Future

Hesta wriggled out of the cage with a gulp.

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

Holding them up to the moonlight, Hesta scooped out the mushroom slices with a spoon and examined them closely.

"Are these porcini mushrooms?"

Boheng nodded. "I stir-fried them with some butter I stole."

Hesta was starving. She stuffed the food into her mouth in huge bites. Boheng handed her an equally old canteen. "Slow down."

While the girl ate, Boheng pulled a roll of newspaper from his pant leg, softened from being folded over and over. The ink along its creases had been rubbed away, exposing frayed paper fibers.

The boy carefully unfolded the newspaper and began reading it intently beneath the moonlight.

Hesta had grown accustomed to this sight.

Over the four years she had spent at the convent, Sister Gurdin had constantly put her in solitary confinement. Every time, Boheng came to see her like this with something to eat, then sat beside her and made clippings.

"How did you know porcini mushrooms were edible?" Hesta looked at Boheng as he read. "Did you read it in the newspaper?"

"No. An old man taught me."

"Before you came here?"

"Yeah... I used to live in the wasteland with him."

As he answered, Boheng carefully cut out a tiny article from the newspaper. He carried milky-white medical tape with him, and with practiced motions, pasted the clipping into his notebook.

This notebook was Boheng's treasure. Somehow, he had found a piece of moisture-proof asbestos cloth. Whenever he was not using it, he wrapped it in the cloth and hid it beneath the floor of the confinement room.

Sister Gurdin exercised extremely strict control over the orphanage children's reading material. Aside from a batch of theological stories she had personally reviewed, the only things the children could read were picture books containing very simple fairy tales—even those had missing pages, because Sister Gurdin believed some parts of those stories were the unrealistic fantasies of heathens. They would cast a shadow over the children's pure hearts and make them more vulnerable to Chelation Disease.

The entire orphanage subscribed to only one newspaper. Every day, it was delivered to the headmistress's office and Sister Gurdin's office. After reading it, they stored the newspaper in the supply room.

Boheng secretly borrowed his reading material from there.

To avoid being discovered by the nuns, he only took newspapers that were at least three months old. They were usually bundled up and piled in a corner. Every six months, government collectors came to take them away. No one checked whether any pages were missing.

As always, Hesta ate every last thing Boheng had brought. Still holding his old lunchbox, she looked a little wistful.

"Full?" Boheng asked.

"Mm."

"Then, Jane," Boheng said, raising his head, "listen to me. You really were wrong about what happened today, though not for the reason Miss Gurdin gave."

Hesta tilted her head.

Boheng said gently, "Maybe you had no choice when you were in Duanming Alley, but now that we can eat meat from farm-raised animals, we should avoid touching wild animals whenever possible."

"...But that squirrel had only just died. It was still fresh. Even then, no?"

"No." Boheng crossed his hands into an X. "Animals living in the wild are very likely to carry pathogenic bacteria, parasites, or viruses—how long they have been dead has nothing to do with it. Remember that, okay?"

Hesta fell into thought.

Boheng lowered his head again and resumed making clippings. "I think Flosang must have seen wrong. Vultures are scavengers. They generally do not actively attack living animals."

Hesta was puzzled. "If it wasn't a vulture, then what made all those holes in the squirrel?"

"Maybe some other bird of prey..."

Hesta looked at Boheng. "Did the old man you lived with teach you that too?"

"Oh, no. I read this in the newspaper." Boheng smiled. "Someone once contracted Chelation Disease after eating raw meat, so all human Habitable Zones now strictly prohibit eating food raw."

"I see..."

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

The Fourteenth District.

Hesta was no stranger to that name. She looked at Boheng curiously. "Was that book you secretly borrowed from the headmistress before, Mountains Under the Storm, about District 14?"

"Yes, but the story did not take place where I want to go. District 14 is huge—the largest of the world's sixteen districts. There are many, many Habitable Zones there."

"Why does Boheng want to go there?"

"Because it might be my hometown," Boheng answered. "'Boheng' is a very typical District 14 name. Heng is the given name, while Bo is a very ancient surname... Maybe my family is over there, so I want to go back and take a look."

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

Smiling, Boheng looked down and rapidly flipped through his scrapbook. When he reached a certain page, he stopped and pushed the notebook toward Hesta.

"Do you know why the headmistress chose 'Hesta' as your surname back then?"

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

"Because you have red hair—red hair like fire. In the north of District 14, there is a nomadic people called the Hesta Tribe. According to legend, the women of the Hesta Tribe all have red hair like yours. Their totem is the eagle, and they have always lived by hunting across the northern wastelands of District 14... Look, this report is specifically about the Hesta Tribe."

Hesta's gaze swept over Boheng's clipping. She was not very interested, but then she noticed that the blank spaces in the notebook contained a great deal of Boheng's handwriting.

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

"Ah, don't read those!" Boheng hurriedly covered the words with his hands. "I'm showing you the story about the Hesta Tribe—"

"That story is wrong," Hesta said softly. "The Hesta people's totem is not the eagle. It is the horse."

"A horse?"

"Mm." Hesta nodded. "Eagles are indeed very important to the Hesta people—in their legends, their ancestors were incarnations of a divine eagle, so they consider eagles guardian gods. But people always confuse that with their totem. Their totem is the blood-sweating horse—the Hesta people relied on such horses to gallop across the grasslands."

Boheng froze slightly. "Where did you hear those stories?"

Hesta hugged one of her legs with one arm and gently tucked the loose strands of hair by her ear back with the other.

"For a while, people in Duanming Alley paid high prices for red hair, especially hair red as flames. So back then, everyone was asking around for information about the Hesta people."

Duanming Alley was where Hesta had once lived. Boheng had heard people mention it before. It was a slum in the wasteland, once home to thieves, assassins, black-market merchants, and drifters with ambiguous identities who could not yet officially enter the country.

Boheng quickly picked up his pen and noted down the detail.

For a time, the only sound in the confinement room was the soft scratch of pen against paper.

Hesta put the lid back on the tin lunchbox and returned it to Boheng's side. "What does Boheng want to do after going to District 14?"

"I haven't decided yet," Boheng said quietly. "I'll probably first visit the towns where people with the surname Bo gather. After that... I might not necessarily stay in a Habitable Zone. There aren't many Chelated Beings in District 14, so I want to return to the wasteland for a while. Only life in the wasteland is truly free... What about you, Jane? What plans do you have for the future?"

"I do." Hesta nodded.

"What do you want to do?"

"I'm going to find someone—someone who is very, very important to me—"

Before Hesta could finish, the door to the confinement room was abruptly pushed open from outside. Her voice cut off at once, and they both looked up.

Pale moonlight spilled through the crack in the door, casting a long, narrow shadow across the floor.

—It was Sister Gurdin.