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From the Reforged pencil of Wong Yun

There are things they say you never forget, even with a disease like mine.

The motions you went through the most can become

ingrained.

It is a terrifying thought that once all my other memories are gone, I might still Reforge a pencil, another person’s

memories playing out before me, long after my own have left.

I’ll have to ask Torou to keep all pencils away from me, the

way others must hide their knives.

I could never forget how to Reforge, not after all the years we spent working for Mr.

Gao.

Mother insisted he not know that you and I could Reforge.

She told him she was the only one so he would not assume it was

genetic.

But when there were too many messages, she recruited us.

Mr.

Gao, or someone posing as a customer with his seal,

came almost every night to retrieve our work.

For three years, all we did was Reforge.

I came to understand the rhythm of these messages.

They were never obvious, never even interesting.

Reports of names I did not know being sent to different cities, requests to move family members, some that didn’t make sense at all, probably part of a code.

The outline of the phoenix on my arm, which used to nearly disappear after I had bled out the heart, was becoming a scar.

You and I would compare, pressing our arms together, competing on who was giving more of themselves to the war effort and to the pencil company.

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.

“Is that something you can help with?” your mother asked.

He eyed her.

We both noticed.

I saw your hands clench, as if you wanted to call upon the armor we had given our characters.

“I can help you with anything you like,” he said smoothly.

“Buy more pencils, then,” your mother said.

“My sister cannot process all the messages you need if you keep giving her trash

pencils.”

“I will do my best,” he said with a bow.

Then he took your mother’s hand and kissed it.

She let him.

She even smiled.

You refused to speak to her for a while after that.

You told me your mother only let him kiss her because of the power difference.

You told me your father was going to come home soon.

Both of our fathers.

That the war could not last forever.

That once our

fathers were back, we would not need Mr.

Gao’s protection.

You insisted all of this and more, even when I did not argue against you.

Each time he came and made your mother laugh, you shot me a dark look, as if daring me to say something.

Looking back, there was, indeed, a power imbalance, and your mother likely wanted to please him for our safety.

But also, and I hope enough years have passed that I can say this without stirring anger in you, there was desire from your mother.

She was so social, elegant, and charming, a woman made for flirting her way through the Shanghai elite, the kind of woman I wanted to be.

And Mr.

Gao could be handsome when his mood was light, when your mother made him smile.

Instead, she was trapped inside with only us for company, your father missing, and no way to socialize without risking someone discovering that our fathers fought against our occupiers in provinces far away.

Mr.

Gao kept his promise and bought more of our pencils, pencils that eventually made their way back to us to be Reforged.

Compared to our neighbors, we became very well-off, though Mother hid our money, and we lived the same as always to not attract

attention.

Whenever Mr.

Gao brought over a small bag of white rice, he would stay for dinner and sit beside your mother, who

would touch his shoulder lightly whenever she rose from the table.

He even gave my grandmother a shortwave radio to receive

the news.

She stopped complaining about his visits after that.

Meanwhile, the world was changing all around us, but we were too focused on Reforging to grasp everything that was happening.

What should have been a remarkable event—the British, American, and French renouncing their rights to Shanghai, where they

had partied and gambled and prospered for one hundred and one years—became another piece of background noise.

The Westerners

had finally been expelled, as my father and the Nationalists wanted all along, except it was the Japanese who had done it

and whose occupation remained ever present.

When we were seventeen, we received word that your father had died in a battle defending a railroad down south in Hunan, so far away from us.

Mother told me to give you space to process.

By then I understood that your father and my father had joined different factions of the Chinese army.

My father fought with

the Nationalists.

More than anything he wanted a strong China.

The Nationalists were the stronger party at the time with a

pipeline from the military academy straight into their ranks.

Your father joined the Communists, who were propped up by the

USSR.

He also wanted a strong China, as your mother said, but believed we should follow the model of the Bolsheviks, the common

people first.

The two parties had once fought each other over China’s future.

Now they were united against Japan.

“Are you alright?” I whispered, ignoring Mother’s request.

You nodded.

“I really didn’t know him. Even before the war, he wasn’t around much. My mother, though...”

Your mother continued her tasks, maintained her usual demeanor for the few customers who came to the store.

For the first

time, though, I saw her stumble over her words, select the wrong sample pencil hearts, speak brusquely instead of with her

usual soft charm.

It was as if I was watching her fade before my eyes.

The next time Mr.

Gao came for dinner, your mother burst into tears.

My mother reached for her, but she had already latched

on to him, crying into his chest as he wrapped his arms around her.

Mother ushered us to our room.

Even my grandmother left

the table, clicking her tongue, but leaving them alone all the same.

Mother joined us in our room that night, sharing my small

bed.

You rolled yourself up into your blanket, your back to us, as close to the wall as you could get, as if you wanted to

become a part of it.

Mr.

Gao stayed the night.

Mostly I remember the next morning, when your mother hugged you and promised she would never leave you, scattered your head with kisses and gripped the back of your shirt so tight the wrinkles stayed long after she released you.

There was a light in her eyes I had not seen in years.

You and I did not fully comprehend the danger of our work then.

There were rumors about a former Chinese hotel that had been

converted into holding cells and torture chambers, right in the International Settlement.

I didn’t learn about that until

much later—our mothers shielded us from the worst.

The Japanese imprisoned Chinese and foreigners there.

They wanted information

on Chinese patriots, anybody related to them, and that was us—my father was still fighting in the war, and perhaps even worse,

we were Reforging messages to aid his cause.

But Mr.

Gao kept his promise.

He protected us and our operation.

None of us came

close to ending up in that building.

Still, we were always on edge.

Your mother, normally so calm and collected, startled

violently whenever there was an unexpected knock on the door.

Once, she even screamed at us for wearing short sleeves, our

phoenixes exposed, though we were in the house, the black curtains drawn.

In the last year of the war, the two of us Reforged the majority of the pencils.

Our mothers insisted on handling the impure

ones, and so we did the rest.

We became very good at it, discovering tricks like how to bleed out Mr.

Gao’s pencils but not

each other’s stories.

Our days became routine.

Wake up, Reforge, see what Ah-shin could scrape together for us, Reforge, eat

any leftovers, and end the night by working on our story.

Sometimes we were too tired to write and just lay there whispering

about what we would do if there was no war.

The shops we would visit, the boys we would meet, the places we would take our

mothers.

Those memories are hard for me to reach, each day blurring into the same.

My grandmother listened to the radio constantly.

It received the best signal in the workshop.

While we Reforged, she would relay snippets of news to us.

That the Japanese were losing ground and there was a new curfew, that the Americans had invaded and opened a military base in Okinawa, not far from us.

Even without the radio, we could tell things were changing.

The Japanese soldiers in Shanghai were increasingly old and injured,

the young, healthy men sent to the front lines where they were needed.

We heard the drone of American planes overhead.

One

day, hundreds of them flew past, and the street outside the company erupted in cheers.

The Japanese soldiers did not even

attempt to punish us.

Soon after that, we heard the emperor of Japan’s voice over the radio.

We all froze, pencils in hand, waiting for the translation,

and then the news, a blur drowned out by a gasp from our mothers, a single sob from my grandmother.

A terrible bomb in Japan.

The empire’s unconditional surrender.

We took to the street, supporting my grandmother between us so she, too, could witness this moment.

Hastily made bamboo victory

banners thrust in the air, more and more firecrackers launched with every step we took.

When we passed the racetrack, the

speakers were broadcasting the emperor’s surrender, crowds cheering with each replay.

And when the Americans rolled in on

their tanks—my goodness.

How they were applauded, their white teeth shining, soldiers handing out chocolate and gum to children

with barely any clothing.

Some of the Americans hoisted a rickshaw puller into his own rickshaw, then pulled him around, delighting

in their strength to spare, hooting at their vitality, their ability to end a world war.

At home, we were finally able to draw back our heavy black curtains.

They had remained closed to prevent bombers from seeing

the light in our homes.

Sunlight fell into the pencil company for the first time in years, illuminating the swirling dust,

graphite mixed with isolation.

The Nationalists were to return to power, and the members of the puppet government were fleeing.

Mr.

Gao came by with a huge bag of white rice, only to be topped by Ah-shin who returned with meat and vegetables taken straight from the homes of those who had fled.

We ran to our old school.

Many of our classmates were there.

We laughed and hugged and dreamed of what might come next.

We were eighteen years old.

The last eight years of our lives had been spent in constant fear of the Japanese, and the past

four, under actual occupation.

“Do you think you’ll leave Shanghai?” I asked.

“No,” you said.

“Shanghai is my home now.”

We spent the afternoon with our former classmates, learning who had fled, who had stayed, and who had cooperated with the

puppet government only to be punished now.

It made me appreciate what our mothers had accomplished.

Our family and the company

were intact.

It had been so long since we had seen the boys in our school.

All of them had grown tall, if skinny from lack

of nutrition.

They laughed loudly and attempted to charm you.

One of them asked you out that very day.

I was jealous at first—I was always jealous of you, you must know that—but that feeling

quickly gave way to mirth.

I saw you redden as the boy stared at you so eagerly, watched you glance away, glance at me, then

focus only on the ground.

“She’ll go on a date with you if you buy a pencil,” I said.

I took an unsharpened one from my bag.

I had nothing in mind at

that point, only an urge to tease him, and to embarrass you, and to bring back the story of a business transaction I was sure

your mother would enjoy.

“How much?” he asked.

I made up a number—it had been so long since I had sold a single pencil.

He offered a packet of just-pilfered

white rice instead.

It was a great deal.

“I never agreed to this,” you cut in as the boy took the pencil with a smile.

“Come by the pencil company tomorrow,” I said.

“She’ll be ready.” And then I ran, you trailing close behind, yelling my name until I stopped, halfway home, both of us breathless and doubled over.

I could tell you were about to start in on me, so I grabbed your shoulders and shook.

“Look,” I demanded.

It was just you and me in an alleyway in Shanghai, our home, on a beautiful day without war.

The air was

delicious, and I took huge gulps of it.

“Live,” I said, then laughed.

“It’s finally time to live.”

Somehow that got through your war-hardened exterior, and you smiled, shaking your head.

“What will I even wear?” you asked.

I grabbed your hand, and we ran the rest of the way together.

At home, our mothers watched us search through their closet for something suitable.

They were in a good mood.

Your mother

reclined on her bed, passing a cigarette to my mother, who sat on the same bed, legs crossed, leaning back.

For once, they

were relaxing instead of Reforging.

“Now that Meng is dating, should we tell her?” your mother asked mine, a spark in her eyes.

Mother tapped her foot, pondering the question.

“You two can’t possibly have more secrets,” I said, holding one of your mother’s dresses up to you.

The dresses had not left

the closet since the Settlement was occupied.

Now they could live a new life.

“Of course we can,” your mother scoffed.

“But how to say it?” Mother asked.

“Not the way our mother told us, that’s for sure,” your mother said.

“I was traumatized after that talk.”

“What are you two going on about?” you demanded.

Even you were growing impatient.

“Well, when you’re with a boy—” your mother began.

“Maybe I don’t want to hear this,” you said quickly.

“—you might find yourself Reforging,” your mother finished.

We both perked up, the search for an outfit forgotten.

“So make sure your arm is clear before you meet with this boy,” Mother said.

She tapped at her own bare arm, at her phoenix.

It had darkened during the war.

“He won’t notice it. Your dresses all have long sleeves.”

“It’s not about what he sees. It’s that we can’t go losing any Reforgings.”

“But why would I be Reforging?” you asked.

“And how do you lose a Reforging?” I added.

“It’s...” Mother began.

“It’s another way of Reforging that you might stumble upon. A way that is much less painful than

bleeding. Pleasurable, even.”

“Well then, why didn’t you teach us that way?” I demanded.

They both shifted.

“You’ll understand one day,” Mother said lamely.

“You’re not going to tell us what it is?” you asked, as incredulous as I was.

“Just make sure your arm is clear before you see him,” your mother said.

She got up from her bed and pulled out another dress

that was buried deep in the closet.

“I think this one would look perfect on you.”

They clammed up after that, revealing nothing about this other way of Reforging, no matter how many questions we asked.

Our

only solace was that we were each as clueless as the other.

Of course, now we both know what they were talking about.

I want Monica to be able to Reforge this way, to know only pleasure,

not pain, and so I have the unenviable task our mothers once had.

Though I like to think I’m bolder than they were and that

I’ll feel comfortable coming right out and saying it.

But Monica.

Well, she’s.

.

.

she’s going to hate this conversation.

I can already see the red in her face.

My little tomato.