“Never stopped me and Tae-kyung’s father,” Sunny said. “He was my manager. It’s the same thing.”
Time to change the subject. “Will your place in Calgary even have enough room for all this stuff?”
“Of course it will. It’s Alberta. Big sky country.”
“That’s Montana.”
“Whatever. It’s the mainland.” Sunny stood up and stretched. She bent at the waist and Hwa heard all the pops in her spine as the muscles finally relaxed and the vertebrae found alignment. Sunny’s hands traced through the wreckage, pushing aside old cookbooks until her hands lit on a box. Before she even opened her mouth, Hwa knew Sunny was about to switch tongues.
<<Do you want these?>>
“What are they?”
<<Photos.>>
“Of me?” Hwa asked. “And Tae-kyung?”
Sunny shook her head. It was a tiny movement, like the jerk of a fish on a line. “No. They’re of me. Do you want them?”
“What, they’re like your publicity shots? Because I can go online and see those. And besides, I thought you sold all of them already.” She gestured at the clothes. “You should be selling all this shit, too. You’ve still got fans. I’m sure someone, somewhere, wants your old underwear.”
Sunny sucked her teeth. <<Are you done?>> Hwa shrugged.
<<They’re of me. When I was a little girl.>> Hwa stared at the box. “Before you started working? Before you signed your first contract?”
Sunny nodded. <<Before my surgeries.>> She held the box tight to her sternum, like if she let it go for one second it might run away from her. <<Do you want them?>> Hwa nodded. “Fine.”
Slowly, Sunny handed over the box. It was a movement of her whole body. Like something in the box would die if she ever let it leave human hands. When Hwa opened it, Sunny hissed. But inside there was just an envelope secured with an elastic. The years were written on the envelope in script Hwa didn’t recognize. Her grandmother’s, maybe. Hwa had never met her. Hwa tucked the envelope down into her vest.
Sunny let out a deep sigh. She looked at the piles. “Take that one down,” she said, pointing to the leave pile.
So Hwa packed up two giant garbage bags full of clothes and started down the hall. The garbage chutes were all full. Who thought it was a good idea to stuff a whole diaper bag down one of those things? Or a whole dressmaker’s dummy? Everyone really was leaving town, after all. Though the end of the month was always such a disaster in Tower One. She’d have to go down a floor or two. She found the nearest set of elevators and wiped her eyes. Everyone dragging their castoffs out must have stirred up extra dust. Her eyes burned. Her sinuses burned. Something smelled awful. The clogged garbage? No. Too acrid. Not sweet enough. Almost like … fertilizer.
There aren’t even any sniffers. Daniel had said that, about Tower One. It was why he was happy she’d moved.
A song came over the emergency intercom. An old jazz standard. Sweet. Slow. She’d heard it before. On the water. In the taxi. “Where or When”? That was the title. It autoplayed every time you passed the protest signs about the experimental reactor.
Oh, Jesus.
<<MOM!>> Maybe she would hear her. Through the doors. Over the drama. Over the song. <<MOM!>> The contents of the garbage chute exploded. Heat washed over Hwa’s face. She fell to her knees. No alarm sounded. No sprinklers came. They’d hacked the building. Must have. Fire everywhere. Tae-kyung had died this way. Just like this. Flame licked the ceiling.
Beside her, the elevators chimed open. She bolted. Too late, she saw the darkness below. The empty shaft.
She fell.
*
Her mouth was full of blood.
Her ears rang.
Her leg throbbed.
Her head ached.
All in all, it was like the outcome of most of her early matches.
The elevator beneath her had major cracks in it. It looked … crumpled. She felt like the egg in one of Mr. Branch’s physics experiments. From what height did Hwa need to fall before she broke?
How much of her was broken?
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Not comfortably, anyway. Was that smoke inhalation, or a collapsed lung? Did it matter?
“Prefect?”
Nothing.
“Daniel?”
Nothing.
“Joel?”
Nothing.
She was in a giant Faraday cage. Communication with the outside world was impossible. She had two options. The first was to crawl up out of the shaft, somehow. The second was to open the trapdoor on the elevator she’d landed on, and hope that something inside still worked.
It took hours. Her fingers were bloody by the time it was done.
Weakly, she pressed the emergency intercom button. Static. “Worth a try,” she muttered.