Everyone in Huangzhong City must be assigned a law at eighteen. Palace means ruler, Shang means minister, Jiao means commoner, Zhi means affairs, and Yu means objects.
Yu are clones, legally considered objects. My little sister is an object.
Every Winter Solstice, strings descend from the sky and call your name in the voice of the person you love most.
If you answer, you can never come back.
This year, her name was on the list.
On the Law-Setting Platform, all five bells rang for me at once. The examiner glanced at me and assigned me to the Office of Law, where they dealt with people who broke the rules.
No one knew that on the Winter Solstice ten years ago, I had answered once.
Then the sky sent me back.
