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“Thank you, I’m grateful for—” Hong Lu’s voice cracks. “For the guidance you’ve given me.” The words come out automatically. He hadn’t meant to speak, didn’t even realize he was until he felt the smile on his face, tongue and teeth, shaping tone.
A phrase of so many variations he’s repeated more often, it feels, than any taken breath. A gift from his family, the same as his smile. Heartbeat in his ears, hands tied behind his back, he does not fight his bonds.
Head swimming, he lies still, his dizzy vision pooling faint. There is a hand up and down his shoulder that does not scare him. Fingers long and thin and deceptively strong, the bones of each knuckle well pronounced. He draws his attention along the touch, to a breathing screen of cigarette smoke. Nicotine, a new smell, awfully strong and not at all like the incense he’s used to. Through the smoke stares Ryoushuu, the details of her expression always difficult to read. She traces the lines of his body. Her eyes the color of zitan, of his childhood.
It reminds him of a room in his family home, the canopy bed upon which he slept. A chamber within a chamber. Carved lacquer paneling, good fortune and joy pinning him down. He thinks of his father's figure in the doorway, of his elder brother’s eyes. All in red.
His wandering thoughts are smothered under the warmth of Ryoushuu’s palm. She cradles him by the jaw, tilting his head left, right, center. He does not resist her appraisal, relaxing into each motion. As water, formless until held. In waves, the room resolves around Ryoushuu’s silhouette. Shadows flickering in darkness, scentless candles. Tatami, futon, silk, skin, muscle, bone. His body.
Covered in lashes, long and pretty pink, lines of running red parallel down his stomach. The duvet uncomfortably sticks against his thighs, saffron streaked. His skin as tender porcelain, pale where un-brushed. Ryoushuu’s touch walks elsewhere, and Hong Lu’s head is lowered and placed upon a pillow. Tired, but taken care of.
Thoughts arrive as rain, gathering in an empty vessel. Overall, Ryoushuu has been very gentle tonight. At least, less fervent than usual. Hong Lu isn’t entirely certain what guides her artistic sense, but it’s nice to be a part of the creative process. He’s long missed poetry and painting. Nights with her are ever illuminating.
Bony fingers lift and dump his mind as runoff. His head is leaned against Ryoushuu’s shoulder, firm and covered in yukata cotton. Her hands slide down his back, easing rope off wrists to unbind his grip. Palm to pointer to elbow crux, Ryoushuu warms the skin and sets blood flowing once again. Her touch steadfast and strange, every movement meticulous, particular in motion. One hand, right, carved of a lifetime’s wetwork. The other, left, always leather gloved. Swirling burns remembered beneath her sleeve.
Soaked cloth, tender folded warmth wiped down forearm, fingernail. Wrung out, repeat. Every inch. Sweat and blood, skin made clean. Eyes drift shut, afloat. Ryoushuu never asks for much. She takes good care of him. His leg is lifted, her hands unblemishing up and down his inner thigh.
Conscious dreaming as he’s cleaned, he thinks of how at home he’d need sewing back together whenever after he made a silly mistake. The nitrile hands of the family doctor seemed so distant. Brusque and impersonal and not at all polite. He weighs those hands, the best that money can buy, against the costless touch of his coworker and can’t understand why she does this for free.
Nothing interrupts, the hiss and hush of Ryoushuu’s lighter. Time enough for a fresh breath of tobacco before she drapes a heavy blanket over Hong Lu’s body, a leg left out. Once a week, part of her routine.
He watches her take and place a handful of items. Box and bottle, syringe, needle, exacting measurements. She picks a spot on the upper third of his thigh and the moment passes after a prick, his leg then covered as the rest. Hong Lu knows neither what nor why, and Ryoushuu’s explanation starts and ends at: “Making F.L.O.W.E.R.S. alive.“
Worry not, through the ebb and flow of attention. He feels the futon shift, Ryoushuu sitting by his side. She cards her fingers through his hair, combing out the conscious knots. Like that Hong Lu drops shoreward, knowing the night nears a close. Time enough for two more cigarettes, and then he’s ushered towards the door.
At the precipice, he’s stopped. A bony finger presses against his so soft cheek, trails up towards the corner of his eye. Hong Lu did not shed a single tear. He was grateful and good and—and doesn’t understand the way Ryoushuu scrutinizes her thumb when it comes back dry. Before he has time to fashion a response, Ryoushuu sighs. “O.U.T.” Looks him in the eye as he’s pushed along.
Resounding through the bus, the door shuts, locks, and his smile falters as his mind traces again and again Ryoushuu’s expression before she harried him out. The drawing of her brow, the downward curl of her lip at just one edge. The click of her tongue, the sigh, the way she’s never looked at him like that before. He’s at a loss.
Blink, blink. He remembers he should not linger lest he seem improper. Raising his head to catch his bearings, he looks, slowly, left to right.
Hong Lu stands alone in one of the many halls of his home, staring up at the latest painting purchased and completed by yet another talented artist in vogue. He doesn’t understand. The paint is made from expensive dyes, of difficult to acquire reagents. The brushstrokes are very fine, almost invisible to the naked eye, and highly detailed. He doesn’t understand. The shadows are deep, the frame gilded in gold leaf. He doesn’t understand who the people in the painting are.
There is a man. His chest is broad; he wears an old military uniform. One of his large hands rests on the shoulder of a young boy who sits on a chair in front of him. Something about the sight Hong Lu does not like. He has to look away.
To the left, there is a painting of his aunt and his elder brother. There is also a painting of his grandmother, who is very kind and always tells Hong Lu when he has made a mistake. The painting he does not like, he reads on a golden plaque, is titled Father & Son.
The face of the man in the painting is impossible to focus on. His features, one by one, are seen and understood. Strong eyes. Knit brow. Tense jaw. But Hong Lu can’t make his mind hold all the pieces at once. He stares, and stares, and all it does is make him dizzy.
He shakes his head, in spite of his aching neck, and steps back. The painted strangers further away now, Hong Lu has to strain to observe them. He focuses on the hands of the older man.
Aged, leathered with deep lines. Almost like his grandmother’s, but bigger. Much bigger. There’s a bulging vein visible by the knuckles. The skin is rough, callused on the fingertips. Something about them seems familiar.
Hong Lu stares at the way that hand folds around the shoulder of the young boy no older than himself, so close to the nape. The pointer rests just above the boy’s collar, on the soft skin of his neck. Oh! Hong Lu knows that gesture of affection. He would recognize anywhere the way his father loves him.
“Young master.” A woman’s voice pulls Hong Lu’s attention back to the real. He blinks. He’s familiar with her; she is adept at poetry. Hong Lu quite liked the woman’s latest recital and would like to tell her so.
”Aah-hk,” comes his eloquent reply, followed by several coughs. He had forgotten his throat was still swollen and raw. After collecting his breath, he presents his best smile in apology for his discourteous display.
For a moment, the woman does not speak. Lips drawn into a fine line, she stares down at Hong Lu. The look she wears is one of pity, but Hong Lu can’t understand why. He lets the smile reach his eyes, tilts his head to indicate a question.
She breaks eye contact with a bow, and speaks to the floor. “The master of the estate has requested your presence in his study.”
The woman leaves as soon as she delivers her message. Now alone again, Hong Lu does not stop smiling. For some reason he feels lightheaded. It would be rude to keep his father waiting.
Barring entry to his father’s study are great doors fashioned of xiao-yie-tan. A beautiful and expensive wood that does not grow here. Carved through the surface are figures nameless to Hong Lu, but called menshen by his grandmother. Their wooden faces contort in anger, forever scowling. Hong Lu does not like to look them in the eyes, is reticent even to touch their bodies through a knock. He bows his head, studies his shoes.
“Enter.” At once a heavy voice reaches through the walls and commands Hong Lu past the guardians, up to the edge of a grand desk. Hong Lu need not look up to know what awaits. There are shelves and many books Hong Lu is not allowed to touch. Paintings of gorgeous vistas and sepia photos line the walls. The room is decorated very nicely, and Hong Lu has seen it often. He stands, staring down, at the edge of his father’s desk. His body repeats the motions of proper etiquette his grandmother taught so kindly over very long hours. Except, of course, the correct greeting. But his father knows his throat is in no condition to speak.
“You are healing well. There is more color to your face.” Hong Lu hears the sound of a pen being set down, the click of a tongue. The praise makes him happy. “Raise your head. Come to me.”
Bowing once more, Hong Lu finds the right smile before standing straight. Face forward but staring away, stepping around the desk to his father’s side. He studies the patterns of the wallpaper, and doesn’t understand why he flinches when he feels a hand against his ear. His father is kind, his father knows best, and Hong Lu keeps smiling.
Patient and quiet and perfectly still, Hong Lu is not in trouble as his father’s hands undo the silk dressing wound around his head. With each lap he feels fingers through his hair, and focuses on the bandages falling away, folded neatly and discarded as trash.
Swallowing despite the pain, Hong Lu accepts his father’s scrutiny. Against his eyebrow, a thumb; inches away, a face. Hong Lu does not look, and hopes he is as his father wants. His long hair is pushed aside, and his father forces his gaze into the black hole of Hong Lu’s empty eye socket.
“Your brother should count himself lucky. There is little scarring to your face.”
Hong Lu wishes to say in response that it was an accident. His elder brother did not mean to, he is not at fault, please do not punish him. The words stir in his torn throat, and he coughs, quickly offering a new smile in apology.
For a moment, there is stillness. Hong Lu can feel his father staring, and does not dare meet his eyes. He should not have coughed. It was ill-mannered of him, and he deserves guidance. There is a clock in the room, and Hong Lu thinks of how he will have to apologize to his grandmother for missing her lessons later in the day.
Instead, his father sighs, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his temple. “The doctors did well in hiding the ugliness. They have justified the expense.” While talking, he retrieves a tiny ornamented box, firmly pressing it into Hong Lu's small hands. “Open it.”
Caught between impulses, Hong Lu stands mostly frozen. His body trembles, though he can’t put a finger on the reason. He behaved poorly and so should be instructed on the proper way of things. But to refuse his father’s generosity is unthinkable.
There is much that Hong Lu does not understand. Perhaps this is simply another facet of his ignorance. Trying to set aside his confusion, he hesitantly lifts back the hinged satin lid of the box.
From atop a velvet cushion stares back an eye of carved jade and polished glass. Hong Lu recognizes, reflected in it, the boy from the painting. Himself. His hair is soft as silk, his one eye an earthy black. The curves of his face are gentle and his smile serene. It’s perfect, the eye a precious gem, truly beautiful.
“Handsome. Like you. With this, you will not be so difficult to look at.” His father smiles and Hong Lu should not. He lets his father pluck the eye from its safe container, watches it vanish between thick fingers. When he feels rough skin cup his cheek, he can no longer look. The hand as big as his head settles against him, a callus brushing the edge of his lips. Whatever his father is doing does not feel very nice, but that’s okay. Pressure against his upper lid, something cold and full and dry is forced into the hole in his head.
“—Mh!—” On reflex a noise slips through Hong Lu’s throat, and he works very hard not to cough again. His eyes are watering, and the tension in his head is unique and new. When he feels his father’s hands no longer, he opens his eyes. It takes more than a moment to adjust, blinking away the tears.
As his vision clears Hong Lu watches his father rub thumb and pointer together, studying the pink pigment as it smears. “What is this.” His father’s jaw is tense, but his voice is perfectly even. It is not a question and it is the sound of anger. Hong Lu does not think of what happens next.
All he had wanted was to look nice for the day, a little makeup. His body so beaten and pale, a touch of delicate color. His own fault, a silly mistake he’s been warned time and again not to make: he had simply forgotten that nothing is okay.