Before the fight tonight, Ares had overheard whispers that Sangui had been involved in some kind of elaborate kidnapping scheme gone wrong, under the orders of a big director at Longfeng Oil. The details were brief—this clearly wasn’t fresh gossip—but he gathered that the mission had left Sangui with nothing, or else the man wouldn’t be here. Nobody would be here if they had a better option. The whole place reeked of resentment, of jaded people who had been slighted or lied to and now had to resort to wronging others to make up for it.
“I will,” Ares says, holding the man’s gaze. “I’ll win it. I’ll win the round after that too.”
“Let’s not get too cocky now,” Sangui says, rubbing a speck of dust off his gloves.
Ares has never seen Sangui without his black gloves, and he’s starting to suspect that they’re artificially attached to his body, or maybe even a part of him. He imagines Sangui combing his dyed orange hair every morning with those stupid gloves on, or washing a bowl of grapes, or brushing his teeth. He imagines Sangui climbing out of the womb with the gloves plastered to his tiny fingers, the doctors’ shock and confusion as they tried explaining the phenomenon to Sangui’s family.
“Is something funny?” Sangui asks, his eyes narrowing.
Ares presses his lips together. “No.”
“Better not be.” Sangui glances down at the floor, where Ares’s blood has splashed across the cement in three dark drops, glistening like wet ink. “Oh, and wipe that up before you leave. The floor’s dirty enough already.”
Ares walks home alone.
It should only take ten minutes, but his injuries are slowing him down, and as the adrenaline from the fight seeps out of his bloodstream and the night breeze stings like salt on all his open cuts, he can feel the panic kicking in. Not that the panic is ever really gone. It just lies dormant, skirting the edges of his thoughts.
When it’s particularly bad, like tonight, it compromises his ability to breathe. He knows thattechnically,he can’t just stop breathing out of nowhere. That he has a pair of functioning lungs. That there’s more than enough oxygen outside, with the oak trees lining the street, the city spreading out wide around him.
But then he’ll think about how fast time is passing, and how he might never find his brother, will never get the chance to make things right, and no matter how hard he tries to inhale, it’s like the air ends up trapped in his throat. His lungs seize, drawing nothing in.
He has to pause beside a traffic sign, one hand gripping the metal pole to support himself, lightheaded and gasping like the man he’d almost strangled earlier. Karma, maybe.
Then a boy on a bike rides past him, slow enough for Ares to glimpse his face under the streetlights. His heart stops.
Luke.
It’s him, it has to be. The unruly black curls that never stayed put, no matter how hard you brushed them, the soft, boyish features that always made elderly women grin and pinch his cheeks, the wiry frame. He’s even wearing the same shirt—white cotton, a graphic logo printed on the back.
“Luke,” he calls out into the night, almost choking on the name. He feels nauseous with hope, his pulse thrumming violently.
When the boy doesn’t turn around, Ares starts running, his worn sneakers slapping the concrete. He pushes himself faster, tearing down the street, narrowly avoiding crashing into a Meituan courier who swears at him. Every step sends a judder of pain through his bruised ribs, but he ignores it. He’s well trained when it comes to ignoring pain.
“Luke!”he calls again, his voice echoing in the cold night air. “Wait, it’s me—Ares.”
And finally, finally, the boy squeezes the brakes, the bike wobbling before he nudges the kickstand down with one foot. He lifts his head and—
It’s not him.
Ares’s stomach drops, the disappointment so crushing and complete it feels like he’s lost his brother a second time.
The boy stares up at him, wide-eyed and clearly unnerved, and as the haze of hope clears, Ares can see how stupid he’d been. Yes, the boy does bear a resemblance to his little brother—but he resembles his brother fromthree years ago.In his head, Luke has become immortal, his appearance permanently frozen on the day he ran away from home, when in reality, he wouldn’t be a little kid anymore, but a teenager. The version of Luke from the vision is older, taller, his features so hollowed out and somber that Ares almost hadn’t recognized him when he’d first peered into the lake.
“Were you calling after me?” the boy asks.
“Sorry,” Ares says. He swallows, wipes the sweat from his forehead. “I thought... I was looking for someone, and I thought you were him.”
The boy blinks. “Okay, that’s okay.” He hesitates, maybe sees the naked desperation on Ares’s face, and adds: “Do you need help looking for him? Maybe... if he goes to school in the area, my friends might know—”
“No,” Ares says, feeling more and more stupid by the second. “But thanks.”
“Okay,” the boy says again, and glances up at him one last time with something like concern—though he isn’t sure if it’s for the boy’s own safety, or Ares’s sanity—before righting his bike and riding away.
Ares stares after him for a few moments longer, his chest hollow, then slowly continues limping down the street.
12
Chanel
