This was my wish:

To change the nature of omens.

Every Omen that understands their guilt and is regretful, will be healed. Any Omen who harbours no guilt and no remorse, won't be healed.

Esp might have felt guilt once, when she was a girl like me. But the Esp I grew up with was blind to the idea, callous to the thought. All she wanted was to hurt.

So the omen gave her what she wanted. She hurt and hurt until the end.

This is what happens after:

Gaia and my anchor are lost to the portal, though I don't think about them as being lost. They're home.

Many Omens lose their stains, though they do not regain the things they lost to their stains, like their arms or legs, their sight, their minds. My wish did not cure everything.

A week is spent in clearing out rubble, of ruins, of debris. The temple is slowly, surely, put back to rights. A city-wide funeral is held in honour of the deceased – the guardians and authorities that gave their lives against the omen monsters, the acolytes and Suns and unfortunate bystanders.

Brother Marat also died in the attack, protecting the whistlers. They mention him especially in the eulogy, saying that he was kind and wise and strong, even to the end, and I remember the time he had lain his old hand on the top of my head, and know he must've been.

I try not to cry.

Yashi is alive, and so is Sister Ena. Rama and Roaz and Frea are fine. We don't speak to each other at the funeral, partly because no one knows how exactly to treat me. No one knows what I am anymore.

In the past, those that won wishes became something like stars themselves, icons, celebrities, heroes.

But how could an Omen be a star? How could an Omen become a hero?

The only one who interacts with me is Yashi. She weaves her hands at me and asks about Naqi, and I tell her that he's being looked after at the hospital, and my wish should have taken his stain away, too, though I don't know about his wounds.

But I can't go myself to check, to see. I don't think people would allow me to take off, not now.

She says, you'll see him soon. She says, I'll visit him with you, after everything.

Debate happens around what should be done with me.

I was Omen, one that colluded with Esp, and I ended the life of a Veil.

But I am also a champion of the Decade-Races, one whose wish brought an end to the Omen threat. I've forever changed the nature of stains. Things, from now on, will never be the same.

Ten years is what they decide on, in the end.

That is my verdict.

For ten years, I am to be exiled from the city of Tall Titan, and three of those years will be served on the farm-colony of the Eurydice moon. My service order there, or community restitution, is to work the fields without pay.

My stationing was something Lumi's mother herself asked for. I don't know why. Maybe she knows how much it'll hurt me, seeing her.

My remaining seven years are to be spent on other moons and colonies, doing compulsory unpaid work, or if I am paid, it would be meager, laughable. I would be put to cleaning or sorting or whatever else the authorities deem best.

And then after my years are served, I can return to Tall Titan.

I can return to Naqi.

#

The only thing I ask for as champion is this:

Don't send me out until Naqi is healed and well. And they grant it to me.

By the time I am released from the hearings and the courtrooms and the mess of the city, by the time I can finally return to the hospital with Yashi, a woman and a man are by Naqi's side, and they are weeping.

It's his mother and father.

They cradle over and around Naqi like petals that have not yet bud, that will not bud, because how precious is the thing they have between them.

The boy's eyes have been unbandaged. There is no stain over his eyes and nose anymore, only a faint iridescent shimmer when he tilts his head this way and that. His eyes, when he opens them, are a pale blue.

The stain had taken his sight for good.

In the hallway, through the window of the room, I watch them, though not for long. Their faces are overblown on love, love, love, and it is not something I have permission to see.

So I turn and leave. I give them their space.

#

In the middle of the hall with the sunlight streaking, as I am overlooking the courtyard, Naqi's mother and father finds me, and the mother says, "Sozo? It is Sozo, right?"

I turn to them and draw in breath, and nod. My face and name has been blasting over all the news networks lately.

The mother—smiles, though it's a hard thing for her to pull on.

"Hello," she says. "Yashi has been translating for our son, and he's told us everything."

I swallow hard, and nod again.

The father sets a hand on the mother's shoulder and says, "You've been his eyes and ears in his time of need. So, thank you."

The mother says, "And ko-ang speaks of you so highly. He says you were great friends in the temple."

"So he knows?"

I had wanted to tell him myself, that the Sozo he met through his hands is the Lumi he befriended in the temple, that it's me. It's me. I never once left your side.

The mother and father look at each other, and then they shake their heads.

"We haven't told him," he says. "Rather, we were thinking it—may be better, if he didn't know."

I don't understand.

My frown is my question.

The mother answers. "We've talked to Yashi as well, and asked her not to tell him. We've said that no one knows the Omen girl's name – your name – but have told him the truth otherwise, that she won the race and made a wish, and helped put a stop to all that madness."

"Just," the father continues, "his mother and I think it would be better for him, easier for him, if the friendship was left on that note. He's—very fragile, right now. And you're leaving soon, for so very long. It would hurt him more than necessary, to say goodbye."

"So," the mother says. "So."

And then the father steps up to me. He squeezes my shoulder and it doesn't hurt, not really, but looking at his contrite smile does, because I understand.

They're afraid of me. They're ashamed of me.

I was the one that hurt their son, and those hurts will never heal. I am everything a parent would fear for their child, a bad influence, an evil influence. And though Naqi tells them about me, they would know me mostly from the things they hear on the news networks, the ones that continue to malign me as the Omen I was, or am.

Hundreds of years of prejudice isn't going to dissolve because of my wish.

To his parents, Naqi must come off as someone who has been manipulated.

I blink and blink and blink. If I don't, the tears will fall.

"Darling," the mother says, and she's by my side. She touches my other shoulder. She touches it with the tips of her fingers, like I am an old, dusty, dirty thing. She says, "You've done so much for our son's sake, and we know you care for him. And because you care for him, you'd do what's best by him."

"This is for you, too, Sozo." The father continues. "Instead of dragging things out and prolonging the pain, you end things now. And you've such terrible experiences in this city, such harrowing memories. The sooner you leave, the sooner you can heal."

I hang my head. My eyes are weighed heavy.

They want me to leave without a goodbye. Cut things off without a word.

Am I strong enough for something like that?

When I speak again, it comes out as a hush, "Until he gets his hearing back."

"What?"

I straighten. I repeat, "Until he gets his hearing back. I'm staying until then."

The mother and father look at each other again. They frown.

"I won't tell him," I say. "Because that's what you want. I don't know how you'll handle him after, when his hearing returns and he learns the news for himself, but until then, I'll remain Sozo the caregiver, not the no-name Omen girl who made the wish. And then after his hearing returns to him, I'll leave."

The parents are still frowning, because they do not like it, because they do not trust me, so I puff a laugh. There's no mirth to it, only edges.

"Don't worry," I say. "I've been lying all my life. One more will be easy to bear."

#

"What kinds of things would I need to bring," I say to Yashi, "for when I leave?"

She signs something else instead, something about parents.

"Have the parents talked to me?" I venture.

Yashi nods, and I say, "Yeah."

And?

"And they told me everything."

And you agreed to it?

"Mostly," I say. "I won't tell Naqi who I am."

Yashi shakes and shakes her head, because she does not agree with any of this. She signs fast and clipped, and I don't know half of what she means, but she's angry. I see Naqi's name. Something about hurts. Something about lies.

"Yashi." I say, "My question."

She throws up her arms. She blows out breath. I look at her and say nothing, do nothing, until she sighs again and signs: I don't know, Sozo.

She signs: Just pack what you need. The essentials. Take with you what you can't live without.

#

I dig out a small backpack. I fold into its belly three sets of clothes, a towel, a toothbrush and toothpaste and a small bag of essentials. I slide an empty wallet under the towel, and then I pat the remaining emptiness inside the backpack.

I zip the whole thing closed. I will finish packing as Naqi heals.

#

Naqi asks me where I've been, because I've been gone for a good week at least, and I tell him it's a secret, so he laughs and waggles his brows and says, "Bet you snuck off to meet someone you like."

And I tell him not to be silly. I lie again by telling him that I wouldn't have gone for so long for something so very insignificant, for the sake of a boy.

#

I learn the things Naqi likes to smell, like roasted chestnuts and water on hot concrete, of all things.

So I dig up an abandoned grill from the hospital shack. I roll it out underneath Naqi's window. In the mornings before he wakes, I step outside to roast chestnuts, and I keep the hood pulled back, so the aroma carries into Naqi's room.

For our afternoon walks, I walk him to his tree in the courtyard and take off his sandals, and then I hose down his feet and the sunbaked ground around him. He cackles and wiggles his toes, and slaps his feet in the water, and takes in large pulls of breath.

Every night, he sits by his window. His parents have told him that not-Lumi has been exiled from the city for the things she'd done, and that's why he should stop asking about her, after her, because she is long gone.

So he sits by the window, quiet in the night breeze, seeing nothing at all. He no longer asks about me.

The first week.

#

I remember the things Naqi likes to taste, like coffin bread, ice cream burritos. I learn he has a special fondness for red bean pastries, especially the ones shaped like fish.

So for lunch and dinner, I leave him his favourites on his platter beside his cafeteria foods. I watch him work through his soups and breads, and then he bumps his hand against my treats because he does not expect them there. I watch him peel back the wrappings. He sniffs. He nibbles, cautious, and then smiles. Sometimes he laughs.

The second week.

#

I learn the things Naqi likes to touch, like dice and wool sweaters, and so I find a dozen dice for him to play with. He lays his cheek against the table and tosses the dice again, again, just to feel the bumps, the jumps in vibration.

I dig up wool sweaters and wash them every morning. That way, when I pull them out of the dryer, Naqi can hold the warm cashmere in his hands. He nuzzles the warmth and breathes in, and smiles.

He doesn't like touching food. He doesn't like chalk and glue, because it dries up his hands or sticks up his hands.

But he likes my hands, even though they're rough, or sweaty sometimes. He lays his hands open, palm up, and waits for me to lay mine over his. And that's all we do. He tilts his head toward the window, because I think he can still see shades of light, and then he settles in our silence. He settles under my warmth.

The third week.

#

Naqi's hearing comes to him like water you can't shake out, clogging the ears, but day by day, the water drains. He takes to talking to himself, like a mad old thing, but the burble of his voice arrests him, fascinates him. So I do not stop him.

The doctors say, at the rate he is healing, his hearing may very well return by the end of next week, the end of the fifth week.

That is how much time I'll have left with him.

That is how much time I'll be allowed by his side.

#

The sky casts grey near the end of the fifth week.

Lighting scrawls on the horizon, looking like cracks on an abused porcelain, and the storm clouds in billows of grey and deep purple roll across the mountains like a hungry thing, swallowing, greedy.

Soon that porcelain storm will shatter over the city, over the hospital.

And a few days before the storm breaks, Naqi's hearing opens entirely.

He's on his feet, jumping, laughing. He jumps to hear the sounds of his feet thumping against the floor. He laughs because he cannot contain it.

The hospital gives him a metal cane that extends and retracts, and he taps out a map of his world with it. He takes to walking down the halls by himself – with me trailing silent behind him – to learn how corners sound, how thin walls sound, how big and small rooms sound.

He tells me: "When there's a corner, the echo of my stick's rubber-end thunks out like a fan." Or, "Sometimes you can feel sound, like a hand. You feel how far it goes or what it touches."

"You're a fast learner," I say, and maybe I say it with too much fondness, but Naqi says nothing about it.

He laughs. "It's hard. But it's fun, like a puzzle."

Only Naqi could say something like that.

I learn that he likes erhus – a two-stringed bowed instrument – and it surprises me, because an erhu sounds to me like a woman that is weeping. But he sits by the radio and listens to erhu music, or to any music at all, until his hips are sore, until his legs are all pins and needles. He winds left and right through the different stations just to hear the static.

He befriends all the nurses and make believes ranks for them based on how strong their finger snap is. He laughs and holds his breath when I drop a coin on the floor. He likes how it wobbles on a rotation, round and round, fast and faster, until it flattens into silence.

He likes the sound of birds. He likes the sound of thunder.

He says the sound of thunder is the sound of storm-monsters yawning, and the closer the storm rolls to the city, the longer Naqi spends with his arms pillowed in his open window, leaning, listening.

The next day, Naqi's mother sees my small backpack of clothes and essentials and coos about buying me more clothes, better essentials. She touches my shoulder with the whole of her hand and frets. When I tell her I don't need anything else, she asks if I am sure, and I say, "Yes," because in secret, I am already bloated with things.

In secret, I have packed things no one can take away from me.

#

For breakfast, I have dried mangos and bananas. I have leek pie and a rice roll, and a tall glass of soy milk. This will be my last meal in the hospital. This will be my last meal in the city of Tall Titan for a long, long while.

After breakfast, I check the transport schedule. The freight train is already pitstopped behind the hospital. In twenty-three minutes, it will pull away and back through the mountains, down to the city and through its many many districts, to stop at the shuttle station. The proper authorities will be waiting for me, there.

Yashi's offered to fly me over to the station – it's quicker, easier – but I told her I wanted to be alone. I told her that I wanted to wind through the denseness of Tall Titan one last time.

I return to Naqi's room.

He is sleeping still, because it is barely mid-morning, and Naqi is still not a morning person. I place nothing for him on his bedside table, because I know. His parents would see it and toss it away. A gift from someone like me would only be a stain.

I move to his bed. I nudge his palm up and over.

In the seat of his palm, I trace a sentence over and over again. I write it into his skin, into the heat of him. This invisible thing is the only thing I can leave to him, the only thing no one can take.

And then, with something leaden behind my shoulders and leaden in my chest, I move to the door. I do not look back. If I look back, I think I will turn into a pillar of static and dust. If I open my mouth to say goodbye, nothing but thunder will come out.

#

Naqi is waiting for me by the train tracks, underneath the transit shelter.

It's only been a few minutes, a few minutes of me grabbing my bag from the locker room, of me saying goodbye to Yashi, of me making my slow way down the stairs and to the tracks. But Naqi is here underneath the shelter, and the storm is above us. And the storm is breaking.

He's tilted up at the coming rain. His cane is gripped between his hands. There is a backpack slung over his shoulder, and he hears me coming and turns and smiles.

"Hi."

I don't know what to say. Naqi laughs and says, "Don't know what to say?"

He taps his way to me, where I am stood by the edge of the shelter. The rain falls around us. He holds out his hand to shake and says, "I'll make this easy for you."

He says, "Hi. I'm Naqi Imka. Your turn."

My words cork in my throat.

"Your turn," he nudges.

I open my mouth, and let out a sound. Naqi laughs again.

He says, "Don't cry."

"I'm not, crying."

"Stop that." He clutches my hand. "No more of that. No more lying."

"Can't," I say, and I close my eyes. "It's what I've done all my life."

"That was before," he says, and though I can't see him, I can hear his smile. "This is now. It's a brand new start for you."

"You make it sound easy."

"Because it can be."

I open my eyes and shake my head. "Why are you here?" I ask.

"Oh," Naqi says, "You went blind, too?" And he thumps his cane against the ground and hefts his backpack higher.

I scowl. "You're not going anywhere."

"Without my toothbrush, I know. Don't worry. I'll get one at the station."

"Naqi."

"Sozo."

My breath is blown from me. He's called me by my name many times by now, many many times. But now, in this moment, there are no more veils between us. There is no one here telling me to lie, to hide.

Naqi knows my name. Naqi knows me.

"How long," I ask, "have you known?"

Naqi answers by reaching up and tapping his fingers against his brow.

Khab. It's the hand sign for khab.

Oh.

I'm such a fool.

That time after I'd caught him crying, I had signed to him, and told him not to be silly. But I don't know the hand sign for silly. I only know the hand sign for fool, the one we had made up together: khab.

"And," Naqi continues, "Yashi's signing rhythm goes all stuttery when she lies. And—"

This time, he beams. "The food. The snacks. Almost everything were things we had together."

All that time, he knew. All that time, and he played along.

"Why, why didn't you say something?"

He stops, then. I do not expect it. His face looks like something breaking. "Why didn't you?"

He says: "Even after I asked for you again and again. For the longest time, I thought," and he stops. He does not finish his sentence.

His eyes weave here and there, like they are tracking smoke twisting up and up in the air, but he cannot see. He is only trying not to cry.

I turn my hand. I link my fingers with his clutching ones, and it is my turn to say: "Don't cry."

"I'll cry if I want to."

"Graduating from khab to crybaby?"

"You know it," he says, and smiles. He reaches for my cheek, and it takes him too long to find it, so I take his hovering, searching hand. I press it warm against my cheek. I forget to peel my hand away, because touching him is habit.

The rain pitters, patters, falls like applause. The ends of them bounce against our feet. Thunder purrs above my head and expands inside my chest, vast, so vast, and I think: ah, if only there was room in my backpack for this.

"I can't believe," Naqi says, and he pulls away to scrub his sleeve over his eyes, "that you were going to leave without a goodbye."

"I can't believe you were going to follow me."

"Were? I still am."

"So they can add kidnapping to my crimes?"

"Yeah. It'll be romantic. We'll be elopers."

Stars. I'm laughing. The sound is wet and broken. I blink and blink, and my eyes sting. Then a horn is beeping and smoke is puffing and the earth begins to rumble. The train's engine is revving up.

Naqi stops.

"Sozo," he says, panicked.

I can't stand it. I want to tell him, tell him everything, the things I had learned in the titan's eye, about him, about his ahavah – but there is no time. So I take his hand. I fold it into a fist. I knock it against my chest, and then I kiss it to my forehead.

Ya'tuv mi-eh.

Naqi stops again.

"Zo."

I can't stand it. My chest is about to burst. I let go. The freight train has already started to move, but slowly, slowly, and I step out from under the shelter and haul myself up one of the train's ladders, onto the outer walkway.

"Sozo?" Naqi is unmoored. He drops his pack. "Sozo!" He twists toward the sound of the train and turns his head here and there at where he thinks I might be.

I drop my own pack on the walkway and lean over the railing, and the railing creaks. Naqi hears it. He taps into the rain and toward the sound and calls, "When will you get to the colony?"

The rain falls and falls over my head. "Couple of days."

"Do you have enough capsules?"

"Yeah."

"Zo." He steps into puddles. He drops his cane. He fumbles against the metal coat of the train and I reach down to take his hands. "I told you to stop lying."

"I'm not lying," I say. "It's a service order. There'll be officials there. I won't be on my own."

Naqi's words clatter from him when he says, "I haven't even, I didn't even have time to. Sozo, I have so much I, did you pack enough? Do you have everything you need?"

"Yeah," I say. "The essentials. The things I can't live without."

"Sozo," he says, and I know he does not believe me, but I have. I have packed what I need. For five weeks straight, I have packed what I need.

The smell of roasted chestnuts is what I need. The smell of sunbaked concrete is what I need. When I am hungry, red bean pastries are what I need. The smooth faces of dice in my pockets are what I need. Soft sweaters and warm sweaters, they are what I need. I know now, that I cannot live without the sound of erhu on the radio, or birds in the air, or thunder on the horizon.

I don't know how I've managed to pack it all; I never knew I would have space enough inside me to hold something like this – pitch black senses and pale blue eyes – something like a home.

Naqi says, "You are not allowed to not send me transmissions."

"Okay."

"Sozo."

And then I say: "Kiss me when I'm back."

"What?" Naqi grips at me. "What?"

"Kiss me," I repeat. "Like a promise."

"Are you, are you telling me to wait for you? Like, like a bride or, or something?"

"Yes."

"That's, Sozo. You're."

I do it again. I fold his hand into a fist. I lean down and down and kiss my forehead against that fist.

And then his hand is wrenched from mine because the train is going too fast. I am the one unmoored, flung far, like a kite with its string cut. Naqi is a wet smear of white in the rain. I think, maybe, I hear him shouting.

The train rolls along the curving track, and I look back at Naqi the entire time. My neck strains against the turn and the distance. My eyes cling like grasping, desperate hands, and I do not blink. My eyes burn and water, and I do not blink.

Him, blurry in the rain, is something I must also keep.