#i hate plot

Now that he thinks about it, their last lunch was over a year ago. He supposes that doesn’t count as “occasionally” anymore. He could reach out first, if he wanted to. But he’s never been the type to reach out. Shirong has a life, a family, all the things he always wanted. All the things Lan Zhan couldn’t give him.

“I cannot imagine myself with a child,” he’d said when they broke up. He hadn’t intended for it to actually be a breakup—he hadn’t really thought that far ahead. But Shirong had visited an actual agency the day before and handed him a brochure, and Lan Zhan had left the apartment and driven into the mountains in a blind panic. He’d ended up stopped outside someone’s cabin, all the way up their driveway, and parked outside this stranger’s house until he’d gotten his breathing under control. That’s one of the reasons he’d sold the car. He’d never done that before, taken off like that, trespassed on private property, so getting rid of the car was the safest option. 

Precept 45 of the Lan Clan: Do not act impulsively.

Precept 213: Be strict with yourself.

Precept 341: When faced with temptation away from the righteous path, remove the source of temptation.

His brother finds his interest in the old clan rules an amusing idiosyncrasy. Even his uncle, strict as he is, finds the rules nothing more than an heirloom, evidence of some kind of hereditary virtue but nothing relevant to the modern day.

It’s not that he follows them. He just likes to know them, to turn them over in his mind. As options. When faced with a decision, there’s a comfort in turning to generations of dead Lans for guidance. Some people like astrology.

There are a lot of Lans, these days, enough that he’s never met a good number of cousins. There’s plenty of Lans he’s barely related to at all, at this point, but the name still has a good reputation. It’s the opposite of what the Wens have to deal with, those who weren’t involved in the insurrection. Everyone knows the old clans are ancient history and you can’t judge someone on their family name. But still, no one named Wen is going to find work in Lanling anytime soon. 

The point is, the Lans have survived and multiplied, so whatever kept them going in the old days can’t be completely useless.

His original interest in the rules was mostly as a journalist, which he’d hoped his uncle might understand. Every rule implies a story. A reason. Thousands of them mean you can triangulate an entire context. Who were we? How did we get here? What did we lose, and how?

Precept 9: Do not speak dishonestly.

Precept 77: Do not make promises that you cannot honor.

“I cannot imagine myself with a child,” he’d said.

Don’t worry, Lan Zhan, we’ll figure it out together. “I’m not sure I want to imagine myself with a child.” It will be different when it’s ours. You’ll see. “The more you talk about it, the less sure I am.” That’s okay, Lan Zhan, I can be sure enough for the both of us.

“I don’t want this. I don’t want this with you.”

Precept 424: Do not be needlessly cruel.

Lan Zhan had killed men during the war. Cultivation was useful for long-range attacks, but he still found himself in the situation of killing up close, of watching the light leave an enemy’s eyes.

He saw the light leave Liu Shirong’s eyes. For a moment his instincts had jolted, shocking through his nervous system. You’ve killed him. You activated your core, by accident, and you’ve killed him.

But it wasn’t the end of Liu Shirong’s life, of course, just the end of his love for Lan Zhan, the end of their life together, the end of whatever future he’d imagined for them. Lan Zhan had meant to release him gently, like a small rabbit with a newly-healed leg, back out into the world he came from. But he’d crushed him instead, under his clumsy feet.

Do not be needlessly cruel.

There are pools of guilt around Moling. Every place that he recognizes, everywhere they went together, even if the memories themselves are good. The guilt gathers on his clothes, soaks through to the skin, makes him cold.

It’s not that he misses Shirong. Perhaps he should miss him more than he does. It’s been nearly three years since they split up. It should perhaps hurt more than it does. It’s embarrassing that it took longer for him to get over Wei Ying—a relationship that never happened. 

The worst part of the breakup didn’t even have to do with Shirong himself. He hadn’t made a special call after Shirong left, or even after he officially moved out a week later, but he had mentioned it when Lan Huan called him as usual on the second Tuesday of the month.

“Oh, I’m sorry, didi,” Lan Huan had said. “I know you did love him, in your own way.”

In your own way.

Is he not— Did he not—

Had he never—

He is nearly to Moling. The train track curves here, about fifteen minutes out, and the rails were laid in crooked. It’s a jolt, every time. It’s easy to see who the regular commuters are, whose coffee sloshes over, who widens their stance in time, who looks suddenly out the window, worried. Sabotage on the tracks, maybe, or someone under the cars. The younger people don’t look worried, only bored. 

The landscape is odd, he realizes suddenly. He’s been staring vaguely out the window, letting his mind wander, but where he’s used to a few farms, a man-made lake, and mostly open country there is torn up ground, heavy machinery, and miles of chain-link fence. Did he not notice this on his last trip? Had he been reading?

Out the window he sees a large sign on the fence announcing, “Future home of Jin Industries Moling Satellite Campus.” Typical.

In your own way.

He never asked what Lan Huan meant by that. Lan Zhan has won multiple awards for his reporting, for his ability to encourage others to talk. The right facial expression at the right time. A direct, polite question with just the right emphasis. Merciless is what they say about him, sometimes. He’s like a swordsman in an old movie, Nie Mingue used to say, in a way that sounded like a compliment. He moves so quick and so sharp, you don’t even know he’s cut you until you’re around the corner and your head falls off.

He’s poking at it like a sore tooth, needlessly. His golden core makes itself known, just a little sense, a small awakening. It’s always ready to defend him, even so many years later. He does nothing with the awareness, of course. No cultivation is authorized outside of combat. But his core was never removed, never shut down. Can’t put the hot sauce back in that bottle, Jiang Cheng had said once.

The train slows, stops. 

“Moling station. Depart here—” The pleasant voice is cut off by a beeping. Lan Zhan stands and shoulders his bag.

“Attention passengers,” a crackled voice comes over the loudspeaker, far less pleasant than the recording. “Due to a security concern all passengers must depart the train at car fourteen. Doors will not open except for car fourteen. Departing passengers, please make your way to car fourteen.”

Lan Zhan looks around the car, then sees a “3” on the far wall. He sighs and follows the few people who are struggling with the connecting door to car four. The chimes that gently demand Get off the damn train are going. He has to speedwalk down the aisle, which is undignified, and everyone looks up at him with that poor bastard expression reserved for torn grocery bags and flat tires. 

He makes it off the train a second before the door closes and it pulls away.

“Close one!” an old man grins at him, more humor than teeth.

The police have roped off most of the platform, everyone standing around looking at each other. A few are smoking. Lan Zhan goes over to the rope, coming up next to a kid with one of those handheld electronic games. The kid’s staring around at the cops while his game beeps vaguely in a lonely sort of way.

“What’s happened?” Lan Zhan asks him.

The kid answers without looking at him. “Abandoned bag. Nothing’s happening.” He sounds disappointed.

“Hm.” Sure enough, there’s a nondescript green backpack slumped on a bench.

“They always say it might blow up, but it never does.”

“Not so much these days,” Lan Zhan agrees.

“Like, if it was gonna blow up they wouldn’t be smoking near it, right?”

Lan Zhan smiles despite himself. “Good eye,” he says. His golden core is settled within him, curling beneath his breastbone like a sleeping cat, uninterested and unconcerned. No danger.

There had been a certain amount of withdrawal, after the war. And grief, and nightmares, and a limp for a while. But the end of regular cultivation, of relying on his golden core as a seventh sense, a second consciousness, a second self, the end of healing himself from the inside, of Wangji at his back and power at his fingertips . . .

It’s not entirely the government’s fault, if he’s being fair. Governments have always thrown away veterans, no matter who is in power. Always have, always will. Use you up and spit you out with maybe some benefits and the number of some overtaxed and underpaid case worker. And cultivation, being both new and more ancient than anything, was an unknown since the beginning. There are no peer-reviewed studies on the long-term effects of using a golden core. If Jin Guangyao hadn’t been doing his own research with the Wens for all those years, only to defect back to his father’s side when the tide began to turn, there wouldn’t have been a cultivator corps at all. So Lan Zhan can’t put the responsibility on any one person’s shoulders.

But it still claws at him, sometimes. His core wants out, wants to stretch, to strike, to light something up. It’s like wrapping his head in blankets, sometimes, stifling and muffled and hard to breathe.

Jin Zixuan likes to talk about it, how it feels. Lan Zhan and Jiang Cheng do not.

He checks his watch and picks up his pace, passing by another building down the block under renovation with a Jin Industries sign. The logo is close enough to the Sunshot flag that the government connection is implied, but different enough for plausible deniability. 

Lan Qiaolian is leaning on her car a few blocks away, exactly where she said she’d be. Lan Zhan appreciates it—they’ve met only once, and he doesn’t trust his ability to pick her out in a crowd. She’s a short woman, but solidly built. Doesn’t look like a Lan, is what his uncle would say.

“Lan Zhan!” she waves to him and drops her cigarette on the pavement. “Thanks for coming.”

He nods and takes his place in the passenger seat. The drive to the Moling Children’s Center is quiet for a while. The Center is near Yilong’s old gym; he remembers the road.

“You had a meeting with the detective?” he asks, though he knows the answer.

“Yeah. Still stonewalling me. Everything’s fucking confidential. They say they’ve canvassed the neighborhood, everywhere between the school and the bus stop and home. But it’s like everyone saw him walking home with his cousin, his cousin turns around for a minute to chase a damn neighborhood cat up a tree, and Sizhui is just . . . gone. How does a kid just disappear like that?”

“But this lead?”

“The administrator I talked to at the Center said they might have something, some record of where he was born. Maybe someone from his birth family has been looking for him, would take him? There’s just— Even if the records do exist, if they weren’t destroyed, I don’t know who has access. And he’s just a kid, you know? I’m not special. We’re not special. So I can’t think of anything but the worst. You know what happens to kids, especially if they take them West, I know they sell—”

“You don’t know,” Lan Zhan cuts her off, gently. “No one knows. No reason to go down that road unless the evidence points there.”

Lan Qiaolian rubs her face. “I just don’t know what the evidence is.”

“We’ll find something. I have a hunch.”

He does not have a hunch. He doesn’t believe in hunches. Or, rather, he didn’t before he started cultivating. Now he believes in the extra-sensory perception of his golden core, which he has been ordered—and signed pages of documents agreeing—to never use it again.

Either way, he’s learned that the general public like hunches. It’s comforting, apparently, someone taking the lead off of no information. It doesn’t make much sense, but most reassuring things don’t.

“I can’t help thinking—” Lan Qiaolian trails off, tapping her thumb on the steering wheel. “Maybe he left because of me.”

This is not a comfortable situation. Lan Zhan should respond with Of course not, don’t think like that. But for all he knows it could be true. He doesn’t really know Lan Qiaolian, and he certainly doesn’t know Lan Sizhui.

All he knows are the facts. Lan Qiaolian began fostering Lan Sizhui a year ago, when he was eight. It was just the two of them until a few weeks ago when Lan Sizhui went missing. It’s not his job to find missing children, but they are technically family, and if there’s some kidnapping or a dangerous part of Moling where children are falling into holes in the ground, that’s a story.

“Why would you think that?” It’s not as gentle, maybe, but it’s useful.

“I got laid off a few years ago. A lot of us did, mass layoffs.”

“Construction?”

“Yeah. Everyone from site managers to the detailers to— well, everyone. One whole firm shut down. So I thought, you know, I’d be home for a while, I got some unemployment, so maybe it would be a good time to finally start fostering. You know? I could stay home until he got adjusted, then when he started school I’d have found something new.”

“And he was happy?”

Lan Qiaolian smiles. “He’s always happy. He’s a real happy kid. Whatever he went through when he was little, he doesn’t seem to remember. Makes friends easily, fine by himself. He’s a dream. But maybe he was just good at showing me what I wanted to see. You know? Coming from a traumatic background like that, being in the system. You know, kids learn how to survive.”

“If he seemed happy, I’m sure he was.”

She sighs. “I just— The work never came back. The last six, seven months I’ve been calling everywhere I can think of. Even considered moving. Nothing. And so it’s been tight, even though it’s just the two of us. I figured with my husband’s life insurance we’d be fine until I found something, but I didn’t anticipate it taking this long. I’ve got some unemployment, but the support payments from fostering messed with my benefits. And so it’s been tight. And maybe he— You know, the secondhand clothes, no takeout, no games. Not getting to go on the school trips because I can’t pay the— I can’t help thinking, maybe all that time in the system, he must’ve been dreaming about a home, you know, what it would be like. And then when it wasn’t—”

“That’s a lot of conjecture.”

She laughs. “True. I just— The brain, it spins. You know?”

“Hm.” Lan Zhan looks out the window at the familiar neighborhood, then startles a bit. “Did they tear down the market?”

Qiaolian glances over. “Oh, yeah. Couple months ago. No more independent groceries in this part of town anymore. Not that most people could afford it at the end. They tried to stick it out, but the big chains moved in after the war, got those tax breaks.”

“Ah. ‘Economic revitalization.’”

She laughs again. 

“So, if I can ask,” he starts, glancing out of the corner of his eye to gauge her response. “On the train I noticed building sites. Jin Industries?”

Her jaw clenches. “They’re not hiring.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“We’ve all tried. They’ve bought up half of Moling, and whoever’s running the construction’s not hiring local. Union’s totally shut out.”

“Really?”

“I’ve tried, okay? I’ve called so many—” she cuts off with a frustrated noise.

“Forgive me. It wasn’t a criticism. I’m just curious.”

She nods curtly. “We’re here.”

The administrator who has agreed to meet with them has black toner smudged up the inside of her left forearm and a framed picture of a cat on her desk. She offers Lan Zhan room temperature water in a cracked coffee mug.

“So you’re my eleven o’clock, right? Okay, right.”

“That’s an old flag,” Lan Zhan says, nodding up at the wall behind her. “I haven’t seen that design for a while.”

For the most part, it’s a standard Sunshot, but in addition to the golden hand and red sun, thin black lines reach up the palm like branches.

The administrator looks surprised, turning around to it. “Oh. Yeah, I guess. I don’t know, I don’t have time to keep up with all that. We have to pay for our own, you know. We’re required to hang a flag in every room but the bathroom, but it comes out of our general operating budget. The official ones aren’t cheap.”

Lan Qiaolian chuckles. “My cousin got it tattooed right after he got discharged. He was pissed when they got rid of the black squiggles in the update. I told him, that’s why you gotta think for more than a week before you make a permanent decision, you know?”

The administrator smiles politely. “Anyway. Let me see here.” She starts digging through her pile of folders. “Lai, Lai—”

“Lan,” Lan Zhan corrects.

“Sorry?”

“The name, it’s Lan.”

“Right! Right, okay, Lan. Lan . . . Here we go. Lan . . . Qiaolian. Foster mother. Yes?”

Qiaolian nods.

“And you are?”

“Family,” Lan Zhan says.

“Right. Okay, let’s see. Lan Sizhui, age nine.”

Lan Zhan leans forward. “Anything you can tell us about where he came from, his life before Lan Qiaolian met him?”

She clicks her tongue and runs a finger down the page. “War orphan, typical story. Moved around, a bit once he got to Gusu. No injuries or disabilities. Hearing and sight all good, average height. Slightly underweight, but that’s not unusual.”

“When did he arrive here?” 

“At our facility? Looks like ‘98.”

“So he wasn’t here long before you got him,” Lan Zhan looks to Lan Qiaolian.

“Yeah, I guess. We don’t really talk about his past. That’s what the counselors recommend. You’re supposed to wait until they volunteer, you know? You don’t ask first.”

“Any idea where he came from? Birth family?”

The administrator clicks her tongue again, flips a few pages. Lan Zhan catches a sight of a grainy printed photograph, a kid looking around six, big chubby cheeks and shaggy long hair.

“Came in through law enforcement. No note of any charges or juvenile detention, so likely if he had surviving family they lost custody due to a criminal conviction. Looks like the child didn’t offer any details to counselors or placement. Um, looks like Sizhui was the name he got here.”

Lan Qiaolian frowns. “You named him? That’s not his birth name?”

“Common practice, especially if we have multiple kids with the same given name. He never gave a family name—Likely he either didn’t know his parents or forgot after being in the system for a while. A-Yuan is what he was called when he got here.”

“Yuan,” Lan Zhan turns it over in his mouth. “Something Yuan. Any record of where he was born?”

“Mmm, can’t be sure. But he entered the system in Yiling.”

“Yiling?”

“Yep. First registered into care in Yiling, 1995.”

Lan Zhan looks back up at the flag. The others must be thinking the same thing. Yiling in 1995, the Sunshot Massacre. But that’s a ridiculous thought—there were no survivors then, and plenty of other battles, bombings, one-off murders in the area at the end of the war.

“No family names though?” Lan Qiaolian asks. “Any record of someone who might be looking for him, might want him back?”

The administrator suddenly yawns hugely, covering her mouth with both hands. “I’m so sorry. No, no siblings, no recorded birth family. I’m so sorry, I haven’t been sleeping.”

“It’s all right,” Qiaolian says.

“I live over on the East side. They’re building some new damn complex, pounding in pilings at all hours of the night.”

“At night?” Qiaolian asks. “Why?”

The woman sighs. “I don’t know. Lights coming in the windows at one in the morning. I had to dig out my old curtains, thank goodness I still have them. Wake up in the middle of the night thinking the bombing’s started up again, ha, the banging and the lights. We’ve been complaining, but the company offered all the neighbors a settlement stop reporting it. Two months’ rent, we couldn’t turn it down.”

“Lots of construction,” Lan Zhan says, carefully. “Unusual construction.”

“I wouldn’t know,” the administrator shrugs. “I just hope they finish up quickly. My cats are getting stressed to death.”

“Have you noticed— Never mind.” Qiaolian chews her lip.

“Noticed what?”

“The site over by me, there’s a lot of trailers.”

“Like trailers you live in?”

“They look similar—usually there’s a double-wide or two for an on-site office, break area, you know. The site by us there’s a dozen at least. I just find that odd.”

“I haven’t noticed. Maybe. I don’t know, I try to ignore it. Whatever office complex or hotel or whatever it is, I don’t need it.”

The administrator flips through the file again. “I’m afraid that’s about all I can give you. Yiling might have more information—I think the children’s home there moved a couple years ago so files might have been lost, but it’s worth an ask. Signature on the transfer form looks like a Xie Ling. It’s not a huge town, anyway, could be someone remembers the kid, or the family. Local police or courts maybe, if they keep decent records.”

Lan Zhan and Lan Qiaolian exchange a glance.

“Sounds like I’m going to Yiling,” Lan Zhan says.

“You don’t have to—”

He shakes his head, then hands his card to the administrator. “If you think of anything, or hear anything.”

She takes it. “Gusu Herald? You’re not going to mention the flag thing, right? We’re compliant with everything, this one’s just a mistake.”

“I doubt you’ll even be mentioned. I’m just following the story.”

She looks doubtful. “Okay. We’re compliant, though.”

“I work for a newspaper, not the government.”

She snorts. “Yeah. Okay. ”

It twists a little in his stomach, but he nods at her politely as they leave.

The hallway takes them past a large window showing some kind of playroom. Three adults huddle around a low table, arguing in hushed tones, while a child who looks around four plays by himself with a few scratched up toy cars. The child has a cast on one arm, rolling one car at a time solemnly around on the carpet. He looks up as they pass him and tracks them all the way down the hallway. Lan Zhan can feel his eyes on the back of his neck even as they go out into the sunshine.

“Did Sizhui talk about anybody here?” Lan Zhan asks as they get back in the car. “Any friends at the group home, or children he knew when he was younger?”

“Not really. I was worried he’d have a hard time making friends, because he always seemed so content playing by himself. It’s why I was so glad he had Jingyi, his cousin. He’s the same age. He’s the one who was with—” Qiaolian breaks off, blinking hard. “Sorry. Long day.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he says. He should say something else like It’s okay. It will be fine. We will find him. But he doesn’t, because that would probably be a lie. His silence rises like water in the car, over his mouth, his nose, stifling.

Do not be needlessly cruel.

“Yiling,” Lan Zhan says, to fill the space. 

“Fucking Yiling,” Qiaolian agrees.

“I’ll go this weekend.”

“What? You can’t just take off across the country.”

“I haven’t taken vacation in three years. I can go.”

“Lan Zhan—”

“I will go. I’m not saying I will find him, but I will go.”

Lan Qiaolian doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. When she drops him at the station, she just nods, lips pressed tight together.

“I will call you,” he says. She nods again and he gets out.

He stops by the payphone on the way in to the station to call the office.

“Can I talk to Lan Shu? Yes, thank you.” He waits while the call is transferred down to the basement. “Hi, Lan Shu. Have we got anything from Yiling? Anything we’ve covered. Is there a local paper there? I haven’t—”

Lan Shu snaps her gum on the other end of the line. He pulls the receiver away from his ear, wincing. It’s a very wet sound. “Yeah, I got some. I’ll check our clippings, but they’ve got some shitty local rag. A weekly, I think.”

“Please pull that for me. I’m looking for 1995, don’t know what month.”

“Eh, looks like it’s only been running a couple years. First edition I have is April ‘98.”

Lan Zhan taps his finger, thinking. “I’ll take everything you’ve got. Any of our coverage from ‘95.”

“So, Sunshot.”

“And anything else we covered.”

Lan Shu laughs around her gum, “What else is there? No one gave a shit about Yiling before Sunshot, and nobody’s given a shit since.”

Lan Zhan sighs. “Just pull what you can find. Please. I’ll be by in an hour and a half.”

He hangs up before she can snap her gum again. It gives him a headache, the wet sound. 

He grabs a copy of the Herald for the train ride back. Instead of reading, he flips through the entire paper looking for one word: Yiling. He finds three mentions: once as the birthplace of a soccer player (a rags-to-riches story), once as the site of a hailstorm in the weather section, and once, as expected, in reference to the Sunshot Massacre. 

He hasn’t thought about it much before. He’s never been to Yiling, but there’s never really been a reason. Even before the war it was a small, poor, middle of nowhere town with low property values, high crime rates, and the worst literacy numbers in the country. It was shitty, but not in an interesting way. Qinghe was always shitty but exciting—drug kingpins and porn producers and a famous red light district. It’s become more respectable since the war, though it’s kept some of it’s sleazy veneer. Lan Huan likes to visit, says there’s a good arts scene, but Lan Zhan has never been tempted. He traveled a lot during the war, but since returning home he’s never really felt the urge. For a while it was justified. Recovery. But five years? Maybe he’s more than comfortable, now. Maybe he’s stagnating.

Lan Shu gives him two-and-a-half years of weekly papers in a brown paper bag and slim folder of photocopied clipping from the Herald’s own files. He hauls it all home on the bus piles them neatly by year on the coffee table, then settles in with a cup of tea to read. There are empty gum wrappers in the bottom of the bag.

The Yiling Observer is a quick read, only eight pages in its first edition. There are no bylines, oddly, no editors listed, no photographs, just one phone number and a street address in the masthead. The stories are . . . not quite what he expected. No gruesome crimes or depressing statistics. Just coverage of a local amateur basketball tournament, a car accident that took out a storefront, an interview with a grandmother about her vegetable garden. Small stories, almost defiantly local, but clearly and concisely written. Professional. A recipe for xiao long bao attributed to a Mrs. Yi.

He flips to the back page, under the fold. Whatever it says in bold. 

This is your humble author’s own column, where our fearless and frightening editor has given me these few inches to write whatever I like. Hence the name, Whatever. Today we’re going to talk about the Sunshot Flag, or as I like to call it, “Hey, let’s slap reminders of a war crime up on every building in the country, that’s a great idea.” 

Lan Zhan snorts. Whoever the writer is, they’re not wrong. He gets up to heat more water and adds to his list of things to do on the kitchen counter. Read all of the newspapers. Call the HR department and schedule a few days of vacation, maybe a week. Wait until his uncle sees it on the out of office calendar and calls him in a huff to explain the story. Book a train ticket to Yiling. Make an appointment at children’s services. Find a hotel. Ask Lan Huan to water his plants. Do laundry. 

He feels better with a list, like all of the static of potential responsibilities has focused into a clearly intelligible sound inside his skull. 

He goes back to the paper.

And before you complain—and I know some of you will—you’re the one reading my paper. Maybe someday you’ll have better options and can use this only for lining your bird cages, but for now I’m the best you got. That’s Yiling, baby.