TWO DAYS LATER, when they awoke again in Yumi’s world, she was feeling somewhat better. She’d spent her day in Painter’s world meditating while he roamed the city, testing out the new freedom granted by Design’s change to their bond.
How quickly and naturally he had returned to freedom. Did he feel constricted now that they were back in her world, where their tether was barely ten feet long? What did it say that she’d stayed in his room thinking the entire day?
She walked to the window, gazing outward while listening to Painter fetch his breakfast from the attendants. She watched the rising crops creeping ever higher in the sky as hotspots on the ground went from warm to scalding. The plants spun like children playing in a rare spring rainfall. She watched them soar, and she envied their liberty. Even cultivated crops were granted more independence than she.
As soon as she thought that, she quashed it. Crushing her longing, her wanderlust, her dreams until they were flat as paper, more easily filed away deep within her soul.
Despite it all, that’s still my instinct, she thought, listening to Painter eat. I know I’ve been lied to. Yet my training holds. It’s a depressing fact. Abuse is a more effective form of captivity than a cell will ever be.
A quiet banging came at the door, and Yumi turned, cocking her head. Why was someone doing that? In all her life, when people wanted her, they simply entered.
Painter called for the person to enter. Liyun opened the door, dressed immaculately in white and dark blue, the long sleeves of her ceremonial tobok swallowing her hands.
She bowed. “Upon your pleasure, Chosen.”
Painter waved with his maipon sticks for her to enter. She left her clogs behind and knelt before him in a posture that might have looked demure for someone else. Liyun, however, appeared unable to make herself fully bow her back, her elbows were too stiff on her knees, and she lowered her head barely a few degrees. A technically apologetic pose, by the strictest definition of the word.
She seemed sorry in the same way a tank commander might be apologetic after destroying your house. He might be in the wrong. But he was still in a tank.
“How,” Liyun finally said to Painter, “did you find out?”
He continued eating, but glanced at Yumi, letting her take the lead.
She nodded to him in thanks.
“Find out,” Yumi said, “about what, Liyun?”
Painter repeated the words with an appropriate air of indifference.
How did he manage that? She would have wilted beneath Liyun’s glare.
“The reform movement,” Liyun admitted at last.
Something had been straining inside of Yumi. It cracked fully when Liyun said the words. Until that moment, a part of Yumi had believed
that Hwanji had been lying or confused.
“I…” Yumi said.
“Someone contacted me,” Painter said, fabricating the lie with such ease it concerned her. “Someone who thought I was being treated unfairly. They left me a note a few weeks ago. There was no name.
Just a random activist, I suppose.”
Liyun swallowed this lie easily.
“You shouldn’t have taught me to read,” Yumi said, with him repeating the words. “I’d be a much better captive that way.”
“You aren’t a captive,” Liyun said. “You are—”
“A servant, yes,” Yumi said, with him repeating. “I know.”
Liyun took a deep breath. “Is this the reason, then, for all the…
strangeness these last weeks?”
Painter looked to Yumi.
“Yes,” she said for him to repeat. “To an extent.” The deception came easily to her as well. Frighteningly easy.
Liyun stood up and nodded. “Very well then.” She turned to leave.
“I shall meet you at the place of ritual, where I shall wait upon your needs for the day, Chosen.”
“Wait,” Yumi said through Painter. “That’s it? That’s the end? All you’re going to say?”
“It is not uncommon,” Liyun said as she slipped on her clogs, “for a younger person to seek to stride past their boundaries. I had hoped such a common attitude would not seize you, but we are all weak before the eyes of the spirits.” She looked at Painter. “We are still the servants of the people. Even the most reformed yoki-hijo does her duty in that regard. So we continue. Besides, I know for a fact you were trained well. You will overcome this bout of petulance.”
Yumi gasped softly. Liyun hadn’t spoken to her in such a forward way since the first years of her training.
The woman turned to leave. Yumi found a word bubbling out, too hot to keep in. “Liyun!”
The woman glanced over her shoulder as Painter relayed the word.
“Do the others live with their families?” Yumi asked. “Do they go back to them? At least visit their homes?”
“It is not unheard of,” Liyun said, “for a yoki-hijo among the more… liberal persuasions to spend a few weeks each year with her birth family.” She paused briefly. “You’d hate it, Yumi. Nothing to do?
Sitting each day with people you don’t know? Strangers trying to pretend they’re your parents? You would be miserable.”
“Don’t you think I would have wanted to have the choice?” Yumi asked through Painter.
“You have the choice,” Liyun said. “You always have. Forgive me for not pointing you toward it, as it would have destroyed you.”
She left then.
“I (lowly) hate that woman,” Painter muttered.
“Please don’t say that,” Yumi whispered.
“You defend her?” Painter said, standing. “After what she did to you?”
“She’s my…” She couldn’t form the word. “She raised me. The best she knew how. And she is right; I’m still a servant of the people and
the spirits. So nothing changes.”
“Nothing?” he said.
“Very little of importance.”
“Your happiness is nothing ‘little,’ Yumi.”
“You think I’m happier?” she said. “Look at me and tell me I’m happier this way, Painter.”
He met her eyes, then glanced away. “Well,” he finally said, “I think you will be happier, once this difficult time passes. I think the spirits believe that too. Have you thought that maybe this is why they wrapped us up in this? So you could learn to be free?”
“Have you thought that maybe they approached me instead of any other yoki-hijo,” she said, “because I was trained to be absolutely obedient to their will? Apparently that’s rarer than I thought.”
She stalked out the door that Liyun had left open. He followed behind, fortunately—because otherwise she’d have been yanked right back toward him.
At the cool spring, she tossed off her clothing and strode straight into the water, then dove underneath and let the soft coolness enwrap her. She turned over and floated to the surface, staring up into the sky filled with twirling plants, kept from drifting too far by the attentive crows and flyers. So far beyond reach that they might as well have been on another planet.
Painter stepped into the water himself, but didn’t start washing.
Instead he turned over and floated as well, quiet, drifting next to her.
Yumi squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to let him hear her sniffling. If he did hear, he didn’t say anything.
“I’m glad,” she whispered at last, “to know. Even if it hurts to realize how I’ve been lied to. Even if I’m not happier right now. I’m glad to know. So thank you. For pushing for the truth.”
“I didn’t do it to find the truth,” he whispered back. “I was annoyed and reckless.”
“That’s what you needed to be,” she said. “Maybe you’re right.
Maybe the spirits wanted this for me.”
She had trouble imagining that to be true. Likely thousands of yoki- hijo had lived following the traditions she had. If the spirits had disliked this style of treating their servants, then surely they’d have done something about it long ago. The shifts in how her kind were treated seemed more cultural than doctrinal.
Though that raised an ugly question: Did the spirits care at all?
She’d talked to them, interacted with them, petitioned them. They didn’t think like people did. Didn’t understand as people did. So why would they care whether she ate her own food or was served by someone else?
Before, her trust in the system had prevented these kinds of questions. Now no such barrier remained. Could she visit Torio City?
Could she know her family? Have friends? Could she have something
that resembled a normal life?
What even was a normal life?
“What is it like?” she asked softly. “Being able to decide for yourself what to do each day?”
“You’ve tasted it a little in my world. It’s like that.”
“It must be overwhelming,” she whispered, “to simply…be able to do anything. To be able to make friends with whoever you want. Pick your profession. I can barely select a broth for noodles. You’re so good at all of that, Painter. How?”
“It’s…not as easy for me as you think, Yumi.”
She turned her head in the water and looked toward him floating there, staring at the sky. What did he think when he saw the plants up there, so high? When he watched the flocks of butterflies scatter as crows soared past, sending individual plants spinning? Did he see freedom, or something else?
“Just because you can talk to anyone,” Painter said, “doesn’t mean you will know what to say.”
“Is that why things are so strange between you and the other painters? You all have so many things you could say, that you don’t know what to say?”
“Something like that.”
“You could make other friends,” she said.
“I’ve never really known how,” he said, his voice low as he drifted.
“It should be easy. Everyone else makes it seem that way. But…if that’s the case…why didn’t it work for me?”
“You didn’t try hard enough, maybe?” she said.
“That’s what my parents say,” he said. “That I should just go…try. ‘Just go talk to someone!’ they’d say. So I would. I’d gather my courage, stumble over, and say the wrong things. I’d feel like an awkward fool, and people would laugh at me. After that my parents would say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t have done it that way, son.’ But what is the way?”
He turned his head to look toward her. “I know it sounds ridiculous to you. I had all the opportunities. My life was easy, liberated. But…I always felt like I was standing on the other side of a large glass window. I could see the world passing beyond it, could even pretend I was part of it. But that barrier was still there. Separating me from everyone else.” He looked away. “That sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”
“No…” She closed her eyes. “I understand invisible walls, Painter.”
She let her hand float outward, near his. She could feel him doing the same, reaching toward her, then stopping. And she wondered.
She could touch the water, float in it, because she felt she should.
She could pick up clothing for a similar reason.
Was there a version of this, a way of thinking, where she could touch him? She let her fingers brush his.
It didn’t work—instead of feeling his fingers, she felt that shiver, that burst of warmth travel up through her arm and strike her to the core.
She gasped, splashing upright at the shock of it. Then she sank down so only her head showed. He sputtered and turned toward her, water streaming across his face.
“Painter,” she said, eager. “Let’s break the rules. Even Liyun agrees…I can do that! Let’s try it.”
“Isn’t that what I’ve been doing?” he said, wiping his face.
“Let’s do something more,” she said, her eyes wide. “Let’s do
something crazy. Something unexpected.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know! You choose. You’re the one with free will.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“I might have it too,” she admitted, “but mine is provisional. Come on. What are we going to do?”
He studied her for a moment, then blushed deeply. What was that
about?
Oh.
“Seriously?” she said, splashing him. “That’s where your mind went?”
“You’re surprised?” he said, gesturing. “Really?” He shook his head, then began soaping up to start the actual bathing part of, well, bathing.
She considered, and soon felt foolish for her sudden impulse to violate rules. What would she have done if she’d been alone? Run through the town insulting people? Stare at each and every person instead of lowering her eyes? A part of her was tickled at the thought.
“What if,” Painter said, “we figured out what those scholars are doing in that tent of theirs?”
“What?” Yumi rose and took some soap. “By asking them?”
“Um, no, Yumi.” He smiled. “We would not ask.”
“What would we do, then?”
“Sneak into their tent,” he said, making sneaking motions with his fingers. “See what we can learn about their equipment. Maybe sabotage it.”
She felt her jaw drop, gritty soap powder trickling through her fingers.
He noticed, pausing, and looked toward her. “What?”
“Painter,” she said. “That would be illegal!”
“You wanted to do something transgressive!”
“Like getting dressed, then running out and hopping up and down in full sight of people in the town!” She wilted, thinking about how embarrassing that would be. “Maybe behind a fan or two.”
“The spirits want us to accomplish something,” he said. “And you’re right—it’s probably not you learning how to eat by yourself. You still think our task has to do with that machine?”
She nodded, dunked to rinse off soap, then rose. “I do.”
“Then we need information,” he said. “So…”
She stepped closer to him in the water, then found herself grinning, hands held close to her chin, elbows tight against her sides. “Let’s do it.” After all, it was probably the will of the spirits. “But how? We’ll be spotted for certain.”
This would be a test. Surely if actively breaking the law didn’t anger the spirits, then…well, nothing short of outright insulting them would do so.
“It’s a good thing everyone leaves us alone for several hours a day, isn’t it?” Painter glanced at her and smiled. “In a place nobody can approach, and where they’ve even helpfully cleared away the casual workers who might catch us sneaking out. Convenient, eh?”
She nodded, conflicted by how eager she felt. She could barely wait the time it took to wash off—going through the ritual soaps at blinding speed—and get dressed. Painter didn’t seem nervous at all as Chaeyung and Hwanji led them down the path into the orchard, among the drifting trees, to the elevated shrine. But he ignored the painting supplies today, kneeling until Chaeyung and Hwanji were out of sight.
Then he looked to Yumi, who nodded eagerly, her heart—well, she didn’t have one in this form, but she felt like she did—racing and her hands trembling. This was going to be so wrong!
The first thing Painter did was pick up his clogs, take off his stockings, then wrap the cloth around the wood. “Can’t do much sneaking if I make a clop each time I step.”
“Wow,” Yumi said. “You know a lot about this.”
He blushed. “It happens a lot in the dramas. There, people generally remove their shoes entirely. I thought maybe I should do this instead, to avoid screaming from pain at every step.”
He tried on the clogs and found them significantly muffled with the cloth around them. (If you’re trying to judge the heat of the ground in Torio, the stone in their settlements wasn’t nearly hot enough to set cloth aflame. It could burn you if you left your skin touching it for an extended period, but except at hotspots a casual brush wouldn’t do damage.) He nodded to her, then hopped down off the shrine. She hesitated.
This was the moment. Was she really going to do this? After a lifetime of training in proper behavior?
She squeezed her eyes closed and followed him, cracking one eye, then the other. Painter hadn’t noticed her worry—he’d moved over to one of the larger trees and was pushing it with his finger, making it drift around on its chain.
“How do these trees float again?” he said.
“On thermals.”
He nudged another tree with his finger. “They’re so light. Even if they’re floating, I shouldn’t be able to move them around this easily.”
He touched one, then hopped back, looking at his hand.
“What?” she asked.
“I felt lighter when I touched it,” he said, trying once more. Then he wrapped both arms around a trunk. “That’s so surreal. I feel like a
balloon.”
“A what?”
“I’ll show you sometime,” he said, stepping back away from the tree. “The trees might float on thermals, Yumi, but they somehow make themselves lighter first.” (He was right. If you’ve been wondering how they work, this is a big clue. Plants on Yumi’s world don’t really defy physics so much as they sneak past while physics is distracted by a nice drama on the viewer.
Probably something involving pendulums. Physics loves those things.) Feeling an increasing sense of transgressive elation, Yumi followed Painter among the lazy trees, which opened and closed pathways as they drifted on their chains. She quickly realized that she had no sense of how the village was laid out, aside from the steamwell at the center, the hills with the cold spring off to the west, and the orchard to the south. Painter, however, seemed to have a better feel for it.
Perhaps that was the sort of skill you picked up when you didn’t always have someone to lead you everywhere you needed to be.
He managed to avoid sections where workers were harvesting nuts from the trees. Then he led Yumi to the edge of the orchard, near the eastern side of the town—close to the place of ritual. Here he crouched beside a tree.
Though he’d gotten them close, the tent the scholars had set up was still a good fifty yards away. Over hot stone, past the fence around the place of ritual. A set of three large trees had been chained
to the ground near the rear of the scholars’ tent to provide shade.
That would give cover once they approached—but first they had to cross fifty yards of open ground.
Painter gazed down at the day’s ritual tobok. The dress was bright yellow and red. “These stand out rather a lot, don’t they?” he asked.
“That’s deliberately the point,” Yumi said.
He nodded. Then pulled his dress off.
Yumi gasped. Not for the common reason—they did bathe together every day. In addition, there were three more layers underneath. But those were undergarments.
“What are you doing?” she demanded as he shucked the second layer of skirt too. “Stop!”
He grinned and gestured to the final layer of clothing: thin silken trousers you might find reminiscent of pantaloons, dyed light brown, and a loose green overshirt. Also silken, shimmering, and way too revealing of his figure. Underneath that was the wrap around his chest, and that was it.
She silently prayed he wouldn’t go any further.
“This,” he said, “is remarkably similar to what men wear around here.”
“Except not,” she said. “Their outfits are completely different.”
“Close enough. I think that from a distance I’ll just appear like a worker leaving the orchard.”
“If someone looks closely, they’ll see me, practically naked and absolutely deranged! It’s not going to work.”
He gazed out at the tent, as if he was going to go striding out anyway, but didn’t move. He glanced at her.
“I’ll pull out now if you want,” he said. “This is your life I’m playing with, Yumi. If I get caught, you’ll have to live with it—assuming we swap back eventually. So…do you want me to stop? It’s your choice.”
Her choice? What a terrible idea.
But she felt reckless. And determined. Somehow at once. So before she could think about what she was doing, she threw off her overdress and second layer too, standing in her silks. “Go!” she said.
“Why…did you strip?” he asked. “You’re invisible.”
“Solidarity!” she shouted, then—taking a deep breath—started out across the stone.
Once, she would have assumed that she couldn’t hide, no matter how good the disguise. She would have assumed that people would instantly know a yoki-hijo.
But she had lived in Painter’s world. She’d been normal for a week and a half at this point. Well, at least during the half of each day she spent in his world. Perhaps…perhaps he was right and no one would notice.
She still felt like a field mouse. Yes, a little mouse that had dropped from its nest in the rice plant and fallen to the hot stones during the day, having to scurry for high ground in full sight of all the giant hawks and crows above. Burning up with each step.
She mistook every sound in the distance for a cry of alarm. She was certain every figure moving through the town was dashing to get Liyun. Everyone would soon hear that the yoki-hijo was crazy and
running around in her underwear.
Painter just plodded along.
“Hurry!” she hissed at him.
“Hurrying ruins the illusion,” he said. “Trust me. I’ve seen this at least three times in the dramas.”
“Three times? That’s the extent of your experience?” She jumped, looking toward a shadow cast by several rice plants moving overhead.
This was misery. Intoxicating misery. And despite his apparent calm, Painter seemed unable to stop himself from speeding up as they neared the hiding place. He practically ran the last few yards and pulled up against the trunk of one of the shade trees.
The little stand of trees, as she’d hoped, provided some cover.
They kept snapping their chains taut in the thermals—since this was near the place of ritual, the stones were extra hot. Painter wiped his brow, then shook his hand, the beads of sweat evaporating quickly on the ground.
“How you people survive in this place,” he whispered, “I’ll never know. But we…”
He trailed off as he saw Yumi, her heart thundering like the ritual drum, her nerves dancers contorting before the spirits, her eyes the
blazing bonfires of a night festival.
“You all right?” he asked her.
“That was the worst thing I’ve ever done!” she said, throwing her hands into the air. “It was wonderful!”
“Girl,” he said, “you really need to get out more.”
“I’m trying!” she said, with an uncontrolled grin. Then she pulled her arms tight up beneath her chin, her eyes going even wider. “We could run away. Escape together. Off into the wide world, like in the stories Samjae used to tell me…”
“Usually,” he said, with a dry smile, “I prefer to go on at least one date with a girl before I elope with her. Call me traditional.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she snapped (lowly). “It’s just…this feels so liberating. And terrifying. They don’t care. The spirits don’t actually care.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. He pointed around the trunk toward the tent, hovering a few feet above the ground on its platform.
“The spirits give you things like that platform, right? No cost? No price?”
“No price,” she said. “They want to help, once we summon them. I think they find us intriguing and enjoy watching us.”
“Sounds like they do care,” he said. “About you. If not about a lot of the things you all have made up about them.”
She smiled. “Right, then. What next? How do we get into that tent without being seen?”
“I figure you’ll simply walk over to it,” Painter said.
“Me? Why me?”
“Yumi. You are literally a ghost at the moment.”
“Oh!” She looked down at herself. And despite wearing roughly the same amount of cloth she did when in Painter’s world, she blushed at her state of near undress. “I guess…that’s useful, isn’t it?”
“For spying? It seems like it might be an advantage, yes.” He peeked at the tent. It was large, almost more a pavilion, and made of thick canvas. It had been set up on a wooden platform some twenty or more feet across that had floating devices underneath to keep it off
the stones.
“I wonder…” Painter said.
“What?”
“It’s just…this is what the nightmares do at home. Sneaking around, hiding, peeking in to watch people.” His frown deepened.
“They can go right through walls. I don’t suppose…” He glanced at her.
Yumi nodded at Painter in understanding. Then, reminding herself that no one could see her, she slipped out from behind the tree and crossed the last bit of ground to the tent. She hadn’t wrapped her clogs, so they continued to clop, wood on stone.
That sound wasn’t real. She wasn’t real, not completely. When she tried to grab things, her hands passed through them unless she concentrated.
So…upon reaching the tent, she bowed to the spirits underneath, then stepped up onto the edge of the hovering wooden platform.
There, she determinedly stepped into the cloth wall.
It, with equal determination, pushed right back.
Yumi glared at the cloth, rubbing her nose. Maybe she wasn’t showing it enough respect. She bowed to the wall as best she could from her narrow perch.
“O wall of cloth,” she said, “grant me the honor of—”
“What are you doing?” Painter hissed at her from behind.
“Petitioning the wall.”
“What?”
She spun toward him and gestured to the tent. “All things have souls, and the soul of the wall is akin to the spirits. All nonliving things
are of them! That’s—”
“Yumi!” he hissed.
“—why they become statues when we make requests of them! And
why rocks draw their attention. It’s—”
“Look at your hand!”
She hesitated, then glanced at her hand—which in her gesticulating she’d thrust straight through the cloth. Huh. Had her petition worked? Or… Or had she just not been paying attention? Design said they touched things they wanted to—expected to. So perhaps… She closed her eyes and stepped forward, not thinking about the cloth. Doing that, she walked straight through. When she opened her eyes, she found herself inside the tent. And wow, the scholars traveled in style. Thick rugs on the floor. Fine pillows and cushions for
sitting on. A counter with various liquors, and those serving boys— likely scholars in training—to wait upon their needs.
The lavish display was interrupted by the enormous metal machine at the center, its valves and bars open and gaping, like a heart cut from a beast with the arteries severed.
The lead scholar had a pinched face and almost pointed head—like a blunt pencil. He paced back and forth, looking less intimidating without his hat. The bowl cut of hair didn’t help. It was the sort of style you ended up with when you assumed that because you’d studied literature and engineering, you knew your hairdresser’s job better than they did.
“We should try the vacuum pumps again,” the scholar was saying as he paced.
“It’s not the vacuum pumps,” said a scholar who sat on the floor beside the machine, tinkering with it. “It’s the power source, Gyundok- nimi.”
“We never had a problem with the power source for the father machine,” the lead scholar snapped.
“Pardon, Gyundok-nimi,” another scholar said, lounging in pillows with a half-eaten fruit, “but we absolutely have had problems with the father machine’s power.”
“The Incident?” Gyundok said—and Yumi could sense the capital letter there. “Hasn’t been an issue for years.”
The three other scholars shared a glance.
“Fine,” Gyundok said, his hands going to his hips. “If it’s the power source, you prime it, Sunjun. This machine is small. It will be safe.”
Sunjun—the scholar working on the machine—raised his hands and backed away from it. “Not a chance.”
“We need a spirit,” said the man lounging in the pillows.
“Is that all, Honam?” the leader said, spinning toward him. “Our machine that draws spirits needs a spirit to start, you say. What a useful observation.”
“Maybe that yoki-hijo will call one,” Honam said, taking a bite of his fruit. “We could grab it.”
“Have you seen her stacks?” said Sunjun. “The only thing she’ll be summoning in this town is an apology.”
“You try starting it, Honam,” the leader said. “Once it’s primed, it will keep itself going. Should be enough energy in this town for that. As long as we don’t turn it off, we’ll be good.”
“We don’t even know that it will work for the severing,” Sunjun said.
“Maybe we should rethink this entire fiasco.”
“If it doesn’t work,” the lead scholar said, “then we’ll try something else. But first we follow my plan.” He peeked out the parted front of the tent, toward the town. “This is dangerous, what’s happening here.
Honam, prime the machine.”
“No,” Honam said. “Not a chance.”
“I order you—”
“I’ll do it.” The fourth scholar spoke from near the wall, where he stood partially in shadows. Yumi squinted at him, making out a man with a full beard on his chin but a mustache that was failing to keep its end of the bargain. He stepped forward, causing Sunjun to scramble farther back from the machine.
“It’s a small machine,” the fourth scholar said. “It will be fine. Just needs a little priming.”
Yumi stepped forward, trying to get into a better position to watch as this last unnamed scholar knelt down in front of the machine and opened a panel. She had to pick her way between the others and lean in close—getting right to the edge of her tether to Painter—so she could observe as the scholar hesitated, then pressed his hand to a plate at the heart of the machine.
There, she was absolutely certain, two lines of light sprang into existence. One was a vibrant magenta. The other a liquid azure.
Hion lines.
She gasped, then clamped her mouth shut. Then felt immediately foolish. They couldn’t hear her. So she leaned forward farther, inches from the man, to make certain she was seeing what she thought she was. Yes, those were hion lines. She couldn’t mistake the distinctive colors. They connected the scholar’s hand to the— Another pair formed from her face, leading to the plate.
She yelped, jerking back. Lights went up along the machine’s sides, and the scholar who had been kneeling relaxed visibly, pulling his hand away and wiping it on his trousers. The lead scholar and the lounging one cheered in excitement.
The one who had been sitting nearby though—Sunjun, the one with grease on his hands from working on the thing—ignored the achievement. He wasn’t looking at the lights or his companions. No, Sunjun was looking right at Yumi.
She felt a sudden panic and scrambled away, grabbing the spirit of a blanket and holding it up in front of her. If they saw— He continued staring at where she’d been. Not at her. She was still invisible.
“There’s a spirit in here,” Sunjun said, scrambling to his feet.
“What?” the lead scholar said.
“I saw a second set of lines,” Sunjun said, pointing to where Yumi had been standing. “A spirit.” He turned to fumble with some equipment, then pulled out a box with a trailing wire that he plugged into the larger machine. Yumi felt a coldness come over her. An actual physical coldness, not just a fear. The machine had stolen warmth from her.
Sunjun turned the box, and the needle on a dial atop it swung toward Yumi. She scuttled away, dodging around the scholars and
running for the wall of the tent.
The needle followed her.
“There!” Sunjun said, pointing. “It’s moving. Quick! Dig out the capture device!”
Terrified of whatever that was, Yumi closed her eyes and jumped through the wall.
