Kuai Liang woke up with a stiffness in his limbs and his cheek stuck to the wood of the kitchen table. He blinked in the morning light. He jumped up quickly and ran to the bedroom. Both low beds were unslept in. He ran back to the kitchen and pulled down the pan from the stove. Uneaten soup sloshed in the bottom. He set it back on the stove and put the lid on top. He chewed his lip. He looked down at the crumpled clothes he was wearing and went to change into something new. He washed his face, pausing to marvel once more at the way water came straight out of the tap when he turned it on. He put his school books in his bag and looked in the mirror. Bi-Han still hadn't bought him the blue shirt that everyone else wore to school. If he stood in a certain light his shirt sort of looked blue. He sighed and went to the fridge. He pulled a carton of milk out the fridge and sipped it. The frothy fat lined his lips. He wasn't allowed milk at the Temple. He looked at the front door. He sat back down at the kitchen table and held his bookbag to him.

Soon the school bus pulled up outside the door. Its horn blared in the quiet morning. Kuai reluctantly picked up his bag and opened the door. He looked up and down the street hopefully. He lowered his eyes and let the front door click shut behind him. He climbed slowly up the steps onto the school bus.

Kuai Liang was silent during school that morning. He worked out maths sums on blue squared paper with pointed pencils, then copied labels from a geography book onto wobbly mountains in his exercise book. When he looked at the mountains in his textbook, they reminded him of home. He leaned low over his work in case anyone thought he looked sad. At break time he wandered off on his own and pulled himself onto a fence-pole up high behind the science buildings. Jia found him within moments.

"You're good at finding hiding spots, Tao."

Not that good, thought Kuai, but he did not reply.

"Are you bothered about that fight? Because I don't think Nianzu told on us. I mean, that's good and bad news, because it for sure means he's planning revenge."

Kuai looked at the forests up high above the school. He wondered if they ever saw snow like the snows the Temple knew.

"Okay, not the fight." Jia pulled herself up with difficulty and sat on a nearby pole. "What's up, Tao?"

Kuai stayed quiet for a while, and Jia did not interrupt him.

"My brother didn't come home yesterday."

Jia sat for a bit,

"That's ok." She said at last. "Adults do things like that. Sometimes they go away for a while. Doesn't mean they won't be back."

"I'm worried he's in trouble."

Jia thought again,

"Does he often get into trouble?"

Kuai frowned and thought. How could he explain to her without explaining anything at all?

"He often gets into dangerous situations. But… I guess he's usually quite good at handling them."

Jia nodded,

"My mama's the same. She's out for days at a time. My brother mostly has to do things like getting food in and looking after us. It doesn't mean she doesn't love me," Jia said fiercely, "She just has to be away some of the time."

They sat and dangled their feet.

"Hey Tao," Jia said at last, "If your brother's not home, why don't you come for tea at my house?"

"I don't know… What if he comes home and he wonders where I am? He might be worried. And I should ask him if I'm allowed first..."

"If he's not there..."

"But what if he comes back while I'm out? He'll be worried. And he'll be angry."

"You don't mind making teachers angry," She grinned.

Kuai didn't smile back,

"This is different. I'll ask him if next time he's away if I can go to yours for tea. I'll have to give him an address and a number for a telephone if you have one."

She stared at him,

"Of course we have a phone, Tao."

He nodded and kicked his legs in the air.

"Thank you for inviting me. I would like to come when I have permission."

He felt a bit better after that, and not so alone. In his next class they looked at poems, and he liked that too, because he'd never read a poem before. By lunchtime he was feeling much happier. He waited by the door to the classroom for Jia and almost smiled at her, before he noticed Nianzu behind.

Nianzu had a black eye. He shouldered past Jia and Kuai glowering at them through puffed up purple.

"Just you wait." He hissed.

Kuai chewed his cheek as he watched Nianzu go.

Kuai sat quietly on the bus home, listening to Jia chatter about cartoons and books and her favourite dish which he would miss being cooked tonight by her brother if he didn't come for tea. He said goodbye at his stop and ran home. He fumbled for his key and opened the front door. The kitchen was quiet and the lights were off. His heart sunk. He ran to the bedroom. Spread out askew on his mat, one arm over his eyes to block out the sun, lay Bi-Han, fast asleep. Kuai's eyes became like light that comes over the snow peaks and sets all afire. He hovered in the doorway, torn between wanting to run to his brother and not wishing to wake him. In the end he dropped his school bag quietly and slipped under Bi-Han's arm, curling up close to him. He heard his brother murmur an objection, but was pleased to find him too tired to carry through the drowsy threat.

When Kuai awoke there were long purple shadows casting furniture into alien shapes on the dim floorboards. He shuffled back into the warmth behind him. He lay quiet, enjoying the safety of the arm wrapped tight about him and contemplating the strangeness of the world he'd been thrown into. Despite its oddities, it seemed too easy to slip into its cares and patterns. It felt odd to remind himself that school exams didn't matter, and that Nianzu's father's opinions weren't important, or even that blue school uniform had no importance. He wondered if Bi-Han had had any similar difficulties, and got caught up in other people's cares.

"Are you worried that you'll let down the people who just want you to make some drinks for them?"

His brother stirred sleepily behind him,

"Hmm. I already quit."

Kuai blinked,

"Already?"

"Mm. I killed a man and joined the Triads."

"Bi-Han! It's barely been a week!"

"Guess I'm good at being a criminal."

Kuai sighed. He'd briefly liked the idea that his brother had a normal job. It made him feel like less of an imposter to everyone at school. For one week only, he'd been the new boy from mainland China who's brother worked at a bar. Nothing remarkable, nothing special, but so many freedoms... like milk, and poems, and mathematics, and catching a bus, and cooking, and-

"Whatever you're thinking about, you're overthinking it."

"You don't even know what I was thinking!"

"Nope, only that there was too much of it." Bi-Han sat up slowly and stretched, cat-like. Kuai rolled over and looked at him.

"I was scared when you didn't come home last night."

"I know."

Kuai sighed again when he realised the conversation was a dead end. Bi-Han stood,

"Want some food?"

Kuai nodded. He got up and collected up his school bag. He pulled out an exercise book and set it on the table. He got out his pen and pulled up a chair.

"What are you doing?"

"Homework."

Bi-Han stared at him.

"They set us work to take home and do." Kuai explained.

"Absolutely not. School work stays at school. You already have work to do at home. Like all the cryomancy forms I know you didn't get up early and do this morning."

Kuai's heart sunk. He hadn't meant to miss them, he'd just been so tired after staying up late waiting for Bi-Han to come home...

"But Bi-Han they tell people off if they don't do homework."

Bi-Han looked at him through half closed eyes,

"And I don't? Trust me, if it comes down to a game of creative punishment I'm going to win over your school every time-"

"That's not what I meant! I meant when am I going to do my school work if I have to do training all the time here?"

"How about at school, Kuai Liang? I'm not having this conversation. Even contemplating the idea that your studies as a student of the Lin Kuei might come second to arbitrary civilian paperwork is pissing me off. Your school is recreational cover for my mission. I happen to think you might learn something useful there. Do not mistake that for me giving a damn about what extra work they try to impose on you. All that matters is the mission. This is all temporary. The things they care about do not matter. The things you learn there are only useful insofar as they help you grow as a person. Everything else can fuck off."

Kuai went very quiet before his brother's anger. He mumbled a quiet apology and went off back to the bedroom to clear the mats away and practice his form. He tried to keep a meditative head space as he went through the motions, but all the while he could here his brother swearing from the kitchen as he tried to find something to cook. He was part way through his sixth form when the doorbell went. There was a momentary silence. Kuai paused mid-move, trying to work out whether it would annoy his brother more that he had stopped, or more that he might be seen practising martial arts.

He heard his brother open the door and crept to the bedroom doorway to peer out.

"Jinhai! Sorry for calling round unannounced."

From what Kuai could see, the man didn't look sorry at all. He was leaning on the door frame as though he required it for skeletal infrastructure. Kuai couldn't see his eyes because there were shiny black glasses on them. He was wearing a loose mockery of Chinese traditional dress, all outrageously embroidered with leaping tigers, and a cool western style silk shirt underneath. A cigarette hung out of his mouth. Kuai was instantly fascinated in a horrified kind of way.

"No problem at all," Bi-Han said awkwardly.

Then Kuai realised too late that the mirror glasses were turned directly at him. The cigarette man pulled them down his nose so that he could look over them.

"Well, hello there, little man. I don't think we've been introduced."

Kuai hid behind the doorway. He heard the man laugh. He cringed. Bi-Han's body language as the man had spoken had been so defensive that Kuai instantly knew he had made an error. He could hear the special tone Bi-Han always put on to hide genuine fear and anxiety.

"Come out, Tao."

Kuai peered out cautiously, then moved in one darting movement to stand behind his brother. Up close he could see a cohort of equally well-draped colleagues that the cigarette man had brought with him. They were piled up behind him and leant on various pieces of street furniture.

"My little brother," Bi-Han offered.

The smoking man pulled a long puff on his cigarette, then stumped it out on the door frame and flicked away the stub. He wiped his hand on his smart tiger robe and offered it to Kuai. Kuai was momentarily at a loss what to do with the hand, before he remembered the custom. He shook it, but was mortified that he might have offended and harmed Bi-Han's chances in the oversight, so bowed low at the same time. The smoking man laughed again. His laugh made Kuai anxious.

"You can call me Uncle Nat, ok? I'm a friend of your brother." He grinned.

Kuai stared at him. No one had ever claimed to be Bi-Han's friend before.

Uncle Nat disentangled his hand and wiped it on his shirt again,

"Well, Jinhai, we were going to ask you if you'd join us for a burger at Chen's, but we'd be happy to extend the invitation to the young man as well."

"That won't be necessary." Said Bi-Han, in his predictable over-protective brother voice.

"I insist." Said Uncle Nat, in a tone that made it absolutely clear there was no room for discussion or dissent.

Kuai found himself sitting in a car that was so big in the middle that there was enough space for the seats to face each other. The windows were blacked out so that no one could look in and the night looked even darker. The they zoomed down the street as car blared out loud music in English sung and spoken so fast over a pounding beat that Kuai couldn't understand any of it. He watched out the window, excited by the change in pace and finally relaxed that he could do something new with his brother nearby to fix any difficulty that came up. Bi-Han sat ridged, silent, and uncommunicative even toward his so-called friends. The leather seats squeaked as Kuai shifted on them. They all smelt strange and new and special. He got on his knees to look out the window as bright buildings flew by in a blur of light. Everything looked very different through the dark window. He sat back round and kicked his legs and wondered what kind of a thing a burger might be.

Author Note: In which Kuai gets his wish to stay with big brother, and big brother starts to regret this whole mission.