The Third Time Hiro Ran Away: Fiction by J.C. Hsyu

Honorable Mention, Adult Category

The second time Hiro ran away, he lived in the rubble of Longshan Temple and sold pieces of charcoal until the priests told him to go home. So he went to his friend Gu-gu’s house, but after a week Gu-gu’s mother said she couldn’t feed him anymore. He hid in back alleys for a few days after that, sharing scraps with dogs so he could sleep with them at night. When people stopped giving him scraps a fisherman gave him a ride to Taoyuan, the next city over, where he lived in the back of a seafood restaurant, scaling fish and plucking chickens. He was good at both, quick and efficient; his mother had taught him when he was four. 

After a week, a local official noticed him and asked why he wasn’t in school, so he washed his hands and slipped out the back door. There were always questions about his size and age, and why they didn’t match up. And questions inevitably led to more questions he didn’t want to answer. 

He was unhappy about having to leave the restaurant – he had loved their oyster omelets – but otherwise unconcerned. There was tip money in his pockets and it was late summer, between bouts of heavy rain, so he didn’t need extra clothing or shelter. 

Taoyuan was too small for him to avoid questions for very long, though. He had relatives to the south, in Kaohsiung; he could come up with answers over the four hours it would take to get there. Baba had always said he was good at two things: making things up, and stubbornly refusing to admit they were made up. 

But there were few cars or trains heading south as evening approached. Hiro walked in the mud along the two-lane highway. He spotted a thick wooden stick, wiped the ants from it and swung it at roaming chickens and flying cockroaches; fewer people noticed him when he looked occupied. In the fading sunlight he could just make out the red paint of the half-dozen small buses in the dirt lot ahead. He walked faster, and relished the irony that he would be spending the night in a children’s school bus, but didn’t hear the voices in time. 

Rounding the nearest bumper, he stopped in his tracks and gripped the walking stick more firmly when he saw two men standing in the gravel and weeds, smoking and talking. “Hey! A little brother,” the one on the left laughed. His short hair stuck out in every direction from his head. The other wore his long hair tied back. 

“Just passing through,” Hiro said gruffly, taking a step back. 

“Well, then you need to pay the toll.” 

“Quit it, Chen,” the long-haired one said. 

“Shut up, Pin. He’s passing through our turf. Da Ge’s orders.” 

“He’s a kid,” Pin snapped. 

But Chen had that look in his eye, flat and shiny. Hiro knew that look well. “Fine. We won’t take your money. But I need new pants.” 

Hiro took another step back. “I’ll get some for you.” 

“No. I like the color of yours better. Give them to me.”

Hiro also knew when to go on the offensive. At his size, surprise was his only advantage. He swung the walking stick and hit the top of Chen’s head. Pin laughed as Chen staggered and swore, and Hiro grinned as well until Chen slammed him into the side of the school bus. He took a knee to the ribs and a fist to the face, and then it was over; there would be a black eye but more than anything Hiro knew to accept trophies of defeat like this, and be grateful he’d worn swim trunks beneath his pants. The trunks wouldn’t stop mosquitoes but they hid most of his skinny legs at least. “Can I go now?” 

“Yeah yeah,” Chen mumbled as he picked up a bottle of beer. Hiro’s pants ended well above his dirty ankles. 

“You alright, kid?” Pin asked. 

“I’m fine,” Hiro said quickly, retrieving the walking stick. 

“Just come with me.” Pin grabbed Hiro by the shirt and headed between the buses. Behind the lot there was a small maintenance shed. Motorcycles with tattered green banners were parked in a row. The rest of the gang stood drinking around makeshift fires. “Where’s our big brother? Hey, Da Ge,” Pin called out. 

A few heads nodded in the same direction, towards the only one of them who was sitting down, on an overturned drum. 

“This kid was walking down the road by himself. Chen took his pants,” Pin explained. Da Ge gestured for them to come closer. His hair was wavy and long and hung in his face. “What’re you called?” A cigarette bobbed between his lips as he talked. Hiro’s eldest brother, Akira, asked questions in the same way. 

“Hiro.” 

He cuffed Hiro on the side of the head. “Your real name.”

Hiro stayed silent. 

Da Ge sneered. “Do we look like we talk to the police?” He raised his hand again. “Lin,” Hiro blurted. 

“Don’t ever use that other name in front of me again. They don’t occupy us anymore.” The occupiers had given everyone names like their own but even after they lost the war, his family had never called him anything else. 

“Let’s talk,” Da Ge said, standing up. He was shorter than Pin and Chen but his shoulders were wider. There was a machete hanging from his hip, tied to his belt loop with a leather thong. He led Hiro away from the others, towards a large touring motorcycle, pulled a small packaged cake from the plastic crate tied to the seat and tossed it to Hiro. 

Hiro dropped the stick, tore the plastic with his teeth and buried the cake in his mouth. “You from Taipei?” Da Ge asked. 

Hiro shrugged, chewing. 

“Why did you leave?” 

Hiro shrugged again. 

“You always dress like a boy?” 

Hiro raised her chin. “Not as many questions when you’re dressed like a boy.” “Ha! True, true,” Da Ge nodded, tilting his head. “So how’d this all start then?” “Do I have to answer if I want to leave your turf?” 

“Pretty much.” 

“After Nanjing, my parents didn’t want the occupiers to know. I have a lot of brothers, they have a lot of clothes. It was their idea, actually.” She picked up the stick. It was so easy for her to talk about her family that she realized she did miss them, even after running away for the second time. “Baba didn’t think we needed to let the mainlanders know either. So it stuck. They’ve never called me anything else.” 

Da Ge lit another cigarette. “Seems a long time to hide. You’re older than you look.” “I’m not hiding. I just cut my hair a lot, and people don’t bother me as much.” “But you still left Taipei.” 

“Well it’s still easier this way.” 

“Okay okay,” Da Ge chuckled, thumbing his nose. “So you got that figured out. Why did you leave?” 

“Why did you?” Hiro shot back. “What’s with all the fucking questions?” “I think-” Da Ge looked down at his hands, “-that I left for some of the same reasons as you did. That maybe I can also do things that… other people, normal people, can’t do.” After a long silence Hiro said flatly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “How old were you when the Allies bombed us?” Da Ge still talked with the cigarette between his lips. Tendrils of smoke obscured his face; flecks of ash drifted onto his hands. “What do you remember?’ 

Hiro glared at him until she decided it was a straightforward enough request. “I was four. I don’t remember much.” She traced a pattern in the dirt with the walking stick. “Our house is in the hills, to the south. I was outside playing. Then Er Ge-” she hunched her shoulders and paused. The second eldest brother, Ruichi, had tried the hardest to keep her from leaving. “He started shouting and pointing. There were planes in the sky. They looked like fish flying over the city. Their underbellies were shining.”

“B-24 Liberators,” Da Ge nodded, pronouncing the foreign words slowly, carefully. He plucked the cigarette from his lips and spat to the side. 

“Mama called me inside. She pushed me under the table with my brothers and put blankets on top of us. Everyone was shouting, but all I heard was thunder, like many storms were outside, and the sirens. I smelled fire.” 

“And then your hands began to hurt,” Da Ge said softly. 

“You – how did you know that?” Hiro pointed the walking stick at Da Ge. He raised his hands. There was no surrender in his movements. “You’re always doing something with your hands. I held my hands in fists, maybe for years. Never realized it until someone pointed it out. Took me a week to stop.” He pulled a matchbook from his pocket and held it up between his second and third fingers. “Took me months after that to figure out how to do this.” He breathed deeply, and the matchbook burst into bright blue flames. Hiro tossed the walking stick and approached Da Ge with her hands raised. The newly risen moon was bright and harsh; her palms gleamed with a rime of frost that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She covered the matchbook with her fingers and the fire died with a hiss, a burst of black smoke. Da Ge made a low, hitching sound in his throat, somewhere between a laugh and a cough. Somewhere between relief and concern. 

Hiro flung drops of icy water to the dirt. 

“Hey, Da Ge!” Chen shouted suddenly, from somewhere on the other side of the buses. Noise rose around them, the sound of tires on gravel, and lights flashed across the small square bus windows. “It’s the police! Da Ge!” 

“Shit.” Da Ge tossed the machete into a patch of weeds. He rushed her back towards the maintenance shed, where the others were tossing the beer bottles and burying their cigarettes. “Line up with the guys. Let me do the talking.” 

The police separated everyone into three holding cells, but let Hiro stay with Da Ge. “The shrimp’ll need all the help he can get in there, until his parents arrive!” the arresting officer laughed. “He doesn’t even have pants!” 

The cell was small and dark, rank with trash, sweat and urine. There were a dozen men in a space that would comfortably fit eight. After the first hour Da Ge convinced one of the jailers to find Hiro new pants; from a bin he pulled a pair two sizes too big and covered all along one side with a dark, pungent stain. Hiro folded the bottom hems into large cuffs, and Da Ge gave her his tattered belt. 

Da Ge was younger than the men in the cell but he spoke to them the same way he spoke to the police, quiet but firm, and they didn’t beat him or ask him any questions he wouldn’t answer. They invited him to play dice and talked in low voices. Sitting with her hands in fists, Hiro dozed to the lull of their murmurs, the rattling of ivory on cement. Da Ge gamely lost all of his cigarettes at first but slowly, surely won them back over the course of the evening. He bartered an extra cigarette for a stick of gum, which he gave to Hiro. The others ignored Hiro completely; her eye had turned blacker and puffier than expected, which seemed to discourage both jailer and jailed alike from looking at her directly. 

Living on the streets had taught Hiro to sleep only a few hours at a time. She woke up well after the moon had risen past the small square window of the jail cell, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs so that she didn’t touch anyone else. 

There was a nudge at her shoulder. “Hey.” Da Ge’s eyes were open, his elbows resting on his knees. “They won’t be able to hold you more than a couple more days. You’ll get out soon.” His voice was barely audible above the snores around them. 

“What about you?” she whispered. 

“They got nothing on us. A few more days than you and we’ll be out. Now. Does anyone else know about what you can do?” 

Hiro chewed her lip. “My parents know,” she finally said, bitterly, looking at the sky outside the window but not seeing it. “My mother, she…” 

Da Ge waited quietly before asking, “That why you left?” 

“I didn’t mean to tell them, it just…” Hiro flexed her fingers. “Baba came home late again, and Ma said he’d forgotten the soap. She makes money doing laundry, and he was supposed to go to the store. But he had gone to see his friends, and gotten drunk. He’s always drunk.” Hiro shook her head. “One time my older brothers tried to stop him, he broke Akira’s arm. But when he started hitting Mama again, this time, I got so angry. I didn’t know I had grabbed his arm until he started yelling. The ice burned his skin.” 

Da Ge looked away. “You were doing what you thought was right-” 

“Fah,” Hiro said disgustedly. “Didn’t matter.” She gripped her forearms. “Mama started shouting at me. To stop hurting him. She hit me, hit my hands away. They both stared at me like I was… so I left.” She swiped at her eyes angrily. “There. There. Now will you stop with the fucking questions?” 

“Fine. No more questions.” 

Hiro closed her eyes and rested her head on her knees. 

The next day Hiro sat in the corner, leaning against the wall with her back turned to the others. After sunset Da Ge sat down next to her, facing the other direction. The clouds had settled and hovered, full and grey and still, in the sky; the air was heavy, oppressive. Mosquitoes swarmed in high-pitched buzzing clouds. 

Hiro was the only one who did not sweat. 

“Hey kid,” Da Ge said, muffled, as he lit a cigarette. 

“What do you want?” 

He blew smoke from his nostrils. “I said I wouldn’t ask any more questions.” “Good.” 

“So now,” Da Ge said, “Now you’re going to tell me what you’re going to do next.” Hiro whipped her head to look at him. “What is your problem?” 

He whistled. “Shit. Didn’t think your eye could look worse.” 

She glared at him before she turned away. 

“Okay, okay. I’m being serious now. Tell me what you’re thinking.” 

“I’ll get a motorcycle. Wait for you guys.” 

“You could. The guys are alright, mostly – yeah yeah, Chen’s an asshole but I can count on him when it’s important. Thing is, right now I think you should go back to Taipei.” She scrambled to her feet. “Oh fuck off, Da Ge.” 

“Listen. Listen! You have a home to return to, one that’s still standing, and your family is still living in it. That’s something.” He scraped the hair from his face. “When the bombs fell, I was in school. Falling asleep in calligraphy. I didn’t see the planes approach, but the sound of the sirens woke me up.” 

Hiro sat back down. 

“We were under our desks when the pain started in my hand. I was staring at my fingers when the world came down on our heads. That sound, the force, in a fraction of a second. We didn’t have a chance to scream.” Da Ge dragged on the cigarette, ashing two centimeters in one inhale. “I woke up looking at the sky. Most of my class had been pulled free. Most of them were covered in tarps.” 

“And… and your family?” 

“My parents were at Longshan Temple. With my little sister.” 

Hiro hung her head. “I am sorry.” She turned her hands over in her lap one way, back the other way. “They have almost finished rebuilding the temple. There’s not much charcoal left.” “Good! That’s good.” Da Ge lit another cigarette, and wiped at the sweat that trickled down his neck. He was constantly sweating, regardless of the temperature; he had soaked his dirty t-shirt all the way through. 

Hiro opened her fingers and offered Da Ge a handful of ice. 

He held the ice to his neck. “Thanks, Lin.” 

The clouds released their burdens soon after, hard as plum rains, and fresh air swept through the jail. The men stretched and moved about the cells. Hiro was allowed to throw a few rounds of dice; she won a cigarette and smoked for the first time, and didn’t cough at all. # 

After the rain stopped, the police left for the night. The inmates began calling to the other cells across the room, taunting and joking, throwing wads of toilet paper. Da Ge nodded at Hiro as she approached and sat down across from him. 

“Got a question,” he said without preamble. “Mama does laundry, what about Baba?”

Hiro drew characters in the dirt on the ground. “We have a print shop. Presses for flyers, newsletters, newspapers. Baba used to publish his own articles when he had the time. But he stopped after the mainlanders started coming around.” 

“Did you ever read what he wrote?” 

“Only my brothers are allowed to work in the shop. But maybe I read some of them,” Hiro said, sullen. 

“And?” 

“They were mostly about a German man named Ma… Ma-koh-su.” 

“Marx. Karl Marx.” 

Hiro stared at him. “Yes. And what Marx wrote about societies and governments. Ba was always going on about how the mainland strayed from Marx’s ideas.” 

“The mainlanders – both factions – don’t like anyone talking about Marx.” “I won’t forgive him,” Hiro said stubbornly. 

“That’s your business.” Da Ge waved his unlit cigarette at her. “But I’m getting at something else. You asked why I left Taipei. After the war ended, after the mainlanders took over, I was sent to a shelter. Heard stories whispered around the bunks at night. That the mainlanders were violent, cruel. Stories of corruption, bribery, extortion. That islanders were being questioned, kidnapped. That our own police couldn’t stop them. Or wouldn’t. Then the stories became truth, overnight, after 228. Suddenly we were under martial law. Suddenly there was a curfew. Suddenly there was a schedule for ‘interviews’ posted on the community board. The day before my interview I heard someone had been taken away because there had been rumors there was something ‘not right’ with them, something unnatural. I stole a motorcycle that night and never looked back.” He lit the cigarette with his thumb. 

Hiro curled and uncurled her fingers. “It’s getting harder to control. That’s also why I can’t go home. And it hurts. Sometimes like I’m being burned, other times it’s like needles.” “The hurting won’t stop. Get used to it, practice with it. And keep your hands still when you’re around other people.” 

Hiro sat on her hands. “Come back with me. You can stay with us.” 

“I can’t. Not yet.” 

“Why not?” 

“Now who’s asking questions?” Da Ge smirked. 

“Shut up,” Hiro snapped. “I mean… fah, just tell me.” 

“Alright. I want to find more people like us. I thought I was alone, but then Chen stole your pants and here you are. I’ll take the guys south, next. It feels right.” 

“Then let me come with you,” Hiro said. “I don’t want-” she stopped suddenly as one of the other inmates turned and stared at them; she hadn’t realized how much her voice had risen. Da Ge waited until the others lost interest before he spoke again, low. “If you still care about your family, help them while you can. Stop shaking your head at me, how old are you anyway? Look. The mainlanders don’t care about our rights and ideas, Lin, even though we have been governing ourselves for hundreds of years. And if they found out what you and I can do… I gotta find the next one before the militia does.” 

“I can help you more.” 

“You can help from Taipei. Watch the mainlanders, listen to their questions. Find my friend Jiang-yeh. She was one of my classmates, and you can trust her. She works at the radio station in Sanchong district. Tell her what’s going on around you, and I’ll hear about it. Come on. You’re way smarter than Chen, I’d never trust him with this kind of stuff.”

Hiro shook her head miserably. 

“I’ll find you when I get back to Taipei. And I know you’ll be careful, but. Be. Careful. If you have to use whatever it is we have, curse or gift or else… only use it on the real enemies, the ones who deserve it.” 

The police released Hiro the next morning. She was allowed to keep the pants. “I’m called Tsai. Tell Jiang-yeh that you have a message for Tsai,” Da Ge said quietly from behind the bars, as Hiro was marched past him. Hiro nodded, but didn’t look back at him. She stepped outside into brightness and heat, the smell of exhaust, frying oil and raw sewage. The Taoyuan police department let out onto a busy street lined with food stands and metal gated storefronts, with fleets of bicycles and scooters gliding beneath thick tangled webs of telephone lines. The rainclouds had been swept from the skies. Hiro stood in place, between cement pillars, unable to take another step. She clenched her fists reflexively, then forced her fingers to relax at her sides. 

“Hiro!” 

There, a few meters to her left: her brother Ruichi, sitting on their family’s scooter at the curb. He waved, and the sunlight flashed on his thick, horn-rimmed glasses. “Er Ge!” she called, and ran to him. 

“You made it farther than anyone else thought. Akira owes me money,” Ruichi grinned, showing more gums than teeth. 

“How’d you know I was here?”

“Aren’t many police stations holding kids.” Ruichi had graduated with top marks in mathematics; he wanted to study abroad. He gestured at her face. “Who did that?” he laughed, but she could tell by the way he shoved his glasses further up his nose that he was angry. 

“I’m alright.” She tried not to smile, twisted it into a grimace. “Nothing happened.” “Nobody gave you that black eye?” 

Now Hiro grinned. “Nobody.” She had only given a name once, when she was twelve but passed for eight and was forcibly deprived of her Kewpie doll, and Akira had led their brothers to the offending party’s house, two stone paths over and a flight of wooden stairs down the hill from theirs, and no apologies had been necessary after that. 

“And nobody gave you those pants.” 

“Nobody.” 

“Well, that’s that, then. Let’s go home.” 

They picked up a bag of lychees before getting on the road back to Taipei. Ruichi always took his time; he enjoyed watching the scenery go by. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” he said at one point, his words bleeding into the wind. 

“I wasn’t going to,” she mumbled into his back. The air was liquid and cool in passing, though the sun burned hotly on the top of her head. 

“Baba, he… mainlanders started demanding bribes. They broke one of the presses. So Baba had to go away for a while. He’s safe, we got a letter from Okinawa. But you can’t run off again, alright? We’re going to need you in the shop from now on. Also, you’re not that good at running away. You didn’t even make it to Aunt’s in Kaohsiung.” 

Hiro opened her mouth to say something, but decided against it. 

“And be good for Mama, okay?”

Hiro felt her face warm. “But-” 

Ruichi patted the hands she had clasped around his waist. “Whatever happened that night, nobody blames you for leaving. The neighborhood knows about Baba, his temper, the drinking. But he’s away, and Ma only has us. Understand?” 

She nodded, thinking about matches that lit by themselves, burning blue in moonlight. 

When they got home Mama hugged Hiro quickly, quietly, and made her oyster omelets. They did not speak of whatever happened – or of Baba – to each other ever again. Over the next few months Hiro worked in the print shop when she wasn’t helping with meals or laundry jobs or her younger brothers. Ruichi repaired the broken press. When Mama sent her out to buy dried angelica root and jujubes one day Hiro took the scooter and drove to the radio station in Sanchong, where the receptionist directed her to a broadcasting booth. Da Ge’s friend Jiang-yeh was even shorter than Hiro; she wore a lemon yellow dress, had a bright voice and large dark eyes, and wanted to be a journalist. Hiro asked Jiang-yeh to tell Tsai that the Lin family’s print shop was back in business. 

In February there were whispers, rumors of a neighborhood march on the last day of the month. Hiro and her brothers wanted to join it. At night, laying on their pallets, they whispered slogans and the names of the missing until Ma-Ma overheard them and threw the pot of dirty dishwater on them. 

Only Ruichi and Hiro managed to slip away and join the march. Hiro spotted the bright yellow dress of Jiang-yeh, who had come to their neighborhood to cover the march for the radio station, and when Hiro introduced her to Ruichi he rubbed his glasses clean before he smiled and bowed. Before they were separated by the surging crowd trying to evade the swinging batons of military police, Hiro saw Ruichi get cornered, beaten and taken away; but it was Jiang-yeh who saw Ruichi get forced into the holding pen in the back of a military truck. Hiro ran after the truck as it headed away from the march. Mud sprayed from the tires and splattered onto her face and clothes. There were a dozen men in the holding pen, holding onto the wooden slats, yelling encouragement. She put on a final burst of speed and jumped onto the bumper, grabbing hold of the tailgate. “Ruichi!” she shouted, settling into a crouch. There was a round of shuffling, and soon her brother pushed his face between the slats. He had lost his glasses. “Hiro? Of all the stupid… get off of there! Is Jiang-yeh okay? Find her and go home!” 

“No,” said Hiro. 

The truck picked up more speed and her feet lost traction when the tires dipped into a large pothole; her knees slammed painfully onto the bumper and she felt her arms and shoulders wrench with the strain of holding on. Ruichi shouted himself hoarse and, when the truck slowed down for a hairpin turn, tried to force her hands off of the tailgate. She concentrated, then, and froze the layer of sweat on her palms. When Ruichi touched her fingers and found them cold as ice and unyielding as stone he stopped shouting, and his mouth hung open. Hiro leaned her head against the slats and he did too, and they conversed in low voices as they swerved downhill towards Taipei proper. Two hours later the truck arrived at the mainland party headquarters and pulled over at the central guard kiosk. Ruichi reached through the slats and patted Hiro’s head, whispering, “Tell Mama where I am.” 

Hiro drew the ice back into her hands and removed them from the flatbed. Then she crouched behind one of the rear tires and placed her fingers against the treads until the rubber froze and cracked. The truck lurched to the side as the tire collapsed; Ruichi whooped and the other captives in the bed began shouting and stamping their feet as Hiro ran down the street. A bookstore owner let her use his phone to call the print shop, and at sunset Akira arrived on the scooter, shrugging and waggling the cigarette between his lips back and forth when she asked if Mama was upset. 

Ruichi was released two days later, bruised but otherwise unharmed. Mama slapped the back of his head before making his favorite night market dish, hoisin fried pork and leek potstickers. Hiro grinned at him from across the table and handed him an old pair of glasses. 

Later that month, in the hour before dawn on a Monday morning, the presses suddenly began firing. Akira led the charge downstairs from the apartment to the print shop, but dropped his baseball bat as Hiro and the rest of their brothers skidded to a stop behind him. Their father was furiously blocking characters on the glass plate, back at work as if a day had not passed since he left for Okinawa. 

At first Baba was quiet and subdued, more guarded and easily startled. He would not speak to Hiro or look her in the eye, and left the room soon after she entered it. But soon enough his friends began to visit, and brought rice wine to celebrate his return; and then he was drinking again, nightly, after the printing presses stopped and their silence pulled at him from the shop below. One night after staggering to the dinner table, reeking of alcohol, he began reading one of his old articles out loud, and at an increasing volume, until his wife and children stopped talking. Soon after, they stopped eating as well. 

Baba’s face turned dark with anger, and his eyes bulged. “What’s the matter? Too much for you?” he shouted, swaying. “You going to report me too?” When Mama demurred softly, he slammed his palms onto the table. Hiro’s eight-year old brother, the youngest, began to cry. Hiro stood up, and her father finally looked her in the eye. “Well?” he said, hoarse.

Ruichi was next to her, and touched her arm. “Isn’t nobody worth it, here,” he murmured. She took a deep breath, and let her hands fall to her sides. 

The third time Hiro ran away she stole a motorcycle, headed south and never looked back.

J.C. Hsyu is a Taiwanese American SFF writer, born in Taipei and raised in Los Angeles. A Clarion Writers’ Workshop alum, her cyberpunk short fiction appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and subsequently Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Eight. Her Chinese fairy tale picture book, The Dinner That Cooked Itself, was published by Flying Eye Books. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter, working in entertainment production and writing a xianxia epic fantasy, and can usually be found online (@jchsyu) rambling about everything from movies to stationery supplies.

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