“Have you seen him?” It was an easy question for which there was no easy answer. Yes, Chang Kun Wei had been seen in the building. No, he had looked nothing like the boy they had taken in so many years ago, groomed and raised to become exactly the thing they were worried about now. A ruthless, heartless, graceful killing machine. The only downside to this machine was that it had taken sides, and it wasn’t siding with us.
There was little to be done to change that now though. Bad management. In the end such things could always be blamed on bad management. The boy, their boy, had become too attached to certain individuals. Their quiet prince had shown signs of wear and tear, after only three years of fighting in the dathmatches. It wouldn’t do. It was starting to look like the waste of a perfectly good project, and Boss Han could not and would not let that happen. Said it would give off all the wrong signals to the competition. No one ever thought to ask about the effects it had on the man himself. Now they knew.
The steady dripping of blood from the tip of the katana to the ground was the only sound that reached Boss Han’s ears. His own please were muted now, garbled nonsense that even he drowned out, even if he couldn’t stop it. It was hard to speak without a tongue, after all, and the tongue, that lying, deceiving, murdering tongue had been the first thing to go.
“Have you seen him?” Boss Han had asked and it had been the most pointless question ever asked. Of course. Where else would he go? What place was there for him, but home? None. There was nowhere left to run to. Nothin left to distract him. It had all started with the handler. The man who had brought him in from the street, raised him and wielded him like the weapon he was. One day he had been alive, and proud of his surrogate son. The next he had been gone, the light from his eyes forever doused in the river.
Chang Kun Wei hadn’t taken it as badly as they thought he would. And why should he? He of all people knew that those who fought risked dying, and those who died risked being reborn. Such was the way of things. His silence embolded Boss Han. It gave him the illusion of control. It hadn’t stopped there. Chang Kun Wei had already set things in motion that he wouldn’t be able to stop. It started on the day he first laid eyes on her, and ended here, with him silently staring at Han.
In the end I suspect she knew, or had at least guessed that for her quiet prince, there was no way out. He wouldn’t have known how to stop even if he was allowed to. His handler had chosen him well, after all. You can’t make a killer out of someone who isn’t made of the right material to begin with. She knew this, and yet she stayed with him. The problems started a month after their first meeting. It became obvious that he wanted out, but his bonds to Boss Han and the triads were too strong. To him it must have felt like desperately wanting the sun to rise in the west. Han chose wrong the first time, when he had the life of the handler ended.
The second time he hit home. He just never expected Chang Kun Wei to liberate himself from years and years of indoctrination. It wasn’t the first time he had counted on ties that didn’t actually exist anywhere outside of his mind. Chang had been swift in shedding his bonds. He’d simply rid Han of his tongue to keep the man from reminding him of them. Messy but effective. Maybe that was something she came up with as well. Chang turned to me and I was fairly sire that that was it. It was alright though. Those who fight risk dying, and those who die…
“How long?” He spoke, the first words I had ever heard him say outside of the competition. I must have looked as dumb as I felt, because he reworded the question. ” How long was she alone with him?” My mind went back to that particular day. They had brought her in midway during the afternoon. She died four hours later, in the early evening. “Three hours.” I said, looking up at him. His face was as unreadable as always. If not for the tightening of his hand on the katana I would have thought he was unaffected by the facts laid out before him.
” You’re a decent guy, Leung.” he said, still looking at me. “Go. Tell them where they can find Han, three hours and ten minutes from now.” He didn’t have to tell me twice. I left a rambling boss and a quiet prince behind. Three hours and ten minutes later I reported to commissionar Lau, who was not someone I had ever thought I’d talk to. Those were the risks of the trade though. Those who fought, died. Those who died were reborn. Those who reborn would find themselves on unfamiliar territory. Such was the way of life.
