Chapter 8: Illness

At the sound of that name, Wuxue froze. What was Qiongna doing here? When she’d left with Torre for the Red Iron Wasteland, Qiongna had been at home making dinner. How had she suddenly appeared in Ke Town, thousands of miles away? And Qiongna had seemed perfectly fine. Why was she taking medicine?

The more Wuxue thought about it, the stranger it seemed. She didn’t hurry in to settle things with Torre. Instead, she slipped into the room next door, leaned against the wall, and listened.

“When is Wuxue coming back?” Qiongna took the medicine. She still sounded full of energy.

“Well… Wuxue has other work. This bounty hunting business is complicated.”

Torre tried to explain. “You never know when a job will be done. Don’t worry about it. Get some rest.”

“Mm.”

Qiongna paused. “By the way, Wuxue knows I came, right?”

“Yes, yes.”

Torre answered hastily. “She’s just busy. Otherwise, she’d have come back to see you already.”

“That’s good.” Qiongna continued, “Don’t tell her I’m sick. Just let her think I came to visit her.”

“All right. All right.”

At that, Wuxue felt a chill. What was wrong with Qiongna? Why didn’t she want Wuxue to know she was sick? And if she was ill, why hadn’t she gone to the hospital? Why had she traveled thousands of miles to come here?

The questions piled up until Wuxue couldn’t stand it anymore. She needed answers.

She strode to Torre’s door and shoved it open without hesitation. She’d expected him to be scared out of his wits, though with Qiongna there, he probably wouldn’t dare make a scene. Sure enough, the cup slipped from Torre’s hand and shattered on the floor. The tall, broad-shouldered man went white.

“Wu… Wuxue.”

Torre’s voice shook. “Wh… what are you… doing back?”

“You said Qiongna was coming, so I came to see her as soon as I was done with my work.”

Wuxue spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She squeezed past Torre and sat down beside Qiongna, taking her hand. There was no need to pretend. Wuxue looked at her with genuine concern. “How did you get here? It must have taken days to drive from Pennsylvania. Was the trip all right?”

Qiongna looked surprised. She glanced from Torre to Wuxue. “Didn’t you ask your friend to drive me here?”

Torre’s face grew awkward.

Wuxue quickly came to his rescue. “That’s right, that’s right. I’ve been so busy lately, I forgot.”

“Did my friend take good care of you?” Wuxue asked. As she spoke, she glanced at Torre. His already pale face now had a waxy yellow cast.

“Yes, they were very considerate.” Qiongna smiled. Fine wrinkles lined the corners of her eyes. “He was just a little quiet. Didn’t seem very friendly.”

Qiongna wasn’t a pretty woman by conventional standards. She even had two prominent scars across her face, along with several raised burn marks on her forehead. She’d gone a long time without taking care of her skin, which was rough and yellowish.

“Oh.” Wuxue put on a look of sudden understanding, but kept her eyes fixed on Torre. “Ms. Yamamoto is like that. She doesn’t say much, but she’s a good person.”

A bead of sweat fell from Torre’s face. Wuxue smiled faintly. There was no Ms. Yamamoto. She’d made the name up to see what Qiongna would say, and Qiongna had taken the bait.

“Wait.” Qiongna frowned at Wuxue. “The person who came with me wasn’t a woman. He was a man, and he said his name was Maji.”

Maji?

Maji!

Wuxue quickly recognized the name. He was a bounty hunter, but not a particularly famous one. Their paths had crossed on a job a few years ago. Wuxue’s status in the business had risen quickly after that, and she’d never seen those small-timers again. Why had Maji shown up now?

“Oh, right, right. He was Ms. Yamamoto’s friend—the one with a tattoo on his hand, right?” Wuxue said with an air of ease. She studied Torre and began to understand. Maji had probably been trying to kill her, so he’d found Torre in secret and tried to use him to do the job.

“That’s him,” Qiongna said with a smile. Despite her plain features, her face glowed with contentment.

Wuxue had a better idea of what was going on. She turned to Torre. “We’re supposed to deliver the goods tomorrow. You put the Black Box we found somewhere safe, right?”

Under Wuxue’s gaze, Torre could barely breathe. He’d worked in security, but those skills were useless against a professional bounty hunter like her. And with Qiongna there, he didn’t dare try anything. His voice trembled as he answered.

“I… I put it away. It’s in the inn’s storeroom.”

“Torre, you can’t leave things like that lying around,” Wuxue said coldly. “Something this hard to come by needs to stay close to you.”

“Y-yes…” Torre stammered.

Wuxue let go of Qiongna’s hand and grabbed Torre by the arm. A chilling smile crossed her face. “Why don’t you take me to see it? It’d be a shame if it disappeared after all our hard work.”

Under Wuxue’s silent threat, Torre left Qiongna’s room with her. He really had put the Black Box in the inn’s storeroom, so he led her downstairs.

The inn’s power supply was unreliable. The only light on the stairs flickered, casting a dim glow before fading out again. It was almost as irritating as Torre’s trembling.

Wuxue watched Torre coldly as he clutched the stair rail and stumbled downward. His legs were so weak that a shout from behind might have made him collapse in terror and tumble all the way to the bottom.

Of course, Wuxue wasn’t about to let him off easy. Once they were off the stairs and far enough away that Qiongna couldn’t hear them, Wuxue grabbed him by the shoulders and pinned him against the wall. Before she could speak, Torre crumpled to the floor. He dropped to his knees, clinging to her feet with a choked sob.

“I didn’t want this… Wuxue, I never meant to kill you…”

Wuxue stared down at Torre, who didn’t have a shred of backbone. She couldn’t understand what Qiongna saw in him.

“Is that so? You were pretty good with a gun. Both shots hit me. Were you practicing?!” Wuxue kicked him hard. She didn’t care whether he was Qiongna’s husband. This was a matter of life and death.

Torre’s fear only grew. Who knew what Wuxue might do? He’d tried to kill her yesterday. Now killing him would be child’s play.

“Wuxue, don’t kill me… I had no choice…” Torre struggled to speak. Maybe he was afraid she’d strike him again, because he blurted out, “Qiongna… Qiongna is sick. I… I had no choice…”

Wuxue had heard him giving Qiongna medicine earlier, but she’d never heard that Qiongna was ill.

She hauled the spineless man to his feet and hissed, “What’s wrong with Qiongna? Why didn’t I know she was sick?”

“Cancer… Qiongna has cancer…” Torre looked into Wuxue’s eyes, his own filling with tears. “They found it last month… stomach… stomach cancer.”

“Stomach… cancer?” Wuxue’s grip on Torre’s hands suddenly loosened. He sank heavily to the floor.

“We’re people as low as maggots. How could we die so easily?”

Qiongna often said that to Wuxue. But why had someone as accepting of life as Qiongna come down with such an incurable disease?

No. Wuxue didn’t want to believe it.

“What did you say?! That can’t be true… It can’t be. You’re lying to me, aren’t you? You made it up because you think I’ll kill you!”

Wuxue refused to believe Torre. Qiongna was the one person she could never replace, the person who’d pulled her out from among the maggots and made her human. Why had such a good person gotten cancer?

“Tell me the truth, Torre.”

Wuxue crouched down to meet Torre’s eyes. She could see how broken he was. “When I came back to Pennsylvania two weeks ago, she was fine. I never once heard her complain that she felt unwell. She still got up every day to make me breakfast… She even went to feed the stray cats in the neighborhood. She didn’t seem sick at all…”

Wuxue shook her head as she spoke.

“A month ago, Qiongna said her stomach hurt. I took her to the hospital in town, but the doctors couldn’t figure it out. They sent us to the city hospital, and then…” Torre couldn’t finish. His voice caught in his throat.

“How much does treatment cost?” Wuxue asked bluntly. “How much did Maji offer you to kill me?”

“Treatment is a bottomless pit.” Torre punched the wall. “Maji said if I killed you… if I killed you, he’d take Qiongna to the hospital in the city… He said he could make sure… make sure she got better.”

“Maji!” Wuxue repeated the name, but she knew perfectly well Maji was a bounty hunter. She wanted to know who was pulling the strings behind him.

Wuxue hauled Torre to his feet. She knew his character. He was an honest man, and nothing about what he’d just said seemed like a lie.

Wuxue steadied herself and patted Torre on the shoulder. “Let’s go see the Black Box first. We can talk about Maji afterward.”

Torre nodded. He was devastated and knew there was nothing he could do. Maybe Wuxue was still his only hope. He followed her obediently toward the storeroom.

But after only a couple of steps, they heard Qiongna cry out from the room.

“Who are you?!”