The Future

Hesta wriggled out of the cage with a grunt.

Boheng took out a very old tin lunchbox containing cold potatoes, shredded cheese, and some grayish-brown mushroom slices.

In the moonlight, Hesta used a spoon to scoop out the mushroom slices for a closer look.

"Are these porcini mushrooms?"

Boheng nodded, "I stole a bit of butter to fry them."

Hesta was starving. She shoveled the food into her mouth, and Boheng handed her a similarly old water flask, "Slow down."

While the girl ate, Boheng pulled a neatly folded roll of newspaper from his trouser leg. Some of the ink along the creases had rubbed off, revealing the rough edges of the paper fibers.

The boy carefully unfolded the newspaper and began to read it intently in the moonlight.

Hesta was used to this scene.

During her four years at the convent, she was often confined by Sister Gurdin, and each time Boheng would bring her a little food and sit beside her doing his clippings.

"How did you know porcini mushrooms were edible?" Hesta looked at Boheng, who was reading the paper. "Did you read it in the newspaper?"

"No, an old uncle taught me before."

"Before you came here?"

"Yes... Before that, I lived with him in the wasteland."

As Boheng answered, he carefully cut out a small article from the newspaper. He carried milky-white medical tape with him and skillfully affixed the paper snippet to his notebook.

This notebook was Boheng's treasure. He had found a piece of moisture-proof asbestos cloth from somewhere and, when not in use, wrapped it in the cloth and hid it under the floor of the confinement room.

Sister Gurdin had very strict control over the reading materials for the children in the orphanage. Besides a collection of theological stories personally reviewed by her, the children's daily reading material consisted of fairy tale picture books with very simple stories. Even these picture books had missing pages because Sister Gurdin believed some of the content in these stories represented the unrealistic fantasies of heretics, which would cast a shadow on the children's pure hearts, making them more susceptible to the Chelation Disease.

The entire orphanage subscribed to only one newspaper, which was delivered daily to the director's and Sister Gurdin's offices. After reading it, they would store the newspaper in the storage room.

And Boheng was the one who secretly took it from there.

To avoid being discovered by the nuns, he only took old newspapers from three months prior. These newspapers were usually bundled together and piled in a corner, and every six months, government recycling personnel would come to collect them. No one would check if any pages were missing from the newspapers.

As usual, Hesta ate everything Boheng had brought, leaving the old lunchbox clean. She held it, feeling a sense of loss.

"Are you full?" Boheng asked.

"Mhm."

"Alright, Jane," Boheng looked up. "Listen to me, you were wrong about what happened today, though not for the reason Miss Gurdin mentioned."

Hesta tilted her head.

Boheng said gently, "Perhaps you had no choice when you were in Duanming Alley before, but now that we have the option to eat farm-raised animal meat, it's best not to consume wild animals."

"...But that squirrel just died, it was fresh, is that still not okay?"

"No." Boheng made a cross with his hands. "These wild animals are very likely to carry pathogens, parasites, or viruses—it has nothing to do with how long they've been dead. Remember?"

Hesta pondered this.

Boheng lowered his head to continue his clippings. "I think Flosang must have mistaken. Vultures are scavengers; they don't usually attack live animals."

Hesta looked confused. "If it wasn't a vulture, then where did those holes on the squirrel come from?"

"Perhaps some other bird of prey..."

Hesta looked at Boheng. "Did the uncle you lived with before teach you this too?"

"Oh, no, I read this in the newspaper." Boheng smiled. "Someone contracted the Chelation Disease from eating raw meat, so it's now strictly forbidden to eat raw food in all habitable areas for humans."

"So that's how it is..."

"But I mainly read the newspaper to collect information about District 14. Whenever I see a report about the sixteen districts, I cut it out."

District 14.

Hesta was no stranger to the name. She looked at Boheng with some curiosity. "That book you secretly borrowed from the director, 'Mountains Under the Storm,' was it about District 14?"

"Yes, but the story didn't take place where I'm going. District 14 is very, very large. It's the largest of the sixteen districts currently in the world, and it has many, many habitable areas."

"Why does Boheng want to go there?"

"Because that might be my homeland." Boheng replied. "'Boheng' is a very typical name for someone from District 14. Heng is the given name, and Bo is a very ancient surname... Perhaps my home is there, so I want to go back and see."

As he spoke, Boheng suddenly slapped his forehead. "Right! Jane, I saw a story a few days ago that might be related to you."

Boheng smiled and lowered his head. He rustled through his clipping book until he reached a certain page. He stopped and pushed the book towards Hesta.

"Do you know why the director chose the surname 'Hesta' for you back then?"

Hesta was silent for a moment, then shook her head.

"Because you have red hair, fiery red hair like fire. And in the northern part of District 14, there is a nomadic tribe called the Hesta Tribe. Legend has it that the women of the Hesta Tribe all have red hair like yours. Their totem is the eagle, and they have lived by hunting and roaming in the northern wastelands of District 14... Look at this. This report specifically talks about the Hesta Tribe."

Hesta's gaze swept over Boheng's clippings, her interest not particularly high. But then, she noticed Boheng's handwriting in the blank spaces of the notebook.

"So you also write a diary in this notebook," Hesta murmured.

"Ah, don't look at those!" Boheng fumbled to cover the text. "I wanted you to look at the story about the Hesta Tribe—"

"That story isn't correct," Hesta said softly. "The totem of the Hesta people is not the eagle, it's the horse."

"Horse?"

"Yes." Hesta nodded. "Although eagles are indeed important to the Hesta people—in Hesta legends, their ancestors were the incarnation of a divine eagle, so they consider eagles to be their guardian spirits. But some people always confuse this with their totem, which is the Akhal-Teke horse—the Hesta people rely on these horses to gallop across the grasslands."

Boheng was slightly taken aback. "Where did you hear these stories?"

Hesta hugged her lower leg with one arm, gently tucking stray hairs behind her ear with the other.

"For a while, people in Duanming Alley were paying high prices for red hair, especially hair as red as a flame, so during that time, everyone was inquiring about the Hesta people."

Duanming Alley, where Hesta used to live. Boheng had heard people talk about it; it was a slum located in the wilderness, once inhabited by a group of thieves, assassins, black market merchants, and some drifters with ambiguous identities who couldn't officially enter the country for the time being.

Boheng quickly picked up his pen and jotted down this detail.

For a moment, the only sound in the confinement room was the rustling of the pen on the paper.

Hesta closed the tin lunchbox again and placed it back beside Boheng. "Boheng, you're going to District 14, what do you plan to do?"

"I haven't decided yet," Boheng said softly. "I think I'll check out the towns where people with the surname Bo gather first. After that... I don't necessarily have to stay in the habitable zones. Chelation Disease doesn't appear much in District 14, and I want to live in the wilderness again for a while. Only life in the wilderness is truly free... What about Jane? Do you have any plans for the future?"

"Yes," Hesta nodded.

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to find someone, someone who is very, very important to me—"

Before Hesta could finish speaking, the door to the confinement room was abruptly pushed open from the outside. Hesta's voice cut off abruptly, and both of them looked up.

Pale moonlight streamed in through the gap in the door, casting a long, thin shadow on the ground.

—It was Sister Gurdin.