Lian had the dormitory room to herself now. Her roommate had gone home several weeks ago, taken away by her parents shortly after Peking and Tientsin fell. Lian cherished her solitude. Without a roommate the plain room felt like a sanctuary, a place where she could dispense with any pretense of enjoying her classmates’ company, avoid the puzzling, intricate protocols required to feign friendship.

Lian dosed herself each night with syrup of poppies. The nurse had given her a small bottle to help her sleep. Even so, she woke up several times, jolted out of dreams that left cold sweat on her brows, ghostly images from the railway station curling like burnt paper at the edges of her mind. She turned over to try and sleep again but the silence disturbed her. Nanking was under blackout and nothing moved on the streets outside Minghua’s walls. Not the familiar rumble of farmers pushing handbarrows on their way to market or the cries of night soil collectors. No laughter from revelers reeling their way home.

Yet there was something about the silence, an expectant stillness that felt like the hush of a theater audience waiting for the star performer to appear. Lian rolled over just as brightness flared at the window, outlining the blackout curtain. Its brilliance was not that of early morning. Awake enough to be curious, Lian got out of bed and raised one edge of the drapes. To the east, the barest hint of morning colored the horizon. To the west, the sky was steeped in darkness, dim hues of blue and gray flecked with stars, a low-hanging half-moon.

The light came from the courtyard below.

It was a girl. She stood with her back to Lian. Her head was turned up to gaze at the heavens and her slim silhouette gleamed with a cool, clean radiance. She lifted one hand to the sky as if in greeting. Then a scattering of clouds dimmed the constellations and light drained from the courtyard as the girl walked away, vanishing into the shadows.

Lian climbed back into bed and pulled up the blankets, wondering what she’d just seen, or if she had seen anything at all. By the time she fell back into sleep, it seemed to her that the shining figure was merely the memory of a dream, brought on by syrup of poppies.

AT HER FIRST class the next morning, Lian’s instructor gave her a note. Professor Kang wanted to see her in his office. Lian hurried across the quadrangle, almost at a run, partly because she didn’t want to keep the professor waiting, but mostly because she didn’t know what to make of the attention from other students she encountered on her way. Students who knew her asked how she was feeling; the ones who didn’t nodded friendly greetings. Her narrow escape at the railway station had given her new distinction among her peers.