On the second anniversary of my grandmother’s death, my father started a fire outside our home, in a metal cylinder. He methodically folded fake money and tossed it into the fire, pausing once in a while to bow his head and mutter beneath his breath. Mother tried to join him, but it was not a good day for her—she had Reforged too much the night before. She was pale and wrapped in blankets even in the tropical heat. She handed me a pencil and nodded to the flame. I joined my father and tossed it in for her.

Halfway through, it began to rain. It happened often on the island, sudden downpours on an otherwise clear day. My father cursed, trying to protect the flame with his body while I ran inside for an umbrella. By the time I returned, the fire was gasping for breath. I held the umbrella overhead and my father threw in bundles of dry paper money, coaxing the reluctant fire back to life. We winced when the wind blew the smoke right at us, stinging our eyes. He tossed the remaining paper money into the cylinder. The fire was extinguished, some of the money unburnt, tears ran down my father’s face. He quickly wiped them away, blaming the smoke, the rain, the island. He sat in front of the house, head in his hands, attempting to wipe the smoke’s sting from his eyes.

I didn’t ask what he was thinking. If he regretted coming here, if he missed home, his friends, the time when his wife was healthy and his daughter happy. I didn’t ask if he regretted making Mother cry—she cried not from moving or from Reforging or even from his temper, but from the fact that he made her craft broken pencils when she used to take so much pride in her work. I didn’t ask if he thought our burnt paper money could even reach his mother from here, or if she would be looking for us in Shanghai. Instead, I closed the umbrella, retreated into the house, and worked on the next batch of pencils.

The clientele at the Taiwan branch was not as far-reaching as the one in Shanghai. For the most part, only university students were interested. They were my age, and yet they seemed a world apart, improving themselves through education, often with the goal of leaving Taiwan. And nobody dreamed of that goal, or was closer to reaching it, than Torou.

The Anti-Communist and Resist Russia Union hosted community events, an effort by the government to garner support for the military. They held free movie nights, organized tree plantings and social gatherings where they would, with each bowl of rice, hand out pamphlets showcasing all the good they were doing for the island. It was at one of these events where I met Torou.