I simply say, “Thank you for what you’ve done for my brother.”
“Did you do well in the third Motivation?” he asks.
“Yes.” I start to tell him the details, but I’m suddenly ashamed, because I would not have done as well as I did if Doi and Suki hadn’t been eliminated.
“I need to go see how your sister is doing,” I say.
As I ride the rail leading from the Conservatory of Wu Liu, it hurts me to think of Doi believing for one moment more that she’s unappreciated. I’ve decided that I’m going to be her friend. Even if she refuses to be mine. That’s her business.
There is also a part of me that realizes that if I gain her trust, she might tell me whom she was talking to about a “hostage” and what she might know about what the Empress Dowager is actually doing with Kenji and Aki.
As I skate down the dormitory hall, I hear Hisashi cry out behind me, “Wait! She won’t want to see you. She’s probably not even in her chamber.”
“She has to be. Sensei Madame Liao ordered it.”
Hisashi pauses and says gently, “She’s my sister. Let me talk to her first.”
Hisashi and I skate to Doi’s door. It feels like we’re approaching a tiger to make it take a pill it doesn’t want to swallow.
Hisashi knocks softly. There’s no answer. “Doi,” he says as he slides the shoji open a crack. His voice is kind, like the sort of brother every girl could admire. He slips in and closes the shoji behind him. I can’t see their silhouettes or hear their voices.
Mere moments later, the shoji opens. Hisashi hurries out and closes it. His face has gone pale.
He puts his hand in mine and leads me away from Doi’s dormitory chamber.
I ask him what Doi said. He doesn’t reply. He’s protecting me. He doesn’t want me to know what she said about me.
He takes me to the Hall of the Eight Precious Virtues, the highest structure on the academy campus. We fling ourselves up each of the hall’s ten tiers of roofs. He directs my gaze to the city of Pearl across the water. It spreads in cream terraces from the waterfront up the side of the mountain so completely that no green is visible.
“Peasprout, you were kind enough to tell me Cricket’s story,” Hisashi says finally. “So I’d like to tell you Doi’s story. When my sister was ten years old, she became the youngest person ever to win first ranking at the Season of Glimmers Pageant of Lanterns Wu Liu Invitational because of her routine, ‘The Dragon and the Phoenix.’ She played the phoenix. A train of skating taiko drummers with black lacquered drums formed a twisting, thundering dragon chasing after her.”
Immediately, I think of Doi in her bird costume.
“The moves she invented for the phoenix became legendary. Little wing flutters and furtive glances behind her. Crossing her feet and taking little steps on the points of her toes. Pulling her arms and one leg back up behind her in a spin, like a spiraling blossom. Baby phoenix Doi.
“Just a few years ago, that whole city out there cheered for Doi. Except for one person. Do you understand?”
No wonder the costume was tight on her. It’d been years since she’d worn it. She wanted her father to see her in it. Why wouldn’t he stop to see her?
I don’t know what their family history is, but I know how it feels to be unappreciated. I know what it is not to be seen for what you are.
I say slowly, “The Empress Dowager’s hair has never been cut. Once a year, it’s woven strand by strand into the tapestries that adorn her throne. The throne is composed of living tortoises that are trained to stack themselves together for her to sit on. She only sits on it once a year to name the Peony-Level Brightstar. All that for me. But now, here, in this place, people laugh even at my soap. So yes. I understand.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
“I need to say something to you,” says someone behind me.
I haven’t heard her hoarse voice in weeks.
After missing the third Motivation, Doi dropped to twelfth place. Every time I tried to talk to her, she would skate away. And this is the sister of the boy who helped Cricket bring his ranking up to eleventh place after the third Motivation, because of the special
