There was a risk to the process though. Our mothers, or maybe their mother before them, had designed the Phoenix Pencil Company pencils not only for their quality in writing, but also so they were safe and easy to Reforge. Mr. Gao paid for pencils he sent into the field, but the soldiers often wrote with whatever they had nearby.

“I should never have told him I can Reforge those as well,” Mother sighed every time your mother helped bandage her wrist.

She never let either of us touch the pencils that were not from the company. Their hearts were impure, she would say. She Reforged those herself.

One time, it left her incapacitated for a week. She remained in bed, shivering despite both you and me bringing all of our blankets to drape over her. We slept in the same bed to keep each other warm. Your mother redressed her arm every night, bandaging over cuts that refused to heal. Even my grandmother went into her room to check on her.

That was the week I Reforged most of the messages. When I finished all our pencils, I tried to sneak one from the impure pile. Your mother clamped my wrist. I had not even known she was there. She knew me too well. Before I could argue, she swept them into a bag, knotted it, and brought it with her to the back of the complex, back to the room she shared with my mother.

The next time Mr. Gao came, Mother managed to sit upright at the front of the store. She handed him each paper I had Reforged, and more. She had somehow completed all the others.

I will never forget that image, even now—Mother barely able to remain sitting, her left arm limp, her right trembling as she passed everything over, a pencil clattering to the floor, nobody picking it up. Mr. Gao, tall and strong and young, flipping through the pages while Mother fell apart in front of him.

He must have pitied us, for when next he came, he brought a small bag of white rice, a luxury during that time. Ah-shin portioned most of it out to Mother, who was still recovering. Mother scraped it into my bowl, saying the young were more in need of good food. I scraped it into your bowl, saying the same thing, for you were a few months younger. Then you passed your whole bowl to your mother, saying we had to respect our elders, and your mother huffed and passed it to Ah-shin, who she said we did not appreciate enough. Tears came to Ah-shin’s eyes before she split the small lump of rice into five, giving the smallest chunk to herself. Only then did we eat.

“If your pencils were the monopoly, your sister would not hurt like this,” Mr. Gao said to your mother when my mother was still confined to her bed.