Chapter Text
“In Tikany, she’d been an invisible shopgirl, far beneath everyone’s notice. Her life and death had been utterly insignificant. If she’d been run over by a rickshaw on the street, no one would have bothered to stop.”
-The Dragon Republic, pg. 611
Rin wobbles precariously, a stack of wooden crates swaying dangerously beneath the tips of her toes. Her object of interest sits just out of reach of her fingertips; a dusty, medium-sized package of dried red ginseng root, wrapped with thick white cloth into a compact brick. Her last customer swept up the last few pieces of ginseng from the little cart of dried medicinal herbs that stands by the shop’s entrance. The cart sits there, at the front, inviting potential buyers to purchase any variety of plant, cloying the air with heavy spiced fragrances that threaten to make Rin sneeze. Auntie Fang had instructed Rin to replenish the herbs when needed, and Rin doesn’t like what happens when she doesn’t listen to Auntie Fang.
Falling off these crates seems like a much preferable outcome to disappointing her foster mother.
Finally, with a move that is perhaps more stupid than it is brave, Rin jumps, hand catching tightly around a loosened corner of the package, pulling it down as she falls back onto the crates. The whole stack shudders for one terrifying moment; but then the sway slows, and Rin lets out a shaky breath. She climbs down slowly, package in hand, and heads for the large, cluttered desk in the back of the store where she takes orders and works on her ledgers. She’s still not perfect; her mind can only work with so many of those large, complicated numbers, but she’s learning quick. Auntie Fang has made it very clear that she expects nothing but perfection.
Rin drops the package onto the table with a thump, trying not to think about the mottled bruises scattering her ribs from last time Auntie Fang wasn’t satisfied with her calculations. At least at her grown age of nine, she’s been deemed responsible enough to run the shop on her own. That means fewer interactions with Auntie Fang, and thus, fewer opportunities to make her mad.
She reaches for the dagger she’d taped under the desk, pawing at the underside until her hand meets the hilt. It’s an old, rusted thing, having seen many years of use under Auntie Fang. Rin uses it to cut open packages and slice up herbs. Once she’d been left alone in the shop, Auntie Fang told her to point and stick it into the crotch of anyone who tries to steal. She’d had to point it a few times, but luckily the situation had never escalated to sticking it into any sensitive places. Yet.
Just as she presses the dulling tip of the blade to the seam running along the side of the ginseng brick, a grating little chime sounds from the front of the store, indicating a new customer.
She hears a sob, and quickly shuffling feet. Rin looks up at the sound.
A young, frazzled, snivelling boy of a customer, bolting in as if being chased by a pack of rabid wild dogs. He appears to be about her age, but the similarities end there. He looks otherworldly, like a painted lantern plucked straight off the moon. His robes, his far too expensive robes for a place like Tikany, alongside his porcelain face of nobility that had never seen a single day of disease, are as out of place as Rin would be in a palace.
She blinks at him stupidly. “Would you like to buy something?”
He startles, as if just noticing her presence. At first, he just cries harder, head turning wildly to look at the door where he just came through, then back at her, as if unsure if he would rather stay here or face whatever it is that’s waiting for him outside. Rin bristles; she knows most people find her muddy skin and underfed frame off-putting, but she doesn’t think she deserves a reaction quite like this.
He looks back at her again, this time in what is clearly terror, his already-pale face only leeching colour further. His eyes zero in on her hand.
Oh, right.
Rin lowers her dagger onto the table slowly. “I won’t hurt you.”
His lips quiver and he takes a step in her direction. “Please- please help me.”
Even his voice doesn’t belong, lilting and aristocratic even as it shakes. He looks so pathetic, the shivering little noble boy, that she can’t help but feel a little pity. She wonders how he even ended up here, in Tikany, of all places.
Rin hears shouts and laughter, loud and mocking, from somewhere outside the shop. The boy starts sobbing.
“Please,” he pleads, taking another staggering step towards her, tears and snot smearing his skin.
Rin frowns, re-gripping her knife. “Here, behind the desk. Hide.”
She feels bad for the boy. She’s reminded of little toddler Kesegi. She’d like to think someone would help him like this if he were ever in need. And besides, she wouldn’t want this boy’s blood spilled everywhere in the shop if worst came to worst. That would mean she’d have to stay late to clean the mess, and Auntie Fang would certainly be unhappy.
His face goes slack with relief, whimpered thank you’s spilling like prayers from his lips as he lunges behind her, ducking into a tiny, shivering ball just in time for the store door to burst open once again.
Two men saunter in, clearly drunk, one gripping the neck of some kind of foul liquor bottle as he nearly trips over his own feet. Rin rests her dagger on the hard wood of the desk, but keeps it gripped tightly just in case.
The man without the bottle is holding his own weapon, a dirty kitchen knife, between loose fingers. He points it in Rin’s general direction, barely keeping the blade up without it drooping downwards at the tip.
He leers, taking a shuddering step forward. Rin’s fingers tighten around her dagger, and she feels the boy beneath the desk clutch onto her pant leg with a trembling hand.
“Hey, you! Little girl,” the man with the knife slurs, dragging his inebriated partner along. “Have you- have you seen one little boy, yea tall-”
His knife hand shoot down, massively underestimating the boy’s height as he struggles to keep his grip on the knife.
“-all snobby and rich looking?” He continues with a noticeable hiccup, pausing to catch his breath. “He’s definitely some prissy little Lord’s spawn, we can certainly sell him- sell him for a good price to someone.”
The boy’s hand tightens around the fabric of her trousers, and she shakes her head in response to the man, and as a warning to the boy below.
The man takes another step forward, now only a few feet away, and Rin brandishes her knife, hand shaking just a little.
“Don’t come closer.” She threatens weakly, swallowing through a dry throat. She lowers her knife and points it in the direction of the man’s crotch.
His companion laughs loudly, brandishing his bottle like a flag, nearly sweeping a row of cheap cosmetic powders off their shelf. “Ooooh, you’re a feisty kid aren’t ya!”
“No need to point that at us, girl,” the man with the knife chuckles along, but blessedly takes a step away from the blade directed at his groin, hands raised in placation. “We’ll be on our way, just give us a shout if you see him, will ya?”
Rin nods tensely, still holding her dagger. The two men saunter away, knocking an ugly, ceramic bowl to the ground on their way out, but with no further damage. Their laughter fades as they walk away from the shop, and Rin drops her dagger to the table as the door shuts behind them resoundingly.
The boy starts to cry again.
Rin sits down beside him with a sigh, pulling her pant leg out of his grasp with a tug and wrapping her arms around her knees for comfort. He looks wrecked; eyes swollen and tremors racking his body.
“First time being threatened to be sold off, huh?” Rin tries for humour, but her voice trembles a bit too. She doesn’t like these confrontations, even if she’s unfortunately used to them. She doesn’t like how small, how weak she is compared to these men. She doesn’t doubt that if any of them were wanting to hurt her, to really hurt her, there isn’t much she would be able to do about it.
The boy flinches at her words, staring at her in horror.
She sighs. “Not from around here, are you?”
He shakes his head in a few jerking motions, as if shaking bugs out of his hair. His sleek, midnight-black hair, done up into an intricate topknot that has definitely never felt the disgusting grip of bug legs when he’s trying to sleep at night.
“Well, wherever you are from, you really can’t go around looking like that, someplace like this.” She states, reaching up to pull on the shimmering cerulean ribbon holding up his hair with a sharp tug, sending it tumbling down into a mess of dark strands. “Better.”
He blinks at her, eyes wide. At least he isn’t crying anymore.
“Also,” Rin adds, leaning down to rub her hands into the dirt and grime that had gathered on the floor over a long day of work. “This could help. A little.”
She grabs a sleeve of his robe and smears her stained hands all over the fine, expensive silk material. She almost sighs at how soft and comfortable it feels. The boy jerks away in shock, pulling his sleeve close to his body, as if she’s just threatened to stab him.
She rolls her eyes at his theatrics. His clothes staying clean, really, is that what matters here?
“You look too rich, too important. That makes people here want to go after you.” She clarifies in the same tone of voice she uses to reprimand Kesegi when he reaches for the sizzling hearth or a sharp knife.
The boy flushes scarlet, stuttering in indignation. “I- I know! I’m not a child. I’ve been learning my family martial arts, I’ll have you know. I can- I can beat up any of the uncivilized bastards from around here!”
Rin scowls. She doesn’t like his pretentious, snivelling voice. “Well, then why didn’t you beat up those guys that chased after you back there?”
He turns redder, and this time he looks away in embarrassment.
“I’m still learning.” He mumbles quietly. “They were… scarier and meaner than any of the masters I’ve been practicing with.”
Rin scoffs. Must be nice to have someone care enough to find you a master to learn from. She crosses her arms petulantly.
To her surprise, the boy leans down, covering his hands with dirt the same way that she did, and begins smearing it into his clothes with no more than a pitiful wince. He even smears a bit on his face, and Rin’s lips quirk at the effort.
She lets him sit under the desk, until the trembles pass, until his breaths even, until he’s certain the men have truly gone. She continues organizing inventory and doing calculations in her ledgers as he waits, neither of them saying a word. It’s only when he gets up on shaky legs, likely ready to find his way far, far away from this place, that he finally speaks.
“I’m Nezha. What’s your name?” He says politely, and she sees a flash of the important, powerful man he is likely destined to be one day. Unlike her; a poor, unwanted shopgirl from Tikany.
“Rin.” She says simply. She has no need for politeness here, not when it will bring her nothing of value anyway.
“Thank you, Rin.” He says softly, earnestly.
He gives her one final look over his shoulder as he turns, and then he leaves.
Later that night, when Rin is closing the shop, she sees a flash of blue and shiny silver amongst the grime on the floor. She picks it up, squinting, dusting off the soft velvet, rubbing the grime off the intricate dragons stitched into the material with silver thread. By the time she realizes what it is, whose it is, Nezha is long gone. She stuffs the ribbon in her pocket and locks the door behind her.
The boy, Nezha, comes back three days later.
Rin is staring at a packet in her small, shaking hand when it happens. She’s lost in her thoughts, thinking about the task that lays ahead of her later that evening. She’s responsible for helping Auntie Fang deliver important packages to not-so-important people. These packages are filled with opium, she knows that much, but it could be gold for all she understands why its recipients hold it in their hands as if it’s as precious as their newborn child.
She’d actually had one person offer their child to her, just for a few more handfuls of that opium gold from her pockets. She didn’t have any more than what Auntie Fang allocated to her, of course, but that didn’t stop the emaciated, frantic mother from trying to claw it from her anyway.
It’s horrifying, and Rin wants nothing more but to toss the packet in her hand along with its contents into a river. She’d do it if she didn’t think Auntie Fang would kill her for it.
Her fingers wrap around the crinkled paper on instinct at the sound of the chime at front of the shop, and she drops the opium into her pocket before her newest customer can see it.
Nezha peers around a shelf, and Rin blinks at him in surprise.
“Hello,” he says meekly, hands tucked behind his back. He’d changed out of his expensive robes, now wearing a pair of simple beige cotton pants and a tunic, his hair knotted back plainly, as was standard for most boys in the area. He walks towards her.
He wears a makeshift mask, wrapped tightly over his nose like a bandit. He’s trying to hide his aristocratic features, Rin supposes, but she still finds the look kind of silly. She tells him as much.
His ears turn red.
“I’m trying to be discreet, okay?” He mumbles while pulling down the mask, embarrassed.
Rin shrugs. She returns to what she was doing prior to ruminating over her opium run, picking up a brush to mark any new orders for the shop that she’d need to place for the upcoming month.
The silence drags on.
“Would you like to buy something?” Rin asks eventually, noticing Nezha shuffling from foot to foot in front of her.
“Um, yes.” Nezha grabs a tin of ointment from the shelf nearest to him without even looking. “This.”
He hands her the product. Rin stares. “Old ladies usually buy this for their rashes.”
Nezha flushes again, and mutters something unintelligibly under his breath. He grabs the tin from her hand and returns it to its rightful place.
Rin looks down at her order sheet, then back at Nezha. “Can I help you find something?”
“I’m, uh, not actually looking to buy anything.” He says, not looking at her.
“Why are you here then?” Rin wonders. He seemed very scared when he ran in here three days ago. If she were him, she’d never have come back to the shop.
Nezha seems to contemplate for a moment, chewing on his lip. Then, he brightens.
“Look.” He brings out something from the folds of his tunic, sharp metal shining from the warm afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows. “It’s a dagger. Like yours, but fancier. Isn’t it cool?”
It does look cool. Intricate designs of cliffs and rivers wind their way across the hilt, and the blade is sharp and spotless. Rin feels a little jealous.
“Aren’t you worried the bad men will come back here?” She asks earnestly. If he just came here to show her the dagger, it doesn’t seem worth the risk. Besides, noble boys like him probably had much more important things to do than visit peasant shopgirls.
Nezha raises his chin haughtily, holding the dagger out before him, like a sword. “I can take them.”
Rin observes him, the way he holds the weapon with such self-assurance that she can almost believe him. Maybe she can, maybe noble nine-year-old boys can win in a knife fight against two grown men.
Rin goes back to her orders, and Nezha joins her, asking her questions about what she’s doing, about the products, until she has to tell him to be quiet so she can get her work done. So, he stays with her, in silence, playing with the dagger. He swings the blade around, pretending to be a soldier, a general, until the sun begins to dip on the horizon, and he says he has to go home.
He starts coming back. Not every day, not for more than a few hours at a time, but often enough that she starts talking more and he begins to listen more, instead of exclusively the other way around. She shares with him the kinds of games she likes to enjoy in rare moments of rest, how she plays with little Kesegi. He tells her about his expensive toys, about his sweet little brother and awe-inspiring older siblings, about his days filled with study. She doesn’t understand much about his life, but it’s clear he doesn’t understand hers either. He shares big dreams and hopes for the future, of sailing oceans and slaying dragons. When he asks of her future, she draws a blank. But it never matters for long; any time she’s stumped by a question, he helps build a dream for her, imagining her on the open oceans alongside him, placing orders and doing inventory while he navigates the ship. He describes her brandishing Auntie Fang’s rusted knife as they both battle a tempest of sea creatures, coming out victorious every time.
He explains it all so beautifully, so logically, that Rin can almost imagine it all to be real. A few times it costs Rin her well-practiced efficiency, and she misses a product or miscalculates a sum on her ledger while lost in Nezha’s stories. The bruises she hides under her clothes after Auntie Fang finds out about her missteps always hurt, but she doesn’t dare tell her about the boy that’s been coming by and filling her head with fantasies. Somehow, it feels worth the pain.
Every day, she carries his ribbon in her pocket. But he’d never asked for it back, and she’d never claimed she isn’t selfish. It’s a pretty ribbon, and she doesn’t have any pretty things. It’s the least she deserves for saving him when they first met, she reasons.
She never does get a real answer for why he came back that first time, but weeks pass, and their companionship feels as natural as breathing. Like poppies in summertime, he grows on her.
Then one day, the poppies are gone, and he disappears without a word.