"Numbed with pain to unfeeling"

I am Zhizhu, though once I was known by the name of Nao Meixiu. Before I took the Second Breath--my unlife, my second chance. Someday, I will burn away all that remains of sad, helpless Meixiu. I will never be helpess again.

I should explain. After all, it was my life as Meixiu that sent me to hell, which empowered my P’o with the rage it needed to break free of the Howling Tower. I’ll come to all that, of course. That is the end of the Tale of Meixiu, and I’m at the beginning.

I was born in British Hong Kong, the daughter of a businessman glutted on his own importance. Nao Feng, CEO of a small pharmaceutical company. My father was a staunch traditionalist in an ever-changing world, a man clinging to a crumbling pillar in the middle of a hurricane. Perhaps it’s understandable, the lengthsto which he’s gone to protect his delusions. Perhaps it’s all he has, but he will reap the harvest of suffering he has sown. In time, before my koa is done, he will taste true bitterness. I hope it clings to him in hell.

My childhood was a lonely one--my father was rarely home. For all his traditionalism, he flaunted the tradition of family. My mother was also absent, though for much different reasons. My mother was unwell, I was told a child. Her mind was fragile, and she could not live at home. I didn’t visit her often. She was a woman lost, her mind drowning in artificial dreams. If I’d only know the truth then… maybe things would have turned out differently.

I was allowed to go to school, for some degree of education had become desirable in a woman. Even my father had to admit that. I did well enough, for I have an inquisitive nature. But school held so much more than books and learning for me. It held friends. Social interaction. And best of all, exposure to things beyond Hong Kong. Western culture fascinated me, if only for the freedom it flaunted so casually.

In high school, I met a girl named Sayuki. Her family was from Japan, and she was unpopular. But I felt drawn to her, perhaps because I felt like an outcast myself. I had other friends, but I didn’t really care about the same things they did. I could giggle and sigh over the cute boys, but there was something more I wanted from my time. Sayuki helped me find that.

While we also giggled and sighed, Sayuki’s family was heavily involved in political activism. It was part of the reason they had come to Hong Kong. Sayuki, having been raised in such a family, spoke to me of protests and rallies, of rebellions and revolutions. I decided then that I wanted to pursue education beyond high school. I wanted to be a part of the changing world.

I didn’t tell my father this; I knew how furious he’d be. But that decision woke something in me, a streak of rebellion that had lain dormant for years. I‘d been a fractious child, before I learned fear of my father’s anger and displeasure. I found that I just didn’t care anymore. I was going to do what I wanted to do, damn the consequences.

He didn’t find out about my outings with Sayuki until we disappeared for an entire day. We’d often go out after school. While it was most often just to hang out, to sit in a mall restaurant and talk and laugh, there were times we went to student rallies at the local college. The more I learned, the more I wanted to change things. I knew that Hong Kong stood on the brink of great change, that we would soon be Chinese citizens rather than British. The government would leave, and a new one would march into the city and take over. And I knew that I would still be a student during that great change, but I wanted to know what I could do to help our people during the chaos that would follow.

The day my life began to end, Sayuki and I blew common sense a kiss goodbye and boarded a bus to the heart of Hong Kong. Two pretty 17 year old girls alone should have been afraid, but we weren’t. There was so much to see, so much to do. She had taught me some Japanese during our years of friendship, and we brazenly talked about the cute boy sitting just in front of us. If he’d known what we were saying, I’m sure he would have blushed bright red.

We went to a massive mall that filled several stories of a building and listened to American music. We tried on the latest fashions and had our photos taken in one of those curtained booths. I tucked my half of the photo sheet into a pocket, never realizing that it would be one of my most treasured possessions. We barely caught the last bus into the suburbs, returning home around midnight and separating, laughing, to our respective homes.

To say my father was furious would be an understatement. His face was purple with rage, and he slapped me so hard it threw me to the floor. I was in shock; I had not been struck since I was a child. He interrogated me, then forbid me to ever see Sayuki again. I shocked myself again at that point—I stood up for myself against my father. I think I took him off guard when I stood and screamed in his face that I’d see whoever I wanted to see. That Sayuki was my best friend and cared for me more than he ever could.

He threatened to take me out of school. That deflated my anger, and I meekly agreed to his terms while plotting ways around them. Sayuki and I of course continued to be friends, though furtively. How my father found out, I have no idea. This time, he did take me out of school.

I tried once to run away. I was certain that I could start a new life, away from my father and his strict brutality. After two cold nights sleeping in the bus station, I was picked up by the police and brought home. Then everything fell apart. I couldn’t understand why my days were passing in a blur. I ceased caring about anything. I could barely work up enough energy to be angry with my father.

When I realized my food was being drugged, I stopped eating. I tried to run away again. Again, I was brought home, but not before I was able to talk to Sayuki one last time. I told her what was happening; she was, of course, horrified. She promised to tell her parents and get me help.

Help didn’t come. Ling-shi, our maid, told me that Sayuki’s family had moved quite hastily back to Japan. My father, she said, had more influence than people knew. She never said “Triads,” but the word would have explained the fear in her eyes. My mother had been like me once, she said, wild of spirit. She too had rebelled against my father’s strictness. My father paid corrupt doctors to keep her in mental institutions. Ling-shi said the he'd have divorced her to find a more suitable wife, but she'd been the only heir to a modest fortune. Since she was "mentally unstable", he had complete control over the money.

I went to my father and begged him to stop. I promised him that I would be a perfect daughter. It shames me to remember pleading, and the glacial cold in his eyes as he watched me. He sneered at me, told me I’d already proven myself untrustworthy. He said I was as traitorous as my mother, and practically worthless as a daughter. Then he looked at me again, eyes flat and expressionless as a shark’s. It was lucky I was pretty, he said. He’d be able to find me a husband, after all. One who would be able to handle a treacherous girl like me.

I couldn’t keep starving myself, not matter how much I feared his words. I’d never thought much about actually getting married, and I certainly didn’t want to be married off to some stranger. But I had to eat, and to drink. I descended once more into that hazy existence. Months passed, and I became a Chinese citizen. I didn’t even notice.

My 18^th birthday came and went, and then my father announced my engagement. My husband-to-be was a man named Wengyan Yi. Yi was a real estate developer, rising fast in his business and his wealth. He had bought up a number of properties before and just after the British gave the city back to the Chinese. Now, he was able to sell these properties at a ridiculous profit.

Yi was 15 years older than I, more interested in appearances than in emotions. He wanted a young, pretty, tractable wife to smile at his business partners and make him look good. Young and pretty I was, and my father assured Yi that I could be kept tractable. The marriage was arranged and performed quickly. I remember it faintly, like looking at the memory through a meter of murky water.

My husband was a ruthless man, both in his business affairs and marital. During the first year of our marriage, he would come to me nightly with sons on his mind. Perhaps the drugs inhibited my fertility, perhaps I was just barren, and perhaps he was simply shooting blanks. But I never got pregnant, and he eventually gave up. I don’t blame him—I wasn’t exactly passionate; the term “cold fish” could have originated with me.

Yi’s business took us to Japan. I remember a faint joy, thinking I might be able to find Sayuki. I still kept the half-sheet of photos from that booth, a reminder of a time when I knew what joy was. When I knew what emotion was, and not the dulled sensations that had become my daily life. Yi was often away, but my “medications” were administered faithfully in his absence. I had given up on hope. It was almost painful, those few times when my dosage was forgotten and I had a few hours of clarity.

Five years of my life had been stolen from me when the end came. In a way, it was merciful, the overdose. I never knew what was coming. It could have been an accident, but I tend to think Yi simply had no use for me anymore. In any case, it was a quiet death.

But I still woke in hell.