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Now, another memory shakes loose and floats up slowly, spreading like a lotus leaf over a pond: the day he appeared inside my cottage, ready to take my soul. Who are you? I had asked him. You already know me, he’d said.

So I have, all along.

“What happened to them?” I whisper. “The boy and the god?”

“Fate decided to play a cruel trick on them.” His smile is sad, his eyes solemn.

How cruel, indeed. To learn this at a time when everything is too late. I have helped him and harmed him; he has spared me and sought to kill me. Who knows if I owe him more, or if he owes me? But what does it matter? That past is as far from us as a legend, untouchable as the bronze reflection of a flower within a mirror. For better or worse, we have both become something else since, and though our paths have joined for now, there will inevitably come the day when they split off again.

The only difference is that I find myself dreading it for new reasons.

Chapter Twenty-One

“This is terrible.”

I jerk my head up and glance over at where Keran and Junyi are studying. The last time I’d checked on them to ensure, as I routinely did, that Junyi was still alive, Keran had been making his way through his essay in silence. Barely the length of one incense stick has passed since then. Now, Keran’s pushed the paper to the farthest edge of the desk as if the mere sight of it is insulting.

“I thought you said you understood the basic structure of the eight-legged essay,” Keran says scathingly. “I thought we had already gone through the different styles and sections on multiple occasions. But what is this? You’re six hundred words over the limit, which would not be so pressing a problem if there were anything of substance to be found in them.”

Color blooms deep in Junyi’s face. His lower lip wobbles even as he bites down on it and folds his hands stiffly over his lap. They’re still bandaged from when he scraped them open four days ago. After he saw us that afternoon, he had claimed to have tripped over on his own feet, and we’d both acted like we believed him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I—”

“I’m not expecting an apology. I’m expecting improvement after your previous five attempts,” Keran interrupts. “This essay is riddled with faults. From the very beginning, you’ve failed to break open the title, and then you spend the next few lines seemingly determined to avoid it when you should be clarifying the theme. You have neglected to cite the opinions of other philosophers, and you give no concrete examples of exactly how a ruler may raise to office men of good virtue.”

With every word he speaks, Junyi shrinks farther and farther back from him, until I worry that he may slide off his chair and crumple to the floor. Since Qiming’s visit, he has been particularly jumpy, easy to scare and upset. I had startled him yesterday simply by walking through the door.

“Did you even review your own final argument?” Keran presses. “It is so muddled that you contradict your own points twice, not to mention that your sentences are too disjointed to be considered parallel to each other. If I were unfortunate enough to be the examiner, I’m not sure I could bring myself to finish reading this.”

“You’re right,” Junyi whispers, swallowing, his eyes turning red at the corners. “I wouldn’t read it if I were an examiner either. I wouldn’t let myself pass. I’m not even sure what I’m doing . . . I had such a clear idea of how I wanted the essay to look, but as soon as I lifted the brush, it’s like—like my head went blank, and I panicked . . .”

Keran looks most unimpressed by this explanation. “If your head is blank, then endeavor to fill your head with useful information.”

“I’m trying,” Junyi mumbles. “Maybe—maybe you’re right. They’re all right about me. I’m nothing special and I’m wasting everyone’s time and it’s embarrassing that I’d ever think otherwise. Maybe I’m just not suited for these exams—”

I stand up. “Keran,” I say loudly, plastering a bright smile to my lips. “My darling, I know you’re very busy, but would you mind helping me with something for a moment?”

He raises his eyebrows but follows me into the backyard.

“Do you think,” I say the instant I close the door behind us, my smile vanishing with my view of Junyi, “that you’re possibly being too harsh?”

“Too harsh?” he repeats. “I was restraining myself. I hadn’t even gotten into how his vocabulary would be the subject of ridicule by a ten-year-old, or how his sentences drag about aimlessly, as if diseased. If he cannot handle a bit of criticism, then he has no hopes of passing the exam.”

“But your criticism isn’t helping him correct his essays,” I point out. “It’s only making him doubt himself, and he’s already shaken after what Qiming said about him. Haven’t you realized that he doesn’t have much confidence in this incarnation?”

He scoffs. “Considering he had an overabundant supply of confidence in the past, I’d say it is the universe balancing things out.”

“Well, it’s affecting his performance,” I tell him. “I’ve noticed it in his mock exams too. Once he is unsure of a question or makes a mistake, he loses all direction, second-guesses himself, and becomes far more likely to get the next question wrong. Then he takes it as proof of his incompetence—”

“Because he is incompetent—”

“And believes that he is destined to fail, which then makes it come true,” I speak over him.

“So he has a frail heart and mind,” Keran says without emotion. “It’s his own problem. He will simply have to learn to be tougher.”

I grit my teeth, then drag him over to the window. “Look.” I motion toward the room, where Junyi is hunched up by the desk, in the exact spot we left him, and visibly crying. We watch in silence as he rubs his eyes with his sleeves, picks up his essay, reads over a few lines, then sets it down and wipes away fresh tears again. After he repeats this a number of times, I pull Keran back to the wall with me. “What do you think will happen first? Him becoming tougher and absorbing any criticism you fling at him, or him completely giving up on himself and the exams and perishing as a mortal?”

Keran frowns, though I cannot tell if it is from the faintest pang of regret or from sheer irritation.