She looked down at her left palm and saw a deep gash, from which dark orbs of blood like pomegranate seeds were welling up rapidly. - P44
The edges of her vision seemed to come unstitched, and her weak knees finally gave out. Jade passed out unnoticed by anyone, a pool of black-red blood drenching the ground beneath her hand. - P48
Jade shut her eyes but she couldn’t stop herself from hearing his mechanical grunts. When it was over, Hayashi pulled up his pants as if nothing had happened and walked away, followed by his men. - P47
Finally, she pulled off her silver ring and gave it to Chun, smiling wanly. - P39
All of her most expensive trinkets combined had meant far less to her than giving up this silver ring. But life had to be kept in balance: she had to do what actually felt like a sacrifice. She would gladly trade her life itself for the safety of the people she loved—the general, Luna, and Lotus. - P39
She had a very strange sensation like waking up after a long nap and not knowing whether it’s dusk or dawn. It was a little lapse in her one long, continuous, uneventful existence—a skipped heartbeat, the meaning of which was as yet unclear. - P42
A creeping sense of malaise came over her. - P44
Such tales never told of women who didn’t want to become mothers, although there were plenty of these among courtesans, servants, unmarried girls, widows, and matrons who already had too many mouths to feed. These women also had to pray and eat bitter herbs to get their wish. - P50
I’d tried to get rid of her but her soul had clung to me by a thread. It’s an uncanny thing—inyeon. If it’s not meant to be, you can’t hold on to people no matter how hard you try. Some people you love deeply will turn into a stranger in an instant, if the inyeon has run its course. And sometimes people will be attached to you forever despite all likelihood. Lotus and I, our inyeon is deep and goes back further than this life. - P52
Jade felt that they each would have only half of a life, a single wing, which would not be truly complete unless they stood together side by side. - P55
Even worse, she was not even naturally curious: the books she liked best didn’t teach her something new, they talked of things that she al- ready understood just in a more beautiful way. Her imagination ran its circular course inside familiarities—a fountain rather than a river, particularly when it came to thinking about her own life. - P56
Next to her, Dani was staring willfully at the horizon, as though she could fly through the window by the force of her beauti- ful, opinionated eyes. - P56
Beyond this, there was a huge, freestand- ing stone arch topped with a blue-black tiled roof. Small stores and odd buildings huddled on its sides like puppies. - P57
And Jade did shiver with an inexplicable elation as the rickshaw passed under the arch and came out on the other side. - P57
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