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Eating dinner with Sing has become a little bit too common, looking back on it. Almost to the point where it’s getting hard to justify it as merely ‘keeping relations with the current Chinatown gang boss’, although it’d be quite difficult to put any other name to it. It’s not even an issue of enjoying his company; when every single other person you’ve spent time with in your entire life has left you with nothing but pain, disgust, or fear, it becomes quite difficult to differentiate merely tolerating someone’s presence from actively enjoying being around them. Solidly and objectively, though, Yut Lung is certain he can pinpoint Sing right around the ‘passably tolerable’ side of things, mostly because it’d be unthinkable to mark down someone as enjoyable to be around when they are seemingly as unable to shut up as Sing Soo-Ling is.
“Uuh, so like, is there going to be some super dessert your fancy ass chefs are bringing in after this, or…?” the brat of the hour says, after swallowing down a mouthful that he had the decency to finish chewing before deciding to speak up.
“No? When have I ever offered you dessert after a meal here? If you’re looking for a multiple dish culinary experience then go to a restaurant and stop barging into my house for dinner.” replies Yut Lung, not even bothering to raise an eyebrow at Sing. The younger boy, sat on the other side of the table, just shrugs.
“Well, since you’re eating like a bird, I thought you were like… Saving space or something.” he says, making a small motion with his hands that effectively communicates nothing at all. “Like- jeez, I’d almost think you were a vegan or something, you put so little meat on your plate I can barely see it! Combined with like, well, all the other… Super small portions of food and stuff.”
“Stop waving your hands around when you’re eating. I promise you aren’t making any more sense by gesturing or whatever it is you’re doing with all the flailing.” says Yut Lung, rolling his eyes. “Besides, how can you compare my plate to yours? Unlike you, not everyone is a fucking glutton-”
“Geez, no need to get angry over it, dude, the fuck? I was just pointing it out, calm down.” says Sing, waving away with his hand and rolling his eyes right back at Yut Lung. If he were any weaker or more emotional, the words might be annoying or even grating, but a lifetime of being told to ‘calm down’ and to ‘stop being emotional’ from far more demeaning men than Sing just make his words kitten-weak, almost hilarious to a point. “Like- I’m just saying, if you keep eating like that I’m gonna be taller than you one day. Wait, no, actually that’s gonna happen either way, but like, you’re making it too easy on me.”
“Would it kill you to stop saying nonsense for a minute and just eat the damn food-”
“No, but seriously, like, you should probably get some more protein in there or else puberty will really never hit you-”
“Will you shut up? So what if I don’t like meat, huh? It’s just my personal taste, you asshole-” Yut Lung says, but his tone dies down, going quiet by the end. It’s an odd, stilted action coming from a person who’s every move is usually calculated and careful, enough so for Sing to notice, but the younger boy seems to just raise an eyebrow and choose to not dig deeper.
“Alright man, sorry, whatever. You don’t like meat and like to eat like a little girl, you do you. Don’t whine when we’re both in our twenties and you look like an ant next to me.” he mumbles, quickly shoving food into his mouth to punctuate his words.
Yut Lung looks down at his plate. The small serving of rice, the serving of stir-fried veggies that he’s been picking at. The pitiful little chunks of meat pushed to the side, velveted and cooked to perfection and then promptly ignored by him. Compared to Sing’s plate- heaping with everything, little dishes of sauces all around- it is a pitiable sight. It’s his personal taste to serve himself a plate that looks more fit to feed a toddler than a sixteen year old, except it really isn’t. It really isn’t, but those thoughts have to wait until after dinner, until he’s alone and can do something about the realization that has his stomach churning and whatever was left of his appetite dying out.
On the very least, he does a good enough job through the rest of the dinner, mostly because he’s a master at sitting by at a mealtime and pretending nothing’s wrong by this point. If Sing notices his usual mood has changed and that his silence, which by most others would be taken as some shyness or any other attribute they’d like to slap onto him like if he was a blank slate for them to project what they please onto, contrats his usual demeanor during these meals, he at least has the decency to not point it out. He eats, says thank you for the meal, asks Yut Lung to give his compliments to the chef knowing full well the only times Yut Lung speaks with the kitchen staff is if he has to make arrangements for what meals to give to ‘poor, sick Hua Lung’, and leaves. Yut Lung leaves the table as well, glass of pinot grigio left half-full for once as he retires to his rooms.
He doesn’t keep anything stupid in his room, like say- a diary or a journal where he’d write down the dates and the ways his brothers died. It’d be an incredibly idiotic idea to keep a record of those things, just waiting for the wrong hands to get to it and for everything to crumble around him: of course such a stupid idea had only occured to him as a child, back when killing his brothers wasn’t even a plan and just a fantasy. Back then, he’d thought that reading over and over the ways he would make them and their loved ones suffer would offer some sort of catharsis. But he’s not a stupid, snot nosed brat anymore: he knows better. Knows they don’t deserve even the ink spent on a page detailing the date when their hearts were shot or when poison made their organs stop.
Because that’s what it’s all about: what it’s always been about. Kill his brothers, avenge his mother and his child self. Kill his brothers, kill their wives and children so that nobody’s left to care about them. Kill his brothers, take over the Lee family and take away the organization they spent their lives working for. Truly, leaving a written record would’ve been antithetical in a way, if he wanted to destroy all what was left of them, all they could leave behind to live through. He’s destroyed companies run by his brothers just for the momentary pleasure of seeing a lifetime’s worth of work crash, after all. Killed children and wives who probably had wished for the deaths of their fathers and husbands as well, for the sin of being tied to them, for the sin of being an extension of them.
And yet somehow, his brothers live on, because Yut Lung cannot eat until he is not hungry.
It’s not as much of a realization as it is a giving up on denying it. Because as he sits in bed, lips pursed, he knows very well that he’s not full. He’s hungry. Going to sleep hungry has been his normal since- forever, to the point where it’d probably feel weird if he did otherwise, and therein lies the issue. Because he’s destroyed his brothers and their families, has nipped the rose at the bud, and now there’s two final places where the traces of his brothers reside: the Lee family itself, in all its capacity as a mafia organization, and on every fiber of his own being.
Of course he’s known that he was influenced by his brothers for a long time. It’s not an earth shattering fact by any metric. But it’d been too easy to see those influences as shackles, as just another part of his life that would break off when his hard work paid off in his brother’s spilt blood or Hua Lung’s stupid face after his brain got scrambled beyond repair- the thought of once they’re gone I can be myself. And perhaps it’d been obvious since the start, and perhaps he’d been stupid to think otherwise, but in the end, there’s no such a thing as himself divorced from his brothers.
The last remnant of his brothers is himself. Not in blood, no, not necessarily, but in their cruelty. Because there’s no need to do a deep dive into the thought exercise of if he’d still eat just enough food to not wake up from hunger pains if he hadn’t been accustomed to do so as a kid. It’s easier to tell himself he dislikes meats and proteins than it is to remember his brothers purposefully removing them from his diet to try and keep him as small as possible, to set back his puberty as much as they could so he’d look even younger than his age, because gross old men found power in how easily his bony wrists could snap and how little strength he could muster with a body so desperate to try and function that there’s no nutrients to allocate to muscle. Because a hungry kid is so much easier to wrangle than a fed one, because when you’re delirious with thirst and hunger you’ll do anything even if it means getting your hands dirty just so you can lap up the blood staining them.
In his bed, he rolls to his side, legs curled up slightly. The position, he’s learnt over the years, makes going to sleep easier because it makes your stomach rumble less out of hunger. Makes it hurt less, which was a small blessing to have back then. This much wasn’t taught to him by his brothers, but it’s hard for it to not feel like an extension of their reach, of cold slimy hands all over his past.
When my brothers are dead, I can be myself. Those kinds of thoughts had to spring up just a few years after his life had been changed forever; when he was eight or nine, at most, and killing his brothers was a mere fantasy he’d indulge in to try and escape a reality he couldn’t handle at times. And even so, they remain stupid thoughts. Because even at nine years old- at eight, at seven, at six- there’d not be such a thing as a himself without his brothers’ traces left on him.
Even back then, what hope was there for a normal life? For some idyllic escape, for a god granted miracle that put him in the best environment for a kid, only for it to turn out he’d been far too ruined already?
He can’t tell where he begins and where the creation sculpted by his brothers and by their cruelty begins.
And maybe that’s fine. Yut Lung doesn’t care much for being a person. He hasn’t been a person in years; a weapon, a bargaining chip, a thing to be used, sure, but not a person. It’s not something he cares much for. So it’d be fine, really, if it didn’t mean that they live through him, and that every piece of self imposed suffering is not truly self imposed but actually their ghosts continuing to poke and prod at him even while burning in hell.
… And then what?
Nothing, of course. And then nothing.
Because if his brothers live through him and he wants to get rid of them, then there’s really no other solution to the situation other than Yut Lung must die, and he isn’t going to do it. The poeticness of it all can go fuck itself, the tragedy of the ouroboros and the vicious cycles ignored. If he’s made it this far, it surely has not been for him to choose a quiet and flowery death over some thoughts and tenuous connections that nobody other than him know exist. If he failed to give into the urge to end it all even as hell itself closed in around him before, it sure won’t be some musings and a tentative, abstract offer of his life goal being complete that will do him in.
He rolls to rest on his other side, legs curling up again, almost automatic. The hunger has simmered down to a sort of background feeling, a full-body thing that’s divorced enough from the pangs and aches that it isn’t really being hungry anymore, faint enough to be put on the backburner, a familiar feeling that will have mostly faded by the morning. When the hunger gets to that stage, sleep comes easier, some sort of giving in of the body. But despite knowing this, he chooses to stand up from the bed, making his way to the liquor cabinet in the corner of the room- he didn’t finish his wine at dinner, after all. Doctors recommend one glass of wine per day, and it’d be a shame to not look out for his health, or whatever.
It’s been a long, stupid night of stupid thoughts, either way, so why not indulge a little? Not that he plans on drinking to any point of drunkeness, but on the very least he can take the edge off and cut off the stupid, useless rabbithole Sing decided to dig up in his mind. He inspects the selection of bottles and finally decides on a red wine, uncaring of the label or age as he serves himself a glass. While he might enjoy searching for aftertastes and aromatic hints on a good day, or maybe even pretend to do so when drinking with some snob who thinks they know about wine just to watch them make a fool of themselves, today’s not the day, so he just placidly sips down on the wine, his stomach no doubt grateful for anything to fill it up.
(Of course, he knows that drinking long term kills the appetite. Knows alcohol delays and disrupts a kid’s growth if consumed too early and too often, something about the alcohol and the hormones and puberty and whatnot. Of course he knows that on the rare occasions he was brought to dinner as a scrawny little kid he was served wine and nothing more to drink, and he doesn’t dare think it was mere coincidence his brothers saw it fit to let him have alcohol of all things as a comfort when he was a mere brat.
But there’s no point in thinking about that, not when it’ll yield no real answers to any worry and just lead into another cyclical, self-focused introspection with no purpose.)
Tomorrow too, Sing will come over for dinner, uninvited and yet welcomed inside anyways, and he will talk his head off about mundane topics Yut Lung couldn’t care less about. He’ll serve himself a plate brimming with whatever he deems the best out of the dishes served- plenty of meat, plenty of things that make a boy grow strong and grow big. And he’ll spare a glance at what Yut Lung has served for himself, and then talk for the whole meal about the latest episode in a TV show or a new card game rising in popularity. And Yut Lung will go to sleep hungry, and it won’t mean anything that matters enough to fix, but enough to haunt him into a second glass of wine perhaps.