CHAPTER 7 – MING

I hadn't grown up in Ba Sing Se, but I had grown up poor.

Before I was born, my family had been uprooted from our home in the Earth Kingdom by Fire Nation soldiers. Dad was a smart man. He had believed the rumors of raids and the destruction of the nearby villages and moved before his village was struck. When my family moved, it consisted of Dad, Mom, and my older brother.

I came into the picture along with my twin brother in the countryside. When Mom's labor started, Dad rushed her someplace private. Leaving my brother, Shi, with Mom, Dad searched desperately for a woman who could help. The woman who helped deliver my brother and me travelled with us for a distance. It was told she helped care for us and helped Mom get well before she mysteriously disappeared in the night. Maybe she had gotten tired of us. Maybe she was taken. We never knew.

Dad wanted to live in Ba Sing Se. It was the great stronghold of the Earth Kingdom. Not having much money, my family walked to the city barely scraping by. Shi says that sometimes Dad and Mom would have arguments over the money. Mom said it should be used for food, Dad said it needed to be saved for a home in the city. It seems they made compromises.

Dad's and Shi's job was to gather different fruits and nuts for us to eat while Mom had her hands full with me and my twin, Hu.

Hu and I learned our basic skills on the road. We learned to walk, talk, and not to dirty our pants all while travelling to Ba Sing Se.

One of my earliest memories involved traveling. Day after day, we plodded to our destination, but one day we saw something we viewed as hope. A division of Earth Kingdom troops were headed the opposite direction as us, towards the coast to fend off the Fire Nation. Hu and I ran up close to them, Mom protesting behind us. We stood together and waved rigorously to the soldiers. One of them winked at me and gave a sly smile. I was five and loved him instantly, though I was quickly over it.

We didn't reach the city until I was eight. By then, Mom had given birth to two more girls, though they were not twins. She had taught Hu and me how to read and write, saying they would be important skills for us one day.

The city was huge and spectacular to us. Shi told us that it was a hundred times bigger than the little village we'd come from. Mom and Dad laughed at him, saying he was five when they'd left. It had taken six long years, but we had arrived.

Dad had to take a low-paying job at a local factory while Mom worked in a sweets shop. It was mostly Shi's job to care for us until Hu and I were older. When we turned eleven, Shi was beginning to chase after silly, giggling girls. My twin and I would exchange confused looks and let him run off.

My younger sisters weren't hard to care for. They mostly entertained each other. Occasionally, Hu and I would hide everything dangerous from them and set out by ourselves to explore. The city held many secrets for us to discover. We had a special tree we hid things in. Looking back from now, all of the things we deemed worthy to hide were useless. Bits of string, assorted buttons, pretty rocks.

One day, we went far from our little home. It was the farthest we had ever travelled from it. Eventually, we came to a large wall. We tried to find a doorway, but couldn't. So we asked the nearby soldier if we could go through. To our dismay, we were gruffly told to go back home. The Upper Ring is no place to tiny street urchins. Sadly, we trudged back home. We later learned that the King lived there along with the other rich people of the city. That was our first encounter with the fact that we were poor, and some people hated us for that.

A few years passed, and Hu got interested in stupid girls, too. It left me home alone with my younger sisters every day. They would force me to play games with them, silly embarrassing games for my age. But eventually all of us grew up. My younger sisters began going to public school, but I was told I was too old to go.

The war never affected my household. It was strange considering we were in the poor part of the city, but neither of my brothers were drafted to become soldiers and my parents' jobs stayed steady. The Hundred Years War was just a passing event in our lives.

I spend my days as a sort of housewife. Every day, I go to the market to buy our food for our meals and I prepare the meal for everyone. I clean our little apartment, make everyone's bed, empty the garbage, and sweep the floor. Feeling trapped, I began to plot ways out of my dreary existence.

The best plan I hatched was to marry someone rich. The problem was I couldn't get into the Upper Ring to meet any rich heirs. So instead, I settled for marrying someone with slightly more money than my family, so I could get a job and work with my husband to move up in the world.

It seemed fool-proof.

At the market one sunny morning, I was, as usual, buying the ingredients for my family's dinner. Mom and Dad had mentioned that I get a job and pitch in extra money to help with the rent. I sincerely hoped I wouldn't have to; I was too comfortable in my routine now.

Squeezing different avocados to determine ripeness, I spotted a handsome man in my peripheral vision. He had black hair and pale skin. Being subtle, I slid closer to his right side.

"Hey," I said. My voice has sounded a bit squeaky making me cringe on the inside.

He paused for a tiny second. "Hey," he said back.

"I've never seen you before," I said, turning to fully face him. His clothes were much more fashionable than mine, a sign he was from the Upper Ring.

"I'm new in town," he said, not looking at me.

"That's cool," I said. "I've only lived here since I was eight."

He made eye contact with me. "Refugee?"

"I guess," I said. "I was born on the journey here. So I guess Ba Sing Se is my home."

He added a fruit to his basket. "This is my home for now," he said.

"Welcome to Ba Sing Se," I said. I held out my hand. "My name is Ming."

The man turned to face me, revealing a nasty scar on the left side of his face. "I'm Lee," he said, shaking my hand.

I tried my best not to appear shocked at his scar. "I would be happy to show you around the city sometime."

"Whenever you're free," he said, turning back to selecting produce.

"Well," I said, following him and we went to pay the stand owner. "I'm kind of free now. I mean, my days are free in the mornings, but I have stuff to do in the afternoon."

Lee reached inside his tunic and pulled out a wad of cash. I mean, more cash than I'd estimate my parents had made in eight years. He slid a bill to the grocer, telling him to keep the change. "So you're saying you'd like to now?" he asked, turning back to me.

I forced the shock from my mind so I could speak. "Yes!" I chirped. "That would be lovely."

"I need to get these back to my apartment," he said, holding up his bag. "But you could walk with me there."

I agreed to accompany him. On the way there, I did most of the talking. I told him about my family, my parent's jobs, how stupid I thought my brothers were. He didn't say much in return; he mostly let me talk, which released some of the things I had been keeping on my chest.

"Sounds like you were once close with your twin brother," he said.

"That was before he started chasing girls," I said. "Boys can lose their minds over a girl."

He grinned a bit. "That can be true at times. But don't be too down on them. Try to spend a little time with them."

"It can be hard," I said. Lee simply nodded in agreement.

My heart fell a little when we reached his apartment building. He lived in a slummy home just like I did. But it didn't explain the clothes and cash. Maybe he had one of the larger, top-floor rooms.

He passed off his bag to me to unlock his apartment door. It was on the second story, and it was much smaller than my home. There was barely room to turn around in the kitchen. Only one door led off of the main door, and I assumed it to be the bathroom. His bed was in a corner of the room along with a small couch and side table. There was very little personality or décor to his home, just poverty.

"Ready to go?" he asked, smiling at me.

"Sure," I said, feeling not so sure inside.

I took him to a local tea shop. Before we entered, he protested.

"I heard this place isn't very good," he said.

"Who would you have heard that from?" I asked. "You just moved here."

"One of my neighbors told me," he said, lightly shrugging.

I could tell he was lying, but we went to a diner instead. We ordered bowls of rice with egg bits in them for our meal. Lee seemed to have manners sophisticated beyond mine. I felt as though I were being deceived by him. During our lunch, I kept him entertained and we exchanged silly stories about our travels to the city. Earlier, he had been stone-faced and stoic, but after two hours he seemed to have loosened up.

After we finished and he had paid – that stack of bills! – he insisted on walking me home. He looped my arm around his and led me like a gentlemen. Like someone of a higher class.

"I had a really fun time with you," he said. He had untangled our arms and was holding both of my hands in his.

"Same here," I said, half-way lying.

"Meet me again at the market tomorrow?" he asked.

"I'll see you there," I said.

"Good bye until then," Lee said. He leaned down and gave me a gentle peck on the cheek.

"Bye," I said weakly. I stepped inside my apartment building and watched him leave. Lee went back the same direction we had come from.

After not having bought my produce earlier, I returned to the market. Instead of buying just tonight's meal, I also bought the ingredients for tomorrow night as well. The grocer knew me well, and cast a strange glance at me for breaking my routine.

Returning home, I began my chores. I swept and scrubbed and dusted and folded. As I started making dinner, which was a vegetable stew, I let my thoughts come to me. The plain truth was, Lee did not fit into my plan. He had rich clothes and carried a lot of cash on him, but his apartment was smaller than the one I lived in. I didn't believe he was truly rich.

There was no way I could stay in poverty for the rest of my life.

I decided tomorrow would be a relaxation day for myself, and I wouldn't go to the market.

Author's Note: The rest of this story will be built into the next chapter. Dun dun dun.