The gun in my jeans weighs tons. My hands are in my pockets, trembling like a dog spooked by a foghorn. Shivering and burning from the power of the metal.
I’ve carried the same gun for two years, but this is the first time I’ve pulled the trigger. The first time I’ve fired a weapon since the night that changed everything. I had no choice. I had to fire it. Unleash a shot that tore the air apart, unraveled every nerve in my body at once.
My emotions are like pounds of overcooked rice noodles. Spilling everywhere. Impossible to gather back together again. I blame them for my split-second decision to bring Jin back here.
Of course, if I were following my old rules, I would’ve stayed out of the alley altogether. Kept walking with my head down. Let nature run its course, the way it did when Kuen pounded Lee’s face in.
But, like Jin said himself, he’s special. I need him.
Questions are all over the kid’s face when we stop at the gated door. Of course he always thought I was a vagrant, surviving on drug runs and luck. A persona I’m now shattering by pulling oil-stained keys out of my pocket.
The door to my apartment building is identical to almost every other door in this city. It’s barred, crammed between a seafood restaurant packed with smoking diners and a dimly lit noodle-maker’s shop. First I unlock the gate, then the door behind it.
“This… this is your home?” The boy blinks.
Home. The word fills me with an ache. I shove the door open with a rusty squeal. The stairwell behind it never really grows less ugly. Its walls are soaked with water, crumbling like a sand castle on its last legs. A few years ago someone decided to paint them green, but only patches have lasted. Even those are peeling off in rot and curls, like a snake shedding dead skin.
Not home. Never home.
“I’m just staying here awhile.” My answer climbs the steep, narrow stairs.
Jin follows in silence, but I can still feel his questions. The apartment, the gun, the money for these things… none of them add up in his mind. Not that they should; my story isn’t the easiest equation.
Maybe it was a mistake to bring him back here. Tsang would certainly have my head for it. He’d call it something like a “leak” or a “compromise.” But Tsang’s an asshole, and there’s no way I was going to leave the kid stranded in that alley. Not with Kuen’s wolf pack circling, waiting for my gun to disappear.
The old rules are changing.
We climb the thirteen stories to the second gate. I unlock the door and let him in.
I try to see the apartment through Jin’s eyes. A single room covered in yellowing coin-size tiles and more peeling green paint. No decorations, furniture, or food. The only signs that a person lives here at all are my pile of essentials in the corner and the charcoal marks on the far wall.
Jin steps into the room, cradling that cat like a little girl would hold a doll. He shucks off his boots and stares at the emptiness. His feet make soft sticking noises on the tiles as he walks over to the window where the veranda is and looks out. The window and its veranda are the only things I don’t absolutely hate about this apartment. Every once in a while a breeze will dip down from the open sky, and around noon there’s a crescent of sunlight that hits the tiles.
But, like every other veranda in every other Hak Nam apartment, mine is covered in bars. They’re supposed to keep thieves out, but on my darker days all I see is the cage that’s keeping me in.
“You’re not a vagrant, then.” Jin turns, lets the cat down. I can feel my nose starting to itch. Damn allergies.
“Never said I was.”
“But if you don’t work for the Brotherhood or a gang… how did you get this apartment? What do you do?”
What do I do? What a question. I feel like I’m taking an exam, holding my pencil over a row of bubble answers. Trying to pick the best one.
A) Stay awake for days at a time to avoid my own nightmares.
B) Sit on the edge of Hak Nam’s rooftops, waiting for a wind that’s strong enough.
C) Always wear my hoodie so I never have to see the scar on my arm.
D) Lie to a beautiful, desperate girl to save my own skin.
The truth is all over this list, but none of the choices is the best answer. So I write in my own half-truth, cheat a little. “You know. I’m a runner. Freelancer. I find jobs and take them. Or give them to people like you.”
He’s looking around again, eyes as wide as the cat’s. They scour this place like my grandmother’s willow broom, picking apart every groove in every tile. It’s odd how I feel like so much is hiding here when the only things that are mine are the T-shirts and jeans and jacket stacked in the corner. And, of course, because it’s the one place I don’t want him to be, the cat plants his pounds of fur and dander straight on the folded fabric. I’ll be gracing the world with my nasal linings for months.
“By all means”—I glare at the cat—“make yourself comfortable.”
The animal yawns—white fangs, sandpaper tongue—and stretches as long as he can over my jacket. Jin ignores him. His stare is on the far wall, where the charcoal marks grin at us like rows of rotten teeth.
“What are all those lines?”
I look to where he’s pointing and remember that I don’t have months. Just days. Thirteen. It’s not a tight number, but it certainly feels that way when I think about it, squeezing like a rope around my neck. I bring a hand to my throat. “It’s a… calendar. Of sorts.”
Jin’s eyes grow thin with study. His head tilts just a few degrees. “Who are you?”
More bubbles. More terrible, true choices.
A) Not a good person.
B) A selfish bastard.
C) A murderer.
D) A liar.
E) All of the above.
There’s no writing in this answer.
I look at the kid again. Ever since I pulled the trigger, my whole body has been on pins and needles, waiting for my brother’s ghost to shine through. But Jin’s face stays Jin’s. Though some of the fierceness is gone. His expression is softer, less like that of a tiger about to maul my face off and more like a pampered shih tzu’s.
Something about the way he’s standing feels off. I can’t seem to place it. Maybe it’s the smear of still-bright blood on his shirt. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t like him asking. I don’t want him looking at me like he looked at the room, trying to pick me apart and figure me out. Finding the dirt between the cracks.
“Sun Dai Shing,” I tell him. All of the above.
“Sun,” he repeats my family name. It echoes over the marked tiles, through the window, to the bars. Ties my past and my present prison into a neat little bundle.
I walk over to my pile of stuff, like I could actually run from the fading sounds. The cat doesn’t move, just voices his opinion loudly when I root through the things. There’s a first aid kit somewhere in here. A scarlet pouch with a white cross crammed full of things I never use. (Tweezers and tongue depressors don’t do much when your hurts are inside.)
“What’s that?” Jin blinks at the pouch.
“Let me see your hand.” I nod at the kid’s fist. It’s clenched against his chest, tight as a furled poppy. He offers it slowly. Fingers blooming to show the still-oozing gash striped across his lifeline. An ill omen, my grandmother would have called it.
“It’s not bad.”
Not bad. The cut is so deep I’m surprised the kid can still bend his fingers. He needs stitches and a tetanus shot. Not some flimsy cloth and a bottle of peroxide.
But they’re all I have.
The peroxide fizzes and foams over Jin’s cut like a rabid wolf. It has to hurt like a bitch, but the kid’s face stays tough. Under this light, I can see all his other scars, spreading up his arm like lace. Some are shiny and white. Others, angry and red. Just like mine.
But Jin probably didn’t deserve his marks.
I wrap the gauze tight and knot the fraying ends. Jin eyes the bandage, flexes his hand in and out. In and out.
“Try not to move it,” I tell him.
“It’s fine.” He clenches his hand into a fist again. Tough as nails.
I wish I could be fixed that easily.
“Right. Well, it’s late. We should crash. Pick a spot anywhere. If you can move the king from his perch over there, you’re welcome to use my jacket as a pillow.”
I reach out and flick the light switch. The room pitches into a startling darkness. I can’t see Jin’s scars anymore. Or the lines on the wall.
“Dai?” Jin’s whisper is light and high. Not like him at all.
“What?”
There’s a pause as I fumble through the dark to the center of my room.
“Thanks.”
You’re welcome. The answer sticks inside my throat like an octopus tentacle. I can’t bring myself to say it. Not when I know the real reason I did all these things.
Tonight I don’t bother unzipping my hoodie and using it as a pillow. I lie flat on the floor, curl my knees up to my chest. In my mind I map out where the wall with the marks is. I turn my back to it.