Kuai Liang looked around the room with darting eyes. Thin wooden walls were inset with plastic frames and steamed up glass windows. Moth-eaten lampshades hung from single stuttering bulbs and winked down at old sturdy furniture covered in patched worn quilts.
"There are so many… things!" He pulled open a draw in a bedside cabinet, then the door to the cupboard underneath. He tugged the switch on the lamp on top. He nudged a phone receiver and poked his finger in its coiled wire.
"Stop touching everything." His brother looked easy and comfortable as always. Kuai had to look very hard to see the details of uncertainty in his movements. His hand hovered a second before it picked up a suitcase and tossed it to the floor. A frown flickered in his brow as he unclipped its hinges and flung it open. His eyes squinted fractionally as he surveyed the little they had brought with them from the Temple; everything they possessed.
"So many things!" Kuai said again. He sat down on a low mattress on the floor. "A bed! Can we keep it, Bi-Han? Please? Please can we keep the bed?!" His bright blue eyes were wide and pleading.
"Yes! It's part of our cover, now shut up I need a second to think."
Kuai rolled like a rolling pin feeling the soft felt blanket under his cheek. He sat up when he remembered he was still angry at his brother. He folded his arms and folded his legs and screwed his up face and put out his lip. His brother was looking at his blue Lin Kuei uniform doubtfully, as if unsure what to do with it. He was so caught up in his own thoughts he did not have a spare glance for Kuai Liang. Kuai huffed, trying to get his attention. His own attention snapped away to a large fruit bowl on the kitchen table, visible through the doorway of the bedroom. He leapt up and ran into the kitchen. The bowl was too far for his small arms to reach, but he jumped onto the chair and dragged the bowl to him.
"Why is this table so big? Did they build it especially so that I can't reach it? Hey, Bi-Han, this is a melon, right?" He held up a green and yellow striped ball the size of his head.
"You're a melon."
"Bi-Han, is it a melon? Tell me!"
His brother did not turn round. Kuai sighed. He caught sight of a wooden rack of knives on the sideboard. He grabbed one and climbed back up to the table. He sat the melon down and cleaved it in two with one fine, clean, cut. The steel sheared the thick fruit skin but stopped a hairs breadth short of the table. The fruit split open and its two halves rocked left and right.
Bi-Han leapt for the wooden blinds and dragged them down the window.
"What did I tell you?!" He snapped.
Kuai looked pleased as he looked down at his handiwork,
"It is a melon! I can see from the inside! I never saw a whole one before."
"Kuai Liang!"
Kuai looked slowly up at his brother. His gaze slunk away again.
"...Not to show my training..."
"Because?!"
"Because it might give away your cover on this dumb mission." He rolled his eyes.
"Our cover. You are part of my cover, therefore if you are discovered to be an assassin in training, I am as well."
"I chopped one melon in half."
"Kuai Liang!"
Kuai hung his head, but he still scowled. Bi-Han picked up the knife and set it in the sink. He pulled up one of the kitchen chairs and sat opposite Kuai.
"Kuai Liang," He said again, but this time more gently, "I spent a long time persuading the Grandmaster to let me take you with me."
"Well I don't know why you bothered! I didn't want to come! And now I won't see Tomas for forever!"
"It's not forever, Kuai."
"It might not be to you, but it is to me! It might even be a year! I've only had ten of those in my entire life and I can't even remember some of them!"
"Exactly! There was no way I was going to leave you for a year!" Kuai quieted when he saw uncharacteristic emotion on his brother's face. "Now, I'm sorry you won't get to see your friend, but I'm giving you something important here. You can have a chance at a normal life. Learn things normal children learn, see the world outside of the Lin Kuei, if only for a short while."
"The Lin Kuei is my home," Kuai said a little sulkily. He was excited to see the world, but he was still angry. Tomas was the only friend he had beside his brother, and no one was really friends with their big brother when he was eight years older and could pick you up when you annoyed him.
"The Lin Kuei will poison you. You are the only member who does not remember ever living outside the clan. Apart from Sektor. You want to be like Sektor?"
Kuai shrunk into his chair and shook his head. Sektor was aloof and cold and elder gods forgive you if you accidentally ran into him when you were alone in a corridor. He put people in their place before they could think about moving out of them.
"Then keep your eyes open while you're here. Learn what you can in the brief time you can spend in the real world." Bi-Han stood.
"Why do you say 'poison', Bi-Han? You do everything for the clan. Why do you sound like you don't like them?"
His brother looked back at him,
"I do everything for you, Kuai Liang, not the clan."
Kuai did not know what to say to that. He looked at the melon before him. He reached in a hand and scooped out the seeds of one half and threw them on the table. He offered the melon up to Bi-Han with small sticky hands. His brother's grave face dissipated into one of familiar scorn.
"I have no idea where your hands have been and neither do you. I'm not touching that." Kuai grinned. He had done what was important. The anxiety and shadow of pain on his brother's face had gone. He looked back to normal. Kuai turned his attention to the melon. Lacking an accessible knife, he put his whole face into it and bit. Juice ran down his chin and across his cheeks and he even had to shut his eyes. He sat up beaming and sticky with juice.
Bi-Han looked aghast. He had been about to say 'You spend too much time with that Tomas Vrbada', but decided against it when he thought of the look of betrayal and confusion both Tomas and Kuai had given him with when the Grandmaster announced Kuai Liang would accompany him on a year long mission. He looked back at Kuai munching on his new found delight. Bi-Han sighed and turned to his suitcase of Lin Kuei robes. He could not wear them whilst posing as a citizen. He would have to conceal them whilst he lived in this place. He had told the Grandmaster that living with his younger brother would add to his cover story. A young man new to an area and living alone would raise suspicion. It was still a big favour though, and the Grandmaster knew it. Bi-Han was going to have to walk a line of total obedience if he did not want that privilege revoked. A year without being there for Kuai Liang. A year where the Grandmaster or Sektor or whoever, could prey on the malleable trusting heart of a child that had still somehow retained an innocence that eight years of growing up amongst the Lin Kuei had not yet taken from him. He looked back at the sticky youth stuffing melon into his mouth.
Bi-Han sighed again and sat down heavily again at the table. He pulled the other half of the melon towards him.
"Pull the blinds before you start throwing knives around next time, alright?"
Kuai nodded, his eyes bright with warmth.
Author Note: To keep myself sane through the winter months I've started writing this new thing. I'll share some more chapters soon, just gotta make sure I'm happy with them. I love Hong Kong crime dramas. I love these bros. Sticking them together is an entirely self-serving enterprise, which I hope someone else might enjoy too. But either way - I'm having fun.