Chapter 2: The Future

Hesta tumbled out of the cage with a muffled grunt.

Boheng took out a very old tin lunchbox, inside which were cold potatoes, shredded cheese, and a few grayish-brown mushroom slices.

Under the moonlight, Hesta scooped up the mushrooms with a spoon and examined them closely.

“Is this a porcini mushroom?” she asked.

Boheng nodded, “I stole a bit of butter to sauté them.”

Hesta was famished; she devoured the food with great gulps. Boheng handed her a similarly battered canteen. “Slow down.”

While the girl ate, Boheng retrieved a roll of soft, creased newspaper from his trouser leg. The ink at the fold had worn away, revealing the frayed paper fibers.

The boy carefully unfolded the newspaper and began to read it intently under the moonlight.

Hesta was used to this scene.

For the past four years in the convent, she was frequently locked up by Sister Gerlding, and each time, Boheng would bring her a little food and sit beside her, clipping articles from the paper.

“How did you know porcini mushrooms are edible?” Hesta asked, watching Boheng read.

“Did you learn it from the newspaper?”

“No, a man taught me once.”

“Before you came here?”

“Yes... before that, I lived with him on the wasteland.”

As Boheng replied, he carefully cut out a small article, then taped it into his notebook with a strip of milky medical tape, his hands practiced and deft.

This notebook was Boheng’s treasure; he’d found a piece of waterproof asbestos cloth somewhere, and when not in use, he wrapped it and hid it beneath the floorboards of the detention room.

Sister Gerlding strictly controlled the reading material in the orphanage. Aside from a batch of theology stories she personally vetted, the children’s daily reading consisted only of some simple fairy tale picture books—even these had missing pages, for the sister deemed parts of the stories the fanciful delusions of pagans, which would cast a shadow over the children’s pure hearts and make them more susceptible to Chelation Disease.

The entire orphanage subscribed to just one newspaper, delivered daily to the offices of the headmistress and Sister Gerlding. After reading, they stored it away in a storeroom.

Boheng secretly took the papers from there.

To avoid detection, he only ever took issues from three months prior. These papers, often bundled in stacks in a corner, were collected every six months by government recyclers. No one checked whether pages were missing.

As before, Hesta ate every last morsel Boheng brought her, savored it, and then held the empty lunchbox, feeling a sense of loss.

“Are you full?” Boheng asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s good, Jane,” Boheng raised his head, “Listen to me: today, you did make a mistake, though not for the reasons Miss Gerlding said.”

Hesta tilted her head.

Boheng spoke gently, “Perhaps back in Shortcall Alley, you had no choice. But now that we can eat meat from domesticated animals, it’s best not to touch those wild ones.”

“But the squirrel had just died, it was fresh... is that not okay?”

“No.” Boheng crossed his hands, “Wild animals are very likely to carry pathogens, parasites, or viruses—it doesn’t matter how long they’ve been dead. Remember?”

Hesta pondered.

Boheng returned to clipping articles. “I think Flasan probably misidentified it. Vultures are scavengers and rarely attack live animals.”

Hesta was puzzled, “If it wasn’t a vulture, what caused all those holes in the squirrel?”

“Perhaps some other raptor…”

Hesta studied Boheng. “Did the man you lived with before teach you this?”

“Oh, no—this I actually learned from the newspaper.” Boheng smiled. “Someone once got Chelation Disease from eating raw meat, so now all human settlements strictly forbid raw food.”

“I see…”

“But I mostly read the newspaper to collect information about District Fourteen. Whenever there’s a report about the Fourteen Districts, I clip it out.”

District Fourteen.

Hesta was familiar with the name and looked at Boheng curiously. “The book you secretly borrowed from the headmistress, ‘Mountains Under the Storm,’ was that about District Fourteen?”

“Yes, but it’s not set in the place I want to go. District Fourteen is vast—the largest of the sixteen world districts. There are many habitable zones.”

“Why do you want to go there, Boheng?”

“Because it might be my homeland.” Boheng replied, “Boheng is a typical District Fourteen name: Heng is the given name, Bo is an ancient surname... Maybe my family is there, so I want to go back and see.”

Suddenly, Boheng slapped his forehead. “Right! Jane, I saw a story the other day that might be about you.”

Smiling, he riffled through his scrapbook until he stopped at a certain page and pushed the notebook toward Hesta.

“Do you know why the headmistress chose ‘Hesta’ as your surname?”

Hesta was silent for a moment, then shook her head.

“Because you have red hair—fiery red hair. There’s a nomadic tribe in northern District Fourteen called the Hesta people. Legend says their women all have hair like yours. Their totem is the eagle, and they’ve lived as hunters on the northern grasslands for generations… Look, this report is all about the Hesta tribe.”

Hesta’s gaze swept over Boheng’s clippings, her interest not particularly high, but she quickly noticed Boheng’s handwriting filling the notebook’s margins.

“So you keep a diary here too.” Hesta murmured.

“Ah, don’t look at those!” Boheng frantically tried to cover his scribbles. “I meant for you to read the story about the Hesta tribe—”

“That story is wrong,” Hesta said softly. “The Hesta people’s totem isn’t the eagle, it’s the horse.”

“The horse?”

“Mm.” Hesta nodded. “Though the eagle is important to them—in their legends, their ancestor was the incarnation of a divine eagle, so they see the eagle as their guardian spirit. Still, people often confuse it with their totem. Their true totem is the blood-sweat horse—the Hesta people ride these horses across the steppe.”

Boheng was taken aback. “Where did you hear these stories?”

Hesta hugged her knees, brushing loose strands of hair behind her ear.

“For a time in Shortcall Alley, people paid a high price for red hair, especially hair as fiery as mine. So everyone was always trying to find out more about the Hesta people.”

Shortcall Alley—the place Hesta once called home. Boheng had heard of it as a slum on the wasteland, inhabited by thieves, assassins, black market traders, and some wanderers whose identities were too ambiguous for official entry.

Boheng quickly jotted down this detail.

For a moment, the only sound in the detention room was the scratch of his pen on paper.

Hesta closed the tin lunchbox and set it beside Boheng. “What do you plan to do in District Fourteen?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Boheng replied softly. “I’ll probably visit the towns where the Bo surname is common, and after that… I might not stay in the habitable zones. There aren’t many Chelation outbreaks in District Fourteen. I want to live on the wasteland again for a while. Only life on the wasteland is truly free… What about you, Jane? Do you have any plans for the future?”

“Yes.” Hesta nodded.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to find someone—someone who is very, very important to me—”

Before Hesta could finish, the door to the detention room was abruptly pushed open from outside. Her voice stopped, and both of them looked up.

The pale moonlight spilled through the crack in the door, casting a thin, long shadow across the floor.

It was Sister Gerlding.