Thankfully, the torture is interrupted by Supreme Sensei Master Jio, the head of Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword. He skates to a great dais, rubbing his belly like the Enlightened One and laughing as if hearing the best jokes in his life one after another, although no one else is saying anything. “Ahihahaha, sweet little embryos! Now the second- and third-year students shall welcome you to Pearl Famous with a demonstration of Pearlian opera. For as you shall learn when you attain sagehood, the shadow they cast is the you that you shadow.”
A student skates out and unfurls a scroll that reads, FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS YOURSELVES WITHOUT THE SUPERVISION OF A SENSEI! ALWAYS SKATE RESPONSIBLY!
The great curtain of white silk covering one side of the hall is drawn aside. We gasp as we see that there is a vast white stage set behind it built in the image of the whole city of Pearl in miniature.
The older students enter into the cityscape. They sing as they skate, while strumming or pounding or drawing bows across instruments. I know the song. It is “The Pearlian New Year’s Song,” sung throughout the month of the New Year’s festivities.
“If I learned just one thing, then the year has not been wasted!” they cry.
They skate faster and faster and then begin to leap up and down from the rooftops to street level, flipping from bridge to balcony. The miniature cityscape is alive with a dazzle of figures dressed in ravishing pearlsilk brocades that swirl and flip like petal-fall in a wild wind.
“If I traded one illusion for a revelation,” they sing.
The stage riots with color and motion and the flash of blades. Skaters in scarlet and skaters in black robes spin and fly at each other in one-on-one duels like dark, metallic parasols.
The voices crescendo, and I feel a ball of emotion grow inside me as they sing, “If I kept just one friend, then the year has not been wasted!”
The hall quakes with Edaian taiko drumming over the sound of skates whisking on the pearl like bladed blossoms.
“May we meet here in the New Year!”
Skaters bear down hard toward the curling rooftops to the left and right edges of the stage. They whip into the curves and go hurtling back toward one another with their arms spread like eagle wings. They fly through the air until their skates clash and shower sparks onto the crowd. With each strike of metal on metal, we roar with joy.
“May we meet here in Pearl!”
With the last note of the song and the last strike of the drums, the skaters stamp their skates, toss their chests out, and punch their fists in the air, like statues of heroes from legend. The hall explodes in applause.
This is all I have ever wanted.
At last, at long last, I am finally where I belong.
And I do belong here. Because Little Pi Bao Gu was Shinian, and she invented this beautiful art form. So no one is going to make me feel that I belong here any less than anyone else.
* * *
After the performance, the two boys invite me to come and tour the campus with them sometime. I learn that they’re second-year students. They tell me that you can distinguish year by the trim on the front seam of a student’s robes: silver for first-years, gold for second-years, various colors for third-years depending on their conservatory. I burn with embarrassment, because second-year students don’t spend their time with first-years. There are kind people here in Pearl as well.
I look for Cricket, but I can’t see him. He must have skated off to hide in his dormitory chamber with no evenmeal. His hands tremble very badly when he doesn’t eat. Why did I leave him?
As I head toward the boys’ dormitory, I see two people sitting inside one of the rail-gondolas stationed at the towers at the academy entrance: Cricket and a boy I don’t recognize.
The gondola hangs from the rails, bluntly snouted like the lip of a walnut shell and swaying gently. I climb the tower steps to them.
They’re eating noodle soup with mushrooms and bright vegetables. The boy who is sitting with Cricket is handsome but smiles too much. Boys who have dimples overuse them.
He smiles. “Ah, Disciple Cricket, we have a guest!” He smiles again. “You must be Disciple Peasprout.” Another smile.
I press my hands in a bow and sit on the gondola bench beside Cricket.
“Joyful fortune to make your acquaintance. I am called familial name Niu, personal name Hisashi.”
What kind of name is Hisashi? Not Pearlian. Certainly not Shinian. Another Edaian name? Why are the Pearlians so obsessed with Eda?
“Thank you for feeding Cricket,” I say.
“You didn’t actually eat that stuff they serve in Eastern Heaven Dining Hall, did you?” he asks. He laughs. He has a nice laugh, as if he’s remembering something amusing while trying to clear bean jam from the roof of his mouth.
“Why didn’t you eat in the dining hall?” I ask.
“I don’t like crowds. And everything they serve has meat or other things taken from animals in it. The architecture is magnificent, though.”
“Disciple Hisashi said that he thinks I have the hands of an architect!” says Cricket.
What does that matter to him? Cricket has as much focus as a puppy.
“You’re too kind,” I say. “But Cricket is here to study wu liu. We are the skaters sent in the goodwill exchange with Chairman Niu Kazuhiro of New Deitsu Pearlworks Company.”
He tenses when I mention the Chairman of New Deitsu. Why is he acting like— Wait, the familial name. Niu. He must be the Chairman’s son. This boy is the son of the man who controls the company that manufactures and sells most of the pearl in existence. So why is this rich boy from a powerful family out here alone with Cricket?
“Tell me, friends”—Hisashi smiles, breaking the silence—“what has your impression of Pearl been so far?”
This boy’s big eyes
