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Something Lloyd came to know about after living with Kai and Nya is that the elder Smith sibling has some freakishly weird skills with a knife and not of the conventional, normal, kind either. The first time he had learnt of Kai’s skills was when he entered the kitchen behind Kai who hadn’t heard him and soon a kitchen knife was embedded in the wall behind his head.
“You threw a knife at me?!” To say Lloyd was a bit freaked out would be the understatement of the century.
“Sorry, greenie. Next time, don’t sneak up on me,” Kai apologized as he crossed the room and yanked the knife out of the wall.
“What even was that? Where’d you learn to throw a knife like that?” the blond asked. They were both probably thinking about what would have happened if it had hit Lloyd.
“A knife? And it was a long time ago. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again,” Kai went back to chopping the onions.
“I don’t care if it happens again. How did you learn? It’s not like you can book knife-throwing lessons at the gym,”
“Actually, you can - there’s a place down the street that offers them. Are you going to help me with dinner or not?” he asked.
“Really? I am - chuck me the dumplings?” Kai did indeed chuck Lloyd the container of dumplings after that.
The next time Lloyd almost got a knife stabbed through his hand. He had been looking through Kai’s side of the room for a book the brunette had stolen (borrowed, Kai had insisted) from a few weeks ago. So far, he had come up with nothing, the last place he had to check was under Kai’s pillow, which he really didn’t want to do but he really needed the book for school otherwise he would end up with week-long detention.
As he ran his hand under the red pillow, he suddenly felt a stabbing [a/n: stabbing, ha!] pain in the palm of his hand. When he drew that hand out, he found a shallow knife wound that was slowly bleeding. Lloyd flipped the pillow over to reveal a black karambit and his book.
Why does Kai have a karambit under his pillow? Why does he even have one in the first place, aren’t they illegal?
Shrugging off the thoughts for the time, he grabbed his book and left for the lounge room, intent on getting some homework done.
The next day.
“Nya!” Lloyd called out to the girl during school. The ravenette turned around to face him from where she had been walking through the hallway.
“Hi Lloyd, what’s up?” she asked as the blond caught up with her.
He dropped his voice to a whisper before he asked, “Why can Kai do some weird stuff with a knife? And why does he have a karambit? Aren’t they illegal?”
“You know about that? He has a weapons license for his karambit, don’t worry,” She hadn’t answered his first question.
The pair reached the school’s library where Nya led them both to a table where they both took a seat opposite each other.
Nya checked over her shoulder that no one was too close to overhear her before she spoke.
“Look, Lloyd, you know how Kai basically raised us after our parents walked out on us when we were young?” He nodded. “Well, to keep us safe and so nothing too bad happened, Kai became a part of some pretty shady stuff, learning those...skills along the way,” she explained.
Lloyd would later learn that there was more to it than that, no story was ever that simple but for now, it was enough.