It keeps you young outside forever. But inside, you will begin to rot. If you do not scrape the insides of your mouth and rub this paste inside it with every new moon, you will deteriorate and feel much pain.

White Fox cries silently.

WHITE FOX

How could you do this to me?

GRAY-HAIRED WOMAN

(tsking her)

The other girls would kill for this curse of yours.

INT. PERFORMANCE HALL - DAY

WHITE FOX performing and receiving greater and greater acclaim.

WHITE FOX (V.O.)

But the first rumblings of a war could be felt, and I knew this moment of prosperity would not last forever. I explained to Madame that I wished to educate myself.

INT. OLD-FASHIONED HOME / LIVING QUARTERS – DAY

White Fox crying on her knees before Gray-haired Woman, and Gray-haired Woman pulling her to her feet to slap her.

WHITE FOX (V.O.)

She insisted that I needed her paste, and if I stopped performing, she would keep it from me.

She controlled me in this way. I feared bleeding out, and so I used her paste. I felt that I’d become a demon. Good for nothing but that creamy inch-deep of flesh.

INT. OLD-FASHIONED HOME / BATHROOM - DAY

White Fox stripping her mouth of its membranelike skin and rubbing it raw with paste.

WHITE FOX (V.O.)

I couldn’t bear it anymore. Working for her, needing this evil woman who used me.

INT. OLD-FASHIONED HOME / LIVING QUARTERS - NIGHT

White Fox slips into the hallway and sneaks into the Gray-haired Woman’s room.

She is sleeping on a cushion with a blanket.

White Fox creeps past her and removes a large tub of paste from beside her. Gray-haired Woman stirs, and White Fox turns.

CLOSE IN on White Fox’s face, cold as it has ever looked.

A shadow falls over the Gray-haired Woman.

WHITE FOX (V.O.)

And so I stole the magic she had on her and escaped.

EXT. OLD-FASHIONED HOME — NIGHT

White Fox entering a car outside the house with several bundles in tow.

INT. GRAND OLD HOME — NIGHT

Client 2 sits in the same corner of the bedroom, watching White Fox.

CLIENT 2

You stole from the woman who raised you?

White Fox seethes.

WHITE FOX

She mistreated me.

White Fox’s hands curl into fists.

WHITE FOX

You said you would listen.

Client 2 looks pensive.

CLIENT 2

This bleeding of the mouth—this continues to afflict you now?

WHITE FOX

Yes.

CLIENT 2

Is there no other way to help you, besides finding you that cream?

WHITE FOX

Of course there is. There are three other ways that I have been taught. But I can’t make any of them work anymore.

We stop at the end of Part One, and I feel disembodied.

“I know her,” Saxim says, breathless. “Oh my gosh, I know her.”

“What?” I shoot up onto my bare feet, yanking her up with me. We’re bouncing on our toes.