As Shao and Lian trailed Sparrow through the wreckage, Shao kept glancing down at Lian, trying to place her. It came to him only after Lian’s hair came loose from its matronly bun and hung down to frame her face. Each year, Minghua University awarded scholarships to three students. The school newspaper always printed their photos. Lian was one of the scholarship winners from last year, her fees and expenses fully covered for four years. She was a literature major, if he remembered correctly. He recalled thinking at the time that she looked too young to be attending college.

They followed Sparrow’s trim figure past neighborhoods blasted beyond recognition, through tangles of people and vehicles, along streets Shao didn’t know existed, until finally the crenellations of Nanking’s city walls loomed above them. They left the city through its triple-arched southern gate. After another hour of walking, Shao began spotting familiar landmarks. They were almost at Minghua University. He knew it would’ve taken much longer if not for Sparrow.

When they reached Minghua’s gates, Shao insisted they all go to the school clinic. He only had a few cuts on his hands, which the nurse treated with iodine. There wasn’t a scratch on Sparrow, who returned to the servants’ quarters. The school nurse took one look at Lian’s pale face and called an aide to take her into the ward. Lian would stay at the clinic for a night or more to recover from her shock.

Shao used the telephone in the nurse’s office to call his father in Shanghai. His father was in a meeting, the secretary informed him, so Shao left a message to say he hadn’t boarded the train. That he was safe and back at the campus. And what would his father like him to do now?

When the war began, some families had kept their children home, so they’d be together if they had to flee. Others believed their children would be safer at school in another city. Some, like Shao’s father, had changed their minds partway through the semester and sent for their children to come home.

There was no single correct decision, Shao reflected. Only anxiety, leavened by hope. And now perhaps Minghua University would evacuate Nanking.

THAT NIGHT, SHAO lay awake on his narrow dorm bed, trying and failing to push away memories of the morning’s horrors. He wished his roommate, Pao, hadn’t gone home. But there was something else that prevented him from sleeping, something that prickled at the edge of his consciousness. Something to do with the letter from his father. It had arrived weeks ago, ordering him to come home.