I almost laughed when I was finished, a laugh that was a mixture of relief, guilt, and sorrow. It was nothing more than the next chapter of our story. I did not know when you had written it—you had been out all day. Had you written it while you were with the boy? Were you thinking of our story even then? It was a brilliant chapter, filled with our usual espionage and the dash of fun that had become prevalent since the war’s end. Our characters used their new ability to armor themselves to great effect—a shock to the soldiers who preyed on them because they were young women—and as they worked on their plan to infiltrate some important government official’s house, disguised as housekeepers, they passed each other messages through pencils. They pretended not to know each other, walked right past each other, and slipped the other a note without a word.

I went to the workshop. You were bleeding into a notebook, surprised when I sat beside you and grabbed a handful of pencils.

“But you’ve already done yours,” you said.

I pushed a heart into my wrist anyway.

I didn’t apologize to you, not then. But as we quietly sat, Reforging, I once again felt close to you. Not in the same way as before—it would never be the same. It was the first time I understood that I did not need to know everything about you, that it would be better, in fact, if I did not, and that not all stories are meant to be shared. The beauty was in the ones that we shared willingly and those were to be cherished.

Neither of us knew then that another war was right around the corner, or that we’d soon be separated. In many ways, that was the last peaceful moment we spent together.

Chapter 15

From the diary of Monica Tsai, backed up on three servers spanning two continents

October 10, 2018 (2018-10-10T20:11:53.740456)

loc: Cambridge, Massachusetts. United States of America (42.3721865,71.1117091)

It has been a difficult few weeks, I’m not going to lie. I took some time off work to accompany grandmother to the doctor. At first, she was in good spirits as we helped her with her shoes, insisting we all wear the scarves she’d knitted us last year, now that it’s getting colder. It was only when we stepped outside that things started to turn. Grandfather tripped over our porch step, and I barely caught him in time. His palm scraped against the pavement, and he was struggling to breathe. I sat him down, holding on to his thin torso. But when I tried to help him to his feet, grandmother on his other side, also fruitlessly trying to hoist him up, he kept shaking his head.

“Just give me a moment to catch my breath,” he said.