The moment the tent flap was lifted, a pungent smell assaulted my senses.
Animal hide. Dry hay. Copper rust. And—
Blood.
Fresh. Not the old, ingrained stain that wouldn't wash out of leather, but the iron-heavy scent left within hours, not yet dried by the wind.
My stomach cramped.
The cafeteria at UCLA definitely didn't have this smell.
The tent was huge, more spacious than I expected. The floor was layered with felt and furs; on top lay a complete wolf pelt, the head preserved, its eyes replaced with two dark red beads that glowed eerily in the firelight—as if staring right at me. I stared back for three seconds, confirming it wouldn't suddenly jump up and bite me, before looking away.
In the center stood a low table, spread with several sheepskin maps held down by candlesticks. A scattering of knives—various sizes, some still sheathed—lay beside the maps.
No books. Not a single sheet of writing paper.
I sighed.
Then I saw him.
In the deepest part of the tent, in a corner where the light barely reached, a figure leaned against a pile of furs.
Not sitting, but half-lying. One leg extended, the other bent, an arm resting on his knee, turning something in his hand.
The candlelight flickered, illuminating his face.
A youth.
No older than eleven or twelve. His face was still youthful, his jawline not fully defined, but his features already possessed sharp contours. His hair was braided into several thin plaits hanging from the crown, tipped with small turquoise stones.
He was looking at me.
Not with curiosity, not with childish appraisal—but with a quiet, impassive scrutiny, like a wolf crouching in the grass, judging whether the prey before it was worth rising for.
I thought:This kid's gaze is scarier than my professor's.
The object in his hand flashed in the candlelight.
It was a short dagger. The blade was narrow, the handle wrapped in dark leather cord.
The silence in the tent stretched on. Long enough for me to hear my own heartbeat, long enough to hear the rustle of dry hay beneath the furs moving in the wind.
Then he spoke.
"You were looking at my knife."
His voice was lower than I imagined. Not the rasp of puberty, but a deliberately lowered, controlled depth. An eleven-year-old speaking in the manner of an adult.
I didn't deny it: "There's blood on the blade. You didn't wipe it clean."
His movement paused for a split second.
The blade was still spinning between his fingers, but the rhythm changed—it slowed by half a beat.
"Not afraid?"
"Afraid of what?"
"Blood."
I thought about it. "Afraid. But if I smell it, I smell it. I won't pretend I don't. Besides—how long has it been since you cleaned this knife? It rusts easily like this."
His fingers stopped.
The knife was stuck between his fingers, motionless. He looked at me, his expression as if he had encountered something... something he couldn't quite define himself.
"You care about my knife?" he asked.
"I care about anything that looks valuable but is being mistreated," I said. "Including knives."
He looked down at his knife, then back up at me.
That expression—the furrowed brow, the pursed lips, the eyes holding a confusion of'this person has a screw loose'—almost made me laugh.
He withdrew the knife into his palm, his thumb sliding slowly along the blade's edge.
"The last person sent here," he said suddenly, his tone as if discussing something trivial, "cried for three days."
He looked at me.
"Will you cry?"
"Depends."
"On what?"
"If you're going to kill me, I might cry. If you're just scaring me, that's a waste of tears. Tuition at UCLA is expensive—well, my parents paid it, but you get the point."
He stared at me for three seconds.
Then he stood up from the pile of furs.
He was taller than I expected. Lying down, I hadn't noticed, but now standing, I realized this eleven-year-old boy was already up to my eyebrows. I'm 1.65 meters tall, meaning this kid was at least 1.50-something—eating what to grow this tall at eleven?
He walked toward me.
One step. Two steps.
I didn't retreat. The first thing I learned in drama class at UCLA was:On stage, never turn your back on the audience. Although there was no audience here, I felt he was more dangerous than any audience.
He stopped in front of me, looking down.
Then he raised his hand.
The knife tip pressed under my chin, cold, carrying the chill of metal. He used the force to lift my face slightly, letting the candlelight illuminate my entire face.
"You don't look like the Han people they describe." He tilted his head. "They say Han women are like rabbits."
"Rabbits?"
"Timid. Cry at the slightest scare."
"Then you've seen too few Han people."
"I've seen many."
"Then the ones you saw were all rabbits. Not Han people."
The knife tip didn't move, but his wrist loosened slightly. The force changed—not oppression, but testing.
"You're not afraid of me?"
"I am."
"Then why not run?"
"Run where?" I asked him sincerely. "Can you tell me where to run? I spent ages just finding the exit of this tent. And it's pitch black outside, I don't have GPS—"
"What?"
"Nothing. Just means I can't run."
He withdrew the knife.
The moment the tip moved away from my chin, I saw a split on his虎口 (the web between thumb and index finger). The flesh was turned outward, the edges already blackened—untreated, not even bandaged.
My professional instinct—well, the nursing prerequisite course at UCLA—made me frown reflexively.
"You stay by my side." He sheathed the knife at his waist, looking down at me. "Before I let you go—"
"Your hand."
He glanced down, as if just noticing the wound, and indifferently put his hand behind his back.
"None of your business."
"It will get infected."
"I don't die when I kill people; should I fear this?"
"Killing and bacterial infection are two different things," I said. "Do you know what tetanus is?"
He was silent for a moment.
"...No."
"It's when a wound isn't treated. You get a fever, you convulse, and then—"
I made a throat-slitting gesture.
He looked at me, his expression slightly subtle.
"Are you threatening me?"
"I'm educating you," I said. "UCLA professors say knowledge is power."
He turned and walked back to the pile of furs, sitting down again, picking up the short dagger and continuing to spin it. His posture was lazy, as if that confrontation had never happened.
"Someone will take you to your quarters. Starting tomorrow, you teach me to read."
Not a request. A command.
I stood still.
What was spinning in my head wasn't that—it was the wound on his hand. No redness, not infected yet. But if not treated in another two days—
"You're not leaving yet?" He looked up, the knife stopping between his fingers.
I looked at him.
Eleven years old. Hand injured. No one around to tell him wounds need treatment.
Maybe no one had ever told him.
"Your hand," I said.
"I said it's none of your business."
"You want me to teach you to read tomorrow."
"So?"
"So you need to at least survive until tomorrow."
His movement stopped completely.
The knife gripped in his palm, motionless. He looked at me, something changing in his eyes—not anger, not wariness, but something more complex, something he probably couldn't define himself.
I walked over.
He didn't move.
I squatted down, eye-level with him.
"Do you have clean cloth?"
He didn't answer.
"Water?"
Still no answer.
He rummaged under the low table, pulled out a piece of cloth, and threw it to me. Then he jerked his chin toward a clay jar in the corner.
I got up, poured some water onto the cloth, and squatted back in front of him.
"Hand."
He didn't move.
I reached out and pulled his right hand over.
His fingers stiffened for a moment.
Just that moment. Very brief, brief enough that maybe even he didn't realize it—but before that, his hand had always been steady. Steady when holding the knife, steady now, but when my fingers touched him, his fingers curled slightly.
Like a wolf cub touched on the paw, unsure whether to retract it.
I didn't let go.
I used the wet cloth to wipe the blood around the wound. The water wasn't clean enough, the cloth wasn't soft enough, but there were no better options now. I could only try to be as light and fast as possible.
He looked down at me.
"Have you done this before?" he asked suddenly.
"Mm."
"For who?"
"Many people. My roommate cut her hand chopping vegetables, my roommate scraped his knee playing basketball, my roommate got drunk and hit a doorframe—"
"What is a roommate?"
"Just... people who live together."
"Slaves?"
"No! Friends. Classmates. People who go to school together." I looked up at him. "Don't you have schools here?"
He was silent for a moment.
"We do. But I don't go."
"Why?"
"Don't need to."
I didn't press. I cleaned the wound and simply bandaged it with that piece of cloth.
"Change the cloth tomorrow," I said. "If it gets red, tell me."
"What if I tell you?"
"I have ways," I paused. "Well, actually, I don't have many ways. But it's better than doing nothing."
He looked down at his bandaged hand, turning it over to look at the not-very-pretty knot. His thumb rubbed the edge of the strip, as if confirming something.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Jiang Jinyue."
"Jiang... Jin... Yue." He pronounced it one character at a time, stumbling, as if chewing on a bone he couldn't swallow.
"Jinyue means the moon soaking in water."
He looked up at me.
Outside the tent, the moon had just reached its zenith, silver light leaking through the缝隙 in the tent roof, falling between us.
"The moon soaking in water." He repeated. "That name is weird."
"Thanks for the compliment."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I know."
He stared at me for another three seconds.
"You have a screw loose," he said.
"UCLA professors say that too."
"U... what?"
"My school. Very, very far away. Further than the furthest place you can imagine."
He was quiet for a while.
"You can't go back," he said.
He said it so calmly. Not comforting me, not sympathizing, just stating a fact.
"I know," I said.
He lowered his head and started spinning that knife again.
"See you tomorrow," I said.
He didn't answer.
I turned and walked toward the tent exit. As I reached the curtain, I heard a voice from behind, very light, as if talking to himself:
"Did she cry?"
Not asking me. Asking himself.
I looked back at him.
He sat on the pile of furs, moonlight on his face, outlining the not-yet-fully-grown contour of his chin. Spinning the knife, eyes looking at his right hand—the hand I had bandaged.
"She didn't cry," I said.
He looked up.
"And," I said, "she won't cry tomorrow either."
He looked at me, the corner of his mouth twitching.
Not a smile. But close.
I lifted the curtain and walked out. Night wind rushed in, making me shiver. The moon was still so big, so bright, casting frost over the entire camp.
The man who brought me was still waiting outside; seeing me come out, he expressionlessly signaled for me to follow.
I followed behind him, thinking about that kid just now.
Eleven years old. Hand injured. Everyone around him telling him Han people are rabbits, are slaves, are untrustworthy things.
But after I bandaged his wound, the first question he asked was—
"Did she cry?"
He was confirming whether there was anyone in this world who wouldn't cry in front of him.
I looked up at the moon.
"No one is born a tyrant."
I wrote that sentence in my UCLA thesis.
But tonight, in that tent, I didn't see a tyrant.
I saw an eleven-year-old kid, hand wrapped in dirty bandages, asking his attendant: Did she cry?
I lowered my head, stepping on the moonlight as I walked forward.
It's not too late, I said in my heart.
Inside the tent, the youth looked down at his bandaged right hand.
The knot wasn't tied very well, crooked, but tight. She had tied it twice, probably afraid it would come loose.
He turned his hand over, then back again.
"Did she cry?" he asked again.
The attendant in the corner of the tent paused: "Replying to Prince, no. She said—she won't cry tomorrow either."
The corner of the youth's mouth twitched.
Very shallow, very short, like moonlight flashing on a blade and disappearing.
He placed his right hand on his knee, picked up the short dagger with his left, and continued to spin it.
But he spun it twice and stopped.
Because his right hand was wrapped, spinning it wasn't smooth.
He looked down at that crooked knot.
"The moon soaking in water," he recited.
Then he suddenly smiled.
Not a cold smile, not a mocking smile.
It was real, very light, a smile.
"Weird name," he said to himself.
But he didn't tear off the bandage.
He lay back down on the pile of furs, holding his right hand up before his eyes, looking at that knot in the moonlight.
"Jiang Jinyue," he recited.
This time it was much smoother.
He closed his eyes, that very shallow, very light curve still lingering on his lips.
Outside the tent, the moon slowly sank westward.
The wind on the grassland stopped.
End of Chapter 2