The Correction

Ken spun around.

They were there. They had separated—or mimicked separation. They stood in a semi-circle in the courtyard, blocking his path back to the stairs. They looked normal again. Uncle Liu was smoking a cigarette. Wei was checking his phone.

But their spacing was too perfect. Mathematically equidistant.

Popo stood in the center. She walked toward him. Her movement was too smooth, a glide rather than a step, as if she were being pulled along a track.

"The gate is stuck," Ken choked out. He backed up until his spine hit the rough wood of the door. "I... I have to go. Emergency at work. In America."

"America," Popo said. The word sounded like an insult. "You are always running to America. But you are not American, Kenny. Look at your face."

"I want to leave!" Ken shouted.

"Why?" Popo stopped five feet away. "You are lonely there. We can feel it. You walk through your city and you feel... detached. You speak your language, but you do not feel the words. You are a ghost in your own life."

Ken trembled. "How do you know that?"

"Because you are broken," Popo said gently. "You are a fragmented file. An incomplete circuit."

She took another step.

"Stay back!" Ken grabbed a heavy bronze incense burner from a nearby altar table. He held it like a club. "I swear to god, stay back!"

Popo smiled. It wasn't the benevolent smile from dinner. It was a look of profound, terrifying pity.

"You don't need to be lonely," she said. And then, she switched languages.

"We can fix you, Kenny."

It was perfect English. It was *Californian* English. It was the exact cadence and accent of Ken’s own internal monologue.

"We can make you whole," she continued, her voice warping, sounding like two people speaking at once. "No more anxiety. No more wondering if you are Chinese enough. No more pretending. You just... let go."

"You're a monster," Ken wept.

"I am family," Popo said.

Then, her face split.

There was no blood. A seam opened from the top of her forehead to her chin, peeling back like the rind of an orange. Underneath, there was no skull. There was just wet, red clay, pulsing with a heartbeat that shook the floor.

"Join the circle," the clay whispered.