Chapter 14: What The Fuck

"W-what—" Lian’s voice cracked upward. "What do you mean by that?"

"Exactly what I said." Wen Ruo’s words still landed a half-beat late, like she was quoting herself from somewhere just behind her own mouth. "We make you look hurt. Some thugs jumped you on the way home. That’s the story, and a story like that needs proof on your body, not just torn clothes."

"You’re saying I need to actually get hurt. Right now."

"That’s exactly what I’m saying."

"No." He shook his head, already backing a step away without meaning to. "I can’t. I don’t know if I can do that."

"You don’t have a choice, Lian." Flat, no cruelty in it, just fact. "Your shirt’s already soaked through. Your pants too. You think your mother’s going to believe thugs jumped you and left you spotless under all that blood?"

He didn’t have an answer for that.

"Fine." The word came out smaller than he meant it to. "But what are you going to do to me?"

"Nothing much." Something in her face eased, almost gentle. "A small cut. Close your eyes."

"You realize I’ve watched you kill something tonight."

"And?"

"And I don’t trust the word *small* coming out of your mouth."

"Smart boy." She smiled. "Close your eyes anyway."

He did, because the alternative was arguing with a woman who was already dead, and some part of him still couldn’t bring himself to fight her on anything.

Her hand found his side. Cold first, through the ruined shirt, then a pressure like a fingernail dragged slow along skin.

Then the cut.

It wasn’t small. Heat split open across his stomach, bright and immediate, and a gasp tore out of him before he could stop it. Blood welled fast, hot against his palm the second he clamped a hand over it, thick and metallic in the back of his throat where the smell of it reached.

"What the hell—" His voice cracked. "You said small! This looks like I got stabbed!"

"That’s the point."She didn’t look sorry at all. "Now you look like someone who survived an attack. Not someone who’s fine and covered in someone else’s blood."

"You could’ve warned me it’d feel like this."

"I did warn you. You just didn’t believe me." A beat. "Also, I’ve been dead less than an hour. Forgive me if my bedside manner needs work."

He almost laughed. It came out as something closer to a wheeze.

He checked his watch, hand shaking hard enough it took two tries to read the face. 7:42 PM. His mother would already be watching the clock.

"How am I supposed to get home like this?"

"You’re not walking home." Her eyes dropped to the wound, measuring something he couldn’t follow. "Someone’s going to have to find you."

The tunnel tilted. His knees buckled before the thought finished forming.

"I’m not—" The ground came up fast, cold under his cheek, gritty against his teeth. "I don’t feel—"

The last thing he saw was Wen Ruo’s face above him, unreadable, already reaching for something.

Her hand hovered over the phone in his pocket, fingers trembling with an effort that shouldn’t have been necessary for something so small. It took three tries before she could close them around it, her whole arm shaking with the strain of holding weight she no longer had a body built to carry.

She unlocked it with his thumb and dialed, each number pressed slow, like it cost her something she didn’t have much left of.

"Emergency services, what’s your emergency?"

"There’s a boy." The words left her mouth doubled, one voice a half-second behind the other, like two people speaking into the same receiver and only one of them alive. "He’s collapsed. Tunnel by the underpass. He’s bleeding badly."

Silence on the line, longer than it should have run.

"Ma’am, can you repeat that? The line’s breaking up." A pause. "Units are already rolling. Are you injured as well?"

Wen Ruo opened her mouth. Static came out first, a low hum wearing the rough shape of her voice, like a speaker turned too far past what it could hold.

"...Ma’am?"

A second voice cut in, muffled behind a hand over the receiver. "Is dispatch flagging audio distortion on this line?"

"Caller sounds panicked, that’s all," the first voice said, firmer now. "People’s voices do strange things under stress. Ma’am, stay on scene. Do not hang—"

The call dropped anyway.

Wen Ruo set the phone down beside his open palm and watched him breathe, too slow, too shallow, while sirens that hadn’t arrived yet were the only thing standing between him and not waking up at all.

---

The ambulance found the tunnel eleven minutes later, red and white light sweeping the walls, diesel exhaust cutting through the smell of blood.

"Over here!" A flashlight beam caught him."Male, teens, stab or slash wound to the abdomen, heavy blood loss, let’s move!"

Boots hit the ground. The stretcher snapped open. Gloved hands found his shoulders, his knees, lifting fast.

"Kid’s barely got a pulse,"one of them muttered, younger, voice pitched too high to be as calm as he was trying to sound.

"Then stop talking and get the line in."

The older one didn’t even look up, already unwinding a strap with the bored efficiency of someone who’d done this too many times to still be scared of it. "Rookie, if you pass out on me tonight, I’m billing your mother for the paperwork."

"I’m not going to pass out."

"You went green on the last one."

"That guy’s arm was inside out."

"Different vein this time. Focus."

"Stay with me, kid," the older one said, louder now, right into Lian’s ear. "Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me."

Lian’s eyes cracked open just enough to catch a face too close to his, a strap cinching tight across his chest, fluorescent light sliding past overhead.

He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. The ache in his side had gone distant, which scared him worse than the ache ever had. One thought surfaced through all of it and refused to sink back down.

That damn old fart. His lips barely moved. Iswear, once I’m back on my feet, she’s got some answering to do.

Something under the gauze at his thumb flickered, once, gold and gone before either paramedic looked down.

Getting his eyes open took everything he had. His lids felt sewn shut, and even once they gave, the light above him smeared and doubled before it settled into something he could actually look at.

Ceiling tiles. White walls. A curtain half-drawn beside the bed.

He didn’t need to be told where he was. The smell told him first, antiseptic and bleach and something sharper underneath both, a smell that only ever meant one place.

He was in a hospital.

His eyes dragged sideways, and the room came into focus in pieces. His mother. His father. Jun.

"Lian!" His mother’s hand closed around his, gripping hard, shaking. Her eyes were red and swollen, tears still running even as she said his name, like she’d been crying for so long.

Jun stood beside her, his own eyes shining, one arm around their mother’s shoulders, trying to hold her together the same way he was trying to hold himself together.

Then his father’s voice cut through the room.

"WHERE THE HECK HAVE U GONE" His dad leaned over the bed, hands braced on the rail, voice loud enough that people out in the hallway turned to look. "WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? ?"

"Sir." A nurse stepped in fast, cutting between him and the bed. "You can’t shout at a patient."

His father froze. Something in his face gave way, the anger draining out of it all at once.

"I’m sorry."He looked back at Lian, quieter now. "I was worried. What did you do to yourself to get hurt like this?"

Lian opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

That was when the doctor walked in, clipboard in hand.

"Your son’s wound is unusual,"he said, not to Lian, but to his parents. "At first it looks like a stab wound. But the damage underneath doesn’t match that. It looks like he was stabbed, and then slashed, just below the abdomen."

His mother’s hand flew to her mouth, and she started crying harder than before.

A woman stood at the doctor’s shoulder, stomach round and torn open at once, staring at Lian like he’d done this to her. Thirty more pressed in behind him, some cradling shapes too small and still, all watching only him.

The doctor kept talking.