“Now we have machines that can do all sorts of math, so we can formulate codes that are harder and harder to crack. But the other side has good machines, too, that can crack our math.” He shook his head and laughed. “And here you are.” He ran his hand along my arm.

I found myself leaning away from him, gathering the sheets around myself again, the barest bit of separation possible. He noticed immediately.

“I wouldn’t make you do anything for me.” In that moment he was the boy alone at the party again, eyes wide, drinking soup. “Even if it completed my thesis. Even if it landed me a professorship.”

When he opened his arms, I crawled into them and let my head rest on his chest. I felt, for the first time since leaving Shanghai, finally safe.

But if the community in Taiwan was small, the community of immigrants from Taiwan to Boston was even smaller. I knew how to avoid the ones who might be Nationalist spies—I had worked with enough of their type in California to pick them out. Typically, straight backed, slicked hair, wealthy in Taiwan, trying not to show their struggle in America. Torou, however, did not have the same instincts. He was always curious, always meeting new people. I doubt he told anyone my name or even that I came from Taiwan. Torou, or maybe even Linda, one of them must have mentioned me, then I was likely followed and figured out. I knew their ways, and still, I could not beat them.

One of these men grabbed my wrist when I placed a bowl of noodle soup at his table.

“A gift for you, from Mr. Gao,” he said. He pressed a pencil into my hand. As soon as he released me, I swept the pencil into my pocket and retreated to the kitchen. The next time I came out, the man was gone.

In Torou’s dormitory, I sharpened the pencil. Its black was a rare thing now. With Mother gone and the Shanghai company burned to the ground and me hiding in America, there was nobody left making these pencils. I held in my hands likely one of the last Mother ever made. I had to Reforge it, even if I feared the message it contained.

Torou was bent over his desk, angling his light on his textbook. He paid me no attention, did not even notice I was Reforging. Only when I sucked in a breath from the cut did he turn around. It had been a while since the last time. I had forgotten the pain of it.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Mr. Gao’s characters formed slowly across the page—so slowly, did it always take so long? I already knew what it would say.