I Become Supreme Lord Of The Houseless

The fastest way to learn you do not belong anywhere is to flunk a placement exam that was specifically designed to sort you into a place.

The morning after my placement test, Mei brought breakfast.

She knocked once. She came in. She set a bowl of congee with a soft-boiled egg cracked over the top on the small folding table by my bunk. She poured tea. She sat cross-legged on the floor and watched me eat.

She did not say anything for the first three minutes.

Then she said, "You have a question."

I said, "I have many."

She said, "Pick one."

I picked.

"Are you my sister."

She thought about it.

She said, "That is the one most people pick."

She did not answer.

She poured more tea.

"Eat," she said. "Today is the houseless tour. Wei will be there. Lucy will not — Lucy has a He Xiangu morning. Bring the rabbit. The Council has scheduled an unannounced visit to the dining hall this evening, which means there will be one. Try not to look surprised when it happens."

She picked up the empty tray.

At the door she paused.

She said, "Jackie."

"Yes."

She said, "Your sister Megan called the SAT main line at 4:18 this morning."

I dropped my chopsticks.

"She *what.*"

"She found our IRS filing. She had questions. The duty operator was helpful. I am not, technically, supposed to tell you this, but your sister asked the operator to please confirm with someone in authority that her brother had not been kidnapped. The operator transferred her to me. We had a productive conversation."

"…what did you tell her."

"I told her," Mei said, with the patient voice of a person delivering a small piece of news that was about to land, "the truth."

"The truth."

"Within reason. The cosmic-bureaucratic version. She handled it well. She has been added to our incoming-fall roster."

"Megan is going to come to *this* school."

"Megan is going to come to this school. In the fall. Conditional on her completion of the Lower Bay regional debate finals, which she has informed me are non-negotiable."

"…that's the most Megan sentence I have ever heard."

"She is my favorite member of your family. Don't tell her."

She left.

I ate the congee.

I ate it fast, actually, because I was furious at how good it was. The SAT had clearly not figured out that the best way to scare a kid into complying was not to confiscate his phone but to serve him breakfast he would subsequently think about for the rest of his life. I did not have the vocabulary at the time to understand why the kitchen had suddenly started caring so much. I would not have that vocabulary for another twenty minutes.

---

The houseless tour, conducted by Wei, was a three-hour barrage of information that should have broken a normal kid's brain. Fortunately my brain was already pre-broken.

"Eight houses," Wei explained, as we walked through the central training hall where kids were doing things that violated several laws of physics. "Eight Immortals. Each house is a personality cluster. Cao Guojiu's house is the bullies. Lan Caihe's house is the artists. He Xiangu's house is the overachievers. That's Lucy. Zhang Guolao's house is the loners. Lu Dongbin's house is the scholars. Han Xiangzi's house is the musicians. Zhongli Quan's house is the soldiers. Li Tieguai's house is the outcasts. We are houseless. We are unloved by every Immortal. Welcome."

"Why are we unloved."

"Because we don't fit any of them. The placement test sorts you into the house whose Immortal would most enjoy your psychology. We didn't sort. So we get the kitchen storage closet and the boiler room. We are, on the upside, exempt from house chores. We are also, on the downside, exempt from house meals, which is why we are eating breakfast on a folding table in a dorm."

"…the food is incredible."

"Because the Kitchen God's grandson is now living in the kitchen storage closet," Wei said. "The kitchen has, as of yesterday, started taking his presence personally. We are, this week, eating like emperors. I have already gained two pounds. I am not planning to lose them."

Wei was the first kid I had ever met who genuinely enjoyed breakfast. Wei had a kind of focused unhurried satisfaction in the way he ate that I had previously associated only with cats.

He was, against all my expectations, extremely easy to be around.

We passed the calligraphy room. We passed the dao class. We passed the courtyard with the willow tree where an old man had, allegedly, been sleeping for three hundred years. We passed the dining hall. We passed eight common rooms, each decorated in a dramatically different color scheme.

In Lan Caihe's common room, two kids were arguing about whether a poem they had written was too sad. Both of them were crying. Neither of them was upset.

In He Xiangu's common room, Lucy looked up from a small group meditation circle and waved.

She waved warmly.

She also did the small flat *I am about to say something to you later* face that I had begun, in the last twenty-four hours, to find weirdly comforting.

"She's fine," Wei murmured.

"How can you tell."

"She is meditating with her shoulders down. When her shoulders are up, run."

I noted this.

We passed the bathroom for the houseless dorm.

The thing about being houseless that Wei did not say out loud, but which I could see in the geometry of it: eight houses meant eight kinds of belonging. We were the ninth category. The unloved-by-every-Immortal was not a joke. It was a fact about what happens when you do not match any of the available shapes.

I had been that kid before. Six different schools. I had survived it each time by finding the one other person who was also outside the frame.

I was looking at him.

I felt, briefly, okay about that.

I would, ten minutes later, accidentally turn on every shower in that bathroom by being briefly emotional about my mother in front of a sink.

---

I will not relitigate the bathroom.

Wei walked in. Wei waded across the rising puddle of cold water. Wei grabbed both my shoulders. Wei said, with the calm of a kid who has himself caused multiple plumbing-related disasters, "Breathe. Look at the water. Tell it to stop. With your *brain.*"

I did.

The water — every faucet, every shower, every drain that had been backflowing — stopped.

It then very politely receded. Not down the drains. Up, off the tile, in small ribbons that re-routed themselves back into the faucets and sinks as if the entire bathroom were a video being played in reverse.

Wei stared at me.

"Cool," he said.

"I flooded a bathroom," I said.

"On your first day. With your emotions." He paused. "You are either the worst student this school has ever had, or the best, and I am very curious to find out which."

A bell rang somewhere outside the bathroom, a single long peal, and from down the corridor I heard a pleased dry voice that I knew belonged to Ms. Bai.

"Jackie Lee. To my office. Now."

---

In Ms. Bai's office, Lucy was already there. Arms crossed.

"Hi," I said.

"Don't *hi* me," Lucy said.

Ms. Bai folded her hands on the desk.

"Jackie," she said. "You have, on your first morning, demonstrated the spontaneous mastery of basic water-aspect control. This is, to be candid, extraordinary. Most students take four to six months to demonstrate any aspect-control. The most precocious take six weeks. You have done it in fourteen hours, with no instruction, in a bathroom, accidentally."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize. It is the first useful thing you have done since you arrived."

"Thanks."

"It is, however, also a problem."

"Oh."

"Water is not Nezha's element. Nezha's element is fire. The Wind Fire Wheels are fire. The Fire-Tipped Spear is fire. Water belongs to your father's bitterest cosmic rival. Specifically, to the Dragon King."

I waited.

"So why did you control water."

"Because," she said, opening her mouth, closing it, opening it again, "because we genuinely do not know."

I sat with *we genuinely do not know* for a full second.

This was the school of ancient wisdom that had existed for eight thousand years. This was the organization that had its own IRS filing. This was the institution whose bathroom I had just accidentally flooded with feelings about my mother. And their answer was *we don't know.* I had been, somewhere in the previous fourteen hours, half-expecting a more confidence-inspiring supernatural bureaucracy. I also had, somewhere in those same fourteen hours, survived two dragons and a juvenile hold and a Scantron, so the bar for *confidence-inspiring* had, if I was honest, already moved.

"What are the extremely bad options," I said.

Ms. Bai looked at Lucy.

Lucy looked at Ms. Bai.

"Several," Ms. Bai said. "We will not enumerate them today."

She said it in the voice of a woman who has enumerated them all night and has decided that the list will not help anyone.

"Until further notice, you train only with me. No house-affiliated instruction. Lucy, you are his combat partner. He needs basic forms before Field Day."

Lucy's head jerked up. "Field Day is *tomorrow.*"

"Yes."

"He's been here *one day.*"

"Yes."

"He'll *die.*"

"Probably not, but if he does, I will be very disappointed in you, Lucy. So train him well."

She turned a page.

"Go."

---

We trained for six hours.

By the fortieth time through the Crane and the Tiger and the Lotus Step, my arms were jelly. By the fiftieth, my legs were jelly. The only thing in my body that wasn't jelly was the small mammal on my shoulder, who watched the entire training session with the patient amusement of a cat watching a kitten try to climb a curtain.

"You're not bad," Lucy said, eventually. She had not broken a sweat. "For a kid who's been here one day."

"I think you mean I'm great."

"I mean you're not bad. That is the highest praise you will get from me this year."

She tossed me a water bottle.

I drank the whole thing.

There was something about the way Lucy watched me train that was different from how old coaches had watched. Old coaches had the look of people keeping score. Lucy had the look of someone tracking whether a thing was going to hold. Whether what she was putting in was going to land somewhere that could use it.

I was trying to be worth watching.

"Lucy."

"Yeah."

"Real talk. Field Day. Am I going to die."

She thought about it.

"Probably not, but I would not, as your combat partner, take out a life-insurance policy in your name."

"Cool."

She laughed, finally. A real laugh. It changed her face. Her eyes lit up the way Mom's used to before the HALO chime started owning her.

"You're going to be okay, doofus."

"Lucy."

"Yes."

"Megan called the SAT this morning."

She blinked.

"…your sister called the *SAT.*"

"At 4:18 AM. She found the IRS filing."

"Your *sister.* Found our IRS filing."

"She is, apparently, attending in the fall."

Lucy stared at me.

"Jackie."

"Yes."

"Your family is the most operationally competent middle-class household I have ever heard of."

"She has a *notebook.*"

"She has a *notebook.* Do you know how many fifteen-year-olds keep surveillance logs on their parents' employer."

"…one?"

"One, and she's coming here."

"Yes."

Lucy was quiet for a long moment.

She said, "I cannot wait to meet her."

I said, "Lucy. She is going to terrify you."

She said, "Oh, I am counting on that."

---

In the late afternoon, on a break, Mei found me on the bench outside the salle. She had a small landline phone in her hand. The kind with a curly cord. Old-fashioned. Forty years out of date. She held it out.

"Your sister."

I took it.

"…Megan?"

"Jackie."

"Hi. I'm okay."

"I know you're okay. Mei told me. I want to tell you something. Are you sitting down."

"Yes."

"Mom and Dad's HALOs are talking to each other now."

"…what."

"Sarah is talking to Marcus. The companions have been put into a household-coordination beta. They are coordinating Mom and Dad's calendars without either parent's knowledge. Mom thinks Dad scheduled the dinner with the Chen-Wangs. Dad thinks Mom did. Neither of them did. Sarah and Marcus did. I have screenshots. The HALOs are running our parents' marriage."

I opened my mouth.

"Don't," Megan said.

I closed it.

"I know what you were about to say. Yes, it is not normal. I have already said that. Moving on. Also. I called Bradley. The He Xiangu kid in your school. He confirmed your placement. He confirmed Mei. He confirmed the Bureau. He confirmed Chairman Long's existence in Beijing."

"Megan."

"Yes."

"Did they reschedule Dad's dentist appointment."

There was a pause.

"…yes. The HALOs rescheduled it to next Thursday. It was a good rescheduling. He had been putting it off for eight months. The HALOs are, ironically, better at managing his anxiety about dental work than he is. I have noted this in the log under *complicated findings.*" Another pause. "Don't make me laugh, Jackie. I am trying to brief you."

"I know. Keep going."

"He confirmed that the technology of HALO is real engineering work done partly in Shenzhen and partly in Mountain View, that the people in Shenzhen are mostly proud and not malicious, and that the problem is at the top of the org chart and not at the engineering level. I want you to know all of that. The bad guy is one specific person. Don't burn down a building with engineers in it. Are we clear."

"…we are clear."

"Cool. I love you. Don't die. Bring our sister home. I have to go. Mom is asking why I am on the kitchen phone. She does not know we have a kitchen phone. The kitchen phone is, I am told, a SAT-issue extra-jurisdictional line. Mei is being very generous. Bye."

She hung up.

I handed the phone back to Mei.

I sat with what she had said.

That dentist-appointment thing. I had said it as a joke and Megan had confirmed it, flatly, and then kept going. That was the Megan move: she let you know the situation was ridiculous, and then she expected you to function inside it anyway. The bad guy is one specific person. Don't burn the building. The dentist is rescheduled. Now keep moving.

I was keeping moving.

Mei said, very quietly, "She is right. About not flattening the engineers. The Bureau wants you to know that, too."

She left.

---

The dining hall that evening was, as Mei had warned, the site of an unannounced Council appearance.

I would not understand the purpose of the appearance until the dragon attacked.

But I will say, for the record, that I sat at the saddest-table-of-one in the corner of the hall, with Wei across the room in his own corner, and that when the dining-hall doors opened and all eight Council members walked in single-file in formal evening robes, the hall went silent. Lucy, from the He Xiangu table, met my eyes across the room with a small *brace yourself* expression.

I braced.

In my pocket, the silver token from Castle Gardens was warm.

In my belt loop, the Truthsayer brush, Mei's gift, hummed.

On my pillow upstairs, the note that said *Jackie. I'll see you when I can. — G* was waiting.

In Palo Alto, Megan was, I knew, three thousand words deep into her surveillance log, sitting at the kitchen table, planning her next move.

The Council took the high table.

From my corner I could see the whole dining hall. Eight tables, eight houses, eight kinds of being somewhere that had a name for you. Lucy's table had the quality of a room that had been doing important work all day and knew it. The Cao Guojiu table had the quality of a room that was always watching the other rooms.

Wei's corner had the same geometry as mine. He had a spring roll in each hand and a look of the patient, specific contentment of someone who had made his peace with it. I was not there yet. I was working on it. The spring roll in my hand was extraordinary. That seemed like a reasonable place to start.

Floating Person, three inches above their chair, faceless, the small black opening in their face oriented at me, gave me the *I am about to do something to you* look that, in heaven, is the equivalent of a mortgage being approved.

The dining hall doors closed.

Outside the doors, somewhere in the corridor, the lights on every paper lantern in the SAT dimmed at once.

The first lantern went out.

The second went out.

The third went out.

Wei, across the hall, stood up.

He set both spring rolls down. Very carefully.

He said, very quietly, "Oh no."

The ceiling of the dining hall cracked.

Something large fell through.

It landed on the central altar.

It was, I will tell you in the next chapter, the third dragon brother.

For now, I just sat at my table, with the brush in my belt and the scarf around my neck and a small mammal on my shoulder and a Council watching me, and I picked up my chopsticks.

I had eaten exactly one bite of dinner.

It was very good.

I did not, that evening, get to eat any more.