They were about halfway through Chinese customs when a call came through on Komui's mobile.
"Bak?" Komui said as he put it to his ear.
That got Kanda's attention, but Komui moved off to the side, pressing his finger to his other ear to block out the sounds of flight announcements and a bunch of kids trying to navigate airport security in a country where they didn't speak the language.
Kanda did. It hit him as soon as he stepped off the plane, with a sound like someone throwing a pile of old church bells off a cliff. It was his cradle tongue, and even though he'd been speaking English and French for so long that he dreamed in them, he slipped into Chinese so easily it scared him. He wanted to go home, to the hospital room, the one place in the world where he didn't feel alone, then he kicked himself. He was here to do a job, and he needed to focus. He could freak out later.
"Kanda," Komui said.
Kanda looked up.
"That was Bak Chan. Zhu Mei has asked to see you and Fou."
Kanda said nothing, just waited.
"Fou said she's going. If you want to go, Bak will pick you up from here. I'll take your luggage, and we'll meet you at the hotel. Is that all right?"
Kanda nodded.
"No, is it really all right? If you'd rather not, I'll call him back. He'll respect your decision."
"I don't care one way or the other," Kanda said, irritated at the intrusion of an unnecessary obstacle between himself and a hot bath. "I didn't even know the old man was still alive."
"Apparently he won't be for much longer. Really, Kanda, if you'd rather not…"
"Shut up," Kanda said, but he had no tolerance for fussing, especially when it was being done over him. "Where do I need to go?"
Bak pulled up to the curb in a Chery A3, and leaned over the seat to open the door for Fou. Kanda sat in the back, barely managing to get the door closed before Bak wove into traffic.
"How are you?" Bak asked as Kanda pulled on his seatbelt.
"Fine," Fou said. "How is he?"
"He's a hundred years old," Bak said. "Every day is a surprise now." He looked at Kanda in the rearview mirror. "Kanda, thank you for taking the time to see him."
"No skin off my teeth," Kanda said, staring out the window, wondering why this country still existed.
Bak wisely left him to it, and chatted quietly with Fou as they cleared the airport.
Forty minutes later, they pulled up to a private house, which surprised Kanda. He'd assumed they were going to a hospital. When he got inside, he understood. This was in-home hospice care. Something on Zhu Mei Chan had finally failed to the point where science couldn't fix it.
They took their shoes off at the door, then Bak led them to a room on the first floor. When he walked in, Kanda blinked at the rhythmic beep of machines, the same ones he heard in the hospital every day. Strange how two people could be so unlike, but the sounds of them living were the same, the near-identical rhythms of completely different hearts.
This body was very different, too. It was old, older than any human being really needed to be, sallow skin falling in cascades of wrinkles over a tranquil face. The eyes, when they opened, were milky with cataracts.
Fou made a small, distressed sound.
"Fou!" said a voice like singed paper. "Is that you?"
"Laoshi," she said as she reached for Zhu's hand. She looked both happy and sad, but it was a lot less complicated for her. "I'm so glad I get to see you again.
"I wish I could properly see you," the old man said. "You sound well."
"I am," she said. "Are you? I mean..."
"As well as can be expected," Zhu said. "I keep thinking when I go to sleep that surely I won't wake up, and then I do. I suppose, for my age, that's what it means to be well. Kanda. How is he? Is he here?"
"Yes," Bak said.
Kanda said nothing, still astonished at his own pity.
"Where are you, child? I can't see you."
"I'm here," Kanda said, reaching for a hand that felt like a parchment over dried twigs.
"My goodness! You have a man's voice now. You've grown up and I missed it, but that's my own fault. I know that. Could everyone leave? Everyone but the children?"
The nurse walked out, closing the door behind her.
"I'm so glad," Zhu said. "I'm so glad for this chance. I apologize for my cowardice in not asking for you sooner, but if you smothered me in my sleep now, it would be a kindness."
"I would never…" Bak said quickly, but this was his great-uncle lying there.
"Bak," Zhu said. "It's all right. Just listen. I don't have much time before I fall asleep again."
They waited.
"It was my fault. My fault, not anyone else's."
Kanda knew what he meant and had even expected this. There was no other reason for him to be summoned, but even though he'd had plenty of time to prepare himself, he found at that moment that he hadn't been able to. The whirlpool of rage, vindication, grief and helplessness that welled up in him left him wondering if his feet were really on the ground.
"It was the wiring," Bak said. "That's what they said, isn't it?"
"And whose fault was that?" Zhu asked, a bit of his old energy returning. "I owned that place. I was responsible for its maintenance as well as the rules by which it ran." The dry twigs curled around Kanda's fingers. "You were not to blame, child. You did everything you could. You were very brave. It was me. I created that place, and then I shut you up in it. Bak, your parents died because they were better than I am. They tried. Kanda, you weren't abandoned. They tried. They tried."
Kanda's head filled with the smell of roasting flesh, so vivid to him even now that he couldn't bear to have meat on his plate.
"Kanda?"
"Yes?"
"I should have kept you. I trained you as I would have trained my own son, and I was so proud of you, but after that night, I could no longer bear to look at you. Every time I did, I felt the weight of a debt I could never repay, so when Malcolm made his offer, I accepted. I thought if I didn't have to look at you, I wouldn't feel that weight anymore. I was wrong."
Zhu paused, and Bak wiped his eyes.
"I have lived with my guilt, but you will live with the consequences of those decisions for the rest of your life, and I cannot take them back. I cannot undo what you have suffered because of me. That's why I am not asking for your forgiveness. That would be asking too much. I just want you to know that I understand what I did."
There was another pause as the old man caught his breath, and Fou smothered a sob.
"Fou?" Zhu asked.
"Yes," she said.
"I failed you, too. When your parents died, I could have taken you. Instead, I let you go to Malcolm. He only knew about you because of me."
"Laoshi!" she said. "No. That would have been too much to ask."
"It would have been the right thing to do," Zhu said, "and I could have done it if I hadn't been so busy wallowing in self-pity."
"No...!" she began, uncharacteristically vulnerable in her distress.
"Please, let me have my say!" Zhu said. "I won't get another chance. When my own father died, there were things I wish I could have heard from him. Maybe if I had, I would have found some peace of my own before it was too late. Now it's too late for me, but not for you. You children were blameless. It was my fault. I was arrogant and proud, and I do not ask forgiveness because here I am only setting my arrogance and pride aside at the very end."
Fou was really crying, while Bak just let his tears stream silently down his face.
"Kanda," Zhu said. "Whatever happens, whatever must be done, the guilt is mine. Do not blame yourself. Blame me."
"I can take responsibility for my own decisions," Kanda said sharply. The old man might be calling him a child, but he wasn't one anymore.
"So you can," said Zhu. "Just don't take on more fault than is actually due to you."
Was it really that easy? Kanda wondered. Because as tempting as that sounded, it didn't feel right. It felt a lot more complicated than that, and a lot dirtier. "I guess this means that next time I see you, I'll see you in hell," he said. If such a place existed.
There was a dry wheeze, Zhu's idea of a chuckle. "I think there's plenty of time for you avoid that fate. I have not been a good example to you children, so please let me be a warning. Do not let yourselves die having missed so much." He lay still for a moment, then drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. "And I did. I missed so much, and it was nobody's fault but my own."
They waited while the machines beeped and Bak and Fou tried to get themselves under control. "I think he's asleep," Bak said finally.
"Bak, I..." Fou said, wiping her face on her sleeve. "I can't...I mean...I need to wash up before we go back."
"Of course," Bak said. "Second door on the left. There are clean towels in the closet if you want a shower or a bath. Kanda, do you want anything? Tea?"
What Kanda wanted more than anything was a bottle of tequila, but it would have to wait until the competition was over. "I'm good."
"I'm making some for myself."
"I told you, I'm good."
"Oy," Bak said. "You want to smother the old man, I won't tell anyone."
Kanda looked at him. Bak was short and slender, with his mother's Chinese eyes and hair that favored his German father to such a degree that Kanda suspected him of bleaching it. Not that he would have blamed Bak for clinging to his father in that way. Kanda remembered Twi Chan as being, in most respects, a Chan, strict and stern to the point of humorlessness, but Edgar Martin was gentler, more inclined to laughter, and Kanda realized that he was almost the same age just then as Bak was the night they died.
"No caffeine," Kanda said. "I have to be able to sleep tonight."
"I think we have something," Bak said. "Please sit down."
Kanda sat, leaned his head back and closed his eyes, trying not to imagine what his life would have been like if he'd stayed in China as Zhu's ward. Why was it so hard to think that it would have been worse, even though he knew the possibility existed? Why did he find it so difficult, even now, to hate the old man?
And why did he hate himself so much for that?