Chapter Three: The Life you Want

CHAPTER THREE

THE LIFE YOU WANT

The next time anyone in my family willingly utters a word to me, it’s them shrieking my name the morning of my enlistment.

I lurch up from my straw bed, where I’ve been festering with a twisted stomach all night, turning my wooden hairpin over and over and over in my hand like a thick chopstick.

A hovercraft is supposed to take me to the Great Wall. Did they see it in the distance or something?

“Tian-Tian!” My grandmother’s voice floats closer to the door. “There’s a boy here!”

I falter while getting up. My hand brakes against my grandparents’ bed frame.

A boy…

No. No, it can’t be—

I totter to the door in a daze. A dangerous anticipation hovers alarm-red in my chest. My thumping heartbeat travels from my palm and into the door as I push it open.

Brightness stings my eyes. Then, when the spots wash away, there he is. Yizhi. Standing in the blazing sunlight beyond the front entrance, pleading with my family, who cower like cave creatures in the shadows of our house. His white silk robes, embroidered with golden patterns of bamboo shoots and leaves, practically glow like an otherworldly material.

I have never seen him outside the mottled shadows of forest cover. For an instant, I’m disoriented—is it really him? But the gentle tenor of his voice is unmistakable.

“Aunties, uncles, believe me, I can match any price.” He shows my family the metal piece of his ID. “So, please. Let me marry your daughter.”

My heart chokes like I’ve missed a step going down the stairs along the rice terraces.

Shock ripples through my family. Jaws drop. Hands fly to their lips. My grandmother, standing closest to me, swings a bewildered look between me and Yizhi. Transaction chimes must be going off like firecrackers in their heads at the sight of his family name and his address in the Huaxia capital, Chang’an.

They might actually forbid me from getting on the hovercraft.

I move without speaking or thinking. I shove through them, snatch Yizhi by the wrist, then tug him into the dimness of the house. His mouth parts in surprise. He almost trips over the threshold. But then his eyes meet mine and light up with an intensity that shoots a pang through my chest.

I drag him into my grandparents’ room. Even his shoes don’t sound the same when they scuff our dingy concrete floors.

“Don’t come in,” I warn my family before slamming the door, stirring a flurry of dust.

I turn to Yizhi. The slant of light from the window cuts over him like an ethereal blade, turning his robes lunar-white and his skin translucent.

“This is my house. My home.” My voice shakes the silence. The image of him against the greasy wooden walls is so wrong that I’m not sure if I’m dreaming. “You were never, ever supposed to show up here—how did you even find it?”

“The official registries.” He gulps, thick-lashed eyes wilting. “Zetian, I can take you to Chang’an.”

“No, you can’t!” I blurt, because my family is definitely eavesdropping. “That’s just something you’re saying. Your father would never let you marry me!”

“He’s got fourteen more sons. He’ll get over it.”

“Really? Would he? Wouldn’t he rather pair you up with the granddaughter of some high-up official? I doubt he became the richest man in Huaxia by missing opportunities!”

“Then we’ll make our own opportunities. We can figure it out together. As long as there’s life, there’s hope.” Yizhi lifts my fingers into the spill of window light. His words tremble like winter and fall like snow. “But any life I make will be meaningless without you.”

Light shivers in my eyes. His face blurs over.

I know how to be hurt. I know how to take a beating, how to be insulted, how to be ground up and crumpled and thrown around like a piece of trash. But this?

This, I don’t know how to handle.

It doesn’t feel real.

It can’t be real.

I’m not falling for it.

“Give me a break.” I snatch my hand away. Hot tears scald from the corners of my eyes. A dry laugh cracks my voice. “Frontier peasant girl marries into the richest family in Huaxia? Can you be even a bit realistic? I’m not some four-year-old child you can swindle.”

Yizhi’s eyes gloss over. “Zetian…”

“Stop pretending like your family would let me be anything but a concubine.” I back away with wobbling steps. “And that will never work. There’ll be problems when I refuse to kowtow to your disgusting pig of a father. When I refuse to serve the proper wife you’ll inevitably get arranged with. When I refuse to bear your son—because I am never letting anyone’s spawn swell up my body and bind me forever, not even yours. And you will not be able to prevent any of this, because you are barely eighteen years old, and any semblance of money and power you have are based on your father’s mercy. Now, you could bravely elope with me, and we could spend our lives as humble migrant workers in some small city, but because I never got to do what I wanted, I will be miserable. I’ll be constantly thinking about how much more satisfying it would’ve been if I had volunteered for my death instead of going with you. Is that what you want? Is that the life you want, Gao Yizhi?”

My words snap off into an asphyxiating silence.

Yizhi looks at me like a beautiful immortal who’s floated down from the Heavenly Court, only to stumble upon the concept of cannibalism.

Then it’s not silent anymore.

A rumbling clatter picks up beyond the window. Great winds churn through the mountains, rustling the trees. Our pigs and chickens freak out in our backyard, oinking and clucking in their pens.

Now that must be the hovercraft.

I’ve heard this noise once before, when my sister was taken. I didn’t realize it was meant for her until the hovercraft hovered directly over our house, its steel hull gleaming like white fire, and a soldier with a neat topknot and olive-green uniform dropped a rope ladder into our backyard. Everyone had kept it a secret from me. Including her. They’d known they wouldn’t be able to predict what I’d do to prevent it if I had found out beforehand.

I couldn’t stop anybody then.

Nobody can stop me now.

“Zetian.” Yizhi leans closer, whispering, eyes widening. “There has to be a different way to kill Yang Guang. My family has connections in—”

“If there was anything you could do, you would’ve done it already,” I growl under my breath. “You can’t touch a pilot that powerful and popular, Yizhi. You just can’t!”

“What about his family?” Yizhi’s voice sinks lower, deeper. His eyes darken with a menacing fervor I’ve only glimpsed in him a few times. “They’re not untouchable. Would it be enough for them to be…?”

“No!” I say on a gasping breath. Yizhi really must be beyond desperate. “They weren’t the ones who did what he did! What would be the point?”

“Then just let him die in battle. Even male pilots hardly live past twenty-five.”

“You don’t get it. It needs to be me. I need to do it. I need to avenge Big Sister by my own hand.”

“Why?” His fine brows squeeze up at the middle. “Karma will get him.”

“There’s no such thing as karma,” I say, enunciating every syllable like I want to crush them with my teeth. “Or, if it does exist, it sure doesn’t give a shit about people like me. Some of us were born to be used and discarded. We can’t afford to simply go along with the flow of life, because nothing in this world has been created, built, or set up in our favor. If we want something, we have to push back against everything around us and take it by force.”

Yizhi has nothing to say to that. He just looks at me, weary lines etched around his eyes. Strands of his half-up hair stray across the front of his pristine robes, curling to the side as choppy winds intensify through the window.

“We’re all going to die anyway,” I say, softer. “Don’t you wish you could at least go out doing something you’ve dreamed of doing?”

“The…” Yizhi’s mouth opens and closes. His lips have gone pale. I can’t stop staring at them. “The thing I dream about most is being with you. No more hiding. No more shame.”

My heartstrings pull into knots. “Then you seriously need to dream bigger, Yizhi.”

The hovercraft rumbles louder. A buzz goes through the house, vibrating the walls.

“No regrets?” Yizhi leans even closer. “You really won’t come with me?”

“It’ll be the same fight, just in a city instead of a village,” I murmur, focus flicking to his lips over and over. A new kind of tension builds in me. “I’m tired. Just tired.”

“But we could—”

I grasp his face and close the gap between us. His plea hushes away between our lips.

Warmth like I’ve never felt blooms through me. Heat seeps into my blood, and I swear it could’ve turned luminous. Yizhi’s lips are tense with surprise at first, then meld to the shape of mine. His hand lifts up, trembling, grazing my neck like he’s afraid to touch me, like he’s afraid this isn’t real.

When I break the kiss, I thread my fingers through the pulled-back portion of his hair and touch my forehead to his. Warm breaths gust and swirl between our faces.

Maybe, if things were different, I could get used to this. Being cradled in his warmth and light. Being cherished. Being loved.

But I have no faith in love. Love cannot save me.

I choose vengeance.

Gathering my senses, I rip myself away and push him back.

“That’s what you were trying to get, right?” I say with no emotion, ignoring his disheveled look, his pained eyes. “You got it. Now let me go. If you somehow retrieve my body, burn it and scatter the ashes in the creek. So I can follow after Big Sister, wherever she is.”

Wet lines break from his eyes, glittering in the sunlight.

I can’t look anymore. I turn and head for the door.

But before I reach it, I pause.

“One last thing,” I say over my shoulder, too quiet for my family to hear over the hovercraft churning. “Don’t think I’ve overlooked that you came to my house and almost foiled my plan, despite knowing how important it is to me. If you tip off the army in even the slightest way, I will kill myself when they lock me up, and then I will haunt you.”

I wrench the door open and leave him forever.