Cen Jin did not sleep that night.

She told herself over and over not to suspect her companion. The bloodstain was just an accident. But this could not stop certain terrible thoughts from coming, surging up in waves and crashing toward ever darker possibilities.

The next day at mealtime, she asked Re Lei Mi as if in passing whether she could ride along with them one time — so that later, if there were reports to make, interviews to give, or documents to write, she’d have firsthand experience to draw from.

Re Lei Mi refused, citing that it was too dangerous for a woman in the field, and that if all three of them were gone, the protected area would be in a vacuum. What if something went wrong?

Cen Jin looked at Wei Lai and smiled: “I thought about it for a long time and came up with a terrible plan.”

The next time the van went out at midnight, she had the refugees help conceal her, and slipped onto the vehicle.

Wei Lai asked, “Didn’t you consider how dangerous that was?”

Cen Jin looked slightly dazed: “I thought about it. But I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t know what happened to the people once the van took them away. And maybe because I’d never left the protected area, I was still too optimistic about the outside world. My colleagues who’d gone on field missions had mentioned the BBC journalists were still moving around outside… I thought of myself as a foreigner, an international volunteer… In the end, I got on.”

What followed was an experience she would never forget for as long as she lived.

From the moment they passed through the gates of the protected area, the atmosphere inside the vehicle grew tense. The dozen or so refugees pressed in around her were silently praying, making the sign of the cross over and over against their chests. The silence outside was terrifying — only the sound of the vehicle body scraping against the ground, the engine noise gradually falling into the same rhythm as her heartbeat until the feeling of suffocation in her chest made it impossible to breathe.

Ka Long’s nights should not have been so deathly silent. Cen Jin remembered how, before the massacre, you could see people drinking and dancing if you walked the streets at night, and you could hear singing and the sounds of television programs.

Now it was like a dead city. Every so often the air carried a foul stench. Only when nearing a roadblock could you hear the Huka men shouting and the strange laughter of the drunk.

She didn’t know how much time had passed before the vehicle slowly stopped. There was wind outside, and the faint sound of flowing water. Then a light suddenly came on, and Cen Jin’s scalp prickled: she had grown accustomed to unlit nights — the protected area dared not show a single thread of light for fear of drawing the wrong eyes.

The canvas was suddenly yanked back. The person closest to the edge let out a shriek as they were dragged out. Before Cen Jin could react, she too was grabbed and dragged out by the heels, thrown to the ground. Screams and struggling rang out everywhere. Then suddenly someone seized her by the hair and jerked her face upward, shouting, “This one’s not a Kasi!”

A moment of silence fell over the scene.

In that silence, Cen Jin saw everything clearly.

They were at the riverbank, near a camp at the edge of a forest. There were no boats — only a group of armed Huka men. Some sat around a bonfire drinking. Re Lei Mi and Se Qi were there, laughing as they cracked open beers, white foam spraying out and spattering their faces.

On the other side, the Kasi people from the van were being dragged by several powerfully built Huka men into the dark of the forest.

That shout — “This one’s not a Kasi” — threw everyone momentarily off balance. One Kasi woman, seizing this window, broke free and ran desperately toward Cen Jin, screaming: “Cen! Save me! Save me!”

The Huka men who had recovered gave chase. Just as the woman was about to reach her, a blade rose and fell.

Cen Jin shuddered. A rush of warm blood blurred her vision. Through that red haze she saw the woman fall forward against the ground, struggle to raise her head, reach out a hand toward her, and say: “You…”

The woman wore a headscarf. Her eye sockets were sunken, her eyes locked with terror and despair and the fading embers of hope.

Cen Jin went mad in that instant. Nothing frightened her anymore. She lunged for the Huka man and would have raked his face to pieces if she could, but before she touched him she was seized and dragged back. She heard Se Qi say: “What are you doing?!”

Cen Jin’s eyes were red. Without thinking, she grabbed Se Qi’s hand and bit down hard.

Se Qi cried out in pain and kicked her away. Cen Jin was sent reeling in the dirt, aching. The sound of a rifle bolt came to her ear. A cold barrel pressed to her forehead, but was quickly knocked aside. Re Lei Mi said: “No — she’s still useful. Let me handle it.”

He grabbed Cen Jin by the collar and dragged her forward, stumbling, into the forest. Going deeper, she suddenly froze.

It was a slaughter ground. Bodies everywhere. Swarms of flies. Several Huka men had just finished their work and were gathered together smoking, watching the two newcomers through slitted eyes.

Re Lei Mi pressed Cen Jin forward. She fought with everything she had, but was no match for his strength. He pinned her down with his knee to her back, forcing her face against the cold, still face of a corpse.

He said: “Cen. What did you come out for? We shelter you, you have food and drink — isn’t that good enough? Look how brutal the world outside is.”

Cen Jin’s voice was torn raw. She was streaming tears.

Re Lei Mi said: “Let me show you how many people are dead. I’ve heard the death toll is already over 100,000. There are countless slaughter grounds like this one. Look with your own eyes — this heat, by the time they rot, who will know if what’s left is the bones of a Kasi person or yours?”

“The protected area will fall sooner or later. That French priest’s church is already gone — there were three thousand people inside. All dead. Without me, your protected area would have been finished long ago. What’s wrong with me taking something from them?”

“Cen, I’m giving you a choice. First: you behave yourself, get cleaned up, go back, and keep being your volunteer. With any luck, you’ll still be the hero who saved refugees, and when you return to Northern Europe you can live the life you want. Second: you rot here. Nobody cares where you are. You’re a missing person, a missing statistic. You die and no one will investigate. In wartime, one or two foreigners going missing — who takes that seriously? How tragic — you came all this way to do volunteer work, and you end up with nothing to show for it, not money, not fame, not your life…”

He hauled her upright and asked her: “Well?”

Cen Jin could not stop shaking. Blood and tears mixed on her face. Her lips moved but she couldn’t form words. Re Lei Mi grew impatient, and abruptly looked over at the several Huka men. “Here’s a woman to play with.”

He shoved Cen Jin toward them.

Those men let out wild howls and lunged. Cen Jin screamed hysterically, struggling and rolling on the ground. In the chaos she seized hold of Re Lei Mi’s leg and held on with everything she had, as though it were the only thing keeping her alive. And then she nodded, over and over, desperately.

Re Lei Mi patted her head: “You’ll behave now?”

Cen Jin nodded, her tears falling like rain.

What followed was a blur. Re Lei Mi led her back, found her a different set of clothes. She hid in the van to change, and halfway through, nausea rose suddenly and overwhelmed her — she hung out the van window and vomited until there was nothing left but bile.

Re Lei Mi combed her hair and wiped her face with a towel, then said: “Don’t look like someone’s just died. You have to smile. Go on, smile.”

She made herself pull the corners of her mouth up. Reminded herself: smile. You have to smile.

Re Lei Mi was finally satisfied with her smile. He pushed her toward the bonfire and handed her a beer, saying: “Come on, let’s celebrate together. Cheers.”

Cen Jin smiled her rigid smile and looked at the hulking Huka man sitting across from her. He was smiling too. His beer clinked against hers.

A flash went off. Snap — she turned on instinct. Re Lei Mi was holding a camera, telling her warmly: “You smiled very naturally.”

The rain had stopped at some point. Then it started again at some point. Cen Jin refilled her empty glass and said to Wei Lai: “I have nothing to explain. At the time, I did nod.”

At dawn they returned to the school. Some refugees were waiting. Cen Jin got out of the van to meet them, still wearing that laboured smile, and said: nothing to worry about, everything’s fine.

Re Lei Mi added that Cen Jin had even bought herself a new outfit — the people on the boat were selling small items from Uda, and those who had boarded were already shopping before they’d even settled in.

The refugees laughed. Cen Jin laughed too. Then said quietly: “I’m going to rest.”

She went back to her room. Just as she closed the door, she crumpled.

The sun rose. Sunlight came through the window and stung her eyes. Somehow she found the strength to haul herself up and stuff and block every gap in the window, then seal them with tape — strip after strip, left and right, until the whole roll was used up.

The room finally went dark. She curled up and lay down on the floor, no expression on her face, and no tears.

The cigarette had burned down almost to her fingers. Wei Lai reached to take it from her. But her hand turned over and she pressed the burning stub tightly into her palm.

“Do you know what I was thinking at that moment?” she asked him.

“I had no strength to hate anyone. I was too depleted. When a person is in despair, they need a dream to survive.”

“I stared at the door and thought: I wish someone would come and save me. My person — never mind whether he was some magnificent hero or not. If only, at that moment, he could have appeared from nowhere and come for me. That would have been so good.”

Wei Lai reached out to take her hand. Cen Jin moved it away. “Don’t. Don’t muddy this with sentiment. I’m not telling you these things because I want comfort. Just listen.”

She lay on the floor through the hazy, disoriented day. Toward evening, Se Qi knocked on the door, impatient, saying: “Cen Jin, if you don’t show yourself for a whole day people will get suspicious.”

Cen Jin got up, took the basin, went to the washroom to clean her face. After wetting her face she looked in the mirror, and suddenly noticed — on her collarbone, a new mark had appeared.

She leaned in close to look, reached up to touch it, and realized it was not. It was a single drop of blood from the night before, somehow not wiped away, that had dried and hardened there.

She took water to scrub it off. The bloodstain came away quickly.

Cen Jin said quietly: “But strangely — once it was clean, I only panicked more. After that, I couldn’t control myself, and would keep reaching up to touch it from time to time, feeling as though the drop of blood was still there, that I had to wipe it clean.”

Wei Lai’s gaze fell to the white-gold collarbone chain around her neck, with its small garnet pendant. The garnet was tiny, like a vermilion mole, or more like a single drop of splattered blood.

Cen Jin’s fingertips traced the garnet slowly: “You didn’t know I had this habit, did you? If I don’t wear this chain, I always end up reaching up to touch it, unable to stop…”

She was quiet for a while.

Then what happened that night was as if it hadn’t happened at all. The protected area went on like the second hand of a watch, forward and forward, unvarying, with no telling when it would finally be allowed to stop.

She grew afraid to talk to people. Afraid to see so many faces still full of hope.

She kept herself occupied. There were pencils and paper left in the school. She found them and started drawing — at first badly, but gradually more and more like the real thing. She needed no model. Face after face — their features, the fine lines and details — seemed branded onto her eyes. Whether she opened them or closed them, they were there.

Sometimes refugees would come and find her, and would watch curiously, and would thoughtfully shield her from others approaching: “Cen Jin is drawing, come back when she has a moment…”

And sometimes, when it was impossible to avoid it, she would lower her eyes and say gently: “There’s no rush. We can wait. How about you go in the next group?”

People’s lives were at stake — how could it not be urgent? Someone would beg her: “Cen Jin, please, let me go first. I have a child with me…”

The boldest thing she ever did was slash the minivan’s tires. Se Qi came to find her and without asking a single question slapped her across the face, saying: “Whether you did it or not, it was you. Do it again and see what happens.”

Cen Jin emptied her glass again.

She said: “I didn’t know what to do. Outside, people were being killed everywhere. Should I have told them to run? If they ran, they’d die. Staying in the protected area — at least they’d die more slowly.”

“Sometimes I thought it would be good if Re Lei Mi and Se Qi died. But the cruel joke was, without their dirty dealings, this protected area couldn’t survive a single day. I felt useless — I couldn’t get food, water, or medicine. Not one thing.”

She became quieter and quieter. People were sent off on the ‘boat’ roughly every two or three days. She watched the protected area empty out little by little, and crossed out the names registered in the ledger one by one. Sometimes in her dreams she saw the protected area as a vast swamp, with every person sinking slowly deeper, day by day.

She just waited for the day when everyone would be completely submerged.

And yet, the turning point came without warning. After more than a month of sunless, lightless days — not because the international community had finally wrapped up their endless conference, but because the Kasi Liberation Front had fought its way back.

You cannot depend on anyone else. In the end, it is most often yourself who saves yourself.

When the Liberation Front’s artillery began firing beyond the city walls, the number of refugees remaining in the protected area was 175. Re Lei Mi and Se Qi changed their faces once again.

They stopped going out on field missions. Relying on what they had stockpiled, they held the position firmly, leading the refugees to block the gates, patrol, stand guard, and push down Huka men trying to climb the walls — they even sustained injuries.

The refugees wept as they thanked Re Lei Mi. He replied that it was only right; what mattered was that everyone had survived.

But toward her, the murmuring began: Cen Jin seemed like a different person, all she did was draw, and when you asked her anything she wouldn’t say a word…

The day finally came. The locked iron gates swung open freely for the first time. Refugees and Kasi Liberation Front soldiers embraced. The embedded journalists took photographs everywhere. Re Lei Mi pulled her and Se Qi together for a photo, then said with unmistakable meaning: “Let’s have a memento.”

After the photo was taken, Cen Jin said to Re Lei Mi: “I’m going home.”

Two days later, Re Lei Mi drove her personally to the just-repaired airport. The runway was packed earth, no walls, more like an open field — planes were landing in abundance as the journalists who had evacuated were rushing back to seize the first firsthand accounts of peace.

Enormous engine roars rose and fell. Her hair was whipped and tangled by the wind everywhere. Re Lei Mi cupped her face in his hands.

He said: “Little girl, you’re so beautiful. When you go back, forget everything that happened here. There will be no shortage of men who want you, and you’ll have money too.”

He leaned close to her ear and said: “We’ve deposited a great deal of money into your account.”

“You’d better keep your head down. We have a great deal of evidence — your photographs, the refugees’ diaries, letters that were never mailed out. Even if one day it does come out, you’d be the primary perpetrator.”

“We are all in the same boat. We must help each other. Don’t curse me dead — as long as I’m safe, you’re safe. If I die, you won’t be far behind.”

Cen Jin said: “You were never really volunteers, were you?”

Re Lei Mi grinned, showing a row of uneven teeth: “No. We came to Africa to strike it rich. We didn’t find gold in the mines, but we turned things around here. Miracles are truly everywhere, aren’t they, Cen Jin?”

The candle had burned out. Ribbons of smoke drifted through the thick darkness.

The rain had stopped too. Only the intermittent drips from the eaves remained.

Cen Jin said quietly: “When I was in Ka Long, I told myself — when I get back to Northern Europe, it’ll be all right. It’ll have been like a nightmare, and I can start again.”

“When I actually came back, I realized that wasn’t possible. In Ka Long, Northern Europe was still an imagined refuge, a way out. Once I was actually back, there was nowhere left to retreat to.”

“I had serious psychological problems — my life fell into disorder. I had constant nightmares. In my dreams I searched over and over for the UN evacuation convoy, and the faces of refugees flashed before me — those I had personally put on the van, and those who had died in front of me…”

She looked at Wei Lai and smiled: “My luck really is bad. What could I have done in that situation? If I had refused to nod, I would have died on the spot. If I nodded, I was an accomplice — a criminal — and the day it all came out, I’d be finished regardless. Neither road led anywhere good.”

Wei Lai didn’t know what to say.

Cen Jin suddenly broke into laughter — laughing so hard she almost laughed out tears: “You believed me, didn’t you? I said it with such feeling, and you just believed me, didn’t you? You really could never be a judge.”

She lowered her head and caught a cigarette between her lips, struck a match, and the flame rose. Her hand was trembling slightly.

She murmured quietly: “Who would believe me? The evidence is all in the hands of those who want to kill me. And what’s more — I did give in.”

The cigarette finally caught. She didn’t smoke it. She rested it on the corner of the table and watched the thread of smoke curl upward.

“I knew about The Hand of God long ago. I’m not frightened, and not surprised. When I received Se Qi’s hand in the mail, I felt a kind of relief, I really did. I felt tired enough. The road had come to its end. It was time.”

“The only unexpected thing was Hu Sha hijacking the Tianlanxing. The Saudi men found me. I thought — fine. If there’s time, help them with the negotiation; if there isn’t, die on the road. Whatever comes.”

“As for hiring a bodyguard — the Saudi men were very enthusiastic about it, with all their interviews and selections. I had absolutely no interest.”

“Haven’t you always wondered why I chose you? Now I can tell you.”

“It wasn’t because I wanted to go against the Saudi men’s wishes by choosing someone they’d consider inadequate. It wasn’t because you’re good-looking and I was taken with you. After you came in I barely noticed you, I thought the Saudi men were tedious, and I thought you were tedious.”

“But you said something. Do you remember it?”

“You said: if Miss Cen’s character proves to be significantly flawed, or if she has done something she cannot openly acknowledge, I would advise against hiring me — because I will walk away midway.”

She looked at Wei Lai with gentle eyes.

“What a coincidence. I really did have secrets I couldn’t openly acknowledge. I chose you, and was waiting for this moment — to see how you would walk away once you knew the truth.”

You go ahead.

You are the last farewell.

You’ll go on to other places. And I — I will end here.