The sungchal soldiers walked the perimeter, skipping the corners of the room. They waved their hands under the table, chair, and cubbies. The first grunted to the second with a nod that said, “All’s clear.”

They’d barely given the room a half-hearted glance—for which I was grateful, of course—and walked out to the next. We held our breath until we couldn’t hear the boots clomping on the floor, then Se-hun cleared his munje from the air.

He gave me a cocky grin and mouthed, “You owe me.”

I rolled my eyes and pointed to his bulging pocket. He’d made plenty on me tonight, and none of it was being paid in taxes. Bot fighting was legal, but when it wasn’t sanctioned and taxes weren’t paid, the King made a huge stink about it… always needing their cut to run the kingdom.

Se-hun beckoned me to the broken door. We looked left, then right, and when we felt the coast was clear, headed for the first window. We crawled out onto the dirty concrete and brushed ourselves off before slipping between the trees back to Namnak. We still had to get over the river and past the wall to get home, but at least the sungchal wouldn’t be on our tail.

“That. Was. Amazing,” Se-hun said as we made it deep enough into the forest to avoid the ears of the guard.

I sighed with relief. “No kidding. I thought for sure they’d see through your glamor, but you’ve really been practicing.”

Se-hun scowled. “Not me—though yes, I am amazing—You! Tuko one shot that inner-city pungbahn! How does it feel to be the hottest bot fighter in the outer-city limits?”

I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly. “I don’t know about that. He was stupid. Who puts such a huge reservoir in an obvious place?”

“People with more money than sense,” Se-hun retorted and we nodded to one another with a laugh.

We were quiet for a while as firebugs twinkled, lighting the way towards the river. Crickets chirped and the stars peeked out from between wild growing trees with looping vines that hung over the canopy.

The air smelled of dirt and cool water, and the gentle breeze was welcome in the heat. Sometimes, the end of harvest would smash us with an early and unwanted winter, but it was warm. A perfect night for a long walk home from a successful bot fight.

“It’s not going to be the same without you,” Se-hun said and I turned my gaze away from the firebugs to see him better. He was serious, his face solemn.

“What do you mean?” I asked, shifting Tuko in my grip.

Se-hun shook his head. “You’re getting in, dummy. I’m not going to see you for six months—” he punched me in the shoulder—“Who am I going to order around at the arborum?”

“There’s always Naena,” I offered and Se-hun groaned.

“She’d sooner rip my head off than take direction that would save her life.”

We laughed, then fell silent again as we made our way to the softly flowing river. Se-hun and I stopped at the edge of the riverbank and entered seated meditation. I pulled in a breath of crisp river-water air, tasting it with all my senses. I closed my eyes and focused my mind on making en munje, the magic to control the elements.

The band around my core shifted again, centering a smaller block designed for en creation over the crystal. The block allowed me to create the munje needed to perform specific spells in that school of magic. When the raw energy reached critical mass, I pushed it through the block, into the black crystal at the center, and then out flowed the tingling, neon blue en munje through the bottom into my reservoir.

One reservoir could store all five of the magic types: Zo, the munje of body; Li, the munje of living things; Ry, the munje of communication; En, the munje of the elements; and Ma, the munje of machina. The reservoir could hold each magic type in it at once, but it had limited capacity. Overfilling with one munje—as I had done with ma all night—meant I had very little space left for anything else. I breathed again and cycled one more round of en into the reservoir, just to be sure I had enough.

“Ready,” I said as I let the magic trickle down my arms to the tips of my fingers.

Se-hun scoffed. “I’m not even half ready. See, you’re definitely going to get in.”

I crouched at the bank and touched my finger to the water. En munje tingled my finger on the way out, creating ice crystals on the gently lapping edge. I smirked and sucked down a huge breath. I infused the en munje into my breath and cold lanced though my chest.

I launched the breath spell out through pursed lips. En munje swirled through the air and where it touched the water, it turned to solid ice. The platform was strong enough to hold me, so I stepped onto it.

Se-hun pushed past, leaving me on the bank of the river. “Thanks, friend,” he shouted as he trailed his fingers behind, unleashing his own en munje on my ice bridge that melted it. Se-hun waved from the other side with a cheeky grin and I rolled my eyes.

“You’re never going to learn like that,” I warned before creating another burst of en munje to remake the bridge.

Se-hun’s eyes focused on the road home. “Yeah, but I guess I won’t need to cross the river anymore when you’re gone.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “You could always come visit me.”

He blew a raspberry and turned toward the village. “Like I’d be caught dead at a school for stuck up pungbahns.”

I chuckled. “The invitation is always open.”

He shrugged in the very noncommittal Se-hun way. “I’d need a visitation visa to get in, and those are pretty hard to get. Plus, I’ve got Secondary schooling to go through too.”

“So, you decided to go back for another year?” I was surprised. Se-hun was a year older than me and had already spent a year in Secondary school. He’d said it wasn’t for him, that working was the way.

“I won’t—can’t—work at the arborum forever. I figured school is probably a good place to learn some new skills so I can get out of there before I’m old and decrepit.” He moaned and half-bent forward as he held is back with one hand and an imaginary cane with the other.

We laughed and I gave him a gentle shove. “You’re not much older than me. I’m not going to be decrepit anytime soon.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m a few years younger than you. You seem to have it all figured out.” He sighed and shook his head. “Can you plan my life for me?”

I blew my cheeks out. “I don’t have anything figured out. I’m going to get into Bastion, then what? How am I going to support my family if I don’t get a good paying apprenticeship? It’s taken me eight months of bot fighting to save up enough for their food for the first year I’m gone. If anything happens to any of them—”

“Nothing’s gonna happen, so don’t worry for nothing.”

We came to the wall and scaled the short ten feet easily. It was unknown to us why the ancient ones had erected such a tiny barrier, but they must’ve had some reason for it. Perhaps it had been taller long ago, or much of it had been buried by rising soil and rivers. Whatever the reason, the wall had become a part of our reality we didn’t question anymore.

When we reached the edge of the farmland, Se-hun turned north for his home, but stopped short. “Jiyong, it’s been a pleasure doing crime with you tonight.” He tapped his knuckles against his chest and held them out for a bump.

I did the same with a grin. “Likewise.”

We looked at one another and for a moment I thought I saw a shimmer of tears in his eyes. Then he turned away. “Don’t go learning too much. I’m gonna need my technician back.”

I waved and we parted ways.

The cobblestone roads led me through the center of our quiet town. The general store sat to the north a few blocks and a few small restaurants peppered the lane down from there. The road home was filled with pop-up food stands for farmers and people selling wares from the kingdom, a small infirmary, the school for kids aged five to ten, and a few other businesses for mending machines.

Many of the buildings were repurposed from what the ancients left behind, and there were still remnants of their touch in each of them. Some had ghosts who would talk about cappuccinos, bulgogi with rice, and more delicious treats. Others had stunning light images of the deepest parts of the ocean, or distant planets far away.

I wondered if the ancients had left this place to go explore somewhere else, or if they came from somewhere else and were just going home. It was one of the mysteries the Guild of Historians worked on every day. If I could just get into Bastion, maybe one day I could be one of them and uncover the secrets of machina. Maybe I could use that machina to find a cure for my mother.

I turned off the main road and headed down the path to our little cottage. My litter sisters, Eun-bi and Suyi, had been taming the wild again with their li control spells. Freshly grown branches from the trees beside the path were laced together overhead like an intricate braid, and fresh picked flowers—likely thanks to Mini—dangled down from the loops. It smelled like jasmine and tea. Moonlight trickled through the braids, creating a dance of silver as the breeze blew by.

I didn’t want to be cruel, but such lavish uses of munje were wasteful. Until we’d all mastered pulling energy from our surroundings, it came almost exclusively from our food, of which we had little. Braided tree paths were a waste of that precious food.

Despite the late hour, I decided to walk through the front door. Everyone would be asleep, and I didn’t want to track mud across the wall up to my bedroom window. The door wasn’t locked but as soon as I turned the handle, I heard footsteps across the kitchen.

I cursed and closed my eyes. “I’m home,” I whispered as I stepped into darkness.

The silhouette of my mother backlit by moonlight was more than enough to raise the hairs on my arms. She stood tall, hands on her hips and shoulders back, hair in a twisted bun on top of her head. I knew by the way she stood, glaring me down in the darkness, that she was prepared to deliver the angry speech she’d been working on since whenever she’d discovered I’d left.

“Sit down,” my mother said with a quiet fury.

I did as ordered and took a seat in the rocking chair next to the door, then set Tuko and the control panel on the table next to it. She walked around the table to stand in front of me, her hands in the same position clamped on her hips.

I pulled the money out of my pocket and held it out to her. “It’s another half month of rice and fish.”

Her chest rose and fell with angry breaths, but she put her hand out for me to drop the money in. The coins jingled into her palm and when the last hit her hand she stuffed it away in her apron like lightning, wanting the distraction—my bribe for peace—out of the way. She’d never approved of what I did to earn the money that kept us going, but wasn’t going to turn it down if it meant feeding the children well while I was gone… not that she wanted me to leave at all.

“Do you think if they find out what you spend your nights doing that you’ll be allowed to enter Bastion? Do you think you’ll be allowed to go to any academy?”

“But—

“You’d be sent to the mines, Jiyong!” She paused, lowering her voice with a calmed breath. “You would be sent away to pay off your tax debt and fines. I can’t get work, we know this. No one wants to hire a munje mute. Your brothers and sisters, what could they do? Eun-bi is the oldest at only twelve, Jiyong. She can’t work yet, she’s still in Primary, as are the others.”

I nodded and dropped my head as guilt and indignance warred in my stomach. It was for that very reason I was fighting for the money they needed to survive while I was at Bastion. If I had been caught, I’d have thrown not only my life away, but theirs too—but we hadn’t been caught. We’d never been caught. Well, we’d never been detained.

“Look at me,” she whispered, and I lifted my head. “If you’re so worried about us, why not go to a closer school?”

“Because Bastion is the best. They can give me the training and connections I need to get us out of here.” And because I wanted to join the Guild of Historians, but that selfishness wouldn’t help me in this argument.

She crossed her arms. “If you attended Nam-je Academy you could still work your job and see us. Se-hun is going to Nam-je.”

I sighed. “And that’s great for Se-hun, but it’s not my path. I need to be able to take us away from here, into the kingdom, where you can get real care and my brothers and sisters can go to better schools.”

She scoffed. “You don’t have to worry about me, baby boy. Your father will return with a cure.”

Warmth filled my cheeks. “He’s never coming back. He left us.”

Her slap hit my face faster than she’d ferried away the coins. The swift retribution stung against my hot skin. She pointed with the hand she’d used to strike me and leaned in close. I could see the dark bags under her blue eyes, the hollowness of her cheeks, and the wrinkles permanently etched into her forehead from worry.

“Don’t ever speak about your father that way. He is an honorable man, and he is coming back for us.”

I bit my tongue to keep in the next set of foolish statements. He’d been gone six years in search of the man who made the potion that destroyed my mother’s core and corrupted Mini in the womb. She was incapable of creating a munje core, and there was little hope that any cure for my mother could help her at all.

I had many fond memories of my father, but the past six years of neglect—not even a single letter to let us know he was alive—showed me he was either dead, or did not have a shred of honor. An honorless man would be happy to rid himself of a broken wife and a growing family to feed in the slums of outer-city, where no prospects thrived. An honorless man would cut his ties and run, not a word to a soul. He was better off dead, because if I ever found him, he’d learn the sting of a fatherless family scorned.

“I can see what you’re thinking,” she warned, and I felt for munje infiltration, despite the fact I knew my mother couldn’t use ry munje without exposing her core to the disease that devoured it.

There was no infiltration. “How?”

She smirked. “I am a mother. I don’t need magic to read your face and know your thoughts. He is coming back to us, and he is a good man. You’ll see.”

The stairs creaked with the steps of little feet and I saw Mini—my youngest sister at six years old—poke around the corner of the wood banister. “What’s going on,” she asked as she rubbed her brilliant purple eyes.

“Jiyong was just getting ready to go to bed, again,” mother said with a finality that let me know the conversation was over. She turned away for the kitchen and I stood, meeting Mini at the stairs.

“Hey Ms. Minjee, don’t rub your eyes so much. You’ll hurt them.” I scooped her up and balanced her over my shoulder like a sack of rice.

She yawned and rubbed her eyes more. “But it feels nice.”

I turned back at the bottom of the stairs and looked into the kitchen. My mother was finding some new place to hide the money. Silver rays highlighted the streaks of white in my mother’s hair, making her look so much older than she was at only thirty-eight. The disease had almost killed her until my father blocked all her munje passageways and locked her core. What was left was almost worse.

A life without magic, no jobs to be had, and doctors’ fees piling up. Slow death of the body and soul was not how I wanted to see her go. I wanted her to get to a real doctor, get real answers, and fix whatever ailed her. I wanted my brothers and sisters to get an excellent education, have decent opportunities, and a chance to live a life that gave them a sense of purpose, and security.

This could all be accomplished in a matter of years if I got into Bastion Academy. While I could work and see my family every day for the five years I would be in Nam-je, it would also be the dead end that trapped us here and killed my mother. I was doing the right thing, for all of us.

The money tinkled as she dropped them in the long-empty jar that once had sweet honey. She sighed and pushed up onto her toes to put the jar back on the shelf amongst the herbs and medicines she took daily.

“I love you,” I said as my heart ached.

She turned her head, surprise in her face. Her wrinkled forehead smoothed but for a fraction of a second and she smiled. “I love you, too. Goodnight.”