It hurt to look at him like this: unaware, curious.
“Careful that you don’t trip,” Roma intoned.
Juliette glared at him, though he was still looking at the houses, then forced her gaze back onto the sidewalk before her. She should have known any sort of obliviousness from Roma Montagov was merely an act. She had once known him better than she knew herself. She used to be able to predict his every move… except the one time when it really mattered.
Roma and Juliette met on an evening like this four years ago, right before this city imploded with the bustle of its new reputation.
The year was 1922, and nothing was impossible. Planes dove and swooped in the sky and the last remnants of the Great War were being scrubbed clean. Humanity seemed to be on an upward turn from the fighting and the hatred and the warfare that had once spilled over the edges, allowing the good things at the bottom to slowly rise. Even the blood feud in Shanghai had reached an unspoken sort of equilibrium, where instead of fighting, a Scarlet and a White Flower might nod coldly at one another if they were to pass on the streets.
It was an atmosphere of hope that had welcomed Juliette when she stepped off the steamboat then, her legs unsteady after a month at sea. Mid-October, the air warm but becoming brisk, workers bantering by the port-side as they volleyed packages into waiting boats.
At fifteen, Juliette had come back with dreams. She was going to do something worthy of remembrance, be someone worthy of commemoration, ignite lives worth fighting for. It was a feeling she hadn’t known when she left at the age of five, sent away with little more than some clothes, an elaborate fountain pen, and a photograph so she wouldn’t forget what her parents looked like.
It was the high of that feeling that had sent her chasing after Roma Montagov.
Juliette’s whole chest shuddered as she exhaled into the night. Her eyes burned, and quickly she wiped the sole tear that had fallen down her cheek, her teeth gritted hard.
“Are we almost there?”
“Relax,” Juliette said without turning around. She didn’t dare, in case her eyes were glimmering under the dimly burning streetlamps. “I’m not leading you astray.”
Back then, she hadn’t known who he was, but Roma had known her. He would reveal months later that he had rolled that marble at her on purpose, testing to see how she would react while she waited by the ports. The marble had come to a stop near her shoe—American shoes, shoes that wouldn’t blend in with the cloth and heavy soles stomping down around her.
“That’s mine.”
She remembered her head jerking up upon picking up the marble, thinking the voice belonged to a rough Chinese merchant. Instead, she had been looking into a pale, young face with the features of a foreigner—a smorgasbord of sharp lines and wide, concerned eyes. The accent with which he spoke the local dialect was even better than hers, and her tutor had refused to speak anything except Shanghainese in case she forgot it.
Juliette had rolled the marble into her palm, closing her fingers around it tightly.
“It’s mine now.”
It was almost funny now, how Roma had startled upon hearing her Russian—flawless, if a little stilted from a lack of practice. His brow furrowed.
“That’s not fair.” He stayed in the Shanghai dialect.
“Finders keepers.” Juliette refused to switch out of Russian.
“Fine,” Roma said, finally returning to his native tongue so they spoke the same language. “Play a game with me. If you win, you may keep the marble. If I win, I get it back.”
Juliette had lost, and rather grudgingly, returned the marble. But Roma had not started the game for the fun of it, and he wouldn’t let her slip away that easily. When she turned to leave, he reached for her hand.
“I’m here every week at this time,” he said sincerely. “We can play again.”
Juliette was laughing as she slid her fingers out of his hold. “Just you wait,” she called back. “I’ll win them all from you.”
She would find out later that the boy was Roma Montagov, the son of her greatest enemy. But she would return to find him anyway, thinking herself shrewd, thinking herself clever. For months they flirted and pretended and toed the line between enemy and friend, both knowing who the other was but neither admitting to it, both trying to gain something from this friendship but being uncareful, falling too deep without knowing.
When they were launching marbles along the uneven ground, they were just Roma and Juliette, not Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai, the heirs of rival gangs. They were laughing kids who had found a confidant, a friend who understood the need to be someone else if only for a while each day.
They fell in love.
At least—Juliette thought they had.
“Juliette!”
Juliette gasped, coming to a quick stop. In her daze, she had been two heartbeats away from walking right into a parked rickshaw. Roma yanked her back, and instinctively, she looked up at him, at his certainty and cautiousness and clear, cold eyes.
“Let me go,” Juliette hissed, yanking her arm away. “We’re almost to the hospital. Keep up.”