Archive of Our Own

It was the one lie he refused to admit to. By some cursed mockery of the universe, he remembered everything.

Act I: Beginnings

Xiao Weiying's parents hadn't been well-off. He remembered the small building, the dingy smell of mold and rotting wood.

They saved up for a trip to Bridon for ages. It must've cost them a lot, yet they did it. He knew why.

His parents hadn't liked him. Demon, they'd called him. As if it were his fault that genetics graced him with his... exotic features.

Superstitious, he assumed, whenever he looked too deep into a glass of red wine and wondered about it. Yet they didn't even try to excorcise him. How fun.

They could've drowned him in a river anywhere in China. Likely, they wanted to make sure his spirit didn't come back to haunt them.

So they brought him to Bridon and left him on the streets one dark, fateful night.

Probably assumed him to die. He was only six years old, after all.

He'd never forget his first weeks in Bridon.

Hunger, loneliness and coldness were his constant companions. Each hurting in a different way. Each making him want the nightmare to end day in day out, night after night.

Fat businessmen walked past the alley he took residence in.

More often than not he watched them, a dark scowl on his young features, fuelled by the hunger gnawing a hole into his stomach.

If they had enough money to stuff themselves like pigs, why couldn't they give him even a penny?

He'd asked. Begged. They barely spared him more than a glance. Perhaps because he didn't speak English yet.

One time he got yelled at. He didn't understand, but he could tell it wasn't anything nice.

Eventually, he learned that hunger and cold weren't the biggest dangers the streets had to offer.

If he was a demon, then these people were the devil in human shape.

Sometimes he isn't sure why they left him alone for as long as they did. Then he remembers the defining detail.

He barely remembers his first encounter with one of them. The slimy voice, sending shivers of terror down his spine.

He barley remembers, but at the same time he remembers enough. His hair had grown longer, reaching past his shoulders. The man, thin and tall and staggering unsteadily, had mistaken him for a girl.

During his first encounter, he ran.

His second encounter had him cornered. This one he remembers better. At least he remembers the hand that had reached for him.

Call it desperation, but he'd reacted in the one way he thought could work: he'd bitten, pointy teeth breaking skin.

A metallic, sweet taste had filled his mouth.

Starved as he was, he didn't even care that it was blood. He was hungry from the lack of food. He was scared of what this man wanted from him, an instinct telling him it was nothing good. He was angry, with everything and anything.

His parents, who left him. The fat businessmen, who stuffed themselves like pigs. The slimy strangers of the night, who he knew had hurt other kids like him.

He barely registered the panicked scream until he was smacked. Hard. He was sent flying, head crashing into the brick wall.

But the stranger ran, and he didn't care.

He didn't spit the blood out, and instead licked his teeth clean.

Over the course of his first three months in Bridon, Xiao Weiying found that there were two good ways to get food. The first was dumpster diving. The second was pickpocketing the fat businessmen.

Dumpster diving was easy, even if he'd gotten various things thrown after himself and been chased by furious store owners. It did leave him feeling ill not too rarely though.

Pickpocketing brought a certain thrill, like a game of tag. Except he was always the one running and never let himself be caught. It did leave him hiding from the police though.

Eventually, he befriended Harry and Dylan, two other kids who frequented the same area as him.

Like him, they had nothing. The three of them banded together, for a while. They'd been in a similar situation as he had been not too long ago. Except clearly, they had needed help.

Vein barely remembers more than the adrenalin and the sting of pain in his palms.

There had been glass shards. He'd picked one up, snuck closer. Dodged the rock that had missed the disgusting filth before him, thrown by the taller one of the two boys.

Without much warning, he'd leapt. Jumping onto the man's back. Without mercy, he'd plunged the glass into the side of his neck with all the force a child his size and stature could manage.

The devil in disguise went down with a dull thud, the cry strangled and wheezing.

He choked on his own blood soon enough. Or perhaps he bled out. Xiao Weiying couldn't tell.

It was certainly one way to make friends, but neither side complained.

Dylan did the talking. Not that Xiao Weiying understood a thing. He barely understood more than "yes", "no", "thank you" and one or two insults. Vaguely.

Where the redhead attempted to communicate with a ear-grating mixture of English and Chinese, Harry never talked. Only Dylan. Xiao Weiying didn't ask.

The difference in languages made communication hard. It took what felt like ages just to get past the introductions, which ended up a mess. Xiao Weiying had only mild issues saying their names.

Meanwhile, the two kids from Bridon had trouble pronouncing his name.

In the end, they called him Vein.

~

Act II: Crimson

As it turned out, Dylan and Harry had... interesting habits. Harry more so than Dylan.

Unlike Xiao Weiying, or rather the newly dubbed Vein, they didn't dumpster dive. They preferred stealing from the street vendors down in Bridon's Chinatown.

(It was there that Vein stole a lucky charm or two. For good luck, of course.)

Dylan made a habit of disappearing for hours at a time, scouting out other areas, as he put it.

Another thing he learned was that, at least Harry, had a habit of biting people. He bit Dylan plenty.

Over the course of half a year, Vein picked up enough English to get by in conversations with Dylan.

They'd run away. Harry, at least. Dylan had met him after he'd fled from... something. He didn't understand the word. Could? Could what?

But things were fine. They got along well, even with limited communication.

Eventually, Harry started biting him as well. Not one to be out-done, Vein bit right back. Much to Harry's delight and Dylan's exasperation.

And then winter came, and it became even harder to get food.

Eventually, they resorted to begging.

The fat businessmen, just as before, ignored them.

Dylan tried to keep morale up, but Harry and Vein both could tell he was weaker than the both of them combined.

"I'm dying", Dylan had admitted, one night after Harry had fallen asleep. He tried to explain, but his lack of Catonese and Vein's limited English made it hard.

All he knew was that Dylan was dying.

One day, he left and didn't return.

Vein, in a fit of rage of being abandoned yet again, ended up snapping that night.

His second kill was a drunkard who'd staggered into their alley. He had no money on him.

It hadn't been a hard choice to make, in the middle of winter.

Vein couldn't keep most of it down. Harry barely seemed to care.

It wasn't the last time they did it, though, and eventually he was as ravenous when eating as Harry.

That was how they found them.

The Crimson Order, they called themselves, as he later learned.

They killed Harry.

"Traitor", he remembers one spitting in Catonese, even among his shock and exhaustion, and latched onto the familiarity with desperation.

They took him with them. Perhaps solely because he reasoned with the one who spoke his mother tongue. Even if "reasoned" was barely the right word.

"Traitor", he'd parroted in perfect Catonese, eyes fixed on the man who'd spoken. He wasn't a fat businessman.

Rather, he was a young man who looked like a walking twig. He looked about as appetizing as an actual stick.

The gun that had killed Harry seconds ago was trained at his own head, seconds later. "Help, please" he murmured, despite the events seconds ago.

He was scared, yes. Sad as well over the loss of yet another friend. But he was also desperate. He didn't want to die.

His stomach growled. He hadn't eaten in days. Neither of them had. Even with their tendency to eat people, when push came to shove, they hadn't had food in days.

Shock and hunger and exhaustion made for a terrible mix in stressful situations.

The world blurred. Tilted. Then he fell, things fading to black.

When he came to, it was to the dingy smell of mold. For a moment, he thought everything had been a dream.

Then he noticed the lack of the smell rotten wood exuded and realized that no, his room's ceiling wasn't wooden but made of stone.

He was alive.

He wasn't just alive, though. They kept him alive. Fed him. Gave him proper clothes. Let him have the room he'd woken up in.

A few took to taking care of his hair, despite his protests. He found he didn't mind when he was put in front of a mirror.

They treated him well.

He learned through Lian Yu, the man who'd spoken Catonese that night, that they deemed him special.

He didn't explain further. Vein didn't ask further. Not when "being special", or different really, did something good for him for once.

No one looked him in the eyes, no matter what.

It made it all too easy to guess why they deemed him special.

Yet for all that he was put on a figurative pedestal, it took ages until they let him anywhere near the on-going rituals and sacrifices, despite letting him eat with them afterwards.

A cult, he'd later learn. Harry had run away from a cult. He hadn't minded eating humans because that was what they ate after sacrifices.

Vein indulged in it, on occasion. Not always, but often enough. He minded it less when it was cooked at least a little.

The better his English got, the more fun he found in annoying the people around him. At first he could chalk it up to poor English, but truly, he enjoyed weirding them out.

Besides, he wasn't saying anything wrong in commenting on how tasty they looked, was he?

He got into plenty trouble during his stay with the cult. No matter in what high regard they held the ruby-eyed boy, even they had limits.

Some evenings he was sent to his room hungry, or made to clean the altar. Nothing that would actually harm him. They didn't dare raise a hand to him.

Truly, it was as if he were always either on a pedestal like some sort of prince or treated like an unruly child.

He was about twelve when his life was turned on its head yet again.

Once again, Vein had gotten in trouble. For what, he cared not enough to remember.

As the point stands, he wasn't allowed to join the ceremony that day.

He barelybremembwrs what it was about. Just that he snuck out of his room and climbed up onto the rafters to watch anyway.

Everything went as normal. At least for the first half an hour.

That was when things took a turn.

Glasses with ruby red liquids were raised, prayers were made. Then they drank.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then a cacophony of shrieks and wheezing filled the dimly lit room.

In a morbid fascination, Vein watched as they scrambled up and for the door. None of them made it that far. Soon enough collapsing. Dropping dead like flies.

For two weeks, he buried the dead.

Then, finally, someone deigned to check in to see why the cult had gone radio silent over night.

After all, they had been informations for Bridon's underground.

That was how he met the last person on his way to the top.

~

Act III: Ascension

There were three lessons Vein learned at the ripe age of fifteen, under the careful guidance of the head of Bridon's Chinatown. Under the guidance of the underworld's most powerful woman.

One, power is absolute. Dangerous in how addicting it is. But absolute. If you hold all the pieces of the chess board, you can dischard the useless ones as you please and keep those you need... or simply want.

Two, power is lonely. Others can and will strive to take it. Strike down such attempts without mercy.

Three, there are many, many ways to achieve power. Deals, blackmail, murder or seduction. Soul taught him all of it.

He took those lessons, twisted them like strings of red, and learned to pull the strings.

Eventually, that brought him face to face with a growing gang for negotiations.

His laughter rang clear through the night when his eyes found dark bronze ones.

"Dylan, old friend... not dead after all?" He mused, stepping closer.

The young man before him sweat dropped. Laughing nervously. "Vein? Oh, your English has become amazing" he complimented in liue of an answer.

Vein leaned closer. "I hate lies, old friend" he whispered, and that was the only warning he gave. He left moments later. His own men shooting down any of the gang members trying to get after him for his transgression, all while the traitor bled out like the pig Vein deemed him to be.

Idly, he thought that he'd likely taste terrible.

The streets of Bridon weren't like the coldness of his first home, yet the cult had been nothing like the streets. Thus, one can logically conclude that yes, the mafia is nothing like the cult was.

Yet at the same time, it is closer to the cult than anything else.

Soul held him in high regard, despite his young age. At arm's length, sure, but just as with the Crimson Order, he was treated well.

They'd taken him in when he was twelve, and now here he was.

A young man who strode down the hallways with the same confidence as men who had been serving their boss for decades.

Vein was slowly but surely working his way to the top. It was no secret. He wasn't subtle about it.

He wasn't subtle in general.

From his lighthearted comments of how "your head would look perfect in a hotpot" or how "he'd love to sweeten his tea with that one's blood", even his old eating habits were no secret.

Perhaps that was what made people fear the young man so much.

He didn't care much.

Vein didn't have the authority Soul had, not at that point in time, but he couldn't help but think that he was a close second.

If he said kneel, they knelt. If he said run, they ran. If he asked for a gun, he was handed one.

Truly, how could he complain?

Among it all, his old legal records had been erased, replaced by new ones.

Xiao Weiying was still his name, but maybe three living people knew. He liked it like that.

He was eighteen when he started to grow bored of things and took some of the founds he'd collected over the recent years.

He bought himself a nice apartment near Bridon's Chinatown, uncaring about the blood-stained money spent.

The decor was more akin to traditional as opposed to the modernity of Bridon. He liked it like that.

Out of anywhere in the city, he liked this area the best. Even if it had been a long time, he did still feel a tie to his father's country.

At least he thinks his father was the one from China. Perhaps it was his mother after all? No matter.

The point was, Vein was living his best life.

There was no more hunger, no more cold.

He had safety, power. If someone tried to take it from him? He'd have their innards strung up as warning if need be.

He opened a modeling agency. He had time. He craved something interesting.

It was amusing. The dramas. The baleful glares thrown between models new and old.

They whispered behind his back. Of course they did. He didn't care. It was amusing.

He was twenty, sitting in on a photoshoot, when the call reached him.

Soul was dead. Shot in her own office.

All she owned, all she had build, would be torn apart by her subordinates like a sheep's hide torn apart by rabid wolves if no one stepped up.

He didn't hesitate to leave without as much as an excuse.

When he arrived, people dropped to their knees wherever he passed.

There was no mistaking why Vein had come 'home' after almost a year of absence beyond weekly tea and dim sum with their boss.

There was no reason for questions, even as his stride was slow and leisurely, as if merely taking a walk.

He arrived at the office after what could've been minutes or hours. Her body was still there. A bullet wound in her forehead. Her eyes empty.

She was already cold to the touch.

Snapped his fingers. "It was her will to be cremated," was the only thing he said to the three men who'd trailed after him, "do be sure to fulfill her wishes"

They didn't hesitate, simply getting to work.

Without another word, Vein took his seat at the table like a king would take a seat on a golden throne.

There was no one who dared to question his authority.

Not when his craziness was known to all.

Look at me now, he can't help but think, swirling the ruby red liquid in his glass. From an unwanted brat tossed to the streets for something I couldn't control nor choose to one of the most powerful men in Bridon.

Look at me and regret what you've done, but know that I'm quite happy to bathe in blood.