The first bullet smashed the Jingdezhen tea cup on my nightstand.
I had been idling in bed when it happened. The next bullet struck the lampshade on the unoccupied side of my bed and then the couch where I had discarded my wine-stained, plum-colored silk dress from the party last night.
If I had been sleeping in my usual spot, I would have left half of my skull splattered across the black elmwood of my latticed headboard.
Instead, I was fortunate enough to have been hanging off the side of my bed after throwing up in a drunken stupor sometime around midnight. The bullets left holes in my drapes. As the light fabric ballooned serenely in the morning breeze, they looked more like innocent moth holes than bullet holes.
Was this real? Or was it just a nightmare?
I got a grip on myself. No, this wasn't a feverish, drunken dream. We were under attack.
Get a hold of yourself, Angela!
There I was, still lounging in bed, barely awake enough to differentiate the sounds of gunfire from the illusion of nightmares. I was wearing only the barest of undergarments because it was sweltering this time of the year.
The scatter of blue and white glass shards across my light, summery linen blanket perplexed me. Was this a dream? What was going on? Then, I noticed a drop of blood from my cut hand drip onto my bed. It bloomed red as it soaked into the linen blanket. My hand was bleeding. In a shocked haze, I recalled I instinctively used my hand to shield my face when the first bullet came.
What stuck in my memory and haunted me for days after was neither the blood nor the exploding tea cup.
Rather it was the water dribbling down the side of my inky black table with mother-of-pearl detailing.
The water seemed to run in black rivers down the top of the table, down the lacquered side in a sinister waterfall, and slowly soaked the sheets on my bed. But no, as I followed the miniature river down, it ran clear and innocent as it seeped into my linens.
Not dark with ancient, forbidden mystery. Just water.
My breathing stopped. For the smallest of split seconds, I thought the assassins had brought more than just bullets to take me down. They brought poison, our family poison, the same poison they accused my father of making. Even as I had smiled alongside him and called it medicine, in that brief moment, as it dripped toward me, my mind screamed poison.
Guilt.
The mighty Angela Liang, as she faced certain death, finally admits that Black Waters is exactly what everyone knew it to be — the cursed substance that drove its drinkers mad.
I didn't say it out loud. But even thinking the thought, I felt like I had betrayed my father — no, my entire family — somehow.
Snap, snap, snap.
Almost like bamboo fireworks during the Lantern Festival.
Except now, the twenty-year-old girl lying naked in bed was the monstrous Nian they were trying to kill.
Perhaps, in their eyes, I was worse than any fairy tale monster.
Deep down, I always knew my father destroyed more than the rafters and mud walls of the farmer's houses. He destroyed the architecture of human minds.
I rolled out of bed, trying to shield myself in the foot of space between the bed and my nearby couch. With one hand, I reached for my dress and managed to yank it on over one leg.
Purple was the color of immortality. Last night, I had chosen that dress to flaunt my disregard for our family's impending threats.
Liangs, we rise with the dangerous winds to which others bend.
The cut on my hand was bleeding all over my dress, making my grip slippery. I could see my friends laughing now.
Yes, Angela, even you can bleed.
The fury welled up in me and blotted out my fear.
I heard the sound of male voices outside. They were familiar voices. My guards had finally arrived.
And then, just as I thought it was over, there were more gunshots. None of which were directed into my room. I heard a scream outside, and I held my breath. I hoped it was not the sound of my guards dying.
I finally managed to hoist the silk straps of my dress over my bare shoulders. With relief, I mused to myself — at least Angela Liang wouldn't die in the nude. The glass window into the courtyard had shattered. My bedroom was on the second floor of the quaint little cottage. There was a peach tree outside my window that the perpetrator must have climbed in order to shoot into my room. When I was a child, my father once stated he brought that tree back from Fusang. Sometimes, he joked that within it was the secret elixir of life.
How ironic that now my would-be assassin climbed that very tree to kill me.
But it was not fear or regret that gripped me now. It was cold, hard fury.
How dare they?
Shoot me?
And here, in my father's rather-modest-by-Liang-standards summer cottage in Fengxian? Did they know how much he donated to make this city livable?
"Miss Liang!" The door to my bedroom was kicked open by a newly hired and overly enthusiastic bodyguard. "Are you hurt?"
"I am fine," I retorted, pushing myself upright to a wobbly standing position. I would not have a lowly guard snatching a glimpse up my skirt while I wallowed around the floor on my belly. I wondered why he had kicked my door open. There was a valley of splinters where the lock had once been. The young man tossed his pistol from hand to hand and paced about my room like a feral animal. His dress shirt was mis-buttoned, and I saw the outline of a crisp red Anta swish on the t-shirt he wore underneath.
This attack, in the early hours of the morning, had caught my guards unprepared. The assassins had watched us long enough to know when the guards changed shifts. It was around 7:00 in the morning when it happened, and in these troubled times, I seldom slept past 5:30.
"Just a nick. Give me a towel for my hand. I'll send my dress for dry cleaning."
I was barking orders, but no one was listening for some reason. Didn't they know it was vital for me to clean up, change, and for the maids to come to wash my linens? I didn't understand why the stupid guard charged into my room with his muddy boots, leaving footprints everywhere. To add insult to injury, he seized my hand in his and dragged me from my room.
"Where is Wang Shen Shan?" I demanded. Mr. Wang was the head of my security team. I had known him since back when my mother was present in my life. My mother preferred him over all the others because he had an easy smile and a full head of hair. My mom liked her boys pretty. Now, many years later, Mr. Wang's face was lined with too many days spent patrolling in the unforgiving sun, chain-smoking, and too many nights serenading the local women over bottles of Tsingtao.
But, among the endless revolving door of guards my father sent to guard me, I still trusted Mr. Wang the most.
"These animals are everywhere!" A nameless bodyguard slurred at me as he lay bleeding out of a leg wound by the hallway to the dining room.
My young bodyguard, Mr. Anta, as I called him in my mind, was luckily free of injury. He motioned for me to follow him along, going as far as to grab my arm to ensure I didn't fall behind. With his other hand, he shakily pointed a pistol into the empty hallways before us.
I didn't know his name, but I was grateful he was here to shield me from the advancing assassins.
If my father could see me now, I was sure he would shake his head and say, "An-ji, this is why you should have gotten married or at least a steady boyfriend! If our enemies come for us, wouldn't you like a man to throw himself in front of them to shield you from the bullets? Without a man, you are left pummeling them with one of your designer handbags. You leave your poor father praying for them to fall into a river ditch infested by swamp eels."
I bit my lip and continued onward, despite the sound of shooting in the direction we were heading.
I was going to survive if only so my father wouldn't shake his head at my corpse and blame the whole thing on my being a spinster at the ripe old age of 21.
"You couldn't have waited for me to put on some shoes?" I muttered as I stepped over a broken window. Damn our architect for filling this house with floor-to-ceiling windows. If only we had built it out of bullet-proof brick instead. Before Mr. Anta could reply, another window exploded behind us. Holding my snide tongue in my mouth, I ran ahead.