Page 22 of Immortal Longings
“Again, hard to say.”
“We’re not even in contact with Sica anymore.” At least, that was the case five years ago, the last time Calla got a glimpse into Talin’s national affairs.
“Which is precisely why I’m puzzled,” August says. “I can keep you updated. Just… find the idiot who took your wristband and eliminate him quickly.”
Calla takes a proper bite of the dumpling. The hot juice inside dribbles down her chin, and she hurries to catch it. Heavens, if her old palace etiquette tutors could see her, they would have a heart attack. “Yes, Prince August. Your wish is my command.”
August hangs up without a response. Meanwhile, when Calla sets the landline down, she chews thoughtfully on the rest of the dumpling, mulling over what August said.Foreign agents from Sica.The last maps she saw on her parents’ tables had been pencil drawn, showing a completed conquest of the rural outskirts and almost broaching the mountains that separate their kingdom from Sica. Perhaps King Kasa has been inching even farther into the borderlands. Perhaps Sica is sending people to put a stop to it. And if that’s the case, then she wishes they wouldn’t, not for the same reasons as August, but because she’s already fucking on it.
A flash of movement in her periphery breaks her train of thought. Calla swivels suddenly, just in time to see a kid duck behind a potted plant, like hedidn’t expect her to look his way. His hand closes around one of the large plant trunks, sleeve slipping up and revealing a wristband.
Calla draws her sword.
“Wait, please, don’t!” the kid bellows. He emerges from behind the plant, arms above his head. His eyes are a dusty violet, the same as the flowers that grow by the Rubi Waterway. “You should at least wait until you get your wristband back.”
“What?” Calla pulls a face. She doesn’t have her mask on during meals, so it reaches the kid with full effect. “How much did you hear?”
The kid’s gaze flickers over to the tables, and then, making an almost visible effort to lower his voice, he says, “Enough to hear you address the speaker on the other end as August.”
Calla raises the sword higher, intent on making a strike and eliminating this potential leak. The kid throws his arms up again. Though his cheeks have a babyish roundness to them, his limbs are stick-thin with the mark of hunger.
“Wait, wait, wait! I know who took your wristband.”
Oh?Calla lowers her arm. While she’s hesitating, another waitress comes around the corner with a tray of food. The waitress pauses abruptly in her step when she sees Calla’s sword, mouth opening and closing as if she’s debating whether she ought to say something. A second later, she decides to charge right past and disappears down the stairs, the creak of each step echoing against the leaky walls. Calla makes up her mind.
“Come with me,” she says, waving the kid closer. Once he is within distance, she clamps a hand to the back of his neck and steers him down the stairs, too, toward a smaller seating area. He looks nervous that her sword is still out, but he makes no remark. Obediently, he lets her push him into a booth, and perks up when she signals for a waiter by the counter to order more food.
“What’s your name?” Calla asks, sliding her sword casually into the booth before she follows. At one of the other tables, there’s a teenager craning his neckat her, likely trying to gauge whether she’s a player of the games. She reaches for a napkin to wipe down the table, but the napkin itself is so dusty that she doubts it achieves much. When she tosses the wad away, she makes eye contact with the teenager and pretends to lurch in his direction. He stops craning and looks away quickly.
“I’m Eno,” the kid replies.
“And how old are you, Eno?”
Eno scrunches his nose. “Fifteen. Not sure about this body, though. I gave away my birth one. Didn’t like it much.”
Calla folds her hands on the table. It’s not uncommon for someone to abandon their birth body if there’s another vessel they want to take over permanently. Sometimes they’ll stumble onto one tossed on the streets. Sometimes two people decide to swap. Usually, though, long-term changes happen after purchasing a desirable vessel for a handsome price on the black market. On a much rarer occasion, there are those who feel so secure in their jumping abilities that they decide to permanently invade a body already occupied, staying doubled for so long that the weaker qi fades away, until only the invader’s qi remains and they are once again a single occupant.
No matter the method, it’s done persistently throughout San-Er for reasons great and small. If people don’t like the way they look. If their birth body binds them to a gender presentation that isn’t quite right. A person’s qi lasts about a hundred natural years, give or take a decade on either side; that’s a long while to spend in a miserable body. Those with the jumping gene can attempt to occupy new youthful bodies as they near the end of the line, but the gods haven’t offered anyone true immortality yet. Once someone’s qi reaches its end, it will fizzle away, just as someone with qi touched by illness won’t grow healthier, no matter how many good bodies they tear through. Rotting qi will eat a body from the inside out until the qi is gone.
Calla can’t guess Eno’s reason for ditching his birth body, and she doesn’task. The body that he wears looks younger than fifteen, though that could be Calla’s poor gauge of these things too. She’s twenty-three, and each year, everyone younger than her only looks more and more like a child. Out of habit, she scans the restaurant to see who is nearby and within view, not only to flag which patrons appear suspicious, but also to mark all of Eno’s possible exit routes if he were to jump.
“Do you only invade masculine bodies your age?” she asks casually.
Eno nods. Two options, then. When he reaches over and prods her arm, she catches a flash of his wristband, the screen flashing51. “This one’s pretty. Your birth body?”
Calla smiles, though the expression is wholly a warning as she moves her arm away. “… Yes.”
“Do you only invade feminine ones?” he asks in return.
“It doesn’t matter to me.” Calla gestures at the waiter again, catching his attention so he knows where to bring the food. “I don’t leave this body, though.”
Truth be told, she’s never felt like she aligns one specific way, but she enjoys femininity and how it looks on her. Calla is a woman in the same way that the sky is blue. She understands that it’s the easiest identifier to slap on and she doesn’t mind it, but in actuality, the sky is an incomprehensible void, and Calla, too, feels closer to a nebulous, inexact entity. Before she is anything else, Calla is just… Calla.
Eno blinks. “You don’t leave it, ever? Do youhavethe jumping gene?”
“Of course.”
“But you don’t jump? That’s dangerous for the games.”
