“Because—” I tried to weigh the risk in my head. The powerful thing about a pencil was that almost always, one of the first things a person wrote was their name. Then no matter what else they wrote with it, we could always trace it back to them, even if they lost it and somebody else began to use it. I knew Torou did not hold kind feelings for the Nationalist government. If they ever suspected him of dissidence, or simply did not want him to succeed for whatever reason, they would only need to find his pencil and twist his Reforged words to send him away. Maybe he would write only calculus equations. But his conviction that he would go to America and finally live his freedom—that was not worth the risk.

“Please trust me,” I said. I could not tell him the truth or even think of a suitable excuse to convince him never to buy one of our pencils.

“Fine. Then come see a movie with me.”

“What? That has nothing to do with pencils.”

“They’re both things I want.” He smiled. “Surely you can do that much?”

I fidgeted. He was right. There was no harm in going to a movie with him. I was not planning on falling in love with him, after all.

“Alright.”

That night, I quizzed Mother.

“Is there any way to make a pencil heart that cannot be Reforged?”

She was almost always rubbing her wrist in those days. It is only now I understand that feeling. I cannot imagine Reforging at the volume she did at her age.

“There are pencils that harm us when we Reforge them,” she said. “Ones with cheap and impure hearts.”

“But what about ones that don’t hurt us? If we try to Reforge them, and we don’t get any words?”

She tilted her head and stared at me.

“But why would we do that?”

“You mentioned it was dangerous. That’s because people don’t know we can collect their words and use them against them, right?”

“Quiet down,” she ordered. “That is true. But we are sharing truths. That is noble, isn’t it?”