"What were you gossiping about?" Mao Yenrai asks one of his bodyguards, smiling at the man, who fidgets with his fingers and looks at his feet. "It can't be about me, I know I'm not able to create juicy enough stories. Come now, what is it that turns my men into housewives at the marketplace?"
That night, Mao Yenrai walks into the bar where his men go when they are off duty, is jovial and friendly, buys everyone a round of drinks. But he sits down after the initial fuss is over, does not talk to his senior officers who crowd around him, leery of strangers and shadows. He has forgotten his eyeglasses, but he can see well enough to know who it is in the 'quiet corner' - that place where the air is still and the light dim, too far from the bar to call the bartenders easily - unpopular, for these reasons, with the usual fun-loving hard-drinking youths who frequent the place.
"Cold tonight," one of his men says, seeing him shiver. He is not aware of the chill running through him, but when the man mentions it, he realises, feels even colder.
Across the room, he sees how Lin glances over at the girl, thin black fabric of her dress clinging to arms that emerge white and pale from the ends of too-long sleeves; how Lin takes up the jacket that he has taken off and hung on the empty seat beside him, to put it around her shoulders. She looks at Lin, but says nothing; all she can do, it seems, is look, since Lin will never say anything. Look, hoping that perhaps he will look back. When he does her face is touched with a light painful to see, especially when he next looks away, leaving her waiting for him to turn towards her again.
"What do they do?" he asks of the bartender, who is, sometimes, a waiter during the lavish banquets that the Red Dragons hold. "Every night, they are here?"
"When Lin's here, she usually is, too."
"So..."
"Don't know."
"They talk?"
"Not really. Once. Are you his mentor, Mao-san?"
"No," Mao Yenrai says. "But they are all my responsibility. And I do not like to let the same mistake happen twice."
She is a normal girl. Sources say she has an office job, in advertising; she lives with a friend, visits her parents, pays her bills with almost mechanical punctuality. Mao Yenrai accepts this information. Still he cannot truly say why he feels that something infinitely fragile is threatened by her presence in the bar.
"Hello, Shin."
"Mao-san. You wish to speak to me?"
"How are you? How is your brother?"
"We are well. Thank you, Mao-san."
"You have quite a reputation for being a moderately successful ladies' man, do you know? Quite an achievement at your age."
"If you do not approve of my actions, Mao-san--"
"Oh, you can have your fun." Mao Yenrai does not even have to look at the fading photograph, framed and hung on his wall amidst glossier and newer prints, to remember the days when he was Shin's age. "It doesn't seem to affect your loyalty or your performance. You only live twice, I heard a man say - once for yourself, and once for your dreams. It's better if you live your dreams for real. And, who knows? You might end up actually marrying one of those girls and living happily ever after."
"Yes, Mao-san."
"What about your brother? I don't hear much about him."
"Lin is being wasted. He is only doing bits and pieces, being passed around -- He can do a lot more. He is really very dedicated to the Red Dragons. He should be at least allocated an active supervisor, a new mentor. He can learn a lot more, Mao-san."
When was the last time so much energy and insistence and youth glowed in this office, brighter and warmer than the cold light falling through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the windows?
"I agree with you," Mao Yenrai says. "The elders, and others, agree that Lin is a very worthy Dragon. That is why they are not assigning him to some other mentor. The best people in our syndicate - they are not with us, now. But one day, Vicious will return, from Titan. And until then, it is best that Lin does not become used to the habits and training of another mentor."
Shin opens his mouth to speak, cannot think of anything to say. Words try to leave his throat, regardless; he chokes on them, feels ridiculous, falls silent. By his side his hands are in fists, and over his eyes his brow is furious, pulled taunt. But he cannot speak of this frustration he feels, nor can he explain how impossible it is for Lin to serve Vicious. Vicious, whose actions banished (and now threaten) Julia, drove Spike to madness and half-death and flight. Besides, Shin cannot speak against Vicious. Even more so, he cannot stab an absent man in the back with foolish, furious words. He subsides, and relaxes, and he is left with a washed-out regret that he thinks he can see, mirrored, in Mao Yenrai's tired face.
"Now," Mao says, and he tries to smile again, "tell me about your brother. Don't you introduce any girls to him? I'm sure you have plenty left over."
Shin laughs. "I don't know. We don't have the same taste, I think. Like his girlfriend now. I think she's his girlfriend."
"He has a girlfriend? You've met the girl?"
"Yeah."
"I heard a story from the boy in the bar..."
"The other guys don't get it. I don't get it. But I think she's his girlfriend. They just don't do what everyone else does... that's all... that's... it." Shin bites lower lip to stop himself spilling further, not knowing if what he is saying makes any sense, if his guesses are correct. Say only what you know. What do you know? "She's there when he is, and he doesn't stay away from her."
"Would you?"
"I know I wouldn't keep going back..."
Mao Yenrai lets Shin leave his office. Watching the boy stride out, tall and strong and lean with all the promise of the world in the proud back-thrust of shoulders and lift of sharp chin, he is reminded of his other proteges, and he finds himself hoping that Shin will walk down one path, preceded by a crooked-smiled, green-haired boy, and avoid the others, those that have ended in dishonourable death, suicide, crime or treason. There is only one other path left to walk, and Mao Yenrai has only the strength to tolerate one Vicious in his entire lifetime.
But even the path that Spike, and others like him, took, even that path is not safe from death and danger...
Mao Yenrai has neither the time nor resources to watch the twins and the girl, and so he lets it be. He hopes that the past does not repeat itself. It is not likely to; Shin shows no interest, and the passion that Spike and Vicious felt for Julia seems to be oddly lacking in Lin. Still, it is impossible to think back to that quiet corner without feeling cold. The pattern has been distorted; the girl is in love with the boy, the boy perhaps in equal love with the girl, and the other boy a separate entity, moving in a different world and caring only for the welfare of his brother. But the pattern seems to inhabit the same sphere - the corner of a bar, smoke and alcohol, the unlikeliness of a happy ending. He sighs, sags into his chair.
Why are there no happy endings for those who deserve them?
