Hwa kept her eyes pinned to his chest. “I’m sorry. I haven’t really danced since I was, like, ten. People don’t really get in my space unless I’m sparring them, or fighting them.”
“Is that what it is?” He seemed to be adding something up in his mind, like calculating his share of a long, awful, complicated bill. His fingers played absently with the stays at Hwa’s back. They were what really held the whole suit together, Séverine had told her. The pearl buttons—real golden South Seas sewn directly into the dark leather—were just for show. “Nobody’s ever come this close without hurting you first? That’s why you flinch?”
Mute, Hwa nodded.
“You’re not flinching now.”
She shook her head.
“Well. That’s something.” He did something with their hands that made their fingers enlace, and his other arm tighten around her. “They’re playing our song.”
It took her a few bars to identify “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head,” and she laughed despite herself. He spun her out, and then spun her in, closer this time. Surprising, how easy that was.
“See, that wasn’t so hard,” he said, as though having read her mind. “All you have to do is trust me.”
Hwa had nothing to say to that. But his grip stayed tight.
“Your mother nicknamed you after a dessert I’ve always wanted to try,” he said. “Hwa-jeon, I mean. I was in Pyeongyang in the winter, and my hosts told me the fresh flowers were what made the pancakes best. That I should wait until they bloomed.”
Hwa peered up at him. Odd, how his face could open and close like that. How she could climb right into the soft warmth of that gaze and make a nest in there, if she wanted. “Who are you, really?”
He smiled. “She speaks. You know who I am. I’m Daniel Síofra. Pleased to meet you. Who are you?” He spun her out. Spun her close.
“Tell me what you saw in Lynch’s crystal ball.” It was worth a shot. And he had asked her, once. Somehow she wished she’d told him when she had the chance.
His head tilted. “Have you been looking at my file?”
“Your file is redacted,” Hwa said. “Completely. Why is that?”
That same look of defeat crossed his face that she’d seen when he watched the glitch at the shooting for the first time. His mouth worked. “Hwa…”
“Are you vulnerable? Hackable? Like a skullcap?”
“Hwa.” He bent double. Hwa caught him. Held him. “Hwa. Something’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong? Headache?”
He straightened. Smiled. “No. Not at all, Miss Go.”
Ice ran down her spine. He didn’t sound like himself. What had the old witch under the bridge said, about piloting a skullcap? “Hey,” Hwa whispered. “Say me name, b’y.”
“Go.” His head shook. His fingers curled around her shoulders. Like he was holding tight to the tiller on a roiling sea. “Go Jung-hwa. Jung-hwa-sshi.”
“That’s it,” she said. “There we go.”
“Hwa, there’s something very wrong with me,” Síofra whispered. “Oh, Christ, Hwa, I’m—”
Something light and wet glanced off her left shoulder. Hwa smelled something sweet. A champagne flute shattered near her. Gasps followed. Whispers. Tittering laughter. Hwa turned. She almost didn’t recognize the figure at first. Her mind was on Síofra. But in the centre of the dance floor was Mr. Moliter, and he was very, very drunk. Drunk enough to throw a champagne flute at her head and miss badly, anyway. How had he gotten up to this level? Did they let the Homecoming chaperones drink?
Silently, she put herself between Síofra and Moliter.
“You.” Her old teacher pointed at her. “You don’t got anything worth selling on the open market, so you take it out on everyone else.” Moliter shuffled around the dance floor like a rolling sack of rotten potatoes. His pointing finger wagged at her. He grinned his big, drunk, shit-eating grin, the same one he sometimes wore when Hwa dropped Eileen off at his place. “Girl with a face like that in a town like this, with so much pussy for sale, doesn’t stand a chance—”
Hwa’s fist snapped out so fast she almost didn’t register it as movement. One minute Moliter was standing, and the next minute he was on the floor. He writhed helplessly, a potato bug curling in on itself, struggling to talk through the bloody gurgling in his throat.
“You little fucking bitch,” he said. “With your big fucking mouth.”
Coach Alexander. Coach Brandvold. Is it true that one of the teachers here has a type? “What, did Administration finally fire your ass? They finally find out how you were spending your lunch period?” She mimed him jerking himself off.
Moliter spat blood at her. It spattered dark red across the creamy marble floor.
“You’re pathetic,” Hwa turned to the assembled crowd. “This guy, right here, he used to be my teacher. If you can believe that. And senior year, right after my brother died—” She choked on the words. Took a breath. Forced them out. “He said it was a shame about my face, because if I could make money the way my mother did, my brother wouldn’t have died working on the Old Rig.”