But right now, lying in the hospital bed, Karen doesn’t care about any of this. She’s just thinking, Two weeks off school! She’ll have to keep up a bit with homework, her mother will see to that. But otherwise she can just stay home and spend her days watching mou hap videos. She prays for this to be true to whoever might be listening: the goddess of mercy, the god of war, the goddess of the sea, the god of fortune, the goddess of the moon, Jesus, the Dragon Girl and her army of bees. Even the Scarlett Immortal.

HONG KONG, 1941

The Japanese army is preparing to launch their attack, and the idiot boy is kicking Jun-Jun in the legs.

“Ha!” He kicks her again and again. “Ha! Ha!” He whirls around like a malfunctioning spinning top, tracing an erratic path around the concrete front yard that also serves as a thoroughfare for the village. He almost knocks the hat off a farmer steering his ox towards the fields. The farmer catches his hat with a startled laugh and nods at Great Uncle Chutt as if to say, No harm done.

Jun-Jun maintains the jak ma drill position: eyes forward; palms centered; knees bent.

“Try again, try to knock her over!” says Great Uncle Chutt.

The boy, laughing, pushes himself against her legs, punches her arms, and tickles her sides. Jun-Jun imagines high-kicking him to the other side of the fields. He calls her Je Je—big sister. He’d wandered into the village square ten days before, ragged, dirty, and malnourished, making odd, hooting sounds and chuckling to himself incessantly. Great Uncle Chutt took pity on him and pulled him away from the laughing faces. He gave the boy a bowl of rice with a piece of salted fish, which he ate on the stone ground with his hands. When he finished, the boy licked the bowl inside and out, which made Great Uncle Chutt slap his thigh and whistle his approval. Jun-Jun knew then that she’d never get rid of him.

“Had enough, Jun-Jun?” Great Uncle Chutt’s chicken-scratch voice makes her ears itch. “Had enough?” he repeats.