A/N: For my own sanity, and to cut down on formatting mistakes, assume that dialogue between Hei and Jiao-tu (in this and future chapters) when they're alone is Chinese, unless otherwise specified; if they are speaking Chinese in the presence of others, it will be in italics. Hopefully the language will be clear from the context, but if it gets confusing let me know.
"You're cooking?" Jiao-tu peered suspiciously into the pot. Water dripped from her hair and hissed when it landed on the burner.
"I'm better than I used to be," Hei assured her, gently shooing her out of his way. "Did you get your clothes washed?"
"Mm-hm. I hung them in the bathroom, is that all right?"
Jiao-tu had begged Hei to stay with her that night. The apartment she shared with two roommates was only a few blocks from the park, but he didn't want anyone else to know their connection; so, he took her all the way back to his apartment in Koto.
She'd been tired and miserable by the time they arrived, and so jumped at Hei's offer to shower and wash the dirt off her clothes. He'd given her one of his shirts to wear while her clothes dried; it came all the way down to her knees, and she'd had to roll the sleeves up several times before her hands were free.
Under the brighter lights of his apartment, Jiao-tu didn't look quite as similar to his sister as he'd initially thought: she was a bit shorter, her nose was a little sharper, her eyes were brown instead of blue, and her hair, hitting just below her shoulder blades, was longer than Bai ever wore hers. But she had the same high cheekbones, and those brown eyes were just as big.
"What?" Jiao-tu asked, rubbing at her cheek self-consciously.
Hei realized he'd been staring. "Sorry; you just remind of Xing." That name was almost as strange to him now as Tian was.
"Really?" Jiao-tu gave him a small smile. "I always thought Xing was prettier than me." Then her smile slipped a little. "Where is she?"
Hei felt his mouth tighten as he turned back to the mushroom soup, stirring it a few times. "I don't know."
"What do you mean? She left home with you, didn't she?"
"Yes. But I lost her."
"Lost?" Jiao-tu sounded frightened; Hei realized his voice had gone flat and emotionless again, and he tried to bring some warmth into it.
"We got separated a few years ago, and I'm trying to find her again. It's not something I really want to talk about."
"Do you think she's alright?"
"Who can say." Amber.
"Grandfather told me once that he wasn't worried about the two of you. He said Xing would be alright, because you would watch out for her; and you would be alright, because you would never let anything happen to you, not while Xing was depending on you."
Hei turned his back to open the fridge, so she wouldn't see his face. "He was wrong."
"He wasn't wrong - you're still alive, aren't you? We all believed you both were dead, all of us except for him." Jiao-tu leaned her back against the counter, tapping her heel restlessly against the baseboard.
"Dad found Aunt and Uncle the day after it happened. You and Xing hadn't shown up for school, and no one was answering the phone at your house. The two of you were gone." She paused, looking at him, probably expecting him to fill in the blanks. Hei focused on slicing a beef steak, and stayed silent.
"The police said it was a kidnapping, though they couldn't explain how Aunt and Uncle died. They looked for about two weeks, then said there were no leads and so the case was closed. Grandfather was furious; he hired a private investigator, then another, then another. No one could find you.
"I think it was about four months later, some men from the government showed up. They said you'd both been found dead in a slum on the other side of the city, and they brought two urns of ashes. Dad said at least now we could mourn and move on; Grandmother cried for weeks.
"Grandfather never believed it though. He said that it must be a cover up. If you were really dead, they would have brought bodies, not ashes, and they wouldn't be so insistent that he stop looking for you."
"A cover up of what?" Hei said, pushing the image of his grandmother in tears because of him from his mind.
Jiao-tu shrugged. "Aunt and Uncle died just days after the Gates appeared, and no one could explain how. There were lots of stories about people acting strangely, or disappearing, and impossible things happening all over the world around that time, but after a few weeks the government started putting a stop to the stories.
"Grandfather thought you must have seen something, whatever it was that killed Aunt and Uncle, and so you had to hide, or else the government wanted to keep you quiet. They told us you and Xing were dead, so we'd stop looking and not find out what it was you saw. He's never been able to discover exactly what the reason was.
"That's why I decided to try for a scholarship to Tokodai, instead of going to school closer to home - the Gate is here in Tokyo, and a lot of people at Tokodai are working on Gate-related research, in conjunction with Pandora or separately. I thought…if I came here, and learned more about the Gate, maybe I could understand what happened to Aunt and Uncle, and you and Xing."
Hei paused to wipe his brow. It was hot, leaning over the stove. And Jiao-tu's story was reminding him uncomfortably of the woman who'd lived next door.
"And I think I've figured out what happened. It was a contractor."
Hei stopped slicing; his knuckles were white on the handle of the knife. "What?"
Jiao-tu gazed pensively at her feet. "All the Gate research is classified, but that doesn't stop the rumors from getting out among us students. One of the most popular rumors is contractors - people who were changed by the Gate, and now have special abilities. Abilities that would allow them to kill someone without leaving a mark…or cause a random windstorm in the park."
She rubbed her arms as if warding off a chill, even though the room was plenty warm. "The man I - I saw get stabbed, I think he was invisible, I swear he hadn't been standing there before the knife hit him. I wonder if the man who killed him was a contractor too. Do you think I should have told the police? I didn't know if they would think I was crazy or not."
Hei carefully set his knife down on the counter. "You can't talk about contractors, Jiao-tu. No one is supposed to know they exist."
"But you do, right? That's what happened…to your parents?" Her eyes were starting to tear up again.
"Yes, that's what happened," Hei said, looking away from her. "That's why Xing and I had to leave. You could all have been killed too if we stayed."
"Were you ever going to come back home?" she asked in a quiet voice.
"Not without Xing." And he would never have Xing back, he knew. Bai was the best he could hope for. "The food is almost ready - go pull out the table, Xiao-tu."
Jiao-tu punched his arm lightly. "I told you, no one calls me 'Xiao' anymore."
"You're still littler than me, so I'll still call you 'Xiao'," he told her. "Now go pull the table out."
She gave him a real smile then, and went to do as he asked. Her smile grew when she saw the amount of food he brought over. "I was starting to think you were an imposter, but now I know you must be Tian."
"Why would you think I'm not me?" Hei settled on the floor across from her.
"Because I haven't seen you smile once. It's like you're not even happy to see me," Jiao-tu said.
"I'm sorry, it's just…been a very long night. I guess it hasn't really sunk in that you're actually here," Hei told her truthfully, forcing a half smile onto his face.
"Yeah, me too. I heard them talking about getting a translator, but I never thought it would be you. I don't think I would have recognized you, except I was thinking about you and Xing earlier."
She watched him ladle out the soup. "Remember how you and Jiang used to have contests to see who could eat the most bowls of rice, or the most pot stickers?"
"I remember."
"And when Grandmother bought all those Sichuan peppers, and - hey, this soup is really good!" The food seemed to be doing more for her spirits than the shower had.
"Does your brother still eat so much?" he asked. The memories that Jiao-tu's reminiscing was stirring up were dull and hazy, as if he'd seen them on television or in a dream - like they belonged to someone else. He didn't want to keep her talking about the past, but it was better than her asking questions of him.
Jiao-tu giggled, her laugh lower and not quite as girlish as he remembered. "Yes. Mom says he's lucky Song wants to be a stay at home wife, or else she'd never have enough time to cook all his food." Jiao-tu frowned. "But if you can cook, I'd think that idiot could manage too - Song shouldn't have to do it all by herself."
"Song?"
"Mi Song - you remember her." Jiao-tu finished her soup, and moved on to beef and rice. "She was in your class, and used to follow you guys to school every day. She and Jiang are engaged now. They're waiting to have the wedding until next summer, so I can come home for it." Her eyes lit up. "Tian, you'll be able to come too!"
Hei dropped his eyes to his bowl and focused on eating. He was going to have to tell her at some point; unfortunately, Kirihara had been right about it being smart to wait a few to erase her memory of having run into him.
"I have a picture of them, hang on." Jiao-tu abandoned her food and pulled her book bag over, rooting around in it. "Where's my phone? I know I put it in here earlier. Say, what about you, Tian?"
"What about me?"
Jiao-tu looked up from her bag and gazed around the empty apartment, frowning. "I'm guessing you don't bring many girls back here."
"I haven't been here for very long. Finish your food before it gets cold."
Jiao-tu dug around in her bag for a few more minutes before she gave up and returned to her meal. She spent more time talking than eating, but Hei saw the strain in her eyes and thought she must be trying to distract herself from the events of earlier in the evening.
"You never told me what you're doing in Japan," she said when they had finished eating.
Hei couldn't use his cover story, that he was going to school; she'd see through the lie easily. Instead, he told her the truth, or at least a version of it. "I'm looking for my sister."
"You think she's in Tokyo?"
"No. But I think answers are." Amber was in the city, after all.
"Tian, your face is getting scary."
"Sorry." Hei stood to start carrying dishes back to the kitchen, but Jiao-tu beat him to it, stacking as many bowls as would fit in her arms.
"Did you ask that police woman for help looking for Xing?" Jiao-tu asked as she dumped the dishes into the sink. "Is that how you two know each other?"
"Kirihara? No. The police don't know anything about it."
There was a little bit of soup left; he had expected to have more, but Jiao-tu ate quite a bit for someone her size. Hei took out a small glass storage container, the only one he owned, and poured the soup into it.
"Oh. How do you know her then? You seemed pretty friendly."
"We've run into each other a few times, is all."
"Hm. She was really nice. I bet she'd look beautiful in a dress, instead of such a plain suit."
"She does." Kirihara had been wearing a red qipao the first time he'd seen her, Hei remembered. He wouldn't have noticed her, just another pretty woman in a room full of pretty women, except she'd looked so out of place, standing off on her own and squinting at everybody despite being friends with the owner's daughter. After talking to Saitou, Hei had decided she must be police, and kept an eye on her.
He hadn't realized how truly beautiful she was until they were hiding together in the bathroom stall; her dress was torn and her hair was coming undone, but she'd worn a look of such fierce determination, despite the revelation of her friend's betrayal.
She'd had that same look the night Huang had caught her, and Hei had arrived to see her sitting on the ratty sofa, her suit stained with dirty rain water. She thought she was about to die, but she didn't cry or beg, just looked him in the eye and dared him to do it. "She looks better in her business suits though."
He looked up when Jiao-tu didn't answer, to see her grinning at him. "I was looking for a dish towel, and I found this." She was holding Kirihara's business card. "Is that her personal number on the back?"
Hei took the card from her hand and dropped it into the trash can. "That was from a police investigation months ago, when the woman in the apartment next door went missing."
"Oh," Jiao-tu said, clearly disappointed by his lack of reaction. Hei remembered belatedly that she used to tease him about the girls in his class all the time. He didn't think he could handle that now.
"I'm sorry, Xiao-tu. It's been a long night. The apartment next door is still empty; I'll borrow the futon from there for you to sleep on." He opened the door and walked out, leaving her standing alone in the kitchen, drowning in her borrowed shirt like a lost little girl.