Under Orders, Under Rain

What happens when a boy is taught to obey, and a girl is taught to endure?

This piece is not just about uniforms or umbrellas.
It is about how bodies are tailored by history,
how silence becomes a survival skill,
and how an island learns to wear its grief gracefully.

Under the same rain,
A boy and a girl walk side by side, but the storm they carry is never quite the same.

Boys and girls. Boys and girls.

We keep calling back and forth,

wandering back and forth,

observing back and forth,

thinking back and forth.

Their outerwear is a piece of fabric—carefully tailored, meticulously refined.

No one receives the same cut.

Some are handed gold-threaded silk, stitched with care;

others, the fraying remains of what little was left.

But on every body, the fabric sways differently—with its own rhythm, its own grace.

And the ones wearing them? All different,

never quite aligned.

Boys and girls. Boys and girls.

We seem unlike, yet somehow the same.

Sometimes, the fabric we wear may look the same—

but beneath the cloth, we are not.

Under the fabric are boys and girls.

But beneath the boys and girls—

there lies class, gender, identity.

“Boy” — a word that appears so ordinary,

sometimes a noun on the grass,

sometimes an adjective beneath a waterfall.

To the colonizer’s eye,

he is the ideal physique.

To the postcolonial world,

he is the freest soul.

So he becomes both despicable and unrestrained.

He is taught to be brave,

to be firm,

to fight back against uninvited emotions.

He is educated to fight for the nation,

to serve the people.

But has the nation ever truly asked them what they want?

Even when people shout the name of their country out into the world,

their voices tremble—

as if still questioning whether it is a country at all.

To serve the nation—

it pierces like a spell, sharp and unshakable,

yet slowly draws the boys into the mouth of self-doubt.

It lingers, too, like a mother’s home-cooked meal,

repeating itself quietly in the corners of a boy’s mind,

long after the warmth has faded.

The boy still has no answer—

but that is not his fault.

The nation itself does not know,

the politicians know even less.

So what, then, is the boy supposed to know?

What are we waiting for?

To live at the clash of eras—

it is not glorious.

It is only the retreat and approach of two empires,

the fall of one, the rise of another.

But the boys were never given a choice.

Day after day, they handed their bodies over to the empire,

but entrusted their souls to the island,

to the sea,

to the mountains.

Because there were echoes of childhood laughter, the sounds of running and roughhousing with friends.

It was the beginning of freedom,

and the last place where its warmth could still be found.

As the boys grew older, they left their families— No.

They were forced apart.

That parting held no smiles,

no softness,

no warmth.

Only sorrow.

Only rage.

Only thought.

The moment a boy lifts his military cap,

and wears the empire’s brightest uniform,

the world falls silent.

Silent— as if someone might die at any moment.

Flowers die.

Spring dies.

The earth dies.

And memory dies with them.

The world has always known:

the empire lies to its boys and girls.

But it never planned to tell them.

What you don’t know is this—

In this world of silence,

only the boy’s soul and body

are forbidden to die.

Even if the empire collapses,

the boys will remain.

To the empire,

they are the perfect hands to help build the next one.

A lifelong pawn.

“You are only a player who will never move the world,” —that is the label boys place upon themselves.

They appear to hold power— at the center, over women, over family—

but under the colonizer’s eye,

they are the ones most controlled.

The best oarsmen to row someone else’s war,

the most suitable targets for the empire’s arrows.

This island—covered in bacteria, wrapped tightly in loneliness— has never been normal.

Not for the past two hundred years,

and not for the hundred yet to come.

The only ones who think it is,

are the tyrants

who arrived bearing power.

The boys and girls never had a choice.

So the boys died in sacrifice;

and the girls became widows.

The islanders never truly asked:

What are we protecting the nation from?

What are we saving it for?

The boys who put on the uniforms,

who wore the empire’s cap— they never knew who they were fighting for.

Perhaps it can only be understood on the battlefield.

But I am not a boy.

So I have no right to say more,

and no power to change it.

The islanders know everything—

and yet, they say nothing.

Even when they speak, you’ll still hear some of them— those who dream of a Chinese empire— saying the most divided things.

And I can’t argue with them,

because the islanders truly are living under an imperial regime.

Buried alive.

Eroding slowly.

Aging slowly.

Withering slowly.

The islanders have no strength left to fight back.

So we write, we sing, we lie on the grass, we swim in the sea— to comfort ourselves that we once moved through this stretch of history,

so that the river of time will not wash us away completely.

Playing dumb is how islanders survive beneath the regime’s core values.

Beneath our smiles lies the sharpest blade.

We’ve learned to hide,

to retreat,

to stop speaking.

Shhh—don’t talk about politics.

That’s what islanders call peace.

And you’ll never understand.

What the boy carries—

is not just conscription.

It’s a question:

Whose nation is it?

Girl” — a word just as ordinary.

Sometimes a noun in the ocean,

sometimes an adjective in the forest.

Girls are taught to be gentle,

obedient,

considerate,

good.

To the colonizer, they shine brightest—

masters of desire, yet the deepest wounds of an era.

The empire never once treated them with tenderness.

Girls, like boys, offered their bodies to the empire.

But their hearts— they kept for themselves.

They never trust anyone.

Don’t blame them for being cold.

Because their wounds never heal.

And so,

they cannot give you their hearts.

She is the empire’s softener,

the mother of suspended wars,

the music that lives in the heart of the islanders.

She is placed there—

to be toyed with, manipulated by the empire.

And yet,

to the boys,

to the people,

she is the lily in their hearts.

When the girl takes out that old photograph at home,

corners yellowed with time, but still clearly the first picture taken with him— it becomes her only way to forget,

just for a moment, that the boy is long gone.

In that moment,

she remembers only the kiss he left on her forehead—

gentle, careful,

the final mark of farewell.

It is a dream she can never reach,

yet the most real possession

her heart has ever known.

They call a woman’s heart

a needle at the bottom of the sea.

Because the girls know—

the boy will never return.

This departure

was the leaving of an entire era.

So from that day on,

they began to build fortresses of their own.

And the girl—

she shed her petals as a lily,

and grew thorns as a black rose.

Which only made her fall deeper.

And hurt more.

Contradiction—

it sways endlessly

between the boy and the girl.

It moves between them deliberately,

like a partner stepping into an old waltz.

One moment,

it stirs the boy’s cynicism;

the next,

it awakens the girl’s deepest despair.

And so the boy and the girl

turn on each other—

mercilessly,

as they continue to drift across the island.

The imbalance on the horizon deepens.

Under the same umbrella,

she and he no longer trust each other.

When winter comes,

the boy becomes the shape the empire taught him to be.

When spring returns,

the girl becomes the version the empire assigned her to play.

So the boy puts on his uniform again.

And the girl, quietly at home,

takes out the old photograph once more—

forever mourning the boy she once knew.

So the boy and the girl drift further and further apart.

And still—

they do not know who began this tragedy.

The boy does not know who his obedience serves,

who his sacrifice is for.

The girl does not know why she obeys the boy,

nor what her submission is meant to mean.

They still do not know.

But the islanders—

they have always known.

And yet,

no one ever whispered the truth

to the boy and the girl.

Because under the empire,

the people are not allowed to know too much.

Not even allowed the act of telling.

The empire is not our country.

It is a dream spun by history.

The boy obeyed to survive.

The girl obeyed out of longing.

Someday,

when the boy and girl reach the future,

they will come to understand—

because the islanders have been guarding their love all this time,

and guarding their freedom too.

And on that day,

there will be no more empire.

No more standard forms,

no more assigned frames.

Only the ruins of what once was.

And we—

we will begin writing our own boy and girl.

Then,

the boy will no longer wear a uniform and cap,

but a soft white T-shirt,

and the same baseball cap worn by everyone, freely.

The girl will no longer wear the role of a good wife.

She will shed the shell the world gave her,

and dress instead in soft white lace

and a sharp sapphire blazer.

Boy and girl.

Boy and girl.

They will no longer be lonely,

no longer hesitate.

Because this time—

their bodies and souls

will be truly, entirely returned to them.

And this time,

they will not meet in a certain season,

on a certain street corner,

but at the temple,

where they both once reached

for the same umbrella.

Yu-An Huang (Lillian)