Part 1 · Chapters
Standing in Front of the Weak
Long before he had strength, he had learned to step forward.
Xiao Hui disappeared at dusk. The first lamp on Coal Street had just been lit when Xiao Jin found an unfinished little gear beside an empty tool stool.
Someone had seen Yan Tuo heading toward the old water tower with several academy students. A physician had only just finished binding Xiao Jin's ribs. On hearing the news, he tore off the bandages, grabbed his broken staff, and rushed out.
Beside the old water tower, Yan Tuo had cornered Xiao Hui against a wall. Several students blocked the exits with a ring of fire. Residents watched from the alley entrance, but none dared go closer.
“Say it.” Yan Tuo gripped Xiao Hui's collar. “Anyone who doesn't even have fire has no right to live in Flame City.”
Xiao Hui's teeth chattered with fear, but he kept his mouth firmly shut.
“He doesn't have to say anything.”
The crowd parted. Xiao Jin stepped into the ring of fire, burns from the trials still marking his face.
Yan Tuo sneered. “You can't even protect yourself. Playing hero again?”
“Let him go.”
Flaming swords slashed in from both sides. Xiao Jin blocked one with his broken staff and took the other across his shoulder. His clothes burned open at once. Yan Tuo did not summon the full wolf. Instead, he sent flames shaped like its head crashing into Xiao Jin, knocking him down again and again.
Every time he fell, Xiao Jin crawled back along the tracks he had left in the coal dust to stand before Xiao Hui. That spot seemed less a patch of ground than a promise he could never surrender.
The first time, he could still raise his staff.
By the third, he could only spread his arms.
By the fifth, he could not even stand straight, yet he still used his shoulder to shield Xiao Hui from the flying sparks.
“What are you trying to prove?” Yan Tuo seized him by the hair. “You can't save yourself. What makes you think you can save him?”
Xiao Jin's sight had blurred. Behind him, he heard Xiao Hui crying. At the alley entrance, he heard the crowd's silence. It was exactly the silence he had heard with his face pressed into the coal dust: no one intervening, no one bearing witness, no one even daring to let sympathy linger too long.
He braced himself against the wall and covered Xiao Hui completely once more.
“If I step aside too,” he gasped, “there'll be no one left in front of him.”
For a moment, Xiao Hui's crying stopped.
The words seemed to sting Yan Tuo. He raised his hand and gathered a larger fireball. Just as it took shape, a streak of crimson blade-light flew in from outside the alley and sliced it cleanly in two.
Lie Ang stepped into the ring of fire. He did not shout. He merely looked at Yan Tuo. The young noble went pale and immediately extinguished his flames.
“Using a summoned beast to attack civilians without authorization. Return to the academy for punishment,” Lie Ang ordered.
Yan Tuo dared not argue. He left with the others. The onlookers tried to disperse too, but Lie Ang turned to them. “Why did no one report this to the guards?”
No one answered.
Lie Ang looked at Xiao Jin. The boy had fallen to his knees, and Xiao Hui was desperately trying to support him with his small, thin body.
“Do you think this was heroic?” Lie Ang said. “If I'd come a moment later, you would both be dead.”
Xiao Jin lifted his head. Before him stood the hero whose poster he had looked up to since childhood, the man on the wall who never stepped back.
“But before I came, no one was willing to step forward.”
Lie Ang was silent for a moment.
“Remember this. Courage without strength will only get you and those beside you killed.”
He turned and left.
That night, Xiao Hui sat beside the bed, holding a half-repaired gear.
“Why didn't you run?” Xiao Jin asked when he woke.
“Because you were still in front of me.”
Xiao Hui lowered his head and gripped the gear more tightly.
He kept watch beside the sickbed.
What he remembered was not how many blows Xiao Jin had taken. It was that every time he fell, he crawled back to the same place.
That line was narrow.
But it was wide enough to give one child a place to hide.