It was a winter soaked in gunpowder and dust.

Lin Yue sat by the window, her fingertips lightly brushing over the velvet dance shoes that had grown slightly yellow from long disuse. They lay quietly in the display case, like two dried cicada shells. If she closed her eyes, she could almost still hear the final moment of tranquility before the explosion—the collective breath-holding silence of the entire theater, followed by the roar of heavy artillery tearing through the air, and that sharp, ear-shattering sound of metal and bone fracturing.

Now, there was only the wailing sound produced by the city ruins trembling in the wind.

She attempted to stand up, her movements extremely slow. As she crossed the threshold, her left leg muscles would subconsciously tense, attempting to find a sense of support that had long since ceased to exist. That was her left leg, which had “disappeared” along with a burst of flame and rolling thick smoke on that cursed afternoon. The current stump was wrapped in thick compression socks, forcibly supported by an artificial structure to maintain a silhouette that could barely bear her weight.

She walked to the mirror. The woman in the mirror was pale, with a thin scar at the corner of her eye—a mark left by flying debris at the time. She attempted a basic “pushing palm” movement, her arms elegantly sweeping over her head. However, when she tried to shift her center of gravity to the left, preparing for a light rotation, her fractured sense of balance instantly collapsed.

She stumbled, losing her balance and hitting the wall behind her, failing to even make a sound.

Because she had lost that pivot point of supporting strength, her core muscles were always in a state of high tension, as if every second was a struggle against the fall brought by gravity. She could no longer complete complex rotations; even standing steadily until the last minute had become a luxury.

She closed her eyes and danced in her mind. There, she was still at the center of the stage, toes touching the ground, light as a feather, with no more pain from fractures, no more coldness from the wheelchair, only the desperate and noble elegance struggled out from amidst the rubble.

The slight creak of that titanium alloy brace in the dead of night was the only rhythm in Elena’s life.

Once, her world was composed of the lightness of toes touching the ground and the ascent during rotations. In those days, the air was filled with the scent of rosin powder, and every leap felt as if it were breaking free from the shackles of gravity. Now, the air held only the stale smell of plaster and the endless, gray vista of ruins outside the window.

When the last shell exploded against the side wing of the theater, she didn’t hear a loud bang, but rather an extremely long, tearing silence. Subsequently, the sensation that once belonged to her left leg vanished, replaced by a void of nothingness, scorched by fire.

The current Elena lives precariously within the crevices of post-war ruins. She still attempts to practice, but it is no longer art; it is more like a silent protest against a broken body. Every morning, her hands tremble as she buckles that cold metal prosthesis onto her residual limb. The dull ache of metal rubbing against skin is like a nail, constantly reminding her: the girl who could dance upon that slender ribbon died in that great fire.

Sitting on a wobbling wooden chair, she gazes at the thin figure in the mirror. She attempts an “Arabesque,” but when she tries to support her weight on one leg, the cold brace strikes the wooden floor with a heavy, piercing thud. The sound does not resemble dance; it sounds like a withered bone tapping against a coffin lid.

She stares at the half-broken dead tree outside the window, tears welling in her eyes but never falling. She is not crying for the loss of her leg; she is despairing over the loss of that subtle vibration, the friction with the earth that she can no longer feel.

Rainwater meandered down the broken window glass, gathering into murky little puddles on the floor. Lin Wan stood before the full-length mirror, her gaze not focused on the face of the woman in the black tight-fitting practice gear, but fixed intently on that empty pant leg. There, her most proud “swan leg” once connected; now, only a smooth scar at the stump and a faint scent of rust in the air remained—the sole memorial left by the unexploded stray bullet that tore through her right knee in the theater backstage last year.

She took a deep breath, attempting to mobilize her entire musculature to recall the opening of Act I of Swan Lake. Her left foot rose onto its toes, her center of gravity shifted slowly, and her body tilted accordingly. In that moment, the world became terrifyingly quiet, with only the sound of her heart thumping violently in her chest. However, as inertia pushed her center of gravity toward the right, the strength that should have been steadily caught by her right leg suddenly vanished into thin air. A sense of imbalance rushed in like a tide; she instinctively reached for the nearby barre, but the moment her fingertips touched the cold wood, she fell heavily onto the damp, cold floor.

There was no heart-wrenching wail, nor any hysterical struggle. Lin Wan just lay there quietly, watching the peeling paint on the ceiling layer upon layer, like the soil in a trench. She could even feel the soreness in her left ankle from overcompensating, a protest from her body against the missing part, and a mockery of her once-graceful steps. Outside the window, the distant air-raid sirens had long since ceased, replaced by the sounds of children playing across the street, chasing paper airplanes with laughter that was crisp and blissfully unaware of sorrow.

Lin Wan slowly raised her hand to wipe away the moisture on her face—was it physiological tears or rainwater? She couldn’t tell. She struggled to get up, her joints making faint clicking sounds. She walked to the piano in the corner, her fingers hovering above the keys but failing to descend. The post-war city was permeated with a scorched-earth silence; she had lost not just a leg, but the self that could embrace the wind amidst a spin. In these days of reconstruction, every breath felt like excavating through ruins—painful and long—but she knew that as long as she remained standing, even if limping, there would eventually be a day to dance again.

At five in the morning, the sound of rain outside the window was like an unending drumbeat, tapping against the old glass panes of the apartment. Lin Wan opened her eyes, instinctively wanting to spring from the bed to perform a standard “Grand Jeté,” but the cold prosthesis of her left leg pinned her firmly to the mattress, dragging her heavily back to reality.

She stared at the water stains on the ceiling, which had once been her focal point during spins, but were now merely a blur of grayness. On the wooden floor beside the bed, her heavily worn pink pointe shoes lay quietly, their tips stained with long-dried mud—the trace left by her final performance before the war, and the epitaph of her complete farewell to the stage.

Lin Wan sat up slowly, her fingers trembling as she buckled the metal clasps of the prosthesis. With every touch, the friction between metal and skin brought a sharp phantom pain, as if the leg blown away was still screaming within her nerve endings. She stood up by leaning against the wall, her center of gravity forced to tilt to the right, her body presenting a sickly, asymmetrical beauty. The woman in the mirror was pale, with deep-set eyes; the former “Swan” now resembled a bird with broken wings still attempting to fly, clumsy and heartbreaking.

The walk to the kitchen was only three steps away, but to Lin Wan, it felt like a grueling trek across a trench. She had to calculate the distance of every step, every shift of her center of gravity, and even the rhythm of her breathing to ensure that the heavy metal leg would not cause her to fall. When the kettle boiled and let out a sharp whistle, she felt a wave of dizziness. In that moment, the smell of gunpowder seemed to permeate the air again; the roar of explosions overlapped with the sound of boiling water, nearly suffocating her.

She picked up her coffee cup, her hand shaking violently. The brown liquid splashed onto the back of her hand, leaving a red burn that was nothing compared to a fraction of the pain in her heart. Outside, the city’s reconstruction was underway; the roar of cranes drowned out the birdsong of days past. Lin Wan looked at her reflection in the glass, attempting to mimic a spinning movement from her memory, but a tearing pain shot through her ankle. She stopped, took a deep breath, and swallowed the sob that was about to burst forth. Life had to go on, even if it was shattered, even if every breath tasted of rust.

In the third month after the ceasefire, posters were hung again at the theater entrance.

Lin Wan, leaning on a wooden cane, walked slowly from across the street. In the poster, she still had two long legs, her white tulle skirt billowing in mid-air, her toes as light as if landing on a patch of snow that would never sink. The wind lifted the corner of the paper, repeatedly slapping against the wall. She did not stop; she only saw her own empty left pant leg in the reflection of the shop window, swaying slightly in the twilight.

She lived in a surviving old building behind the theater. There were forty-three steps in the staircase, and she counted them every day. When she reached the twenty-seventh step, the wooden cane would hit a cracked tile, making a crisp sound, like a conductor tapping a beat in a rehearsal hall. Previously, she always complained the tempo was too slow; now, she had to wait for her breath to catch up before she dared take another step.

There were no mirrors in her room. The only one she had was covered with an old bedsheet, upon which sat a pair of faded ballet shoes. The sole of the right shoe was worn thin, while the left one still maintained its shape from before the last performance, its ribbons neatly tucked into the shoe body. In the morning, she would boil a pot of water, water the mint on the windowsill, and then sit in her chair, resting her right leg on a horizontal bar. The landlord had nailed the bar for her using a discarded window frame; it was two inches too high, but she never said a word.

The children downstairs often imitated her dancing in the open space. They didn’t know about en pointe; they would only spread their arms and spin, their feet clicking against the broken bricks. A little girl with a red hair tie came to knock on her door every day, asking when she would return to the theater. Lin Wan always said, “When the floor is repaired.”

In truth, the floor had long been repaired.

That evening, the sound of a piano drifted from the theater. Sitting on the twenty-seventh step of the stairs, she laid her cane across her knees. The music traveled through the walls, playing the part where the leap begins, only to stop abruptly. She lifted her right foot, extending her instep, her toe suspended in mid-air. The hallway light had been broken for a long time; no one saw her hold that pose until the distant clock struck nine.

In the third spring after the ceasefire, Lin Yan still woke up every morning at five.

The street outside was washed bright by last night’s rain; the repaired walls still bore bullet holes, like a row of scabbed black moles. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she first reached for the prosthesis resting by the chair, then for her dance shoes. The satin shoes were old, their toes repeatedly mended with needle and thread, looking like two white birds refusing to die.

She only wore the left one.

After her right leg was amputated above the knee, the hospital nurse returned that shoe to her. The toe was dusty, and tiny shards of glass were embedded in the laces. Lin Yan washed it clean, dried it, and tucked it into the deepest part of her drawer. She did not throw it away, as if as long as that shoe remained, her right foot was merely late, rather than gone forever.

The kitchen kettle began to whistle. She hobbled over with her crutch, her movements so practiced they were almost elegant: the tip of the cane hits the floor, the left foot follows, and the body leans slightly forward. Neighbors often praised her for “recovering so well,” and she would simply smile. No one saw her skin chafed at the residual limb when she removed the prosthesis at night; no one heard her lowering her voice to count the beats while pausing in the stairwell—one, two, three, four—as if waiting for a piece of music that would never play.

Breakfast was half a slice of black bread and a cup of coffee so pale it was almost white. She tuned her radio to the classical music channel, which happened to be playing Swan Lake. As the music began, her shoulders instinctively opened, and her arms rose slowly, tracing arcs in the cramped kitchen. The window glass reflected her thin silhouette: one leg supporting the entire weight, while the other pant leg hung empty.

When the music reached the thirty-second octave, the sound of a demolition crew’s blast came from outside.

The cup slipped from her hand, shattering on the floor. Lin Yan froze, her face whiter than the walls. It was a long time before she bent down to pick up the fragments. She did not cry; she simply placed every porcelain shard neatly into a paper bag, as if collecting the missing parts of a body from the ruins.

At six in the morning, the city was still immersed in an unawakened layer of grayish-blue. Lin Zhi pulled back the curtains, first seeing the glassless building opposite hers, then the new wild grass growing on its rooftop. The wind blew through the gaps, carrying coal smoke, moisture, and the scent of a distant bakery, like a hesitant hand stroking every scar left by the war.

She sat on the edge of the bed and unfastened the hem of her pajama pants. Her left leg stopped below the knee, wrapped in a thin layer of cotton. The prosthesis leaned against the wall, its metal joints turned pale by the morning light. Lin Zhi did not immediately reach for it; instead, she placed her right foot on the floor, pointing her toes and arching her instep into the curve she knew best.

In the past, she began her training every day just like this. Toes, heels, knees, back straight, breath tucked between the ribs. She had once danced Swan Lake on the brightest stage of the theater, her skirt blooming like a white flower on water during spins. The applause of the audience would surge from the darkness, and she always thought that sound could support a person, ensuring they would never fall.

The explosion happened one afternoon. She was crossing the plaza, carrying freshly bought oranges. After the roar, the world was nothing but white. Later, someone told her she had been unconscious for eleven days; someone else said the doctors had done their best. When she woke up, her first words were not asking if the war had ended, but asking, “Where are my shoes?”

Now, the theater had become a temporary warehouse, and half of the ballet school’s mirrored walls were shattered. She found a recruitment notice in an old newspaper: The Citizens’ Recovery Center is recruiting dance teachers; the salary is meager, and applicants must travel there themselves.

Lin Zhi secured her prosthesis, the pain slowly crawling up her bone. She gripped the wall to stand, her body swaying like a bird that had forgotten how to take flight. Outside the window, people clearing ruins pushed wheelbarrows past, the wheels grinding over stones with a monotonous, hard sound.

She grabbed her worn dance shoes and suddenly remembered she still had one foot that could rise onto its toes. So, she opened the door and headed toward the stairs.

At six in the morning, the city’s bell tower had not yet been repaired, leaving only a charred, blackened spire sticking out of the mist. Lin Zhi was already awake. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she buckled the straps of her prosthesis one by one, her movements as light as when she used to tie the ribbons of her dance shoes. The sound of a van passing on the gravel road drifted in from outside; whenever the wheels hit the edge of a shell crater, there was a short, jarring bump. She paused, waiting for the sound to fade, before reaching for the old wooden box at her bedside.

Inside the box lay a pair of pink pointe shoes, their tips worn white, their soles still holding traces of rosin powder. She did not wear them; she only brushed the surface with her fingertips and then closed the lid, like closing an unsent letter.

The neighbors downstairs had already begun queuing for water. Lin Zhi picked up two empty jugs and leaned against the railing as she slowly descended. At the corner between the third and second floors, there was a crack in the wall, looking like a crooked river. She passed it every day, occasionally remembering the murals on the theater ceiling, which had cracked in much the same way. That day, she had been standing in the center of the stage, the music just reaching its third movement, when the lights suddenly dimmed, and then the world was swallowed by white. When she woke, she heard someone calling her name, the voice muffled by thick dust, as if coming from underwater.

Beside the water station, children were drawing grids on the ground with chalk, hopping around on one leg. A little girl recognized her and asked timidly, “Did you used to be a dancer?”

Lin Zhi smiled and switched the jugs to her other hand. “I did.”

“What about now?”

She did not answer immediately. In the distance, the broadcast from the temporary school began, playing etudes intermittently, the notes drifting between broken walls and clotheslines. She saw her shadow fall on the ground, one side long, the other short, swaying in the sunlight. After a long while, she finally said, “Now, I am learning too.”

At six in the morning, the bell tower of the old South City Theater appeared slightly grayish-white in the thin mist, like a piece of bone dulled by time. As Lin Cheng pushed open the attic window, the first horn of a bread delivery van had just sounded on the street. She leaned her crutch against the wall, first steadying herself with both hands on the window frame, then slowly moving her body onto the floor. The void where her left leg should be was hidden within her loose training pants, like a melody that had been quietly clipped away. She never looked at it, yet she could always feel its absence in every movement.The steam in the washbasin dissipated quickly. She splashed cold water on her face; the face in the mirror remained young, but there was an indelible layer of gray beneath her eyes, like dust left behind by war, settled deep within her skin. The bakery downstairs had already opened, its aroma creeping up the stairwell gaps bit by bit. She used to love this scent most, because during rehearsal breaks, the girls from the dance troupe would crowd backstage to share warm sweet rolls; now, she often only buys a small piece of black bread, breaking it in half—saving one half for the evening and chewing the other slowly until it loses all flavor.

She went to the market in the morning. The road was not long, yet she had to stop three times. The old woman selling vegetables recognized her and always tucked an extra potato into the bag, like an inadvertent act of mercy. When Lin Cheng thanked her, she always kept her head low, fearing the gazes falling upon her—like dust floating silently in a darkened old theater stage, refusing to settle. She was once the lightest person in the ballet troupe, able to leap in the final eight counts as if to leave the ground; now, she has learned to calculate the weight of every step on the cobblestone road, learned not to let the pain show on her face, and learned to say “I’m fine” as naturally as breathing.

When she returned to the attic, she paused at the door for a long time. The pair of old dance shoes still sat on the trunk, their toes worn white and ribbons curled, like two silent wings. She sat down, slowly tightening the laces of her right shoe, then looked out the window at the street that had been reconstructed by artillery fire. The laughter of children drifted from afar, as light as a performance that hasn’t yet begun. Lin Cheng did not stand up immediately. She simply pressed her hands on her knees, listening to the bell downstairs tolling one beat after another, as if reminding her: some lives have already taken their final bow, while for others, they must continue to stand beneath the spotlight.

She can no longer open cans.

This was the first thing Su Li had to adapt to—not the prosthesis, not the empty pant leg, but the cans. Her left hand held the peach can while her right hand twisted; with no fulcrum for her body, her center of gravity shifted, and the can rolled under the table. She looked down at it for a while but did not pick it up.

It was raining outside. The third-floor window faced a parking lot rebuilt from ruins, where rainwater pooled in potholes like shattered mirrors reflecting a grayish-white sky. The explosion happened in April two years ago; when the wall of the theater’s backstage collapsed, she was tying the ribbons of her pointe shoes. Those shoes were never found later—or rather, only one was found.

The physical therapist was a very young girl, speaking in soft tones, always saying “Great job” and “One more time.” Su Li walked well in front of her: one step, two steps, a turn, holding onto the railing. The therapist said, “Your sense of balance is much stronger than most people’s.” Su Li smiled. Of course. At sixteen, she could stand thirty-two turns within a single square centimeter.

She no longer listens to music. After the radio broke, it wasn’t repaired, and the playlists on her phone were deleted clean. Once in the supermarket, Tchaikovsky played on the broadcast; she stood before the freezer holding her shopping cart until a clerk came over to ask if she needed help. She said she didn’t, then pushed the cart to another aisle and bought three bags of frozen dumplings she didn’t need at all.

The prosthesis was made in Germany, very expensive, donated by a foundation. Metal and carbon fiber; the interface rubbed her skin red. She gave it a name but never told anyone. When she couldn’t sleep at night, she would think of the severed leg—not remembering the pain, but remembering how it looked stretched straight in the air, the instep arched like the ending of a beautifully written sentence. The doctor said this is called phantom limb sensation and that it would slowly disappear.

She hopes it doesn’t disappear.

The children in the neighborhood sometimes stare at her. A boy of five or six asked quite directly: “Auntie, where is your leg?” She said, “It fell off.” The boy thought for a moment and said, “Then can you fly?”

Su Li was stunned.

That night when she returned home, she pulled open the curtains. The room was empty; the floor was old wood with one plank that creaked. She leaned against the wall to stand straight, stepped on it with her right foot, and slowly shifted her weight over.

The floorboard gave a creak.

She stood there, motionless for a long time.

Skip: Specific war background, supporting characters’ backstories, subsequent plot. Let me know if you want this expanded into a full chapter.

Her left leg remained beneath the ruins on that rainy night in 1943. Now, in the third year, she sits by the window sewing clothes for children; her fingers are still slender and nimble, as if they still remember the strength required to hold pointe shoe ribbons.

The sound of an accordion drifted from downstairs; it was the old soldier next door playing a waltz. Her right foot instinctively tapped the beat lightly on the floor, yet that empty pant leg hung motionless beside the chair leg. She glanced down and quickly averted her eyes—a movement she has repeated countless times, like a ritual to remind herself not to look, not to think.

The mirror still hangs on the wall, an old object left from before the war, its frame carved with intricate patterns. She hasn’t stood before the mirror for a long time. Not because she is afraid of seeing that leg, but because she is afraid of seeing her own eyes—those eyes that once shone brilliantly under the spotlight, now possessing only a kind of exhaustion she does not recognize.

Misha, the boy from the bakery downstairs, brings a piece of black bread every evening, leaving it at the door and walking away without saying much. She knows he used to watch her dance Swan Lake from the back rows of the theater; that was the last season before the war. Once, he mustered the courage to ask if she would ever dance again. She smiled and said that with leg injuries, there is always a way, things will always get better.

She did not tell him that last night she had a dream: she was wearing pointe shoes, spinning and spinning in the snow. The music stopped for a long time, but she kept turning, turning until that leg grew back, turning until she could finally live lightly and without reason, just as before.

When she woke, the sky outside was just beginning to dawn. On the old piano sat a photo of her at seventeen, wearing a white dance dress, smiling heartlessly. She reached out, flipped the photo face down, and picked up her needle and thread.

Fragments

The rain outside has started again. Maria sits in her wheelchair, looking at the closed dance studio across the street. Her promotional photo from three years ago is still stuck to the glass door—a whole woman, under the spotlight, pointing her toes toward the sky.

She hasn’t looked at that photo for a long time.

Her morning ritual is always the same. She wakes up at six; this is the gift the war left her—a biological clock that no longer needs an alarm. That was when the explosions were loudest. Even now, far from the war zone, her body still tenses at this hour in her sleep, as if waiting for a second shockwave.

She washes up and changes into clean clothes; these small movements take three times longer than before. In front of the mirror, she no longer avoids her reflection. The prosthesis leans against the bed, pale skin-colored silicone and carefully adjusted spring mechanisms. She gave it a name—“Claude”—as if it were a strange guest rather than a part of her own body.

“Good morning, Claude,” she says softly, her tone mixed with sarcasm and a strange kind of tenderness.

Today she is going to the physical therapy clinic. The hallway is filled with people like her: their missing body parts are all different, but the look in their eyes is exactly the same—a look of having learned how to continue surviving. The therapist tells her to try balancing, to try walking, to try believing that this metal joint pinned to her knee will flex and extend like a real knee.

She has tried. Many times.

In the afternoon, she sits in a cafe, a cup of hot tea growing colder before her. A young girl at the next table is wearing dance attire, with ballet shoe ribbons peeking out of her schoolbag. Maria watches her for too long, until the girl feels the gaze and turns around, her expression shifting from unawareness to unease, and then to a complex kind of sympathy.

In those moments, Maria turns her eyes away.

She does not want sympathy. What she wants is to know if her whole self can suddenly return at some moment. But she has already learned not to expect miracles. War taught her that the most real parts of life often appear the very moment you notice they are missing.

At night, she plays videos—recordings of herself dancing. On the screen, that version of Maria spins, leaps, and flies. Two legs, two complete legs. She presses pause over and over, studying the expressions on her face, wondering if the happiness then was real, or merely an illusion under the stage lights.

Outside, the rain continues to fall. And Maria continues to sit there, at some midpoint between her two selves, waiting for an answer.

The Mirror After the Rain

After the rain stopped, Lin Wan pushed the window open a crack. The soy milk cart downstairs had come out again; the clanging of the tin buckets sounded somewhat like the heating pipes in the theater’s backstage three years ago.

She sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing out the silicone sleeve on her prosthesis. Her movements were slow, like tying shoelaces before a rehearsal—except now, the laces were below the knee, and there was nothing there.

The kettle whistled in the kitchen. She pushed herself up against the wall to stand, landing her left leg first, then her right. The right leg remembered every arc: toes turned out, heel turned in. But the prosthesis had no arc, only the slight click of metal joints, tapping an unfamiliar rhythm on the wooden floor.

She boiled a bowl of noodles, without adding green onions. She used to hate the smell of green onions, saying it would ruin the fragrance of her stage makeup. Now, with only herself in the kitchen, whether there are onions or not makes no difference.

The afternoon sun slanted into the living room. In the corner stood a dusty dance shoe; its pink satin had faded to gray, the toe still maintaining the shape of its last time being pointed. She didn’t look at it, yet she knew it was there, just as she knew the calendar on the wall had turned to September—the performance season should have begun.

The phone vibrated on the coffee table. It was a reminder from the rehabilitation center: physical therapy at 3:00 PM. She replied with a single “OK” and flipped the phone over.

Before three, she changed into clothes for going out. The person in the mirror wore loose knit trousers, obscuring the outline of her left leg. She lifted her chin slightly toward the mirror—a habit from before going on stage. The person in the mirror looked back at her, eyes calm, but the corners of her mouth were slightly tight.

She picked up her bag and paused for a second at the door.

The laughter of children drifted through the hallway, running down the stairs and fading away. She took a deep breath and pushed the door open. The post-rain air smelled of soil and osmanthus. She walked down the steps, one step, then another. The rhythm was unsteady, but she did not stop.

The full text is approximately 520 words. The struggle is presented through daily details: the mechanical sensation of putting on the prosthesis, the residue of old habits, avoiding the dance shoes, using loose clothing to hide, the subconscious posture toward the mirror, and the one-second pause and unsteady gait when leaving the house. If you need to adjust the style (colder/more poetic) or length, please let me know.

The stone steps after the rain were still wet. Anna held onto the iron railing, probing her prosthesis down first; the rubber sole slipped slightly on the moss. She paused, waiting for that hollow sensation creeping up from her knee to pass, before following with her other foot.

The bakery lights were already on. She passes this window every day. Her reflection appeared in the glass: short hair, an old coat, and that unbending silhouette beneath her skirt. Meringue cakes were displayed in the window, as white as the walls of her former rehearsal hall. She did not go in. The coins in her pocket were only enough to buy half a loaf of rye.

The studio was on the third floor. The elevator had been broken for three months; no one repaired it. She counted the steps: thirty-seven, thirty-eight. On the thirty-ninth step, the prosthesis made a faint sound, like sand inside a bone. The door was open. The mirror was still there. Mirrors never leave a dance classroom, even if the classroom has been converted into a mending shop. In the corner lay piles of military coats donated by others, their cuffs worn and collars blackened by smoke. Anna sat down, placing her sewing kit on her leg—on the leg that remained.

She sews buttons for the children. The children do not dance. They come to pick up mended trousers; looking at her skirt, they sometimes ask: “Auntie, why don’t you show the other one too?” She smiles and bites through the thread. The thread end is coarse, tasting like the ribbons she used to bite open.

At noon, she opened the window. Someone on the opposite rooftop was drying bedsheets; the wind blew the white cloth up, making it look for a moment like a tutu. Anna’s hand froze mid-air. She did not reach for it. She simply watched the cloth fall, crumple into a ball, and be smoothed out again by a hand.

A pair of old pointe shoes still sat in the drawer. The toes had gone soft, and a thin layer of dust lay in the box. She occasionally opened it, not to wear them, but to confirm they were still there. Once confirmed, she closed it. Like swallowing a sentence back down.

In the evening, someone downstairs played an old record. It was Swan Lake. She did not close the window. With the prosthesis leaning against the chair leg, she tapped the beat on the edge of the table with her finger, one beat, then another. When she reached the part where she should have been spinning, her finger stopped. Someone passed by outside, their laughter very light. She listened to the end of the record, dimmed the lights, folded the empty pant leg neatly, and put it in the drawer—not to hide it, but just to let it sleep.

Tomorrow, she must go up to the third floor again. Count the steps again. Thread the needle through the buttonhole again. Life did not explode; it simply continued. And the continuation itself is already very heavy.

At six in the morning, the light in the attic was still a cold gray. Lin Na opened her eyes a second before the alarm went off, habitually pointing her toes—her right ankle traced a gentle arc in the air, but on the left, there was only the empty bedding trembling slightly in the breeze.

Two things sat on the nightstand: a box of damp, clumped rosin, and a metal prosthesis reflecting a cold light.

She pushed herself up from the edge of the bed; her right leg felt achy from bearing double the weight for years. Standing remained a long and silent struggle. As she put on the prosthesis, the dull pain of the strap sinking into the flesh of her residual limb made her bite her lower lip imperceptibly, but she did not pause, merely smoothing out her faded old practice clothes.

Beside the full-length mirror by the windowsill, those pointe shoes with worn satin hung quietly. The woman in the mirror held her back as straight as ever, her long neck and jawline slightly upturned—that elegance and pride etched into her very bones. But when she tried to turn to reach for the kettle on the stove, the prosthesis bearing made a harsh “click,” and her center of gravity shifted unexpectedly. She pressed hard against the table edge; the iron kettle tipped, and cold water dripped down the mottled corner of the table, striking the floor with a sluggish rhythm.

Lin Na did not wipe up the spill. She stood there, the severed nerves on her left side throbbing faintly, as if still caught in the illusion of smoke and thunder, stubbornly searching for the pivot point to spin and land. As the bustle of the market outside began to rise, she took a deep breath, readjusted her breathing and her center of gravity, and walked toward the stove step by step, as if waiting for the curtain to rise.

Lesson One

Before dawn, Lin Wan woke up. Her right leg throbbed under the quilt, the part below the knee—the doctor called it phantom limb pain. She did not reach out to touch it; she knew there were only empty sheets there.

The aroma from the bakery downstairs had already begun to drift. This building was rebuilt after the war, and the walls were thin; she could hear the sound of the proprietress pulling up the rolling shutter. Three years ago, this street was still a field of ruins. Three years ago, she was backstage at the theater at the end of this street, stuffing padding into the toes of her shoes.

She sat up, putting on the prosthesis first, then her pants. It took her three months of practice to get this sequence smooth. The prosthesis was provided by the government, made of hard plastic; the interface chafed her skin red, so she had padded her sock with a piece of old silk—cut from a performance costume.

Breakfast was a boiled egg and half a cup of milk. She ate very slowly. She used to eat slowly to control her weight; now, it was because she had nowhere to rush to.

At eight o’clock, she had to go to the community cultural center to teach. There were about a dozen students, the oldest being ten years old. The parents did not care whether she taught well or not; they just needed a place to leave their children for two hours. She did not care either; she needed the wages.

The classroom floor was concrete, covered with a thin layer of plastic mats. She had the children stand in a row, holding onto the wall.

“Heels together, toes apart.”

The children’s movements were crooked and uneven. One little girl stood on her tiptoes, wobbled, and burst into laughter. Lin Wan watched her wobbling ankle for a long time.

“Teacher, why don’t you demonstrate?”

“It is inconvenient for my leg,” she said, no longer pausing before the words.

“Did you used to be able to?”

She did not answer, turning instead to start the music. It was the second act of Swan Lake; the tape was a bit old, and the sound quality was muffled. As the prelude began, her right hand involuntarily rose, tracing half an arc before stopping mid-air. She lowered her hand and pressed against her pants pocket, where there was an old program folded into four, its edges softened by time. She did not take it out.

“One more time,” she said. “Heels together, toes apart.”

Outside the window, on the reconstructed streets, someone was flying a kite.