Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Mama.”

Rin groaned, pulling her blanket closer to herself. Morning sunlight seeped through the cracks in her blinds, stinging her bleary eyes. Gods, had she slept through her alarms?

“Mamaaaa.”

She rolled over to see Keahi standing at her bedside, still in his pajamas and holding her phone in his hands. He waved it at her. 

“It kept beeping,” he said matter-of-factly. “So I turned it off.”

Rin groaned again.

But honestly, who needed an alarm when they had a four-year-old? 

Mornings in the Trengsin household typically started like this: Rin woke up before six to the sound of her many alarms, and spent the next hour or so making sure her little gremlin of a child was clothed and fed. They were usually out of their apartment by seven twenty, on the train by seven thirty, and at Keahi’s preschool right before eight. 

But today, it was past six-thirty already, and she hadn’t even gotten breakfast on the table. 

“Let’s get dressed,” she murmured to Keahi after throwing some bread in the toaster oven. 

Rin knew that Keahi was a great kid. And he was—intelligent, independent, and inquisitive. But sometimes, his intelligence, independence, and inquisitiveness resulted in him turning off her alarms or taking ten minutes to get dressed because he wanted to pick out his own outfit.

“I don’t like that one,” he said after Rin suggested his favorite shirt. 

She was about to suggest his second-favorite shirt, but then the smoky smell of burning bread hit her nose. 

Tiger’s fucking tits. 

Ever since having Keahi, she tried to keep the cursing to a minimum. But burning breakfast to a crisp warranted just the tiniest bit of fucks under her breath. At least Keahi had gotten dressed in the time it took her to scrape out the charred bits from her pan. 

It was now seven.

She placed a tube of yogurt and a hastily peeled orange in front of him while she went to make herself presentable. Thank whatever deity was out there for giving her the foresight to hang up her laundry instead of just letting it sit in the basket. She grabbed the first blouse and pants she saw in her closet. At least they weren’t wrinkled. 

By the time she had cleaned up, brushed her hair, and slapped some concealer on, it was seven thirty. Keahi was still at the table, picking at his fruit. 

“You don’t want your orange?” she asked, taking the slice he pushed into her face. 

He just shook his head. She had no choice but to finish the orange herself. 

Somehow, they managed to be out the door at seven-twenty. But right as they arrived at the station, breathless and with Keahi’s backpack slung haphazardly over Rin’s shoulder, the train doors closed in their faces. It pulled away into the darkness of Nikan’s underground metro with an aggressive whoosh .

Great fucking Tortoise. They would just have to wait for the next one.

By the time they reached their stop, it was almost eight. She hurried Keahi along through morning commuter traffic, gripping his hand tightly as they weaved through the crowd.

They finally made it to Keahi’s school, only slightly disgruntled. Eight-ten and he was waving goodbye to her, disappearing alongside his classmates and teacher. Eight-nineteen and she was at the nearby train station, waiting for the train to take her into the city. Eight thirty-three, she was on the train, squished between a wall of humans and a pole. Eight fifty-three, she was shoving her way through the station, trying to clear her path up the stairs that led to the sidewalk. 

It was two past nine when she finally made it to her desk, disheveled and slightly sticky from sweat.

“Good morning, Mai’rinnen!” called her ever-bubbly coworker from a few desks over. 

Rin mustered a smile, but remained focused on her laptop. The buffering wheel on her screen made her irrationally irate. With a huff, she pushed out of her chair. She hadn’t even had the chance to fill her water bottle this morning, and the whirlwind commute had left her parched. 

It was just her luck that the same bubbly, bumbling coworker bumped into her with an open thermos full of– thankfully lukewarm– coffee.

As if the day couldn’t get any fucking worse, she was wearing a white blouse. 

“I have a laundry pen?” the coworker offered, fishing the aforementioned pen out of her bag. 

Rin smiled tightly. “Thanks.”

When she returned from the bathroom, a vaguely beige stain splashed across her chest even after furious scrubbing, she expected her program to have loaded. But that would have been hoping for too much, because her screen flashed an error message instead.

File corrupted. Unable to load.

Tiger’s fucking tits.

It was past noon, and IT had taken her laptop. The loaner was astoundingly slow, so she felt like she had accomplished nothing. Her coworkers, who seemed to have nothing to do even though their laptops were fully functional, chatted away behind her.

“Are you going to that welcome meeting for that new VP?”

“New VP? Since when?”

“Don’t know, but I heard the new guy was working in Hesperia. Studied over there, too.”

“Oh, one of those.”

Rin checked her own calendar. Sure enough, there was a calendar event for a welcome reception for some incoming VP. The guest list was hidden by the event organizer.

“Is it mandatory?”

A mandatory reception for a stranger whom she would never meet or work with seemed excessive. Why should she be forced to go?

“I don’t care. It’s one hour I don’t have to sit at this desk. Plus, I think they’ve catered some hors d'oeuvres.”

Rin rolled her eyes and put some headphones in.

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The massive atrium had been repurposed for the reception, with rows of chairs facing a sleek podium under the skylights. The event really was mandatory– the already spacious room was filled with people, few of whom Rin knew other than her immediate coworkers. Most of them had headed to the event before her, leaving their workspace empty as Rin struggled with her design software.

Most of the seats in the back had already been filled. She was content with standing room, not planning to be there longer than absolutely necessary, anyway. She had to finish her current project by end of day.

“There are seats near the front!” 

An overly enthusiastic lady—probably from HR—waved the stragglers forward. Rin stepped back, only to be pushed forward and into the aisle. 

Of course all the seats were in the middle of the rows. She squeezed past people, murmuring apologies beneath her breath till she took the first empty seat she could. It wasn’t even that far in the front— still a few rows behind the important people in business professional— but close enough that she had a clear view of the podium. 

She checked her phone for the time. This thing was scheduled for an hour. She could only hope the new director kept the remarks brief. The balmy CHRO sure didn’t when introducing herself.

Her position at Shenlong Industries paid well enough. Sure, she worked predominantly with arrogant new grads who probably made better use of their salaries than she did. And sure, the work was equally demanding as it was downright dull. And sure, sometimes she had to attend stupid events like these. 

But this job afforded her the best life she could provide for Keahi, and she couldn’t afford to complain.

… Not even when a chillingly familiar someone took to the podium.

“It’s such a privilege to be back in Nikan after so long,” Yin Nezha said, leaning into the microphone. “And even more of a privilege to take on this role at Shenlong.”

His voice echoed off the polished surroundings. But Rin wasn’t listening to a single word– she just couldn’t stop staring.

It was him, really him. Dressed in an impeccable navy suit and looking no less infuriatingly attractive than he had nearly six years ago. But he had still changed. He had cut his hair. It was longer back then; she liked to run her hands through it, marveling at how it was silkier than even hers. Had he gotten taller? He looked taller, or at least more confident. And why wouldn’t he be? He was the Vice President of Research and Development for Nikan’s largest defense contractor– a position typically coveted by those with years of experience and seniority he certainly didn't have.

“He can’t be over thirty,” someone grumbled behind her.

“It doesn’t matter,” another voice whispered. “He’s a Yin.”

Yes, he was. And Rin should have known better than to accept her position in this company.

He just looked so sure of himself at that podium, giving his soulless remarks about his commitment to the mission. Something-something about his background. Something-something about his vision for R&D. Rin was hardly listening. She wanted to disappear. There was no way he could discern her in this crowd, right?

“I look forward to working with you,” he said, taking a strategic pause to survey the room before him. 

The moment his gaze swept over her, she froze. It was brief, barely even a second. Reality had gone mute. The only thing she could hear was the rushing of blood in her ears. A chair scraped, bringing it all back — the atrium, the corporate hell. This was not a shitty drama, where the characters picked each other out in a crowd as a ballad played in the background. Time hadn’t frozen. It just kept marching on, as it had for the past few years.

“All of you,” he added, a note of finality in his voice. “Thank you, and I look forward to serving you.”

He stepped away from the podium to polite clapping, which throbbed Rin’s head. The same corporate fuck as before took over again, giving some indiscernible closing remarks before directing people to mingle for the remainder of the hour. Rin was already looking for an exit. 

She pushed past the crowd after scrambling out of her seat, using her elbows to clear a path through the sea of well-tailored suits and slacks. Of course, people had lingered. Any excuse not to work was a good one.

The exit was in sight. She just needed to get back to her desk, finish that design, and then she could leave—

“Rin.”

She should have just kept walking. But what could she do when the new VP of R&D at Shenlong Industries had pushed through a crowd and said her name?

She spun around, throat dry. Nezha was as she expected him to be: in front of her and imposing. 

“Nezha,” she said, a lump in her throat almost threatening her words. “Congratulations.”

For a second, they said nothing and just stared at each other. But time had never stopped for them before, so it wouldn’t stop for them now. His throat bobbed above his perfectly knotted tie.

“I didn’t know you worked here,” he said lightly.

Behind him, a few annoying-looking suits kept a polite distance. They were probably waiting to talk to him. She balled her hands into fists.

“It’s a recent development,” she said, just as tight-lipped.

“Ah.” He looked down. “You should’ve let me know. I probably could’ve gotten you a referral.”

Never mind the fact that it had been years since they had exchanged a word, or that she had blocked him since, or that he apparently had run off to Hesperia. Never mind that she got the job anyway, never needing his help. But she couldn’t voice that— not with an audience and not when he was who he was. One of the ass kissers behind him cleared his throat. 

“I have a project I’m trying to finish,” she said, taking that as her cue to disappear. 

“Of course.” He nodded. “Sorry to keep you from it. I’m sure you’re doing great work.”

What the fuck? She looked anywhere but at him— the floor, the ceiling, the fancy silver cufflinks peeking through at his wrists. 

“Thank you.”

He didn’t skip a beat. “We should catch up.”

No, we should not. We should absolutely fucking not.

But the people behind him were watching her already, sharp gazes glued to her coffee-stained blouse. She forced what she hoped was a convincing smile. 

“Of course,” she said, willing her voice not to waver. She glanced at the onlookers. “Just, uh, send me a calendar invite for whenever.”

Maybe he wanted to say something else, maybe he finally got the fucking hint. Whatever it was, he nodded once more and turned away from her to entertain his admirers. But his gaze lingered on her just long enough to make her want to scream.

“She’s a friend from Sinegard,” she heard him explain, his voice following her even as her hurried footsteps echoed down the hall.

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Rin could be late to work, but never to pick up Keahi.

As soon as he saw her walking up to the school’s doors, he ran to her, his little backpack looped around one shoulder. It was unzipped, as usual. She knelt to zip it up

“Did you have a good day at school?” she asked, taking his hand and heading toward the same train station from earlier in the day.

He nodded very seriously. “I have something to show you.”

It was probably some gods-awful drawing that she would frame anyway, or a lumpy sculpture made out of air-dry clay that would be proudly displayed on a shelf in their apartment. Either way, she couldn’t help but smile.

“I’ll take a look when we get home,” she promised, squeezing his hand a little tighter as they neared the platform.

The train ride back to their apartment was interlaced with Keahi’s little kid stories. They counted to one hundred as a class today. Apparently, one of his classmates had just become a big sister. Another one of them had just gotten a new puppy. And the noodles they had for lunch today were good, but not as good as hers.

“Can we have noodles for dinner tonight?” he asked as the train neared their stop. 

She nodded, grasping his hand again. She had plucked his backpack off him, not wanting it to fall off and be forever lost to Sinegard’s metro system. There was no way she was replacing another one, not after she only noticed the last one sitting on the train seat just as the doors closed behind them. 

As soon as she kicked off her shoes and locked the apartment door behind her, she pulled out her phone to send a quick text to Kitay.

Keahi wants noodles.

Not even a minute later, her phone buzzed with a response.

🫡

Thank gods for takeout. And thank gods for Kitay.

There was a knock at the door. Keahi rushed toward it, leaving Rin alone with the basket of laundry he was helping her fold. Keahi let out an excited squeal from the front door — he must have realized who it was.

“Mama!!” he called. “Uncle Kitay is here!”

Rin sighed and set down her laundry. Kitay was inside already, placing the takeout bags on the small dining table.

“Keahi, please don’t open the door again without my permission,” she said to her son, who looked only a little bit guilty.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, but his attention was fully directed at Kitay. 

“Don’t look at me, you little menace,” Kitay said with a grin. “This is your mama’s house. She makes the rules.”

Rin rolled her eyes at him. “Come on, help me set the table. Both of you.”

Placemats were placed, water was poured, and real plates were filled with food. Over the meal, Keahi told Kitay the same stories Rin had heard on the train. To his credit, Kitay found it all fascinating and asked him all the right follow-up questions.

“Which classmate was this?”

“Minghua!”

“What kind of dog was it?”

“A little white one!”

“What number can you count to?”

At this one, Keahi started reciting. He was doing really well; his teacher told Rin he was exceptionally bright. But right now, she just wanted him to eat his food.

“Keahi, your noodles are going to get cold,” she said, interrupting him when he got to the twenties. 

“He was on a roll,” Kitay huffed in his defense. “The kid likes math.”

Keahi grinned, but slurped his noodles anyway. Rin shook her head and pushed her own plate away. The lump in her throat from earlier had yet to disappear, making it difficult to muster an appetite.

Kitay raised a brow but said nothing. He knew better than to ask with Keahi around.

Eventually, it came time to wind down. She wrangled Keahi into his pajamas— a difficult feat since all he wanted to do was talk to Kitay. Eventually, he gave in when she offered to read him a bedtime story from the book they had recently borrowed from the library. Kitay entertained himself at the empty table, flipping through a giant tome he extracted from his backpack as if it were a rare gem.

She didn’t even have to explain her routine to Kitay. He already knew how it was for her.

It was only when Keahi’s breathing had evened out in his sleep that she carefully shut the door behind her and went back out to the living area. Kitay was still at the table, hunched over his laptop. 

“What are you doing now?” she asked, drawing near. 

He looked up at her, bewildered. “Writing, of course. This dissertation isn’t going to defend itself.”

She rolled her eyes again and moved to grab two glasses from the cupboard. “Okay, Dr. Chen.”

“Not yet. Don’t jinx me.”

If she had faith in anyone to get a PhD, it was Kitay. He had gone straight into a doctoral program after graduating from Sinegard. She had a feeling this PhD was not going to be his last. In the back of the tallest cupboard she could reach, she kept a bottle of wine. It was shitty and room temperature, but that didn’t matter. Right now, all she wanted was a drink and a chance to rant to the only person she knew she could trust.

“Alright, so what happened?” Kitay asked, closing his laptop. “You text me that you need to talk but won’t tell me what it’s about, and now you’re opening your bottle of emergency wine. Either it’s something really good or really bad.” He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re pregnant again—“

Rin nearly threw his glass of wine at him as she set it down. “Gods, no!”

“Oh, thank gods,” he said. “You know, I’m still too young to be an uncle.”

She decided to ignore that and sat down next to him. The knot in her throat had only thickened.

“I saw Nezha today.”

She recounted the harrowing events from earlier. Her fingers tightened around the wine glass when she got to the part where Nezha had described her as a friend from Sinegard . 

“I just thought this city is so big that I could disappear in it,” she confessed after nearly downing her glass in one go. 

Kitay didn’t look impressed. “You’re working at his family’s company.”

“I know, but what are the odds that the Vice fucking President of Whatever would notice some entry-level nobody?”

“Rin, you know Nezha would find you in a crowd.”

Her throat burned. “I didn’t want to be here in the first place.”

But her position at Shenlong had the highest salary and the best benefits of all of the roles she hastily applied for in her scramble to get back to Sinegard. She knew the risks and took them anyway, because, in the end, her pride didn’t matter as much as Keahi. 

Kitay reached across the table to place his hand on top of hers. “I know.”

She swallowed the last drops of wine and pushed her glass away. “Fuck me, this is bad.”

“At least you probably won’t have to keep seeing him,” Kitay suggested. “He’s a nepotism hire. You won’t be in the same rooms again.”

“I hope so.” She wrinkled her nose. “Hesperia? Really? He hates Hesperia.”

Kitay shrugged. “Some people run off to Hesperia and get an MBA after a breakup. Other people run off to Speer.”

“That is not the same. He was in Hesperia, probably playing CEO at one of his father’s companies. You know why I went back to Speer.”

Her biggest fear hung silently between them like the sweet-smelling smoke of the scented candle she had lit once she finished cleaning the kitchen. Kitay looked at her with that expression she hated, the one that he wore when they both knew he was right.

“He can’t find out,” she decided.

He stared her down. “Rin.”

“He can’t,” she said. “I have never once needed him, and if he finds out he’ll overstep, and, I don’t know, try to sue me for custody—“

“Nezha wouldn’t do that.”

“He might,” she insisted. “He has the money, the lawyers. He could try to argue I’ve been withholding—“

“But you have been.” Kitay leaned forward. “You know where I’ve always stood on this.”

“Yes, and I don’t want to hear it.”

He sighed. “Rin .”

Kitay had been the first person she told. She was crying on the cold bathroom floor of their shared apartment, an accusing positive test on the counter, when he found her. But that didn’t mean he could tell her what to do, especially when he would never understand why she ran in the first place.

“I’ve always thought he should know,” Kitay said. “Even if things didn’t end well. Nezha isn’t the type to shirk away from responsibility. He’s too much of a self-serving prick.”

She barked out a laugh. “I know that.”

“But he’s not a bad person,” Kitay continued. “You do know that. So you should tell him.”

“No.”

“Okay, then I guess it’ll just be a matter of time before he finds out on his own.”

The thought almost made the wine come back up. 

“Well, what do you want me to do?” she snapped, throwing her hands up. “I ended things. I told him I never wanted to see him again. And, now, what, I should unblock his number, call him while he’s been in fucking Hesperia for years, to tell him I had his—“

The almost imperceptible creak of a door instantly shut her up. She looked over her shoulder to see Keahi standing in the hallway, bleary-eyed and holding his stuffed dragon to his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Rin called out, immediately standing.

“You guys are so loud!” 

Her chest tightened. She pushed her chair away and padded over to him, kneeling down so they were at eye level.

He frowned. “I was trying to sleep.”

She threw a glare at Kitay. He glared back. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “We’ll keep it down, okay?”

Keahi shook his head. “Now I can’t sleep.”

“We have to be up early tomorrow–”

“Can I be out here with you and Uncle Kitay?” he asked. “Until I get sleepy again?”

This time, she tossed Kitay a desperate look. He just nodded, putting his laptop and charging cable into his bag.

“It’s getting pretty late,” he explained to Keahi as they walked him to the door. “And I have to let you and your mama get some rest. You’ll keep practicing your counting?”

Keahi didn’t look convinced at all, but nodded anyway. “Okay.”

“Excellent.” Kitay then fixed Rin with the look before pulling the door open. “Good night, Rin. Remember — I am never wrong.”

She gave him a gentle prod outwards. “Good night, Kitay.”

“Good night, Uncle Kitay,” Keahi called after him, lingering near the door even as it closed. 

She led him back to his room, hoping that he would go to bed once more, but her kid had other ideas; he went to his backpack, where he dug out a slightly crumpled piece of paper from a folder. Right, of course. He had something he wanted to show her and conveniently forgot about it till now, when it was past his bedtime.

“What’s this?” she asked nonetheless, sitting down on his bed. He handed the paper to her.

Rin was right– it was, in fact, an admittedly terrible drawing that she would undoubtedly frame to keep forever. Two stick figures with enormous heads took up most of the paper. 

“That’s you.” He pointed to the one with longer hair. “And that’s me.”

The other figure was smaller and had a giant, marker-drawn smile on its face. It matched Rin’s own. 

“We drew our families today in school,” he explained proudly. “So that’s us.”

“Ah, I see. But where’s your ama? She’s family, too.”

Keahi tilted his head. “But we don’t live with her anymore.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s not your ama.”

“Can I draw her in?”

“Of course. Make sure to draw your Uncle Altan in there, too, and I’ll send them both a picture.”

Keahi took that as a cue to grab his colored pencils from his backpack.

“Tomorrow,” she instructed. “Right now, we have to go to bed. You have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, remember?”

He made a face as he crawled into bed. “I know.”

She set his stuffed dragon next to him and pulled the covers over them both. He turned over to face her. 

“Mama,” he said, not a hint of sleep in his voice. “Do I have a dad?”

If she had hoped for some peace at the end of the day, she would have been severely disappointed. But she knew better than to yearn for silly things like that.

“Why do you ask?” she said, smoothing his hair back.

He chewed on his lip. “Everyone in school drew their dads. Where is mine?”

She considered her answer. This was normal, right? Especially after a fucking family drawing assignment in school. His snotty little classmates probably drew their snotty little nuclear families while Keahi looked on, confused. Her heart hurt for him, fearing that he may have been ostracized, but her stomach lurched.

“You know,” she said, heart pounding and breaking at the same time. “Not everyone has a dad, and that’s okay. I didn’t have one. It was just me, your ama, and your uncle.”

“But do I?”

A little crease had formed between his brows. She wanted to smooth it out with her thumb, shut his eyes, and tell him to go to sleep.

What could she even tell him? The truth?

She swallowed down the guilt as if it were shitty wine. “You do.”

“Where is he?”

Rin sighed through her nose. “He’s not in our lives.”

“But why?”

“It’s a little complicated.”

“But why?”

”You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Keahi didn’t look fully convinced, but she would take what she got. He curled around his stuffed toy and burrowed beneath his blanket as if trying to hide from her. Rin pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, pushing back the thick waves of his hair. 

“Good night,” she murmured before turning off the lamp on his nightstand. “I love you.”

He shifted beneath the covers, peering up at her in the darkness. “You always say that.”

She frowned. “What, I love you?”

“That I have to be older.”

“I do?”

He nodded solemnly.

She gave him a final kiss and then closed the door behind herself when she exited, trying to make as little noise as possible. Hopefully, he would drift off to sleep soon. Otherwise, she would have to deal with a cranky toddler the next morning.

Keahi’s drawing was still clutched in her hand. She went to the dark kitchen and tacked it onto the fridge, its electrical hum filling their small kitchen in their small home.

Chapter Text

It took no less than seventy-two hours back in Nikan for Nezha to feel like he had never left.

At six thirty, he woke up at the sound of his alarm. The jet lag was starting to wear off, if only because he had tried to adjust his sleep schedule a week before his return. The bright sunlight on his morning run also helped, certainly.

By seven, he was back. His condo was the same as he had left it: quiet and understated, the marble countertops and hardwood floors speaking volumes of luxury at a whisper. Every piece of furniture was in its exact place, albeit covered in dust. 

At seven forty-five, he was showered and dressed. Breakfast was something light — some toast and tea while he started the work day on his laptop. Today, his schedule was packed with working meetings, but that was just the reality of being a senior officer at a multi-billion-dollar corporation; there was never a quiet moment except, maybe, for this one.

By eight, he was in his car. It had been a generous gift from his parents for his Sinegard graduation. There were hardly any miles on it, given that it had sat in a private garage for years. He caught the faintest whiff of new car smell as he settled into the driver’s seat, the leather still stiff and the steering wheel cold. The city hadn’t changed. The Hesperians that complained about the traffic in their own cities had never been to Sinegard, where a ten-minute trip took nearly forty-five. Maybe he would hire a driver so he could work from the backseat while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, but that was a thought for another less busy day if it ever came.

It was almost nine when he made it out of the parking garage, into the elevator, and to his office, where his brother was already waiting for him. 

“You’re late,” Jinzha hissed as he closed the door behind them.

Nezha glanced down at his watch. “It’s two till nine. Besides, traffic was bad.”

“Then get up earlier next time.”

Nearly six years and seventy-two hours later, and it was like he had never left. 

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Jinzha was next in line to be CEO. Of course, there would be some sort of formal process, something to make it seem like it had been a careful decision when their father eventually stepped down, but everyone knew it. He was the eldest, the most competent. He had been preparing his entire life for this imminent transfer of power. Nezha understood the pressure, naturally. They were the heirs to this dynasty, because apparently, that still mattered in the twenty-first century. At least Muzha seemed to enjoy her position with the company’s foundation, so she was happy to be out of the running on grounds of being a woman. But for Jinzha, everything — including this meeting about a new project — was a trial.

“You’ve been in this position for twenty-four hours and you already have a plan for wasting money?” 

He had just finished explaining a proposal to Jinzha. It was something he had been working on for the past few years, even as he finished his program. He knew he didn’t want to stay in Hesperia — eventually, he would return to Nikan, but refused to do so empty-handed. But as the CFO and the heir apparent, Jinzha was inclined to give him a hard time before supporting his work in front of their father.

“I showed you the projected ROI,” he said. “Sure, it’s a big investment, but one that will be well worth the cost. It could even help diversify our clientele — I don’t see why it couldn’t be used by civilian and private sectors for, I don’t know, search and rescue or disaster relief—“

“Unless those sectors are bringing in the same dollar amounts in contracts as our main clients, I don’t care.”

“That seems like a bad strategy.”

Jinzha bristled. “Stay in your lane.”

“I am. ” Nezha gestured to his desktop screen. “Look, I learned a lot while abroad. The Hesperians are years ahead of us when it comes to defense. If we take on an investment like this, it gives us the edge to compete in their market.” 

His brother still didn’t seem impressed. “We make plenty of drones.”

“Outdated ones.”

Now, Jinzha just looked begrudgingly convinced. He took control of the desktop and scrolled through the proposal again, pausing over the expected budget.

“We’re not outsourcing any part of this to contractors,” he decided when he got to the personnel costs. “It’s too expensive and unnecessary. Use what you already have here.”

“Only if we can compensate everyone involved with special project pay.”

“We already pay these people more than enough.”

“It would be additional labor that needs to be compensated.”

Jinzha glared, probably turning Nikan’s labor laws over in his head. “Fine.”

He continued examining line items, highlighting things he didn’t like, and muttering to himself about “inefficiency” and “excess”. When he was finally finished, the budget spreadsheet was a phosphorescent yellow.

“Revise this thing by end of day,” he instructed as he stood to leave. “Then, I can give you my tentative approval before you bring it up to Father.”

The door to his office shut quietly behind him, only for it to swing back open again seconds later. Venka emerged from the other side, her face scrunched in disgust. Nezha could only guess that they had quite literally ran into each other.

“He’s still a dick, isn’t he?” she asked, pulling up a chair to his desk.

Nezha sighed. “Nothing has changed.”

As soon as he had solidified his plans to return to Nikan, he called Venka to ask if she wanted to work with him. She had snapped at him over the phone, telling him she would rather chew on glass than be his assistant. But when he sent her the draft contract to be his Director of Project Management, her resignation from her horrible fashion marketing job was on her creep of a boss’ desk in hours. 

As he said, nothing had changed.

Together, they went through every accusing highlight on the proposal. Halfway through, she had her assistant order them lunch. The assistant had been a demand of hers upon accepting the position, and a part of the job she seemed to like very much. 

“You know,” Venka said, dabbing at her painted lips with a napkin. “You could try being less of a bitch.”

Nezha nearly choked on his water. “What ?”

“You heard what I said. You could try being less of a bitch around your family now that you’re twenty-eight years old and a vice president of a billion-dollar company.”

He frowned. “I am not a bitch.”

“Yes, you are,” she insisted. “I mean, look at that proposal. You’ve been working on it for what, a year? You’ve gone over it millions of times with me over the phone; I have looked at that stupid budget so many times that I swear the dollar amounts are imprinted in my brain. And you’re just going to let your coked-up finance bro older brother tear it up?”

“That’s kind of his job, Ven.”

“What, to be a fucking prick?”

“Well, yes, but you know I need his backing before pitching it to my father.”

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s always about your father for you two.”

“Some of us don’t hate our parents,” he countered.

“Yes, well, you should.”

For the sake of ensuring his director didn’t quit on day one, he decided not to respond. Venka, for all her big talk, was no different from him, really. She was the only daughter of an old money family, whose rebelliousness was only viewed as an inconvenient phase by her parents; they entertained her career ambitions as a silly pastime till she inevitably became a trophy wife to some rich man. Venka was determined to hold off on that for the rest of her life. But as much as she rejected their influence and control, she still benefited from being their daughter. Last he checked, her father still owned the luxury building she lived in and purchased another one in her name. 

Being a Sring didn’t hurt, just like how being a Yin guaranteed access to almost anything.

“Jinzha wants this thing revised by end of day,” he drawled, turning back to his work. “Are you going to act like my director, or what?”

Her eyes narrowed. Nezha caught the balled-up napkin she threw at him with a smirk. 

A few hours and more of Venka cursing Jinzha’s existence later, they finally had a clean proposal. Venka sat back, looking pleased with herself. 

“If your brother rejects this one, I am going to print a hundred copies of it and scatter them all in his office,” she said brightly. 

He just rolled his eyes, but was glad for the pause. There was something– someone – else still on his mind, even after the mental exhaustion. Venka was the only one he could approach with it.

He cleared his throat. “I saw Rin yesterday.”

Venka looked up from her phone. Now he had her attention.

“Shit,” she said, genuinely intrigued. “Where?”

“She works here, apparently. “

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious. She was there at the reception yesterday.”

She leaned forward on her elbows. “Oh my gods, did you guys make eye contact across the room like in one of those shitty dramas?”

He shook his head. “Please. No, I tried talking to her.”

“That’s somehow worse, Nezha.”

“I just wanted to be normal about it,” he quickly explained. “You know, to prove that we can still be civil to each other.”

“She called you a coward, blocked you on every conceivable platform, and then you moved halfway across the world to get away from her.”

He scoffed. “Yeah, well. One of us has to be the adult.”

Because, truly, it had to be him. Rin had never been good at apologizing in the first place, and his position called on him soothe over any remaining resentment.  

“You would think this is the last place she would end up after disappearing off the face of the earth,” Venka mused. “I mean, it was to get away from you, so I get it.”

“Venka .”

“But it was weird,” she continued. “I even tried reaching out to her once after she fucked off to Speer, but she deleted all her socials and her number was disconnected.”

“You think she still keeps in contact with Kitay?”

“Pfft, undoubtedly. And you know he’s not going to rat on her. So, what did you talk about?”

He shrugged. “We chatted. I told her we should catch up.”

“Gods, you’re hopeless.”

“I was trying to be normal,” he repeated. “And it wasn’t like I was actually going to act on it, you know. But she ran out of the room as if she had seen a ghost.” He paused hopefully. “Do you think she feels bad?”

“Rin?” Venka snorted. “Absolutely not. She’s a spiteful little thing without a conscience, always has been.”

“No wonder you two got along so well. You know, after you called her a welfare crack baby.”

“Fuck off. You were terrible to her, too.”

That stung only a little, and it must have shown. Venka rolled her eyes.

“It’s been years,” she said, fixing him with a sharp look. “Let it go, get over it. And don’t be weird by harassing her at work.”

He bristled. “Harassing? As if I was ogling her or something creepy like that.”

“Well… Were you?”

His face felt warm. “No!”

Though he did notice that coffee stain on her blouse. Not because of where it was, necessarily, but because she was wearing white. Who wouldn’t notice a coffee spill on a white blouse?  His watch buzzed with a calendar notification. “Shit. I have an appointment that I’m going to be late to if I don’t leave right now. Can you send the revised proposal to Jinzha before he loses it?”

She glared at him. “I am not your assistant.”

“I never said you were,” he shrugged on his jacket. “I’m just asking you to take the lead as a main contributor of this proposal.”

Venka stood and smoothed her skirt. She shouldered her sleek designer work bag with a note of finality. “I can get my assistant to do it. You should really get yourself one of those, by the way.”

He held the door open for her even as they rushed out of his office and into the elevator. She grabbed his arm before the elevator stopped on her floor. 

“I’m serious, Nezha. About Rin,” she said. “Let her go.”

He shrugged her hand off. “There’s nothing to let go of.”

She snorted. “You keep telling yourself that.”

The elevator closed behind her with a ding before he could respond.

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

The elevator opened to the tiled hallway of Sinegard University Hospital. 

In the neurology waiting room, the warm lamps masqueraded the overhead fluorescent lighting; the sterile smell of disinfectant poked through the sweet-smelling oil diffuser; the chatter of the front desk staff behind their glass screens punctuated the instrumental music playing from the televisions hung on the walls. It was all too familiar and unsettling, no matter how manufactured the serenity. No one ever spent time in a waiting room willingly. 

Nezha checked in for his appointment. The forms felt so excessive, especially considering that Sinegard Hospital had his entire medical history since birth. His phone buzzed with a notification– it was Venka copying him on the proposal email. He smirked. For all her bite, Venka would never leave something as important to someone she considered incompetent.

A nurse called him back. She asked him all the normal questions, took all of his vitals. Everything looked right, she said with a smile.

The wait for the doctor was always the longest. The knock at the door jarred him from answering emails on his phone. 

Dr. Enro was a stern-faced older woman whose demeanor only softened around children. She had been Nezha’s primary neurologist since he was a child, specializing in both pediatric and adult care. She was perhaps the most sought-after neurologist in Sinegard, if not in the country. Once again, he felt very fortunate to be who he was if it meant receiving her care for years. After all, the Yin family had always been generous donors to Sinegard University, including its hospital system.

“Hello, Nezha,” she greeted him. “Glad to see you back in the country. How was Hesperia?” 

She made small talk with him as she went through the cognitive and neurological exercises. None of them were new— the standard memory and reflex tests, all aced. She asked him if he’d had any issues while abroad and if the medication was still working well for him. It was almost like muscle memory now, going through these motions once a year at his checkups for over a decade.

“How’s your sleep been?” Dr. Enro asked as she pulled up a chair. 

“Could be better,” he admitted, looking up from his screen. “The jet lag is finally wearing off.”

“Hmm. You know exhaustion has always been one of your triggers.”

He had been careful about his sleep for as long as he could remember. Even in college, he tried to find time to rest when assignments and exams were piling up. Even more so during his graduate program and working abroad. The all-nighters and energy drink binges were just not for him.

“How are your stress levels?” Enro inquired. “I bet your new position is demanding.”

He glanced down at his phone as it vibrated again. Dr. Enro cleared her throat. 

“Yes,” he answered hastily, shoving his now silenced phone in his pocket. “I anticipate it will be. At times.”

“So, what will you do to avoid that trigger?”

He didn’t have an immediate answer to that one. Enro looked disappointed.

“Nezha, you have been seizure-free for years,” she said, sighing. “I know your career is very important to you, but please don’t let it be the reason your health suffers.”

He nodded. “It won’t.”

Because if there was anything he hated, it was his condition. He’d spent too much time in waiting rooms, in-patient observations, and trying different types of medications as a child to want to do it all again as an adult. Even if Enro didn’t believe him, he would prioritize his well-being only if it meant being able to carry out his obligations to his family and the company. 

“We’ll do an EEG, then,” Enro decided. “Just to make sure everything looks good, especially since you’ve been out of my care for so long. But if you start getting auras any time soon, come back and see me.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Most importantly, though, I need you to make a serious plan for how you’re going to take care of yourself when things inevitably get stressful. Gods know you’re likely to overwork yourself, Yin Nezha.”

A wave of warmth washed over him. “Thank you, Dr. Enro. I will.”

The older woman gave him a rare smile before letting the nurse in to administer the EEG. Nezha laid back on the bed. As a child, he remembered the nurses having to coax him into staying very still so the results would read clearly. Sometimes they would give him a toy, or even a book to read as he got older. Now, as an adult, he took it as a brief moment to close his eyes and rest. 

This had been the reality of his life since he was a child— hospitals and tests and sterile medical equipment. But his parents had done everything in their considerable power to ensure he received the best care possible from the best physicians working in the country’s best hospital. 

He had to at least be grateful for that.

Once the nurse removed the electrodes, he was free to go. Good. His phone had been buzzing with so many notifications that he had no choice but to silence it during his appointment. Only now could he catch up. Calendar invitations to more meetings, email threads that didn’t concern him, messages from a senior leadership group chat that he’d been thrown into this morning… Maybe Venka was right. He probably should get an assistant, especially if he didn’t want to spend his day drowning in communications he couldn’t possibly respond to. 

An email on the proposal thread flashed across his screen.

The proposal looks presentable. 

Nezha pressed the elevator button to the ground floor of the hospital, typing out a response to Jinzha with his free hand. He told Venka it would go like this; of course, his brother was just going to give him the worst time of his life before agreeing with him, as he always had. 

She just wouldn’t understand. 

“Great…” he muttered to himself as he tapped out the words on his screen. “Thank you for looking it over.” The elevator opened to the hospital lobby. “I will put it onto slides and prepare to present at the next—“

He looked down. In his typing, he had very nearly run into a small child. Or, rather, the small child had run into him after failing to come to a stop on the squeaky floors. The little boy gaped up at him with big brown eyes, perplexed by the adult in his path. In one of his hands, he clutched a stuffed blue dragon by its long tail.

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to adjust his tone for a clearly disoriented child. “I didn’t see you there. Are you okay?”

The little boy shook his head. His eyes glistened with tears. “I don’t know where my mama went.”

Nezha glanced around them. There were so many people that he couldn’t find this boy’s mother even if he knew what she looked like. Who the hell let their child get lost in such a busy place?

“That’s scary, I’m sorry,” he said. “But I can take you to the front desk and they can help you find her. Does that sound good?”

“Okay,” the boy whispered and trailed after him with small steps.

Sinegard Hospital was the largest and most renowned medical institution in the country. The lobby alone was massive, with multiple check-in kiosks and service desks. Which was exactly where he should drop this kid off and carry on with his day.
But when he looked at him again, he couldn’t help but see himself as a child, alone and wide-eyed, in a hospital. The front desk staff were, of course, helpful. They asked the little boy what his mother’s name was so they could announce it over the speakers, but he couldn’t tell them. He must have been four, maybe five. Still too young to know his mother as anything but.

“What’s your name?” he asked the kid as the staff made a generic announcement about an unsupervised child at the front desk. 

The kid eyed him apprehensively. “Keahi.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Keahi.” He nodded. The boy hugged his stuffed animal tighter to himself, sniffling. “I like your dragon. Does he have a name?”

Keahi hesitated as if about to share a secret. “Longlong.”

Longlong. Dragon dragon. Nezha couldn’t help but smile. 

“Keahi, my gods–”

“Mama!” Keahi immediately perked up at the sight of his mother. 

But Nezha froze. He knew that voice. He recognized it even before he saw her shoving through the queue at the desk. He could have recognized it – recognized her–  as a whisper in a room more crowded than this one. 

“-- don’t you ever run off on me like that again,” Rin snapped, kneeling down to the boy’s height and pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. “You scared me to death, you little–”

”Rin?”

His choked voice didn’t even sound like his own. He looked at the little boy again, Keahi, whose eyes had now gone wide in confusion. 

Four or five years old.

He had to be.

Rin looked up. She had gone paler than he had ever seen her. 

“Come on,” she said to Keahi, whose free hand was now clutched tightly in hers. “We have to go. We’re already late.”

“Rin—“ Nezha started, unsure of what he even wanted to say, but she turned away from him before he could try.

“Thank you,” she murmured hastily to the front desk staff before hurrying to the elevators with Keahi in tow. The stuffed dragon’s tail drooped behind him on the ground. When he turned around to pick it up, he gave Nezha a little wave.

Let it go.

Venka’s sharp warning echoed louder in his head than their distant footsteps on the hospital floors. 

“No,” he murmured, unsure to even who.

Chapter Text

“Never do that again,” Rin repeated as the elevator closed behind them. 

Keahi stared at the floor. “But he was nice.”

“We don’t talk to strangers. You know that.” 

Rin tugged him down the hallway at a brisk pace. They were running late as it was, and his little stunt had only made them later to his appointment. She pushed through the door and hurried toward the front desk to check in.

“Trengsin Keahi,” she said at the window, glaring down at the subject in question. 

“Ow,” he muttered. Rin instantly released her grip on his hand.

They took a seat on a colorful couch. Nearby, other children played with some building blocks on the floor while they waited for their appointments. Rin looked up from the tablet the desk had given her to complete their check-in. 

“Do you want to go play?” she asked Keahi, who had gone very still and very silent next to her. 

He tugged unsurely on his stuffed dragon’s tail. It had become his favorite toy since he picked it out at the store a few months ago. Rin tried to coax him into choosing a stuffed bird — the closest thing she saw to a phoenix — but the kid was stubborn. 

“It’s okay.” She gestured towards the toys. “It might take a while.”

But Keahi just melted into the couch, shaking his head. She tried not to sigh. Any other displays of anger or exasperation would only make it worse. Keahi was prone to silent spells when he was upset. Sometimes it took a while for him to bounce back, but it was still tough not to take the silent treatment too personally. She would almost rather him throw a screaming tantrum than retreat into himself the way he did. But her mother joked it was better that he didn’t inherit her propensity for explosiveness, anyway. She turned back to the intake questionnaire on the screen. 

Please indicate if your child experiences any of the following and the age of onset.

She selected and typed the response.

Epilepsy, 3.

She filled out his medication list, his birth history, and his developmental history. When she got to the family history, she left the father’s section blank.

Even when they were called back to the exam room, Keahi remained forlorn. He responded to the doctor’s questions in a small voice, even if he followed all the prompts for the familiar cognitive and neurological tests. He scooted instinctively closer to her when they were finished, making Rin feel only a little better. 

“So, let’s take a look at this blood work,” the doctor said, pulling up the chart from his previous appointment the week before. Rin had tried to interpret it herself to the best of her abilities, spending late-night hours searching what all the levels and measurements meant to little avail.

The doctor explained everything in more digestible terms, making an effort to highlight the most important parts of the results. As it turned out, the most recent medication he had been placed on had made his platelets plummet. That explained the suspicious bruises he somehow randomly acquired since the new treatment. The low red blood cell count accounted for the newfound anemia, and the low white blood cells predicted the gradual drop in energy levels. Overall, it had wreaked havoc on his blood cells, but that wasn’t even the only area of concern.

“His liver enzyme levels are also out of what I would call a comfortable range,” the doctor explained to Rin as her stomach dropped. Keahi squirmed next to her. “It’s all side effects of this medication, of course, but I don’t want to continue him on it if he’s reacting so poorly.”

Rin frowned. “So, what’s the alternative?”

“We can try another one. There are many types of drugs to treat–”

“But this is the third one in a year,” she interrupted. “And so far, none of them have worked. Either he’s still having seizures, or the medications are poisoning him.”

The doctor sighed. He was a kind-looking man with round glasses and a gentle voice, but none of that mattered if the treatments he prescribed didn’t work. 

“Miss Trengsin,” he said. “I understand how frustrating this can be. You’re tired, he’s tired. It’s very taxing on both of you, and I wish it weren’t that way. But as you know, this type of pediatric epilepsy is managed by a lot of trial and error. Since we can’t quite determine what causes Keahi’s seizures, we have to test out different interventions till we find one that strikes the balance of managing them and causing the least amount of harm elsewhere."

Rin's eye twitched. She already knew this. Keahi tapped her arm. 

“Are there gonna be more needles?” he asked her, eyes wide. 

She squeezed his hand. “No, not today.” Then she fixed the doctor with a look. “Right?”

“Correct,” he affirmed, this time speaking to Keahi. “No needles today, Keahi. We’re just going to switch your medicine that you’ve been taking to help you feel better.” He looked back at Rin. “You said his last seizure was before he started this latest medication?”

She nodded. “I guess it worked for that.”

“Yes,” he said, removing the latex gloves he had used for his examinations. “It did. We’ll hope the next one does that and more. We’ll figure it out, Miss Trengsin. Don’t you worry.”

Rin tried not to make a face. 

After they were discharged, she went to the desk. The staff had done their best to make the waiting room as inviting as possible– the walls were painted a gentle peach color with white trim and lined with children’s artwork. The televisions played some colorful cartoons at a soft volume. A few leafy plants lurked in the corners of the room, giving it some much-needed greenery. 

But still. It was a pediatric neurology office. There was only so much they could do to make it less terrifying. At least they had candy behind the desk. Keahi seemed to be entertained with his lollipop.

“I want to check on Dr. Enro’s availability again and ask if she had any recent openings,” she said after she scheduled the follow-up and swiped her card for the co-pay.

The bubbly admin behind the desk smiled. “Of course. Give me one sec.”

Because, ultimately, Dr. Enro was the reason Rin had even come to Sinegard. As soon as the pediatrician on Speer recommended the care of a specialist, Rin was determined to find the best one. Even if that meant uprooting everything, pissing off her mother, and moving to Sinegard with Keahi. 

Even if it meant having to see Nezha again when she had least expected it.

Twice.

“So, it looks like she’s all booked for the remainder of the year,” the girl said after clicking around on her desktop. “Between pediatrics and adult neurology. But you still have your appointment for next year, if you still want to keep that?”

Rin clenched her jaw. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. She had to remind herself of that. That was just how these things worked. 

“That’s fine. I just thought I would ask.”

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

She decided to be responsible and not get takeout again for dinner, even if the smell of unhealthy fried food wafted toward her as she walked out of the pharmacy with Keahi’s new medication. Instead, she got creative with what was in her fridge and at least made sure her child ate some vegetables to compensate for yesterday’s noodles and today’s chaos.

”Like this,” she instructed, tapping the egg onto the side of the bowl. The shell cracked neatly. “Now you try.”

Keahi grabbed an egg from the carton and mimicked the tapping. He stood on a step stool so he could easily reach the counter.

“A little harder,” she encouraged.

He smashed the egg against the side of the bowl. The shell splintered. Yellow yolk ran down his fingers. He looked up at her, his mouth formed into a little o.

“That’s okay,” she reassured him. “Look, now we just use the shell to get the little pieces out of the eggs. It’s kind of like a magnet.”

He watched as she fished the bits of shell out from the bowl, his eyes following her every movement. She liked to involve him as much as possible in her cooking because it gave him something to do. Besides, she refused to raise a boy who didn’t know his way around a kitchen.

“Can I try again?” he asked.

They only needed four eggs, but another wouldn’t hurt. More leftovers also meant she wouldn’t be enticed by the idea of take-out again. She handed him another egg, which he held much more carefully than the first.

“Just one good tap,” she said. 

Keahi’s face was scrunched in concentration; the crease between his brows was frustratingly familiar. He cracked the egg cleanly this time and turned to her, triumphant.

“I did it!” he declared proudly.

Rin mustered a small smile despite the pit forming in her stomach. “Good job. Now go wash your hands.”

While he did that, she started on the tomatoes. Their kitchen was as cramped as the rest of the apartment, so she moved the cutting board to the furthest end of the counter. As she cored the tomatoes, she couldn’t help but sneak glances at Keahi as he rinsed the soapy water off his little hands. There was something about his side profile— the curve of his jaw, the high bridge of his nose— that was certainly not hers.

“Shit!” she hissed as the blade sliced through her finger. Bright blood as red as the tomato welled up from the accidental cut.

Dropping the blade onto the board, she nudged Keahi from the sink with her elbow. The water ran pink and metallic. 

Keahi gasped. “Mama, you’re not supposed to say that!”  

She had banned bad words from their house after he started repeating them when he was still learning to speak. The first fuck nearly sent her into a coma of shame and embarrassment. Still, she fought the urge to roll her eyes and gestured toward her bedroom with her free hand. 

“Can you go and grab me a bandage from beneath the bathroom sink, please?”

She couldn’t stop watching as he scurried toward the bedroom. Even his gait , the way he fucking walked, was his .

With a bandage on her finger, she continued cooking. Since she didn’t want Keahi near a hot stove— and maybe needed some distance from him— she instructed him to sit at the table while she stir-fried the eggs and tomatoes. But their home could never afford true privacy, so she could still hear him humming a little tune at the table while he played with some spare Lego parts. Not that she even recognized the melody, but it made her clutch her chopsticks so hard she thought they would snap in half.

When the eggs were finally done, she set them on the table with some rice. She tortured herself watching the way Keahi ate and the way he held his utensils. He had picked most of the tomatoes out.

“Keahi,” she said. “We don’t waste food. Please eat your tomatoes.”

“They’re soggy,” he replied, wrinkling his nose. 

She’d never heard him sound so prissy. She stared at him as he ate only the eggs and rice, leaving the tomatoes in a sad little pile at the edge of his plate. She had lost her appetite. But if he wasn’t going to eat the tomatoes, she would have to.

When bath time came around, she very nearly lost it when Keahi accidentally splashed water all over her and the floor when playing with his bath toys.

“I’m sorry, mama,” he said, looking up at her with those pretty brown eyes of his. Normally, that would have immediately soothed her, but right now, all his little apology did was make her blood pressure skyrocket. 

At bedtime, she read him a hasty story and then turned the lights off in his room as soon as he had closed his eyes. The chaos of the day dampened the anger and turned it into exhaustion that seeped into her bones as she finally, finally , went to bed herself. 

But sleep didn’t come. Instead, she stared up at the popcorn ceiling, unmoving. 

She was a terrible mother.

Keahi didn’t ask to be born. And if it weren’t for Nikan’s abortion laws, he wouldn’t have been. She tried not to resent him for that, just as she struggled not to resent him for being every bit his father’s son. It almost felt like a betrayal; she had carried and birthed him, cared for him, loved him as best she knew how. She had moved back to a city haunted by the ghosts of lost potential and swallowed her pride to accept a position in a place she swore she would never set foot in. She had done that all for him and was willing to do whatever else. 

All for his every gesture, every laugh, and every look to remind her of the very person she had been trying so hard to forget.

There was an unsure knock at her locked bedroom door. She sighed and got up to let Keahi in.

“You okay?” she asked, towering over him. He clung to the doorframe.

“Can I sleep with you tonight?” he asked. 

“Of course,” Rin said with a tired smile. It was the least she could do.

It was then, with Keahi curled into her side, that she realized how terrifying this day must have been for him. He’d spent the last year of his life in different waiting rooms, different clinics, seeing different doctors. The first time he had blood drawn for exams, he’d screamed for her even as the nurses gently attempted to distract him from the needle. Even if there were no invasive procedures today, he still spent most of it in the sterile, artificially cheery environment of a children’s medical office, and he was exhausted.

Keahi shifted beneath the covers. Despite everything, he was still awake, and so was she.

“Mama,” he whispered, shaking her arm. “Mama.”

There was no use in pretending to be asleep. “Hmm?” 

“Are you still mad at me?”

Rin’s heart fell. He sounded so small.

“Why do you think I’m mad at you?” she prompted carefully.

He hesitated. In the darkness, she could only see the sliver of his face illuminated by an errant ray of silver moonlight peeking through her curtains. 

“You’ve been mean all day.”

Oh. She sighed and pulled him into her tightening chest. His hair tickled her nose. 

“I’m sorry I’ve been mean,” she said. “But I promise it has nothing to do with you. It’s just that today has been a really scary day.”

She rubbed little circles into his back, more for her sake than his own. It was what she did to lull him back to sleep when he had nightmares. Or after a particularly exhausting seizure.

“Mama, what are you scared of?”

When Keahi became able to speak in complete sentences, she learned that children often asked the most difficult questions without a hint of hesitation. They were honest and earnest in a way that adults rarely were.

“Losing you,” she admitted. “You really scared me by running off like that, Keahi.”

It wasn’t even a lie this time. It was, at most, an omission.

He buried his face in the crook of her neck. “But I’m right here. Are you still scared?”

She breathed in the scent of his chamomile shampoo. It had quickly become her favorite scent.

“No,” she said. “I’m really brave. And you’re going to be brave, too, right? When we have to go back to the doctor?”

He shook his head. “I don’t like the doctor. It hurts.”

She squeezed him. “I know. But we have to work on making you feel better, right?”

He didn’t say anything. She rubbed gently between his shoulder blades. They stayed like that, intertwined, before he wriggled away from her and pressed his face against hers so they were almost nose-to-nose.

“Mama, did you know that man?”

Rin blinked. Fucking kids and their questions.

“What man?” she prompted.

“The man who found me at the doctor’s.”

Rin stared at him, trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t further set him off. “He’s an old friend.”

Keahi frowned. “You weren’t very nice to him.”

She bit back a laugh, despite it all. “I just wasn’t expecting to see him. He surprised me.”

“He said he liked Longlong.”

Rin wanted to roll her eyes. Of course, he would. She reached for Keahi, pulling him into her again. When he resisted, she retaliated by tickling him till he turned back around in a fit of giggles. 

“I’m just glad you’re safe,” she whispered as she held him close to her once more. “But just please promise you won’t scare me like that again.”

“I promise, mama.”

He made a soft, sleepy sound and burrowed his nose into her neck. The airy flutters of his breath fanned her collarbone. 

“I love you,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “And I’m sorry for being mean earlier.”

As he drifted off to sleep with his arms slung around her neck, she couldn’t help but want to trace his resting features with her finger. The bridge of his nose and the curve of his jaw were not hers, but the shape of his lips were. The waves of his thick hair were. Even his skin, lighter than hers but still certainly not the impossibly pale standard of Nikara beauty, was a reminder that he was hers.

There was no way that Nezha hadn’t realized. But as much as Keahi was his father’s son, his father had only bothered to look for himself in him.

Keahi shifted again, this time rolling over onto his back in his sleep. The ray of moonlight on his face didn’t seem to bother him. Rin pulled the blankets over him and traced his profile with only her eyes.

He was hers.

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

Nine Years Ago...

“New student orientation this way!”

The cheery, almost too-enthusiastic voices of the orientation leaders filtered through the morning haze, and Rin couldn’t help but roll her eyes, amused despite herself. The bright scenes and the sea of students wearing matching Sinegard-branded polos almost felt like a page out of a recruitment brochure. She could already tell this was going to be an overly-excited, very organized experience.

She shifted the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder, tucking her headphones carefully inside. Her fingers brushed the familiar edges of the earphones—Hanelai had gifted them to her last year. The thought of her mother was like a quiet hum in the back of her mind over the chatter of excited people.

Hanelai wanted to accompany her; she really did. But the trip from Speer to Sinegard — involving one ferry ride to Snake Province and three inter-provincial buses — was long and she just couldn’t take off work. Rin promised her she would be okay and that she could just come to see her at graduation. After all, Altan had been just fine.

“Students at this table!” an orientation leader called. “Parents at the other!”

Rin blinked, feeling heat rise to her cheeks. Parents. Of course. She quickly shuffled and joined the student line. It wasn’t that big of a deal, not having a parent. 

Right?

She glanced to the side, seeing all the other new students standing beside their parents, chatting and smiling. It only struck her then just how out of place she felt here, standing alone.

Her fingers clenched around the strap of her bag as the staff at the desk greeted her.

“Mai’rinnen Trengsin,” she said when they asked for her name.

The guy at the desk ran his finger up and down the column of last names on the roster. “Mai’rinnen, Mai’rinnen, Mai’rinnen—“

“Trengsin is the family name,” she explained, only a little irritated. “Trengsin Mai’rinnen.”

“Ah!” he said, beaming. “Found you. Just sign for your room key here, here, and here.”

With the key to her room in hand, Rin made her way up the stairs to the dormitories. She gripped the key tightly as if it would stave off the embarrassment. The Nikara put family names first. It was just another part of life on the mainland that she would have to get used to.

Her roommate for the next two days was already there. She was tall and ridiculously pretty, with long, dark hair that looked to be made out of silk. 

“Hello,” Rin greeted cautiously, setting her bag down on the empty bed. 

The girl just appraised her with a sharp look that betrayed no warmth. Rin cleared her throat.

“I’m Rin,” she said, hoping that would be enough to prompt her into not being so hawkish.

The girl sniffed, staring down at Rin’s worn sneakers as if they were a personal affront. 

“Sring Venka,” she finally said, throwing her glossy hair over her shoulder before turning away. “Charmed.”

She left a trail of expensive-smelling perfume in her wake. Rin narrowed her eyes at the now-closed door and began unpacking her things. 

“It’s only two days,” she murmured to herself as she headed back down the stairs for the opening session. “Only two days.”

But that wasn’t true. These two days were meant to be a preview of the next four years, judging by the amount of information thrown at her. When it came time for the campus tour, she was just glad for a chance to stretch her legs from sitting in that cramped auditorium seat for hours. 

“Our campus was built on the grounds of an ancient monastery from before the times of the Red Emperor,” the orientation leader in charge of their tour group called out behind his shoulder. “To my right, we’ll be passing by upperclassmen residence halls. It’s a climb up to the academic buildings, so make sure to get some good walking shoes. Oh, and the steps get really slippery when it rains, so invest in some rain boots, too.”

Rin had been to Sinegard once, back when Altan had been admitted. She and Hanelai helped him move into his dorm room in the blistering summer heat. The tall, historic buildings and the pristine, picturesque grounds taken straight out of a historical drama were just as unfamiliar to her then as they were now. But even then, she knew there was no choice but to come here as well, even if her only shot was the same prestigious merit scholarship that her cousin had been awarded.

The orientation leader– some bored-sounding guy named Tobi, apparently– stopped in front of a courtyard of stately buildings, pointing out their history, which renowned Nikara general or politician they were named for, and what academic departments they housed. Rin squinted against the bright midday sun and stood on her tiptoes, trying to see over the rest of her group. 

“Any questions?” Tobi drawled, surveying the group. 

Rin stuck her hand up. “What about that building over there?”

She pointed to an important-looking building overlooking a little brook. Tobi’s lip curled. Someone snickered from the front of the group.

“That’s just an old bathhouse,” Tobi explained slowly as if talking to a child. “It’s just there for decoration. No part of this campus can be torn down because it’s a national heritage site.”

The group collectively moved up another flight of stairs. Rin’s face burned even without the sun shining on it. 

After the tour, she was sticky and exhausted from the seemingly thousands of steps, but the day was far from over. The incoming class was split up by majors and led to their respective academic buildings, where they would meet with their academic advisors and register for classes. Rin took a seat on the floor of the courtyard of the engineering building while she waited, her back pressed against a cool stone wall. 

Her phone buzzed with a text from Hanelai. 

Did I miss anything important in the welcome session?

Rin smiled as she typed out a response.

“Nothing you don’t already know,” she said under her breath, focused on the screen. “I’m about to register for classes right now–”

“Someone in our tour group asked if an old bathhouse was important,” a lofty voice from down the hall snickered.

Her thumbs froze over her screen. A group of boys came into view from behind a column. She waited for them to pass her before standing and following them down the corridor.

“I swear,” the same one— no doubt their leader— continued. “They have to stop letting these people in, it’s embarrassing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

They hadn’t even noticed her. The one with a big mouth turned around to face her, a look of shock on his face that only lasted milliseconds before turning back into a scowl. 

“Don’t you know it’s rude to eavesdrop?” he asked.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to talk shit about people you don’t even know?” she shot back.

He was exceptionally pretty, with features that would have been lovely if only they weren’t ruined by a nasty sneer. 

“It’s not talking shit if it’s true.” He rolled his eyes. “You were the one who asked the stupid question on the tour, right?”

Rin balled her hands into fists. He scoffed and turned away from her.

“Wait up, asshole!” she snapped, catching his attention again. “What did you mean by these people?”

He faced her again, this time with even more of a nasty curl to his lip. “Isn’t it obvious?”

He looked her up and down as if appraising an item for its value. She crossed her arms over her chest. 

“Eyes up.”

“As if,” he snorted. “Anyway, it’s pretty clear to me. You’re only here because you have some sort of sob story that the university decided was worth throwing scholarship dollars at.”

She gaped. Who the hell was he to make assumptions like that? The sleek watch on his wrist reflected tiny rays of sun onto the floor. The collar of his stupid button-down was expertly pressed. A pair of expensive-looking sunglasses sat tangled in his perfectly styled hair. All that, paired with the seemingly perpetual expression of having smelled shit, told her all she needed to know.

“I’d rather earn my scholarship than get in on no merit.”

Anger flickered in his eyes and furrowed his brow, even if only momentarily. “I was among the top scorers in my district for the Keju.”

“I was the top scorer in mine.”

“What was your score?”

“1550. Yours?”

He blinked. “I’m sure my district was more competitive than yours.”

Rin just shrugged, unable to contain the sudden pettiness that had overcome her. 

“Maybe. But at least I did it without daddy’s money to help me get ahead.”

The boy just scoffed, but Rin could tell she had gotten under his skin by the way his mouth twitched.

“Whatever. My family’s philanthropy is probably paying for your tuition.”

With a last glare, he pushed past her and stalked away with his henchmen in tow. Rin didn’t even fight the grin spreading on her face.

“See you in class!” she shouted after him.

This time, he didn’t turn back around. Rin smirked to herself as she watched him retreat. Even if the next two days were a preview of the years to come, perhaps it wouldn't be all that bad.

A few weeks later, Rin sat in another tiny auditorium seat, this time on the first day of classes. The lecture hall was packed, with only a few seats near the front available. It seemed that everyone wanted to sit as far away as possible from the professor, but she didn't mind. After all, there was only one way to excel in a class of a hundred students. 

"Is this seat taken?"

"Go ahead."

She nodded absently. Whoever took the seat next to her set their bag down, pulling out a fancy-looking tablet with a stylus. Rin glanced at her own pencil and notebook. Maybe she should get one of those.

"Sorry," the stranger mumbled, finally settling in. "It's kind of cramped."

Rin finally looked up at this cumbersome stranger. He was attractive, exceptionally so, with features that looked much better without a sneer. She groaned as soon as their eyes met. His eyes were pretty, almond-shaped. 

"Oh," he scoffed, coming to the same realization. "It's you."

"Don't sound too thrilled," she grumbled, trying to turn away from him as much as possible in her seat. He did the same, though she imagined it was much more uncomfortable for him, being much taller than her.

After what seemed like an eternity, their professor walked in and took her place at the raised podium at the front of the hall.

"I hope you all like your seats!" the professor announced brightly. "Because this is where you'll be sitting for the rest of the semester. So, I want you all to introduce yourself to your neighbors since we don't have time to learn everyone's names in a classroom this large."

Rin clutched her pencil so hard in her hand that was that she afraid it would shatter. She painstakingly turned towards the guy. He did the same. 

"Yin Nezha," he said flatly, not taking his glare off her. 

"Rin."

He raised a brow. "Is that your family name or your first name?"

She turned away again and flipped to the first page of her notebook.

"It's what you can call me if you have to." 

Chapter Text

Nezha went home in a daze.

He didn’t remember getting into his car. He didn’t remember driving. He didn’t remember unlocking his door and entering his apartment. He didn’t remember throwing off his shoes, loosening his stupid tie, discarding his jacket, and collapsing on the couch.

All he could remember was the hospital lobby, Rin, and that little boy.

He had been staring at the ceiling for gods-know-how long. The sky outside his floor-to-ceiling windows had long ago turned dark, but he hadn’t even bothered to turn the lights on. With a pitiful groan, he removed himself from the couch. The leather has moulded to his body, leaving an imprint. The scene from the hospital replayed in his mind on a loop. Rin. The little boy. His stuffed dragon. 

There were hardly any pictures in his apartment. It remained as clean and sterile as he left it, all cool, barren walls and sleek shelves. But there was a singular picture frame on his desk—one that was too painful to take with him. He picked it up, wiping the dust off with his sleeve.

He must have been maybe ten years old, only because Mingzha looked so young. Both of them laughing, caught mid-motion, mid-something. It was clearly not one of the orchestrated Yin family portraits with forced smiles and tailored suits. 

This one had life. 

And now, staring down at his younger self with his little brother, Nezha saw it: the same round cheeks, the same straight nose. The same almond eyes.

It hit the desk with a soft thud. The glass splintered. His breath caught.

“No,” he said to no one. “No. No, that’s not—”

That couldn’t be it. That couldn’t be real. That little boy had darker skin. Wavy hair. And besides, Rin was on the pill. She’d been meticulous about it. She took it every night before they went to bed. He’d watched her do it. Every. Night. 

The odds were slim. One percent, maybe less. And in the case of that one percent? She would’ve told him. If there had been something to tell, she would’ve told him.

…Right?

He stood there, staring at the shattered photo frame, as if it might rearrange itself and offer him clarity. But the glass only reflected his own blank stare back at him through the fine cracks, painting his face with scars.

He stumbled to the kitchen in the dark. Yanked open the cabinet above the fridge and grabbed the bottle of whiskey he never drank; it was a gift from some overseas colleague trying too hard to impress. He poured two fingers into a glass he barely remembered buying and took a sip. It tasted like leather.

That’s what people did when they were losing it, wasn’t it? They poured expensive whiskey into expensive glassware and pretended it made them feel something other than what they were feeling.

He dug out his laptop from his discarded work satchel and frantically pulled up a search engine.

Birth control pill failure rate

He scrolled till he found a credible source.

If you use it perfectly, the pill is 99% effective. But people aren’t perfect and it’s easy to forget or miss pills— so in reality the pill is about 93% effective. That means 7 out of every 100 pill users get pregnant each year.

He stared at the screen. Seven out of a hundred. That wasn’t zero. That wasn’t impossible.

He whispered, “Fuck.”

The walls didn’t answer. The shadows didn’t shift. His whiskey sat untouched on the coffee table.

He went back to the search engine, fingers trembling and hands clammy.

How do paternity tests work

He didn’t get further than the results page before he slammed the laptop shut. He didn’t need a fucking paternity test. The proof was in the hospital lobby, clinging to a dragon plushie like a lifeline. The little boy was his, no doubt about it. He ran a hand through his hair, tugged until his scalp stung. He gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached.

Who the fuck did Rin think she was?

Who did she think she was, hiding this from him? Shutting him out like he wouldn’t have stepped up. Like he would’ve walked away. Like he wouldn’t have—

Gods.

He would have married her.

The thought terrified him as soon as it crossed his mind. Even if his family had disowned him, and even if she had broken up with him, he would have. Because that was the right thing to do, because he liked to think himself a decent man, because no matter what, he wouldn’t have left her– them – alone. 

“Fuck,” he whispered again. This time, the wooden floors creaked their assent. 

He stood abruptly from the couch, knocking the precarious glass of whiskey to the floor. Amber liquid seeped onto the throw rug beneath the coffee table, but that was the least of his problems. He grabbed his phone again.

Nikara custody laws

father not on birth certificate

child support rights unknown paternity

He jabbed the words into the search bar, teeth gritted like they could hold back the wave of heat rising in his chest. It was late– past midnight, probably– but he didn’t care. Could he file for custody? Did he have rights if he hadn’t been listed on the birth certificate? Did it matter that he hadn’t even known the kid existed ?

He clicked through articles, legal blogs, court precedents, his vision tunneling as he skimmed paragraphs too fast to comprehend. So much of it came down to intent, to presence, to proof . And he had nothing. No acknowledgement. No signature. No relationship. All he had was a run-in left entirely to chance. If they hadn’t been at the same time at the same place, he would have been going about his normal routine. He would have been in bed by now, long asleep, after working till the late hours of the evening on something-or-other to keep himself occupied. Instead, he was pacing his living room, phone in hand, trying to find answers to impossible questions. 

what do i do when i find out that my ex gf hid a pregnancy from me and now i have a four year old son who i never knew existed

He cleared the search bar. No, that was stupid. He swiped to his messages and scrolled down, all the way down, to a conversation he hadn’t opened in years.

Hey, I still have some of your things you left at my place. Would you like me to return them to you?

The message was time-stamped five years ago. There had never been a response. In fact, that blue text bubble had turned green. His thumb hovered over her contact. If he wanted answers, he couldn’t rely on Internet discussion boards full of strangers. He took a deep, shaky breath before making the call.

“The number you called is not in service.”

The tinny, automated voice filled the silence of his apartment.

Nezha stood there, phone still to his ear, breathing raggedly through his teeth like he could will the line to connect. He’d called her once. It was a few months after the break-up when he was about to leave for Hesperia. He’d been in the airport lounge, counting down the minutes till boarding and staring at her contact. It would’ve just been a nice, clean break, she never gave them a chance to have— a way to tell her, hey, I’m leaving the country, and I don’t know when I’m coming back, but I just want you to know that I don’t hold anything against you. But secretly, he wished for her to come running through security and give him a reason to stay.

The phone rang for barely a second before he was called to board.

He reached for a chair at his dining table to steady himself. Gods, how many months after the break-up was that? Three, maybe four? She would have already known by then. He didn’t even know when it could have occurred. There were so many times, so many chances for that three percent failure rate. When had she realized? Did she know when she called him a coward to his face and then left without a single word more? 

He sank into the chair. His knees had gone weak, his body hollowed out by too many revelations all at once. The city outside blinked through the windows. Somewhere on the street below, cars moved, lives happened, but on the thirtieth story, the air was still.

How long had she been carrying this alone? How many nights had she sat up with a crying baby without so much as the reassurance of a partner by her side? How many times had she looked at that child and thought of him, clenched her jaw, and chosen silence anyway?

He wandered back to his office, mind completely detached from his movements. The picture frame was still on the desk, cracked. The image was distorted now, glass spiderwebbing over young smiles. He picked it up again, more carefully this time. The corner of the frame bit into his palm, but he didn’t let go.

Rin was never going to tell him. That was just the truth. 

There had to be another way. He’d find out where she was living. Who the boy’s pediatrician was. Where he went to preschool, or kindergarten, or wherever little kids went. He’d talk to lawyers. He’d show up on her doorstep if he had to. He even read on one of those legal forums that he could petition the court to establish paternity. Rin would have no choice but to acknowledge, either willingly or through a court-ordered paternity test. 

He picked at a stray piece of glass off the frame, wincing when it dug into his finger. No, that was insane, and he needed to get a grip. The last thing he wanted was to give her a reason to actually push him away. Or make her think he was unfit to be a parent to that little boy.

“Fuck,” he murmured, the latent realization nearly making him drop the picture again. 

He had been skirting around it, refusing to actually name it, but it was as unavoidable as looking at his reflection in the broken glass. He reached for the switch on his desk lamp. Gently, he slipped the photo out of its splintered frame and held it up to the warm light. It was inevitable, unavoidable. He had the same nose, the same eyes. He was the same age as Mingzha had been in the picture. 

Nezha set the photo down and took a deep breath. He didn’t even need to say it out loud, but he wanted to. 

“I have a son.”

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

“You look like shit.”

Venka poked her head into his office, unannounced. He really should’ve heard her coming from the sharp tapping of her red-bottom heels on the shiny office floors, but she was the least of his problems. 

“Can I help you?” he huffed, ignoring her comment even though it was probably true. He certainly felt like it after last night’s emotional rollercoaster. 

She let herself in, a steaming drink in hand. He raised a brow when she set it in front of him.

“Tea,” she explained with a roll of her eyes. “I know you don’t drink coffee.”

Oh, but he had today. Desperate, sleep-deprived nights called for desperate, sleep-deprived methods, which resulted in him downing a nasty americano at six in the morning. It had helped him stay awake during his presentation, but only at the cost of trembling hands. He knew it wouldn’t be blamed solely on the caffeine jitters, though. The tea was hot and fragrant. Nice things rarely came out of Venka’s mouth, but this gesture more than made up for all her misgivings. 

“No, seriously,” she said, taking a seat on the plush couch delivered to his office this morning. “You look rough. I’m surprised you got through that presentation.”

He sipped the tea, letting the hot liquid wake him up. “I was up all night working on it.”

Something like that. Truthfully, he had worked on the slides till four in the morning. Not by design, of course, because if it had been up to him, his work would have been finished long before. But yesterday’s revelations set him back a few hours, which he was now compensated for with a blooming headache and dry eyes. 

“Well, I’m just glad it’s over,” Venka yawned. “And that your father approved that proposal because I was not a fan of drafting it again.”

He nodded absently, scrolling through a document he had thrown together in the early morning light. He was relieved, too, not so much because it got approved, but more because it was a perfect way to fix the bigger issue at hand: Rin. 

“So, what’s next?” Venka prompted, draping herself on the couch. “As much as I like having a private office and an assistant, I’m getting bored just talking to you.”

“I’m putting together a team to work on the development of these new models,” he said, turning his desktop screen towards her. “And I’d like your input.”

She squinted at the screen, her lips moving silently as she read the list of names. To his credit, he had actually done his research on most of these people; they were all stellar employees with glowing performance reviews and an aptitude for development and design. Still, Venka’s eyes widened, expectedly, when she made it to the end of the list. 

“Rin?” she hissed. “Why the hell is she working on this?”

Because she blocked my number, and I need to talk to her, and she would rather set herself and everyone in this building on fire than talk to me .

“I think it’s a good idea to give the junior engineers some high-level experience,” he explained smoothly. “And I went through her performance reviews. She’s the best member of her team by far, and I can speak to her work ethic personally.”

It sounded rehearsed the moment he said it. Venka looked unimpressed.

“Yeah, you can personally speak about her,” she scoffed. “I wonder what you have to say.”

He didn’t take the bait, but took another sip of tea. It had steeped for too long and was now bitter. 

“Do you really think she’s going to go for this?” Venka asked, tilting her head. “After all the shit between you two?”

Nezha shrugged. “She’s more than qualified to do this work.”

Venka let out a sharp laugh. “Gods, you’re delusional.”

“Thanks, Ven.”

She scowled. “I’m right. You’re fucking crazy if you think she’s going to be thrilled working directly with you. Do you think she wants to be in meetings with you? Get your stupidly formal emails?”

“I’m just asking her to do a project.”

“You and I both know that’s not true.”

“Then what exactly do you think I’m trying to do here?”

Venka narrowed her eyes at him and stood from the couch. She towered over him, hands on her hips. 

“I think you’re setting her up.”

Nezha frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re setting her up to fail,” she continued without wavering.

He set his tea down. “That’s not what this is.”

“Isn’t it?” Her voice sharpened. “Because let me tell you how this looks. You, a vice president, hand-pick an entry-level nobody who's been here for max a year to be part of this ultra-special project. If she refuses, people will think she’s unambitious. If she accepts, they’ll think she’s too ambitious. Either way, everyone will think she doesn’t deserve this because she’s an entry-level nobody. The only, only, rationalization for you picking her will be that you’re trying to fuck her.”

Nezha bristled. “Venka, you know I would never –”

“Yeah, yeah,” she growled, dismissing him with a nasty little wave of her hand. “You wouldn’t do that. You’re not like other men or whatever. But the truth is, you have . You fucking dated her, Nezha! And when people find out about that?”

He flinched. “She earned her current position. I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t even know she worked here until a few days ago.”

Venka crossed her arms over her chest. “It doesn’t matter what you know or what she earned. You think the insipid little bitches here care about that? All they’ll see is some girl who slept her way into special treatment.”

Part of him wanted to push back. Venka had been terrible to Rin. She was her roommate for an entire year, but Rin ended up staying with Kitay practically all the time because they couldn’t stand each other. Venka had never once shown solidarity with other women before, especially those she considered ugly, poor, stupid or otherwise beneath her. Why would she start now?

“She’s not just some girl,” he said quietly. 

Venka sneered. “Oh, so you’re just like other men.”

He couldn’t even deny it. That one stung.

Because Venka, for all that she was often wrong, was right this time. He’d gone over Rin’s performance review a dozen times last night, trying to find the right reasons to put her on this project. He’d thought of every single justification if anyone questioned his pick, rehearsing them till the bias and desperation were ironed out of his voice. And as it turned out, Rin had plenty of qualifications. Not a single one made him feel good.

“I’m not doing this to screw her over,” he insisted, perhaps sharper than necessary. “I’m not setting her up to fail. It’s just a good opportunity for someone I know who deserves it. Are you going to argue against that?”

Venka pressed her lips into a thin crimson line. She grabbed a sticky note off his desk, balled it up, and threw it at his forehead with stunning accuracy. 

“What the fuck?” he hissed, but she had already stomped off toward the door.

“Fine. Do whatever you want,” she sniffed. “After all, I’m just your lowly director, and you have no reason to listen to me. But hey, maybe people will see me walking out of this office and assume I came in for a quickie. That would be great for my career, wouldn’t it? Anyway, have a good day, Mister Vice President. ”

He let the door slam behind her. The balled-up sticky note rolled off his knee and onto the floor. He ran a hand down his face. Gods, he could use another cup of coffee.

Venka had always been like this: vicious, dramatic, and unfair. She found ways to make weapons out of words, even when there was no target to throw at. Most days, he could brush it off. But today, it cut deeper than he would like to admit.

You’re just like other men.

He wasn’t. Well, at least he didn’t think he was. Or, rather, he never meant to be. Was he?

Intention didn’t matter, according to Venka. But what would she have him do? Call her until she magically decided to unblock him? Find her address and show up at her home? Or, worse, drag himself down to whatever floor she worked on, kneel in front of her desk, and beg her to talk to him? Now that would get people whispering. 

But it didn’t matter. Venka was right. It never mattered.

All anyone would see was him choosing her . And now that he knew, now that the truth was clawing at the back of his throat every time he looked at her—

She was the mother of his child. No amount of qualifications could erase that. Not to him. 

He stood abruptly and shoved the sticky note into the trash with too much force, as if it had insulted him personally.

Then he sat back down and clicked open the draft email to her direct supervisor, requesting that she work on this special project.

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

The conference room was filled with the low hum of people shuffling papers, checking phones, and helping themselves to the pastries and coffee he’d graciously ordered for his design and implementation team. Nezha was standing in front of the group, trying to look as calm and composed as possible– a difficult task with Rin sitting directly in front of him. To his left, Venka had her face buried into her laptop, so obviously trying not to make a face. 

“Alright, welcome everyone, thanks for agreeing to be here,” he said, trying for authority even as his hands subtly gripped the remote used to control the television display. “My name is Yin Nezha. I’m sure some of you may have heard of me, maybe we’ve even had the chance to chat, but for those who haven’t, I’m heading up this new initiative here.”

He gave a half-smile, trying for camaraderie, though he knew it probably came off stiff. He cleared his throat. Rin wasn’t even looking at him.

“But, uh, before we dive into specifics, let’s do a quick round of introductions. Name, role, and one fun fact. I’ll go first—Nezha, I’m overseeing this project, and I’m known for being really bad at icebreakers. 

People murmured. He wanted to kick himself. A fun fact, really? What was this, the first day of undergrad? Still, his team obliged. The first few were standard: names, roles, a couple of awkward “I love hiking” and “I have three kids” facts. Then, finally, it was Rin’s turn. He could see her shoulders tense a fraction as she lifted her head, cool and closed off.

“Mai’rinnen Trengsin,” she said flatly. “Combat systems engineer.”

There was a slight pause as Nezha mentally willed her to offer something else. Anything. But she just stared at him, the look in her eyes unreadable. She wasn’t interested in this, and that much was clear.

“So… one fun fact, then?” he asked, trying to keep it light.

Her lips barely curved into a smile.

“I hate icebreakers.”

Next to him, Venka snorted and tried to turn it into a cough. 

“That makes two of us,” he said through almost gritted teeth. 

The room settled into an uncomfortable silence. Nezha cleared his throat again, trying to shake off the weirdness of the moment. His gaze flitted to the half-empty coffee cups and open laptops, his mind briefly wrestling with the absurdity of trying to get a room full of engineers to bond over fun facts . But despite the tension, he pressed forward, because this was, ultimately, a business meeting that he was supposed to be good at leading.

“Alright, great. Thank you for that. Now that we’re all acquainted…” He nodded toward the screen, where a slide appeared, showing a rough sketch of the project timeline. It was a welcome distraction from Rin. 

After the most painful forty-five minutes of his life, it was finally over. People pushed out of their chairs, making small talk as they prepared to leave with spare pastries wrapped in napkins. He stole a glance at Rin. She was closing her laptop and picking up her bag, clearly not in the mood for team bonding or baked goods. He had to act fast. 

“You better hurry,” Venka drawled, chewing on the end of her stylus. He threw her an icy glare he hoped no one else would catch, but she was right.

“Hey,” he said, forcing lightness into his voice as he approached Rin. “Can you hang back for a second? I have some combat systems questions for you.”

It was shitty, but it was all he had. Rin shoved her laptop into her bag and looked up at him, eyes narrowed.

“Sure,” she said, equally cavalier. “I have a few minutes.”

That was a warning, a boundary. A stop sign, a “do not pass go”, a “heed the yellow flags”. But he waited till the others filed out of the room, their chatter floating down the hall as they wandered out of earshot. He closed the door as soon as the last straggler– Venka, of course– rounded the corner. Rin remained frozen in place, though her arms were tightly crossed across her chest.

“So,” she said sourly. “Combat systems .”

Of course, she could smell the bullshit. He pressed the buttons on the room control pad, and the blinds on the glass walls came down.

“I need to ask you something,” he said, turning back to her. “And I need you to be very honest with me. Please.”

Nezha swallowed down his racing heartbeat. She was calm. How could she be so calm? She had to know why he wanted to speak with her.  

“That little boy,” he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Is he mine?”

She just raised a brow. “Why do you want to know?”

“Rin, don’t play dumb.”

“I don’t know why you want to know.”

“Yes, you do,” he insisted. “He looks like me. I know you see it, too. You have to, and it probably drives you insane. So, I’m going to ask you again. Is he mine?”

Her mask was still on, but she had never been very good at hiding her emotions. Now, her face reflected the anger in his. 

“I’m not doing this,” she hissed. “Not in this room, not in this building. Not when my paycheck comes from your family’s company—”

“That's not what this is about—” he started, but she held up a hand to his face.

“You think I don’t know how this looks?” she snapped. “You, cornering me in a dark room with the blinds drawn, asking me about a child?” 

She gestured at the drawn blinds covering the glass walls, the dimmed lights. The display was still on, casting an eerie, pale glow on both of them. He sighed.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he admitted, softer than he would have liked. “You’ve had my number blocked for years. I can’t exactly show up at your desk or call you into my office. But I needed to talk to you. I can’t just pretend that he doesn’t exist, that he doesn’t look like me.”

“He’s not yours.”

“Bullshit, Rin.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do,” he hissed. “Who else would be the father of that child?”

She scoffed, “You’re hardly my first.”

The words hit him like a slap. Not for what they said, because he knew she was lying from the start, but for how she said them. As if she was sure she could shake him off so easily. As if she were trying to cut deep.

He stepped closer. “Let’s do a paternity test, then.”

That made her falter. Her lips, pressed into an angry line, gave way to a soft, surprised part. But it was brief; before he could stop her, she was marching toward the closed door. Fuck. He knew he didn’t need a test. But what else could he hold over her?

“This conversation is over,” she declared flatly, reaching for the door handle. "I have to pick up my son from school soon.”

“Then let me take you.”

She blinked, her hand choking the handle as if it were someone’s neck. Probably his.

“You wanted somewhere more private,” he continued, spreading his hands. “I’m not trying to make this harder than it has to be.”

“Too late for that.”

“Let me give you a ride and we can talk,” he insisted. 

She hesitated. Her grip loosened on the door handle. 

“You’re not doing this out of goodwill,” she said.

“It’s also supposed to rain,” he replied curtly. 

At least, that was what the weather app said a few days ago, back when everything was still normal. But at this point, he would say anything if it meant they could have a real conversation. 

“Wait a few minutes for everyone else to clear out and then meet me in the garage,” he instructed. ”I drive a–”

“A stupid black foreign car, I know,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Not like I can refuse, anyway.”

She didn’t wait for him to respond. Instead, she just slipped out the door and left him alone in the dark conference room with the blinds still drawn. 

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

Nine years ago

Nezha had never despised anyone as much as he despised Rin Trengsin.

It wasn’t even the kind of hate that burned hot and fast, the kind that sputtered out after a few dramatic fights and a little distance. No—this was slow, steady combustion. A semester-long pressure cooker of slights and eye-rolls and subtle digs, all wrapped up in the tightly wound hellscape that was Engineering 101.

Of course, she sat in the front row right next to him. Of course, she raised her hand for every question with that determined look, eyebrows already arched like she knew the professor would call on her.

And, of course, she was right. All the time. 

But that wasn’t even the worst of it. Because, of course, he shared almost every class with her. E 101? She sat next to him. Calculus? Also next to him. Chemistry? They ended up as lab partners. Academic writing and research? Behind him, just close enough that he could feel her breathing on him in those tiny ass auditorium seats. 

Nezha had tried everything: ignoring her, outperforming her, being civil, being condescending. None of it worked. Nothing seemed to dull the constant, grating presence of Rin Trengsin in his life.

She always tried to show him up on the discussion boards, politely refuting his comments. She was always there. She was always two seconds ahead. Always ready with a counterpoint, a better solution, a sharper edge to her voice. Even her posture pissed him off; she was always bent over and scribbling on her college-ruled, spiral-bound notebooks with a chewed-up mechanical pencil when most everyone else had tablets and styluses. One time in calculus, his curiosity got the better of him, and he peered over at her notes. He could barely make out the numbers scrawled on the page, but they somehow made enough sense to her that she beat him on the midterm by one point.

Today was an honors seminar day. Of course , she was in this class, too, having weaseled her way into the first-year honors program alongside him. But this was the one class where they weren’t near each other, and that was only because she had arrived ten minutes late to their first class, uncharacteristically flustered and profusely apologetic, and failed to claim a seat near the front.

“She sleeps like the fucking dead,” Venka had muttered to him as Rin did her walk of shame to a seat on the peripheral of the classroom. “I didn’t bother waking her up so she could make it on time.”

But that one slip-up did not prevent her from being a menace in this class, too. It was a shame; Nezha actually liked the honors seminar. Even if the discussions about leadership and professional development were sometimes a little too on-the-nose, they were a nice break from balancing chemical equations and solving formulas. 

“Compromise is not only a professional skill, but a life skill,” Dr. Jima explained as they passed around today’s worksheet. “So, I want you to get into two groups and read the case study. Then, you will have twenty minutes to answer the guiding questions on the worksheet and prepare to present your side of the argument. You will pick one member of your group to act as your representative in the negotiation talks.”

The case study turned out to be a historical excerpt pulled straight from a textbook: the Nikara civil war. Centuries ago, the country had been split in half by the armies of the Young Marshal and the Phoenix General. North and south, Republic and rebel… It was a classic topic for history exams. 

It was actually quite easy to pick a side. History painted the Phoenix General as a bloodthirsty nationalist with little regard for the well-being of her people. Acting out a negotiation between two historical figures who actively tried to kill each other would be trickier. 

“I wrote an essay about this for my advancement placement national history class,” he announced to his group once they had made it through the questions. “I can go.”

“We all took that class in high school,” Han, his own insufferable roommate, grumbled.

No one else seemed to have any objections. Dr. Jima directed them to arrange the desks in a circle. Nezha stood in the middle, facing none other than a determined-looking Rin. He wasted no time in laying out his argument.

“Nikan is on the brink of starvation,” he started. “The continuous wars have wreaked havoc on the people. The South, in particular, has been hit the hardest by the famine and the scorched earth tactics of the Phoenix General.”

“The Phoenix General wasn’t starving her own people,” Rin responded curtly. “She was trying to prevent the Young Marshal’s forces from pillaging what little was left in the South. She was only trying to weaken the enemy.”

He raised a brow. “But that didn’t exactly work out, did it? Because now everyone is starving due to the Phoenix General’s poor strategizing.”

“You’re supposed to be acting it out as these historical figures,” Dr. Jima chided from outside the circle. 

Right. Nezha glanced down at his worksheet.

“I have been working closely with the Hesperian government,” he continued, setting his shoulders back and deepening his voice only the slightest bit. “They have offered a year’s supply of grain and dried meat to tide Nikan over till the next harvest.”

“In exchange for?” Rin prompted.

“The surrender of your forces.”

Rin squinted down at her own worksheet.

“No.”

“No?” Nezha echoed.

“Miss Trengsin, this is meant to be a negotiation,” Dr. Jima called out.

Rin crossed her arms over her chest. “But it historically wasn’t. The story goes that the Young Marshal killed the Phoenix General on Speer–”

“Because she chose the starvation of her people over surrender–” 

“Mister Yin, please wait your turn.” Dr. Jima threw him a glare. “Miss Trengsin, I’m aware of what the official accounts say. But the point of this exercise is to bend history. Make it better, if you will. We can only do that by reaching a compromise through diplomatic negotiation.”

Rin’s scowl only deepened. “Fine. What’s your end of the deal, Young Marshal?”

Nezha brought up his worksheet for reference. “Aside from the food aid, the Republican-allied Hesperian forces will withdraw from the continent and sign an armistice.”

“That’s it?”

“What more do you want, Phoenix General?” He clutched the worksheet so tightly that it wrinkled. “After waging the most pointless war in Nikara history, you can’t exactly expect much from the people you were hunting down.”

“Hunting down?” Rin repeated haughtily. “The Hesperians think we’re savages. If anyone was doing any hunting, it was them. And you brought them into the country.”

Nezha scoffed. “Well, what did you bring to the country? Starvation and instability?”

“Mister Yin,” Dr. Jima warned. 

He sighed and met Rin’s sharp gaze. “Look, Phoenix General. I’m aware the Hesperians are terrible. But they’re far more technologically advanced than we are at this point, and they’re willing to bail us out by offering immediate relief. They’re not all bad. Just let go of your pride for once and do it for our people.”

He gestured around the circle to their classmates. Venka was on her phone. Kitay was reading a textbook for another class. Han was no-so-subtly updating his fantasy football league on his tablet. 

“Our people need freedom, not conditional aid,” Rin sniffed. “And I don’t believe the only thing your side wants is surrender.”

She was right. He had been trying to avoid the rest of the unsavory historical terms– unregulated Makerist missionary privileges, amnesty for all Republican soldiers and political leaders, control of the major ports– and would only bring them up after subduing her. He cleared his throat.

“That’s right,” he said. “My side wants reason. Compassion, even. I’m willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, even if it costs me my pride. I invite you to join me.”

He extended his hand in a gesture of goodwill. If Dr. Jima wanted them to act out their parts, then he was committed. But Rin just looked down at his hand as if he had flicked her off.

“You’re literally a boot-licker,” she scoffed. “I’m not joining anything.”

Dr. Jima stood from her seat. “Miss Trengsin.”

“History is just too cruel to make metaphors out of,” she countered quickly. “And we’re still living the consequences of it today. I just don’t see how I’m expected to compromise with someone whose values are entirely different from mine. Respectfully, Dr. Jima, I feel like those types of things are non-negotiable.”

Nezha blinked. “ Values ? Calm down, Trengsin. This is a class activity.”

Rin rolled her eyes. “Easy for you to say. You’re playing the side that won.”

Nezha let out a disbelieving laugh. “What, and you think the South should’ve won? You people burned your own crops!”

“That was a tactic —”

“That failed —”

“At least I didn’t sell out my country for some foreign protein bars and a pat on the head—”

“Alright!” Dr. Jima clapped her hands. “That’s enough diplomacy for today. Mister Yin, Miss Trengsin, please take your seats.”

Begrudgingly, Nezha obeyed. There were only two empty seats in the circle. They were right next to each other.

“You’re ridiculous,” he hissed to Rin as he settled in. “It’s literally just an assignment, not a political litmus test.” 

She didn’t even look at him. “Everything for you is just an assignment.”

It was such a stupid response that he couldn’t even dignify it. And when Dr. Jima assigned them both to write apologies for failing to create a productive and inclusive classroom environment, he couldn’t help but blame it on her.

Chapter Text

Rin glared at the digital office clock, willing for five o’clock to come sooner.

After that fever dream of an encounter with Nezha in a dark, locked office, she had dazedly made her way back to her floor. She sat at her desk mechanically and pretended to read emails while her colleagues, one by one, called it quits for the day. She didn’t even flinch when the automatic office lights flickered off; instead, she collected her things and made her way to the parking garage, where she waited for each vehicle to clear out. Once the last hybrid sedan had pulled out of its parking spot, she stepped out from behind the column she was hiding behind like a character in a bad spy movie, and scurried toward the only car left in the deck: a sleek, shiny foreign build with tinted windows.

She slid into the passenger’s seat wordlessly. The door locked with a subtle click.

“There’s a seat warmer on the control panel,” Nezha offered without looking at her as he pulled out of his spot. “If you want it.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, but didn’t move an inch. 

The leather seat was so soft. The engine was so silent. The car even smelled like luxury– sterile and expensive. He handed her his phone so she could punch in the address to Keahi’s school.

“And, ah, I can take you back home after,” he added. “Both of you.”

Rin glanced at the roomy backseat. “He needs a booster seat.”

She squinted as they finally exited onto the busy street, the daylight still strong against the darkness of a parking garage despite the downpour thumping on the car roof.

Nezha cleared his throat. “I don’t need a paternity test, by the way.”

Rin scoffed, “I wasn’t going to let you do one.”

Still, she couldn’t help the pit that formed in her stomach when he brought it up. She couldn’t– wouldn’t– put Keahi through yet another confusing procedure. Even if it was just a cheek swab or something equally painless, it would be excruciating to her.

A sheet of rain pummeled the Sinegard street. They were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, so typical of rush hour in the city. Even if she had a car, Rin would’ve taken the train. Nezha, of course, wouldn’t be caught dead on public transport.

“Did you know when we broke up?” he suddenly asked, cutting through the thick silence just like the car in front of him cut him off when he tried to merge into the next lane. “That you were pregnant?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“But if you had known?” he continued, watching traffic out of the rearview. “Would you have told me then?”

Rin sighed. “No.”

Nezha’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. The cars in front of them barely inched forward when the light ahead turned green. The time on the touchscreen display read fifteen minutes past five. Pick-up was only till quarter till six, and they had barely made it out of the business district. 

“I just don’t get it,” he said, eyes glued to the slippery road. “You chose to have a baby alone rather than involve me. You kept it a secret for years. And you would’ve continued keeping it from me, wouldn’t you?”

She clenched her jaw. “First off, I wasn’t alone.”

He shot her an alarmed look. “Who?”

“My mother. I went back to Speer because she was there. She wasn’t happy about it, but–” she cut herself off. Too much information that he didn’t need to know. “She was there for us. Every step of the way. So, you can stop beating yourself up over not being there.”

“Well,” he said sourly. “I’m glad you had some help.”

She rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t have liked soothing a colicky baby at three in the morning, trust me.”

“I still would have done it, Rin. All of it.”

She didn’t want to respond, so she just stared out the window at the raindrops racing on the glass. Ahead of them, someone honked their horn. The rain was making already terrible drivers even worse. 

“Did you think I wouldn’t want him?” he probed again. 

“What?”

“Is that it?” he asked, looking over at her as the light turned red. “Did you think I wouldn’t have wanted Keahi?”

She blinked. “How do you know his name?”

“I asked him when he got lost in the hospital lobby.” He made a face. “Does that happen often, by the way?”

She bristled. “Is this you questioning my parenting?”

“I wouldn’t have let a child get lost in the largest medical facility in the country–”

“Please, when was the last time you dealt with a toddler? They’re wiggly! They like to run away!”

“Then, I don’t know, hold onto him tighter–”

“Oh, fuck off– watch it!”

The light had turned green for them, but somehow, an idiot turning left thought it was worth it to race into the intersection. Nezha slammed on the brakes just in time. Thank gods for seatbelts.

“What a dick,” she scoffed. 

“Can you answer the question?” Nezha insisted. “Did you think I wouldn’t want our son?”

Our son. Her stomach twisted at his words. He had known about Keahi for a few days at max, and he already claimed ownership over him. Over her.

“No,” she admitted. “I just don’t think you would have fought for us.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nezha, come on. You wouldn’t even introduce me as your girlfriend to your family, and you want me to believe that you would have happily told them that you got me pregnant?”

The rain let up as more lights turned green, as they turned right on red, as they waited their turn at four-way stops. The dash clock now read five thirty, but the GPS on her phone told her they were still ten minutes away from Keahi’s school. The wiper blades screeched on the windshield as the sun poked through heavy rainclouds. Nezha turned them off with a harsh flick of his wrist. 

“I would have married you,” he said, gaze yet again set straight ahead. 

That admission should have elicited some sort of reaction out of her. Years ago, when she’d been much stupider and convinced she was in love, she toyed with the idea of it. He had loved her, after all. She never doubted it. But girls like her weren’t meant to be the wives of men like Yin Nezha. Mistresses, at worst. Estranged mothers of their children, at best. 

“And then what, Nezha?” she scoffed. “We would have gotten married? Your parents would have hated me, and they would have hated Keahi.”

“He would have had my last name–”

“He doesn’t need your last name, he has mine.”

“Rin, you know what I mean–”

She huffed out a laugh. “You think I’ve been this destitute, helpless single mom this whole time, don’t you?”

“Well, no, clearly you’ve been able to care for him, but–”

“But what?” she hissed.

“But it couldn’t have been easy, okay?” he snapped. “Not just financially, but all of it. Even with help.” His shoulders slumped just the slightest bit. “And he’s mine, Rin. I should have been there, but you didn’t let me.”

They drove in silence till the white facade of the school came into view. Not even the car engine made a sound, the car being as luxe as it was. The carpool line wrapped around the block, as was usual for the heavy city traffic. Rin foolishly thought about telling him how she handled all of the sleepless nights and doctor’s visits without him, but he didn’t deserve to know.

She shouldered her work bag. “Drop me off. I can just walk from here.”  

“No, we’re not done talking,” Nezha said, flipping a switch on his door.

Rin tugged on the passenger door, frowning. “Did you just put on the fucking child lock?”

“I’m not going to have you jumping out of my car.”

“We’re in a carpool line going three miles an hour.”

She yanked at the handle again, this time with a vengeance. “Nezha.”

He dragged a hand down his face and inched forward in the line. “I’m trying to have a conversation with you, like adults.”

“Adults ? You locked me in your car!”

Out of the window, Rin could see Keahi waiting with his backpack unzipped and hanging off one shoulder. His head whipped back and forth between all the cars, probably wondering where his mama was. Little did her baby know that she was in that fancy black one, trapped by the deranged father he didn’t even know he had. She contemplated reaching over him and unlocking the damn door herself but between the car in front of them and the school staff lining the sidewalk, she couldn’t do that without looking like a complete maniac. The car inched forward again, thwarting her exit.

“I don’t want Keahi to think I’m some sort of deadbeat,” Nezha said, still gripping the steering wheel in a way that made his forearms flex beneath those rolled-up sleeves. 

She really shouldn’t have noticed that. 

“He doesn’t even know about you.”

“You don’t think he’s going to ask questions?” he shot back. “When he starts noticing that other kids have a mom and a dad—“

“This is the twenty-first century, not all kids have hetero parents or nuclear families,” Rin huffed.

Nezha blushed a light shade of pink. “I know that. But Keahi can. He does. And I want him to know that he does, I want him to know me.”

Rin stiffened. Never mind that she had already told Keahi that his father just wasn’t in their lives. Never mind that she owed him an explanation when he was older. And never mind that Nezha just sounded so fucking sincere, like he had been when he told her he loved her time and time again. If only his sincerity had shown through when it mattered.

On the sidewalk, Keahi looked forlorn. He was certainly watching as the other kids got picked up by their parents or uniformed nannies while his own mother was nowhere to be seen.

“That’s him, right?” Nezha asked, staring at the same spot she was. “With the dinosaur backpack?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s… Small.”

“He’s four years old,” she snapped. “And he’s fine.”

The line was moving fast. She needed to bolt before Keahi paid too much attention to her ride.

“Rin–” Nezha started.

“Don’t do this now,” she interrupted him. “Not here.”

“I’m not the one who did anything,” Nezha said. “You kept him from me.”

“I was protecting him!”

“From what? From knowing his father? From having someone else who loves him?“

She didn’t answer because he fucking knew better. A few more cars to go.

“Rin.” Nezha’s voice dropped. “I’m not going away.”

“You can’t just barge back into my life and decide that.”

“I can decide I’m not disappearing from his.” He shifted in his seat, fully facing her now. 

Her pulse skittered. Keahi was kicking pebbles against a brick planter now. Still watching the street. Still waiting.

One car ahead.

“Nezha,” she said, her voice low and quick, “You do not get to make demands of me and expect me to fall in line. That’s not how this works.”

“Then tell me how it works.”

Rin gritted her teeth. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Then make time,” he insisted.

“We’re in a gods-damned carpool line!”

He ran a hand down his face. The car in front of them pulled up to the curb, brake lights glowing red through the windshield. 

“I want to do this the right way,” he said. “Talk about it, figure out a way to move forward together. But, gods, if you keep shutting me out—“

Nezha pulled the car forward. Keahi had sat down on the ground, looking smaller than she had ever seen him.

“Were you going to fucking threaten me?” Rin demanded. “Stick your fucking lawyers on me like I’m some sort of criminal?” Her voice rose in pitch. “You’re going to take him from me, aren’t you? I should’ve fucking known it—“

“I’m not going to do that,” he said quickly. “I can’t.” He pressed his palms to his eyes. “I don’t want to force you. I just… Want to be his father, Rin. Could we figure out a way for that to happen without continuing to hurt each other?”

Her knuckles had turned white on the door handle. The car behind them honked much too violently for a school carpool line. 

“Go to hell,” she hissed.

He had the gall to look remorseful. “Please. Just think about it. We’ll talk again on Monday.

The sound of the child lock disengaging clicked through the cabin. She opened the door. The cabin beeped, and damp air rushed in for a millisecond before she slammed it behind her, shaking the whole frame of the car. She jogged up the walkway and crouched in front of Keahi, breath catching in her throat as he looked up with glistening eyes and a tremble in his bottom lip. His dinosaur backpack was sitting on the ground, just as forlorn as him.

“Hi, Keahi,” she said, taking his backpack from him. “Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re always on time,” he mumbled.

“I know. It was the rain.” She wiped his damp cheeks, though she wasn’t sure if it was mist or tears. 

He sniffled. “Who was that man in that car?”

Rin’s pulse skipped. She didn’t look back, didn’t check to see if the black car was still idling at the curb. “Just someone from work.”

“But he was looking at me.”

Rin smoothed back his hair, mussed and a bit sweaty from a long day of preschool. He must have worked himself up counting to forty. 

“Lots of people look at you, you’re very handsome,” she said, forcing lightness into her voice. “Come on, we have to get home.”

Keahi took her hand without another word, like he always did. It was so small in hers, warm, and only a little sticky from something she would rather not know about. She held on tighter than usual as they walked toward their familiar train station. 

“He has a fancy car,” Keahi observed, twisting to look back.

“Mhmm.”

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

After a convenient and shameful dinner of take-out noodles, Rin and Keahi sprawled out on the carpeted living room floor with what felt like hundreds of Lego pieces between them. She had moved the rickety coffee table aside to give Keahi ample room to spread out— a mistake, seeing as how she would likely be picking them up. 

Keahi was bent over the instructions for the Lego baby dinosaur rescue center, his face scrunched. He handed Rin a little blue piece.

“That’s a wing for the flying one,” he explained.

The flying one? Rin rummaged around the piles of plastic bits, trying to find the one Keahi referred to. He picked up the box and pointed to a blue pterodactyl.

“This one,” he said.

Right. To Rin, Legos were perhaps the worst toys after anything with glitter or a voice box. The pieces inevitably got lost and then turned up weeks later, when they had already encrusted themselves into the most vulnerable parts of the human body. They were tedious and required patience, especially when she had the right pieces, but somehow the plastic just wasn’t cooperating.

But Keahi loved building his Lego sets. And if he wanted her to assemble a blue pterodactyl, then, by the gods, she would do it. Even when her mind and heart were anywhere but the Lego baby dinosaur rescue center.

“It’s upside down,” Keahi pointed out with a frown.

He set down the gray triceratops he had been working on and took the plastic dinosaur from her. His little mouth curled in concentration as he twisted the wing to its proper orientation. He looked so much like Nezha in that moment that it almost hurt. 

“Now put it on the roof,” he instructed, handing the blue pterodactyl back to her.

Rin balanced it precariously on the plastic roof of the rescue base. Keahi pouted.

“It goes on ,” he huffed, taking it from her again and snapping it into place. “Like the book says.”

He flipped to a page in the instructions and held it up to her. Rin fought the urge to sigh through her nose.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “Maybe I can just watch you? Since you’re the expert.”

But Keahi shook his head. “I wanted you to help.”

And so she did. But as she aimlessly assembled the base of a palm tree, her mind raced.

Nezha knew. That was the truth, and there was no way to ignore it. He knew, and he wanted to be involved. The worst part was that she had done everything right: she went no-contact, deleted her socials, cut people off, and kept a low profile that she should have been able to disappear into a city of nine million people without a trace. Even working at the same place shouldn’t have been an issue since he was in such a senior role. It really was just her stupid fucking luck that he found out. 

“Look!” Keahi exclaimed, holding up an assembled figure in his hand. “It’s a baby ‘raptor!”

Rin tried to smile. “A velociraptor, baby.”

He cocked his head to the side. “I already said that.”

Keahi turned back to the instruction booklet, humming under his breath. Rin watched him, her fingers tightening around the half-assed palm tree. Keahi was so, so smart. He would figure it out on his own, eventually, just like how he figured out which Legos fit together by trial and error. She could picture it now: an older Keahi, tall and still looking so much like Nezha, getting too curious about the father she swore was not in their lives. Little children were inclined to forgive, but a betrayed young man? He might never speak to her again.   

She cleared her throat. “Keahi.”

He looked up from his blocks. “Hm?”

“Do you ever… Wish that things were different? As in, do you ever wish that it wasn’t just me taking care of you?”

Keahi squinted at her. “But you always take care of me.”

“I do,” Rin said softly. “And I will. Always.”

He considered that, nodding once. “And we have Ama, too. You said she’s family, too.”

She swallowed hard at that, trying to take the guilt down with it. “Yes. But she’s not going to be here.”

He scrunched his brow. “Then who else is going to be here?”

“No one,” she said, maybe a little too quickly. “But what if someone wants to be here?”

“Who?”

Your father. The one I told you wasn’t going to be around. The one who should mind his own fucking life instead of trying to insert himself in ours.

“It’s just a thought,” she said lightly.

Keahi muttered something about needing “the green piece that’s kinda spiky but not too spiky”. She spied it near the edge of the couch and handed it to him.

“Mama, do you have a boyfriend?”

Now that almost sent her flying back into the couch. She frowned at him. “Do you know what that even is?”

He pursed his lips. “Liwei said that it’s his mom’s special friend who takes him camping. And that the last one used to buy him lots of new toys before he left. And that the one before that wasn’t very nice.”

Rin blinked. Liwei’s mother seemed to have a pretty vibrant dating life. Good for her. She shook her head.

“No, Keahi. I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“But if you did,” he said, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Would your boyfriend take care of me? Like you said?”

Rin’s tongue felt thick in her mouth.

“That’s not…” She trailed off.

She almost said that’s not how it works, but that would’ve been a lie, too. Because, sometimes, that was how it worked. Sometimes, someone came along and offered to help. Sometimes, they meant it.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said again, firmer this time.

Keahi didn’t seem to notice the change in tone. He picked up another Lego figure and pressed its tiny legs into place.

“But if I did ,” Rin said, trying not to regret it. “And if he wanted to be around… Do you think that would be okay?”

Keahi paused, blinking up at her like she’d just asked if they could have dessert for dinner.

“Is he nice?”

She almost laughed. “I would want him to be.”

Keahi considered that, his brow furrowed like he was weighing the pros and cons of inviting a stranger into their Lego home. “Then, maybe. If he’s not mean to you like Liwei’s mom’s last-last boyfriend, it’s okay.”

“Yeah,” she agreed hoarsely. “I don’t think he would be.”

She leaned back on the couch, watching him with her knees drawn to her chest. It would’ve been easy to say it. She could have said it.

His name is Nezha, Keahi. He’s your dad. He wants to be in your life. I lied to you. I’m sorry. 

But when she opened her mouth, nothing came out of her locked throat. She just couldn’t do it. Maybe she could convince herself it was about protecting him. But she was as terrible a mother as she was at building Lego sets, and she couldn’t even fool herself into believing she was doing it for Keahi and not for herself.

“Mama?”

She looked up. Keahi held a tiny plastic triceratops in his hand. The Lego baby dinosaur rescue center was far from complete, but bedtime was approaching.

“If you get a boyfriend,” he said, depleting the oxygen from her lungs. “Can he actually help me with the Legos?”

She tried for another smile. “But I help you all the time.”

Her son shrugged and picked up the pterodactyl. “You don’t really want to.”

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

The playground was one of those new, architect-designed ones– all soft rubber flooring and artfully abstract play structures that looked like they’d been commissioned by Nikan’s institute for modern art. Rin perched on the edge of a metal bench, rubbing Keahi down with sunscreen.

“I don’t like it,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “It feels sticky.”

Sticky things were some of Keahi’s least favorite. He’d hated the feeling of lotion ever since he was a baby, wailing and shaking his tiny fists when she had massaged it onto his skin to relieve cumbersome cradle cap. But sunscreen was non-negotiable– not because she wanted him to fit in with stupid mainland beauty standards, but simply because a sunburned Keahi was an unhappy Keahi. She had learned that lesson the hard way after his first summer on Speer. 

“Well, it keeps you protected from the sun,” she said, rubbing the last dollop on his arms. “Here, Longlong can have some, too.”

Keahi held out his stuffed dragon reluctantly. Rin lightly swiped her finger across its snout, leaving a tiny trail of white sunscreen on its blue fur. The poor thing was already filthy; what was one more stain?

Keahi grabbed the bottle of sunscreen from her hands. “Uncle Altan, do you want some?”

Altan lifted one brow as he took in the greasy bottle pointed at him. “I think I’ll pass, kiddo.”

“But it keeps you protected from the sun,” Keahi insisted.

Rin shot her cousin a look. Altan tentatively held his palm out for Keahi to squirt an obscene amount of sunscreen into.

“I think that’s enough, right?” Rin prompted him.

Keahi nodded, satisfied, then darted off toward a low climbing dome that resembled a planet. He lingered on the perimeter while another kid in a bucket hat scrambled right to the top. 

“Do you have a wipe or napkin or anything I can use to get this shit off?” Altan asked her, disgruntled.

Rin snorted. “Don’t waste my sunscreen. I paid good money for that.”

He wiped a glob on her arm. She made a disgruntled sound in the back of her throat, but rubbed it in anyway. Never mind that they were sitting in the shade of a massive tree.

Altan flicked the cap back on the bottle, then leaned back on the bench with a sigh. “I can’t believe you guilt-tripped me into coming to a playground on my last weekend in Sinegard.”

Rin gave him a sidelong look. “You’re the one leaving me. The least you can do is say goodbye to your favorite cousin and her sticky spawn.”

Altan rolled his eyes, but he didn’t argue. They both knew she was his favorite-- by default, since they were the only ones, but still. They’d been raised almost like siblings, crammed into the same two-bedroom apartment under Hanelai’s exhausted watch. He’d scared her with bugs; she’d broken his nose with a swing set. He’d never figured out how to talk to kids, still clumsy and stiff when Keahi looked at him too long, but he liked him well enough. He had always been a little too protective of Rin, in his own frowning way, so, naturally, it extended to Keahi too.

“You’re welcome to visit me in the Hinterlands,” he offered.

Rin huffed. “No, thanks. I don’t want Chaghan putting Keahi on a kiddie leash again.”

“That was one time. Get over it.”

“And that’s why you lost babysitting privileges.”

“Chaghan is very pleased with that outcome.”

“I bet he is.”

Altan leaned back on the bench, stretching his legs out. “So. You still not talking to Hanelai?”

Rin groaned. “Oh, not this shit again.”

“She keeps on asking me how you are.”

Rin didn’t look at him. “ She’s not talking to me.”

“That’s odd. Because, according to her, you’re not talking to her.”

“I sent Keahi’s drawing in the family group chat, and she didn’t respond. Actually, you didn’t either.”

“I gave it a thumbs-up react.”

She huffed. “I’m not the one who threw a fit over a perfectly reasonable life choice.”

“You ran away to Sinegard with her grandchild after she spent five years supporting you,” Altan said flatly.

“Because Keahi needed it!”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Keahi cautiously scaling the play structure. She held her breath till he made it safely to the next platform.

“She’s being unreasonable,” Rin muttered. 

“That’s where you get it from, then.”

“I don’t need you to mediate.”

“You’re using me to avoid talking to each other,” he said. “Which is worse. How is Keahi faring?” 

Rin sighed. “They’re just putting him on a bunch of different meds to see which one works.”

“Has he continued having seizures?”

She shook her head. “No, but there’s an exhaustive list of potential triggers I have to keep in mind. Dehydration is one of them.” She rummaged through her cooler and pulled out his water bottle. “Keahi! Water break!”

Keahi hesitated at the top of the slide as if he didn’t know whether to slide down the slide or scurry back down the climbing wall. She gave him a thumbs up, which he took as his cue to take the slide. He landed neatly on the padded floor and ran up to them with a toothy smile.

“I went so high!” he exclaimed, pointing at the play structure. 

Rin handed him his bottle, which he unscrewed himself. “I saw. You okay?”

Keahi nodded through his big gulp of water and then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Rin narrowed her eyes.

“Dizzy?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Sleepy?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Feeling weird?”

Keahi shook his head. Feeling weird was their language for auras, which were usually followed by seizures. She smiled in relief and led him to the bench, where he climbed up and sat next to Altan. Rin rummaged through the cooler again and procured a bag of grapes and some rice crackers.

“Hungry?” she asked.

Altan reached for a grape. She snorted. 

“I was asking Keahi.”

“It’s okay, Uncle Altan,” Keahi said, two grapes in his hand. “You can have a grape. Here.”

He held one out to him. Altan eyed it warily before taking it, probably thinking about gross little kid germs on gross little kid hands— the likes of which Rin was all too used to.

“Thanks, kid,” he said. “You’re great at sharing.”

Keahi beamed at the praise. “My teacher gave me a sticker for sharing my crayons with Haoyu.” His smile dropped. “But then he broke them.”

Rin had no idea who Haoyu was, but he was probably a snotty little shit whose snotty little parents hadn’t taught him to respect other people’s things. She lifted Keahi’s sun hat and ran a hand through his wavy hair, damp with sweat.

“It sounds like Haoyu didn’t get a sticker,” she said.

Keahi shook his head. “No. And sometimes he eats his crayons.”

After a few minutes of rest, more gulps of water, and a few grapes, Keahi decided it was time to jump back into the fray. Rin wordlessly offered Altan the plastic baggie of rice crackers. Altan raised a brow.

“I thought those were Keahi’s.”

She shrugged and popped one in her mouth. “I like them more than he does.”

They sat in silence for a few moments with the rice crackers between them, watching Keahi. Another child approached him, pointing in the direction of a group playing tag. Keahi looked back at her, unsure. She shook her head even if it broke her heart.

“Exertion,” she explained to Altan. “Another possible trigger.”

Keahi declined. He retreated into the play structure and watched from the platform as the other kids chased each other around the playground.

“It must be hard,” Altan observed.

“We’re alright,” Rin insisted. 

He looked unimpressed. “For him . It has to be hard for him not to be a normal kid.”

“Well, that’s why I came here.” Rin bit down too violently on a rice cracker. “Because there was no way he was going to get to be a normal kid with the care back home.”

“Hanelai understands that. It’s just the way you went about it that hurt her.”

Rin yanked the bag of crackers away and put them back in the cooler. Altan glared at her.

“I have no idea how you’re raising a child,” he said. 

Rin jerked her chin toward Keahi, who had contented himself with trying to climb up the slide rather than go down it. “I am doing a wonderful job.”

Sure, she hated and doubted herself for every decision she ever made for Keahi. But only she got to say that, no one else.  

Altan gave her a side-eye. “Wonderful parents don’t hoard the snacks.”

“Call it stress eating,” she muttered.

He didn’t let up. “What’s got you so stressed that you dragged me out to a playground just to argue about rice crackers and Hanelai?”

Rin didn’t answer. Her gaze was still fixed on Keahi. He’d abandoned the slide and was now crouched at the base of the jungle gym, poking at something on the ground with intense focus.

Altan watched her carefully. “Rin.”

She picked at the hem of her sleeve. “His father found out about him.”

Years ago, when Rin had shown up pregnant at her mother’s house, the first thing Hanelai asked was who . Rin had refused to answer and Hanelai, somehow, miraculously, left it at that. Maybe it was because Rin had no clue who her own father was, and Hanelai realized she couldn’t pressure her without being a hypocrite. But Altan had always had his suspicions on who exactly Keahi’s father was, and made it very clear how much he despised the man. 

“And?” he prompted.

“And.” Rin took a deep breath. “He wants to be involved.”

A beat of silence passed between them. Some kid shrieked, but it didn’t bother Rin. She knew what Keahi sounded like, and that wasn’t him. 

“Do you want that?” he asked.

Rin swallowed. “Not really.”

“Then why are you wasting your time on it?”

She shook her head, thinking of Keahi and his unfinished Lego baby dinosaur rescue center. “I don’t know if I trust myself to make the right decision.”

“You’ve trusted yourself enough to move to a big city alone for the sake of your kid,” Altan said. “What’s different now?”

Rin turned a forgotten rice cracker to dust in her fingers. “I–”

But Keahi was already coming up to the bench. She forced a smile on her face even if it pained her.

“You alright, Keahi?”

He nodded enthusiastically and pointed away from the playground. “There’s an ocean over there.”

Rin frowned. “An ocean?”

Keahi nodded again. “I climbed to the top again and saw water.”

Oh. There was, in fact, a pond further into the park. Keahi truly was a Speerly baby, thinking all bodies of water were the ocean. She should correct him, help broaden his vocabulary, but couldn’t bring herself to.

“Do you want to go?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

Keahi grinned and flapped his hands. “Can I have Longlong back?”

Altan, who had been serving as Longlong’s custodian, handed the stuffed dragon back to Keahi without a qualm. “Here, he missed you.”

Keahi trotted off, murmuring reassurances to the dragon as he went. Rin followed him, but Altan quickly caught up. He was not letting her off the hook.

“How did he find out?” he asked, quiet enough that Keahi wouldn’t overhear him.

Rin slowed down, letting Keahi take the lead toward the pond. “Not important.”

Altan didn’t seem convinced. “You never told us who he is.”

“And I won’t be,” she hissed. 

Altan gave her a sideways glance, unimpressed. “You think keeping these secrets makes you tough?”

She didn’t respond. Keahi had reached the edge of the pond and was crouching low, poking the water with a stick, Longlong perched on the grass like a lookout.

“You don’t trust anyone,” Altan went on. “Not even the people who love you. Not even the woman who raised you.”

Rin turned on him then, sharply. “You don’t get it.”

“No?” His voice was cutting. “Because last I checked, she raised me, too. Or did you forget we were in the same tiny apartment every day?”

“She always wanted you,” Rin said, low and furious. “She took you in when your parents died. She didn’t have a choice with me.”

“She could have turned you away,” he said. “When you showed up at her house in tears because you went and did everything she told you not to–”

“I already know I’m a disappointment!” she hissed. “You’re the perfect one who has never once fucked up, who gets to leave the country altogether to live his perfect life without Hanelai treating you like a traitor. I get it.” She inhaled sharply to stave off the tears prickling behind her eyes. “You don’t have to fucking remind me.”

Keahi was dipping his hands in the water now. She shifted her weight, trying to face away from her cousin.

“Then stop being a disappointment,” he said, not a hint of pity in his voice. “And stop pretending like you don’t have people around you who care about you. You don’t trust yourself to make the right choices for that kid because you’re choosing to fuck up. You need to talk to her,” he insisted. “You’re not the only one who’s scared, and she just might have some advice on what to do.”

The silence stretched between them. At the pond’s edge, Keahi shouted something triumphant and declared a fish had winked at him. Rin blinked hard and swallowed. Altan gave her one last look before turning to join Keahi, who was now attempting to dip Longlong in murky pond water. 

Rin stayed back a beat longer, eyes on the ripples in the water. Her reflection stared back: blurry, uncertain, small.

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

The apartment was quiet when they came back.

Keahi went down easily for a nap, exhausted from the playtime and the outdoors. He was sprawled across the couch with Longlong under one arm. Rin desperately needed to wash that thing, but had not succeeded in getting him to part with it. Satisfied with the gentle sound of his breathing, she retreated to the edge of the kitchen counter, phone in hand, thumb hovering over the screen.

She tapped the number before she could talk herself out of it.

The line rang. Once. Twice.

“Yes?”

Her mother’s voice was as level as it had been when she told her she would not be kicking her out of the house all those years ago. Rin faltered. Maybe she could hang up and pretend it had been a misdial. Hanelai probably wouldn’t call her back if she did.

“Hi,” she said, shakily.

There was a pause, taut and quiet.

“You haven’t called me since you moved away. ”

Rin pressed her forehead to her knees. 

“I need advice,” she said. 

Hanelai sighed through the phone. “Will you actually heed it this time?”

Rin’s throat tightened. “Yes.”

Another pause. There was no sound on the other end of the line. Had Hanelai muted her? Was she still even there? Her fingers hovered over the screen again. It still wasn’t too late to hang up and pretend this lapse in resolve had never happened.

“Then, tell me what’s been going on with you for the past year .”

Rin glanced over at Keahi, still dozing on the couch. She tiptoed past him and closed the door to her room. Locked herself in the bathroom for good measure, too. She breathed in deeply, the smell of the sticky, vanilla-scented diffuser on her counter making her stomach turn.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered, finally allowing her voice to crack. “I need help, mama.”

Chapter Text

If someone who knew him saw Nezha buying a booster seat, no, they didn't.

He thought of ordering one online. In fact, he spent at least an hour scouring through consumer reports and forums for information on safety specs, comfort, and durability. But Reddit and reviews written in all caps with too many exclamation points were only so helpful, so he took himself to Target. Now, he was standing in the baby section of the store, staring down a row of car seats as if they were his enemies.

“Highback or backless,” he muttered to himself. “Or maybe a highback-to-backless?”

Part of his research involved watching simulated crash videos, so at least he could rule out the ones where the dummy flew through the windshield upon impact. Still, there were so many models to choose from. He squinted at the tag on a red one with cup holders on either side. Did kids really need two cup holders? 

“For forty to one hundred pounds,” he read out loud. “Huh.”

The problem was he had no clue how much Keahi weighed, and Rin sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him. Keahi was small. Nezha could probably estimate that he weighed around the lower end of the range, but he had watched enough dummy toddlers getting tossed out of car seats to rely on an estimate. He looked back down at his phone, which was still open to a blog titled The 13 Best Car Seats, Tested By Real Parents.

The UPPAbaby Alta V2 saved my 3 y/o’s LIFE during a rear-end collision! Plus, it comes in three ADORABLE animal prints!!!

“That sounds promising,” he murmured as he scanned the rows for the UPPAbaby Alta V2.

He clicked on the link to see more reviews. The next one read:

It’s a little roomy even for my chunky 4 y/o. Returned it out of precaution.

So much for the UPPAbaby Alta V2.

It was now Sunday. He figured he would give Rin the weekend to figure out how she wanted to do this, but he needed to be ready for their inevitable carpool line rendezvous. Maybe he was too stupidly optimistic to hope that his child’s mother would ever even give him the time of day, much less let him give Keahi a ride in his car, but not having a car seat was just giving Rin another reason to run away.

Nezha crouched eye-level with one of the boxes on the shelves, as if the pictures of smiling children and clean cup holders would clarify anything about the mess that was currently his life.

…They didn’t.

“But I don’t want that one!”

A tired-looking woman with a screaming toddler and a dozing baby strapped to her chest pushed a cart full of diapers, formula, snacks, and cleaning products into the aisle. Nezha scrambled out of the way just in time to hear her sigh.

“You said this was your favorite cereal,” she said.

“It doesn’t have the panda on the box!” the kid wailed, trailing after her as she wheeled her cart through the tight space. “It’s not the same! And it’s not crispy, it’s soggy!”

Nezha cleared his throat as they passed by him in the aisle. “Ma’am, excuse me.”

The woman turned toward him with the most tired eyes he had ever seen on a human. “Can I help you?”

“How much does your son weigh?”

“What?”

He cursed internally. Out loud, it sounded so fucking weird.

“Yes, sorry,” he said quickly. “It’s just— I’m trying to buy a car seat for my son and he’s around the same height as yours—“

“I’m very tall,” the kid muttered sourly even though he so clearly wasn’t.

“— but I don’t know how much he weighs and—“ He gestured to the row of boxes defeatedly. “There are so many to choose from. I just want to get the safest one.”

The woman’s glare softened a bit. She pulled her son to her to keep him from climbing onto the merchandise display. 

“How old is your kid?” she asked.

“Four.”

Her lips twitched into a small smile. “This one is four, too. Quanquan, do you remember how much the doctor said you weighed at your last check-up?”

“One hundred pounds!” Quanquan declared.

Nezha blinked.

“He weighs thirty-eight,” the woman said flatly.

Adjusting her sleeping baby, she led them over to the end of the aisle and pointed out a sleek seat with a high back and a geometric print.

“This Graco one should do,” she said. “Five-point contact and only one cup holder so they don’t fill it with a bunch of gunk. I feel pretty good about putting him in it.”

“The seatbelt is itchy,” Quanquan said.

“Don’t listen to him,” the woman said under her breath.

Nezha looked over at the Graco box like it was a lifeline. “Thank you.”

The woman nodded and returned to her cart with QuanQuan in tow. He immediately tried to climb in, but she gently tugged him down. The baby in the carrier began stirring and whining. She groaned and mumbled something about a blowout.

“Good luck,” she said, pushing past him hurriedly. “You’ll need it at that age.”

He hauled the car seat box halfway to check-out before the doubt crept in. Was that it? No, of course not. Because if Rin was going to let Keahi ride in the car, he was going to need more than just a car seat. What if he got hungry after school and wanted a snack? Normally, Nezha didn’t even like bringing food into his car, but surely Keahi could have crackers and a juice box or whatever kids liked to eat.

So, he grabbed an abandoned shopping cart, dumped the car seat into it, and headed to the snack aisle. He balked at the amount of sugar in a singular pouch of lychee juice, but grabbed a pack anyway. Those filled panda cookies looked pretty good, but maybe he should get fruit or something green. Surely, Rin didn’t allow Keahi to eat a ton of sugar and food coloring. He picked up a bag of grapes instead.

On the way back to the check-out, he passed the toy aisle. The shelves were stacked with toy cars and superhero figurines. A little girl was begging her mother to get her the latest talking animal— a Hesperian-speaking blue dog with pointy ears that said nine distinct phrases. Nezha wheeled his cart between the loud-colored shelves and found himself pulling out his phone for research again.

age appropriate toys for a 4 yr old boy

He toggled his lock screen. Maybe he was getting carried away– after all, it was just a car ride. Potentially. If Rin even decided to be charitable, which was only a possibility. At the very end of the toy section were the stuffed animals. On a low shelf, he spied a blue dragon with shiny bead eyes and smiled.

So, that’s where Longlong was from.

Of course, it was Target. It was brilliant, really— place something that cute within toddler reach and no parent stood a chance. He could picture Keahi grabbing it off the shelf with sticky hands, and Rin probably telling him to put it back. Right next to it sat a red dragon with wings twice its size and a crooked little smile stitched across its face. Not a replacement. Just… A friend for Longlong. He picked it up and gave it a light squeeze.

“Okay,” he murmured. “You’ll do.”

When he finally checked out, he didn’t ask for a receipt. Returning anything meant that Rin had said no, and that just wasn’t a possibility he wanted to entertain.

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

It was five o’clock on the dot, and Rin was nowhere to be seen.

Fifteen minutes ago, Nezha had moved his car from his usual reserved spot to the top floor of the deck. No one ever parked there, especially not on a day when a hot car was a health hazard. He’d messaged Rin the floor number and nothing else on a Teams chat, hoping the lack of context would be plausible enough deniability if their messages ever got leaked for reasons he refused to imagine. If only she hadn’t blocked his number.

He glanced at the time on the display, too bright in the darkness of tinted windows. He glanced at the booster seat in the back, a pouch of lychee juice in its sole cupholder. He glanced at the red stuffed dragon, sitting in the middle seat. 

Still no Rin.

He checked the time again. Five minutes had passed. Five full minutes. Maybe she wasn’t coming. Maybe she had read that cryptic ass message and decided that co-parenting wasn’t worth the time or trouble. He exhaled slowly through his nose and sat back in the driver’s seat, feeling like the world’s most useless Uber driver with a stuffed animal as a passenger.

The dragon in the middle seat kept smiling at him with its silly stitched grin.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he threatened.

The violent jiggling of the passenger’s door handle at ten past five nearly made him jump out of his skin. He swiftly unlocked the car, only for Rin to clamber inside and throw her work bag in the back without looking.

“I know,” she huffed before he could even say anything. “I know I’m late. My idiot boss scheduled an afternoon meeting that could’ve been an email, and my software crashed, and one of my coworkers can’t analyze a report to save their life, and Keahi is going to be upset again, and I–“

She cut herself off and ran her hands through her hair. It was much longer than he ever remembered it being, falling to the middle of her back in thick waves that Keahi had inherited.

“Just drive,” she sighed. “Please.”

They sat in silence again as he exited the parking garage. He stole glances at her through the mirrors, but she was typing away furiously on her phone. The distinct ding of a Teams message made him cringe.

“Oh, fuck off,” she muttered, reaching back for her bag. “It’s past five, just log off— is that a booster seat?”

“It’s not not a booster seat,” he said, tight-lipped as he turned onto the city street.

“Why did you get a booster seat?”

“Because you said I didn’t have one when I offered to give you and Keahi a ride back home from the school.”

“So you bought one,” she said flatly.

“No shit.”

“How much did it cost?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“It looks expensive. And is that toy for him?”

“He likes dragons, right?”

“He already has one.”

“Well, he can have another.”

He came to a stop in front of a red light. Rin shook her head.

“No, see, this is not how we’re going to do this,” she said. “You’re not just going to buy him a bunch of shit to win him over—“

“I’m not doing that,” he insisted, cutting her off like the average Sinegardian driver. “But how are we doing this?”

Silence fell over them, only punctuated by the sounds of traffic on the street and the constant hum of the air conditioning. Rin stared straight ahead through the windshield, her jaw clenched.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

Nezha almost threw his hands up in exasperation, but instead kept them a little too firmly on the wheel. “What do you mean? You had a weekend to figure it out.”

“I can’t spend my entire weekend thinking about how I want to co-parent,” she snapped. “Not when I have to actually parent. But school pick-up can be a start. I guess.”

“Like a chauffeur,” he said flatly.

“You said you wanted to be involved,” she said coolly.

“I didn’t say I wanted to be used.”

“Then don’t offer rides if you don’t mean them.”

They hit a red light. There was another silence.

He wanted to fight her on that—say something clever, something cruel—but Keahi’s car seat was behind him. And the silly stuffed dragon was still sitting next to it with its stupid grin. It felt wrong to fight in front of it.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Pick-up duty. Got it. What else?”

She crossed her arms over her chest— the first sign of discomfort she had shown in the past fifteen minutes in his car. “We can work out times to meet on the weekends. He likes going to the park, and there are some good children's museums in the city we can probably go to. But I have to be present for whatever.”

“You don’t trust me with my own kid?” 

“He doesn’t know you.”

Ouch. That shouldn’t have stung the way it did, even if it was the truth. He bit back another barb about whose fault it was that he was a stranger to his kid, and kept his eyes on the road. The car ahead of him idled at the green light.

“And no introducing him to anyone unless I approve it,” she continued. “No pictures on social media. No pictures at all, actually.”

“Oh, come on,” he groaned. “Now you’re just being unreasonable.”

“No, I’m being prudent. Because what happens when your parents walk into your stupid penthouse and see a million pictures of this random little kid who looks like you?”

Never mind that his parents would never do something as mundane as visit him at his home. He merged onto the highway, feeling more like he was playing a game of Frogger than he was driving.

“At least you finally admitted it,” he said.

“Admit what?”

“That he looks like me.”

She muttered something about the ultimate betrayal, but turned away from him with a scowl on her face. The GPS prompted him to take the next exit in a voice that was much too cheery.

“He’s going to love that stuffed animal,” Rin grumbled.

Nezha tried to suppress his relief. “There’s a juice box for him in the back, too. And some grapes. Just in case he wants a snack.”

In the brief moment that he yielded in a roundabout, he looked over to find her staring at him with an open mouth.

“What?” he prompted.

Rin looked away as if he had shot lasers through his eyes. “Nothing.”

The open gates of the school came into view, alongside the carpool line that brought traffic on the street to a standstill. 

“Have you told him who I am yet?” he asked, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel as the queue inched forward.

“No,” Rin said without the barest hint of hesitation.

Now he threw his hands off the wheel, one foot still firmly on the brake as the line came to a stop again. “Seriously, Rin? What the hell is he going to think about this strange man driving around with his mom?"

“I haven’t figured it out yet, okay!?” she snapped, but it gave way to a bone-tired sigh. “A few weeks ago, he asked if he had a dad because his snotty little school made him do an assignment on family.”

“And?” Nezha prompted through clenched teeth.

“And I told him that his father was just not in our lives,” she said. “So now, I can’t just… Turn his world upside down by introducing you as that. He needs time.”

Nezha considered this. Really, how could she have answered such an innocent question? It’s not like she could tell him the truth. Stories like that were just not meant for little children, especially if the stories made their parents seem like bad people. 

“Alright,” he conceded. “Fine. But you’re not getting out of it, so come up with a way to tell him that doesn’t make me look like a villain.”

“No promises,” she said, and Nezha just couldn’t be sure she wasn’t joking.

So, he engaged the child lock again. Rin flipped him off. He prayed the car in front of them wasn’t watching them through their mirror.

When they finally reached the sidewalk, Rin preemptively unbuckled her seatbelt. With her hand precariously on the door handle, she looked like she was going to bolt. Again. Nezha craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Keahi standing behind one of the teachers commanding the carpool. His dinosaur backpack was completely open, exposing bright sheets of colored paper and Longlong’s blue head.

“Okay.” Rin exhaled like she was preparing to sprint to a finish line. “When we get to the front, I’m going to get out of the car. I’m going to buckle him into that thousand-dollar booster seat, and you’re going to take us home.”

“You know, people at least thank their Uber drivers,” Nezha huffed.

“Shut up.” 

The overhead lights gently blinked as Rin opened the passenger door. He watched, pulse skittering, as she made her way over to Keahi. Those ten yards from the sidewalk to the curb felt like a hundred miles as they walked back together to the car. Rin stopped to zip up his backpack before reaching for the door, speaking words Nezha could not hear as she bent down. This was it. He was actually meeting his son. Even if he felt like little more than a godsdamned Lyft driver than a father.

“—so be nice to him, okay?” Rin murmured as she finally opened the door. Nezha watched her help Keahi into the booster seat from the rearview mirror.

“Hi, Mister Nezha,” Keahi greeted as his mother secured the straps around his shoulders.

“Hello,” he responded, trying not to grimace at Mister Nezha. 

“Mister Nezha thought you might like that new dragon,” Rin said, climbing back into the passenger’s seat. “Can you say thank you?”

Nezha held his breath as Keahi took the stuffed toy into his lap, unsurely. He ran his hands over the tail, the wings, the face, as if appraising some precious gem.

“Keahi,” Rin prompted, twisting in her seat to look at him. “What do you say when someone gives you a gift?”

“Thank you,” Keahi mumbled, cradling the toy close.

The knot in Nezha’s throat loosened just enough to allow him to breathe. He shifted the car back into drive and double-checked the child lock, just in time for the car ahead of him to pull through.

“Wait! ”

Keahi’s yelp nearly made him slam on the brakes and send the three of them flying through the windshield. Bewildered, Rin spun around again.

“What’s wrong?”

“The dragon needs a seatbelt!”  

Rin’s shoulders drooped ever-so-slightly. “Okay. The dragon needs a seatbelt. Do you want to try strapping him in?”

“You’re going to have to take him out of his seat so he can reach,” Nezha said.

“He needs to be safe!” Keahi insisted, twisting and straining out of his harness.

The car behind them honked— short, sharp, and furious. The teacher on pick-up duty shot them a look of deep disdain, clipboard in hand. Rin groaned and reached for her seatbelt, but Nezha was already moving.

“I got it,” he reassured Rin, climbing out of the car and opening the passenger door.

Keahi put the toy back down. Nezha pulled the seatbelt across its fuzzy body, securing it to the best of his ability. Another car behind them honked. He almost cursed, but bit his tongue. Once back in the driver’s seat, he glared at the car behind him through the rearview and finally, finally, pulled out of the damned carpool line.

”He’s safe now,” Keahi said softly.

He drove in silence for a few beats, allowing the GPS to guide him to Rin’s home. At stops, he kept stealing glances at Keahi in the backseat; his head was turned toward the window, and his hands were clutched tightly in his lap.

“How was school today, Keahi?” Rin asked, also watching him through the mirror. “Did you do anything fun?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he just gave the faintest shake of his head, still turned toward the window. 

“You didn’t learn anything?” she pressed gently. “Nothing at all?”

“We learned shapes,” Keahi said, almost reluctantly.

Nezha gripped the wheel tighter. This was his fault. Of course, Keahi didn’t want to talk. He was a stranger to him— a stranger with a too-shiny car and a too-tight jaw who showed up out of nowhere and tried to buy affection with a stuffed dragon. 

What was he even thinking?

He wanted to say something— anything. But what did you even say to a four-year-old who was only being nice to you because his mother said so? 

“You can just pull up to the curb,” Rin instructed as they neared her apartment building.

It was nothing extraordinary— just the average apartment building with a million floors and a sun-faded exterior that badly needed a new coat of paint. Even if it was perfectly fine, with a nearby playground and well-maintained sidewalks, Nezha couldn’t help but feel that Keahi deserved more. Some place bigger, definitely. With a private, fenced-in yard with manicured grass. Maybe even with a security gate and an actual chauffeur. Nezha cringed, realizing that he was thinking too much of his own childhood. 

Rin opened the passenger door the moment he put the car in park, right in front of the doors to her building as she directed. Nezha scrambled to turn on the emergency lights and follow her out of the car.

“Do you need help bringing anything up?” he asked Rin. 

Anything was just Keahi’s dinosaur backpack and her work bag, which had tragically spilled all over the floor of the backseat. Rin was bent over, shoving her things back into the satchel, the dinosaur backpack slung haphazardly over one shoulder. When she straightened, her face was scrunched up.

“We’re alright,” she insisted, and began unbuckling Keahi from his seat. “Keahi, can you thank Mister Nezha for the ride?”

Keahi slurped his juice pouch. At least he liked lychee. “Thank you, Mister Nezha.”

Nezha tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace for sure this time. Still, he held open the door to the lobby for them. Rin ushered Keahi inside first.

“Same time tomorrow?” Nezha asked under his breath.

“I’ll text you,” Rin whispered back, lingering for just long enough.

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

Nine Years Ago

By all accounts, Rin was frustratingly academically gifted. Nezha came to learn this over the past year, measured in the number of mechanical pencils she chewed to death in calculus. Any unscrupulous first-year engineering student would consider themselves blessed by the gods to have her as a partner for a project. He’d even heard a classmate earlier in the semester brag about how Rin was so great because she insisted on doing all the busywork. Nezha didn’t have the heart to tell him it was because she would never trust a moron with her ninety-three in Intro to Java.

But Nezha was far from unscrupulous. And he was even further from being a moron. So, when Dr. Jun assigned them to work together for the final project in CSC 116, Nezha should have been fucking delighted to work with someone competent. Instead, he slammed his laptop shut and buried his head in his hands when he saw the randomly assigned pairings listed on the class Moodle site. Because Rin Trengsin, for all her brilliance, was the last possible person he wanted to bet thirty percent of his grade on.

When Nezha walked into the design lab for the third time that week, Rin had already claimed her usual bench by the window. She was hunched over the desk, her face scrunched in a concentration so deep that she hardly noticed him.

Hardly.

“Nice of you to show up,” she scoffed without looking at him. “Next time you’re gonna be late, at least bring me a Monster.”

Rin had one of those canned heart attacks every morning in E101 last semester. The grenade-like hissing of her punching the tab and opening the can haunted his dreams. 

“Have you ever heard of this thing called water?” he mocked as he took the bench opposite her. 

Rin reached for the metal water bottle in her raggedy backpack and swung it over her head like a blade. Nezha had a feeling she threw it often, judging by the dents visible even beneath all the stickers. She unscrewed the cap and took a swig like she needed to prove something to him, and went back to tinkering with their final project: a one-pound robot she had named Baby Bastard. Nezha had suggested a more dignified name, like Griffon or Dragon Emperor, but the little robot really did look like a Baby Bastard. So, it stuck.

Nezha leaned over to peer at Baby Bastard. “You took his shell off again.”

“It blocks the motor wiring.”

“It protects the motor wiring.”

“It traps heat like an oven,” she insisted. “It’s going to fry the hook arm servo. Again.”

“That’s because you’ve programmed it to mecha-turbo-kill mode.”

“I want to win. Don’t you?”

On paper, their project was simple: construct a one-pound robot that could turn on, off, and travel a grand total of three inches. That was enough to pass, but the winner of the tournament would be given extra credit and, even more importantly, bragging rights. Nezha knew that the key to winning was constructing a structurally sound robot that wouldn’t fall apart as soon as it entered the ring. Rin, on the other hand, would’ve rather held the thing together with duct tape— so long as it had a hook arm and an appetite for carnage.

“At least let me write some of the code,” he grumbled.

“We would never finish in time if you were in charge of writing the code,” she said. “So mecha-turbo-kill mode it is.”

“I’m going to edit it so it doesn’t immolate itself the moment you turn it on,” he insisted, moving to her side of the bench.

“What– no!” she protested, and angled her laptop away from him. “You’re going to fuck up my code!”

He reached for her mouse. “I’m just editing for errors.”

“I don’t make errors,” she snapped, swatting his hand away. “The thing is overheating because you’ve encased it in fucking chain mail armor—"

“Shut up, it’s aerodynamic—"

“And now it’s as slow as you are!”

He deleted a string of suspicious code. She furiously yanked the mouse away and undid his action, knocking Baby Bastard’s controller onto the floor in the process. He opened his mouth to argue, then stopped short when Baby Bastard suddenly lurched forward and drove itself straight off the table like a doomed concubine hurling herself down a well in a Nikara classic. They watched in stunned silence as it twitched on the floor like a dying cockroach. 

“Just fucking great,” Nezha huffed, bending down to pick up its tiny, broken carcass. “You made it kill itself.”

Rin was on her hands and knees, combing for its plastic guts. She blew a strand of choppy hair out of her face.

“Who wouldn’t after spending enough time around you?”

Three days later, they showed up to class with a Baby Bastard that was held together by duct tape and spite. The former was not a design choice on Nezha’s part, but he conceded when Rin begrudgingly let him debug her code. It was likely more out of exhaustion than goodwill. Nezha tried to avoid exhaustion, but Baby Bastard still needed work, and, frankly, neither of them could afford to be picky.

On their last session in the design lab, Rin even offered him a sip of her pink lemonade-flavored Monster. He couldn’t afford to be picky about the duct tape on Baby Bastard’s underside, but he still had standards.

Now, under the fluorescent lights of their classroom turned battle bots arena, Baby Bastard— officially submitted as BB, though everyone knew what it stood for— sat twitching inside the makeshift ring like it wanted blood. Rin lightly caressed the joystick on the controller with an impatient thumb. 

“You remembered to actually solder the hook arm, right?” she muttered as their first-round opponents— Han and some other loser—readied their own robot.

“Yes, because I don’t want it flying off again like it did during the first test run,” Nezha said through clenched teeth.

Their TAs– Arda and Kureel– read out the rules for the brawl with a little too much enthusiasm. Each battle would last a maximum of three minutes. If a robot was down for more than ten seconds, it would count as a surrender. And as a gentle reminder: no projectiles, electricity, gas, or flames as weapons.

Rin looked only mildly annoyed at the last one.

“But otherwise,” Arda said. “Everything else goes!”

“I want to see exposed wiring and a ripped-off chassis,” Kureel beamed.

“This is worth thirty percent of your grades, and no make-up assignments will be offered to those who fail to demonstrate a mastery of robotics basics,” Dr. Jun barked from the sidelines.

Kureel started an ancient buzzer on a ten-second countdown. From across the ring, Han mouthed the words get fucked, Yin.

Three, two, one…

“Let the bloodbath begin!” Arda shouted over the buzzer.

Rin insisted on handling the controller— “I did the Arduino so I should get to control it”— but Nezha had better reflexes—“you’re going to make him run into the glass with such brute force that you’ll shatter it and get us disqualified”— so they settled on the worst compromise: Nezha got to steer and Rin got to attack. 

“Stop turning left—stop turning left—“

“You told me to turn left!”

Baby Bastard narrowly evaded the whirring blade on Han’s monstrosity of a robot. Rin jabbed the X button on the controller, and the hook arm whirred, missing its mark by a solid inch.

“That’s your aim,” Nezha snapped.

“That’s your shitty steering,” Rin snapped back.

“Great fucking Tortoise, just swing again!”

BB swerved hard right, narrowly avoiding another glancing blow from Han’s bot. The hook arm twitched. Rin jammed the trigger again. The hook lodged itself into the other robot.

“Ha!” she crowed. “Suck my dick, Han!”

The class erupted in groans and cheers. Han scowled from across the ring, slamming his controller forward in a vain attempt to shake them loose. BB clung on. Nezha dragged the joystick, pulling Han’s robot in a tight circle. 

“That’s diabolical!” Kureel called gleefully. “Keep going!”

The ten-second buzzer sounded with a glorious squawk.

“Baby Bastard wins round one!” Arda announced.

Rin whooped, throwing both arms in the air. Han flicked them off from across the ring. Nezha slumped forward, forehead on the table. His hands were still white-knuckling the controller.

“That should not have worked,” he groaned into the plastic.

“Do it again next round,” Rin insisted

The duct tape was peeling off the side of BB, and one of its wheels had been hanging on by a thread for most of the match. But it hadn’t fallen apart. It had clawed its way to a win like the scrappy little beast it was.

They won the next match, too. And the one after that.

The final match lasted almost the full three minutes. BB tipped over heavily on one side. Rin shouted in his ear while he nearly sprained his thumb on the joystick. But right at the end, when it looked like they were seconds from defeat, he reversed into the opponent’s wheel well and Rin blasted the attack button in perfect tandem. 

“BB pins Lil Sunzi Vert,” Arda commented as if this were a serious sporting event and not a first-year engineering project. “Lil Sunzi Vert tries to shake BB off. BB holds on tight and goes in for the kill and–”

“That’s ten seconds!” Kureel shouted. “Lil Sunzi Vert surrenders and Baby Bastard wins!”

When the final buzzer rang, Rin let out a victory yell that could’ve shattered the glass walls of the fighting ring. Nezha didn’t say anything. He just stared at the ring, where BB— scarred, twitching, and held together by spite— had outlasted every other robot in their class. Rin turned to him with wild, gleaming eyes, and for a split second, Nezha panicked.

A normal team might’ve hugged, or high-fived, or said something corny like, we did it. So, he held out his hand stiffly. Rin blinked as if he’d offered her a ticking bomb.

“It’s called a handshake,” he said. “You know, to congratulate you.”

Unsure, Rin met his hand with hers. Her palm was sticky with sweat, but his was no better. She gripped too hard. He gripped back harder. Neither of them let go.

“We make a pretty good team, don’t you think?” he teased.

Rin made a sound in the back of her throat and promptly let go of him to pack up their equipment. Nezha rolled his eyes and swaddled Baby Bastard in a grimy washcloth. Rin opened the can of Monster she always seemed to have packed in her backpack, and held it out to him as a final peace offering. When he took it, their fingers brushed again.

"I'll submit the final blueprint to Moodle for us," she said coolly.

Nezha took a sip of the Monster. It tasted like battery acid. "I'll make sure to give you a passing peer evaluation."

Chapter Text

“Keahi, wait!”

Rin raced down the corridor, trying to chase after an overly-excited Keahi as he slipped out of the apartment. Her shoes were barely laced. Her work bag was unzipped. Her tumbler of coffee was dangerously close to spilling all over her clothes. Again. At least this time, she wasn’t wearing white.

But Keahi didn’t care about any of that. A few weeks ago, she’d signed a permission slip for a class field trip to the Nikan National Aquarium. Now, it was as if there were schools of fish swimming in his little head, all other thoughts cast aside. By the time she had caught up with him, Keahi was jamming the elevator call button. Sighing, she gently pulled him back. He believed that pressing it a certain number of times was the only way to get it to come.

“But we’re gonna be late!” he pouted as the elevator doors opened to the lobby of the building. 

“I promise we’re not,” Rin reassured him, even as she kept a brisk pace toward the train station.

When they finally made it below ground, Rin was grateful for the reprieve of darkness on her tired eyes. She had barely gotten any sleep because she had been replaying all of yesterday in her head as if the fifteen minutes spent in the carpool line were an hours-long GIF. Nezha had met Keahi. Formally. That was the truth of it, and there was no going back now, even if her brain still sounded alarms and waving red flags.

They had barely managed to snag two seats on the train, where the sticky, disgusting plastic felt as comfortable as her bed. On the seat next to her, Keahi pulled a picture book of sea creatures out of his backpack. She got it for him on an impromptu trip to a used bookstore after he brought the permission slip home. Sometimes, she caught him reciting the names of the critters he had memorized under his breath.

“Look,” he said, opening to a page.

She squinted at the illustration of a bright green thing with leafy limbs. “What is that?”

“A sea dragon,” Keahi declared.

Rin held back a yawn. “Is that the animal you’re most excited to see?”

Her son sat back in his seat, tracing his finger over the illustrations. “Yeah. But I also want to see the sharks. And the jellyfish. And the penguins. And the starfish, and the…”

Keahi continued listing the animals he wanted to see— ‌all of them. Poking out from his unzipped backpack was the fuzzy red head of his new stuffed dragon. The sight of it shouldn’t have bothered Rin as much as it did.

“You didn’t want to bring Longlong to the aquarium?” she asked, frowning.

“Longlong goes everywhere with me.” Keahi shrugged. “Longlong Two is new, so he hasn’t seen much.”

The robotic voice of the announcer filled the car, and the train came to their stop. Rin grasped Keahi’s hand maybe a little too hard and shouldered her way out of the station. When they finally arrived at the school, only a little disheveled and sweaty, the teachers were already loading the kids onto the bus that would take them to the aquarium.

“See?” she told Keahi. “Just in time.”

One of his little friends waved at him, and Keahi wrenched free from her grip. Watching him made her chest seize just a bit. It wasn’t that she was one of those moms— the type that hovered and prodded and didn’t sign permission slips. But this was the first time Keahi had really gone somewhere without her, and she would always worry, especially since his neurologist switched his medication. Waiting to see if it worked felt like holding her breath for an eternity.

“Excuse me,” she said to one of the teachers trying to corral the children. “Hi, sorry. I’m Keahi’s mom.”

The woman turned to her with a friendly smile. “Oh, hi, Miss Trengsin! We’re so glad Keahi could join us today.”

Rin tried to smile back. “I just want to make sure you have his most recent medical information on file since we’re still working on figuring out triggers for his seizures. I mean, I think he should be okay, but I just want you all to be aware.”

“Of course,” the teacher said. “We have everything you last provided to us, and we have a lot of chaperones on the trip since we know the kids will be really excited and will want to run around. I’ll make a note for someone to keep an extra close eye on him.”

“He gets auras,” Rin continued. “He doesn’t really know how to articulate them well. So if he says he’s feeling weird or—or if he spaces out for a few seconds–”

She cut herself off. Now she was rambling; Keahi was at school for most of the day, a school he had been going to for the past year or so. The staff knew him. They had never once been ignorant or insensitive to his accommodations and needs. It was part of the reason Rin was willing to spend most of her salary on the part of the astronomical tuition his voucher didn’t cover. 

Still, the young woman’s smile softened in sympathy. “Understood, Miss Trengsin. I know it’s easy for me to tell you not to worry, but he’s in good hands.”

Rin tried to look mollified. “Okay. Thanks.”

She gave Keahi a final wave before he clambered onto the bus. He waved back from his seat, pressing his beaming little face into the window. Her stomach twisted even as she packed into the train again, holding on to a metal pole till her knuckles turned translucent. They didn’t turn back to their normal color even as she crossed the massive atrium of Shenlong’s building.

“Dammit,” she muttered as she rummaged through her bag for her work ID badge.

Usually, it hung around her neck like the world’s ugliest necklace, but she’d been so distracted that she had forgotten to throw it on during her walk from the station to the office. Now, she was standing at the scanner, looking like an unprepared idiot, while a line of irritated people undoubtedly formed behind her. And it was just her luck that the other scanners weren’t working.

“Hurry it up!” someone from the back of the queue called. 

Rin was seconds away from combusting. Her bag was a black hole, her ID badge had clearly vanished into the void, and the impatient sighs behind her might as well have been daggers aimed straight into her spine. She muttered a curse and shoved her elbow in deeper, already bracing for the humiliation of admitting she’d left it at home—

“Here, let me.”

In a moment straight out of the corniest N-drama, Nezha stepped into the space beside her, his arm extending past hers to scan his badge. The bright morning sun poured through the glass lobby behind him, backlighting him in a halo of gold. His suit jacket was cut to perfection, his tie knotted like he’d rehearsed it, and his hair. It was immaculate, with every strand in place as though he were a model shooting a shampoo commercial.

And the worst part? He smelled good. Like cedarwood and leather and something else too fancy for her to name. So good.

For half a second, Rin’s brain blanked. Her pulse stuttered so violently that she nearly dropped her bag. But then, the scanner beeped its approval, and the doors slid open.

“Thank you,” she squeaked, before ducking her head and sprinting toward the elevators.

How many times would she have to press the button to make sure the doors closed right in Nezha’s face? It was bad enough that they were going to the same stupid project meeting that his assistant had inconveniently scheduled for first thing in the morning.

When her direct supervisor told her she’d been extended an invitation to join this super special, top-secret project, she had initially been thrilled. The recent-grads she had been hired alongside were complete morons. Sure, plenty of them had gone to Sinegard. A few were alumni of smaller, more insignificant universities, like Nikan Poly. Still, she dedicated at least ten hours a week to fixing their fuck-ups, even though they were paid the same salary and had the same benefits. Half of them either posed too hard as LinkedIn influencers and the other half at least had the self-awareness to keep their mouths shut about how dismal their work was. Finally, she was getting the recognition she deserved. The chance to ascend to where she should’ve been from the start. Sinegard-era Rin would have jumped at the opportunity without hesitation.

But then she realized who was leading the initiative. Vice President Yin, her supervisor had said as if this were some special honor. He wanted the best talent in engineering, and somehow he had heard she was doing such a stellar job in the combat systems division.

Her confidence deflated. But what could she have said? No?

So, when Nezha walked into the conference room, Rin kept her head down. Only when he started speaking about the drones did she look up.

“Alright,” he started. ”We’re breaking this down into four core areas.” He gestured toward the diagram on his impeccable slides. “First, flight control: for stability, maneuverability, endurance. That’s our foundation. Second, optics. Sharper resolution, extended range, multi-spectral imaging. Third, the software stack—recognition, tracking, real-time decision-making. And finally, payload. We’re making sure the drone can carry and deploy what it needs without compromising performance.”

Rin tried not to nod along. She hated how good he’d always been at presenting. It must be nice to command the attention of a room so easily, even if it was partially because of your last name.

“Each team already has its deliverables,” Nezha continued. “But here’s the catch. None of these systems can operate in isolation. A great sensor package doesn’t matter if the software can’t interpret the data fast enough. Strong software doesn’t matter if the drone itself can’t stay steady in high wind. Integration is the challenge.”

When he advanced the slides, a chart with their team assignments flashed on the screen. From her seat toward the far end of the U-shaped desks, she had a hard time finding her name. She squinted, eyes narrowing further when she couldn’t find herself in software or even payload. 

“I’ll personally be overseeing the integration,” Nezha said, pausing on the slide. “Alongside Miss Trengsin, who was one of the best students in our cohort at Sinegard.”

Oh, no. He may as well have let on that they knew each other far more than anyone could guess. He may as well have told everyone that they dated. Hell, he may as well have let it slip that she was the mother of his illegitimate child. From the other end of the table, Sring Venka, Director of R&D Projects and Rin’s first year college roommate and Nezha’s best friend, coughed much too violently for it to be a coincidence.

Some of the heads in the room swiveled to gape at her. She knew exactly what they were thinking.

What’s so special about her?

Rin kept her head down still, trying to mask her undoubtedly red cheeks, but her phone buzzed with a call. On a normal day, it would have been stowed in her bag. She muttered an excuse and swiped it off the desk, ducking out of the room just in time for her heart to drop.

“Hello?” 

She knew before she even answered the call. It was from a Sinegard area code, unfamiliar and yet too familiar for her to fully ignore.

“Hi, Miss Trengsin? Keahi has been admitted to the ER at Sinegard University Hospital.”

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

The glass doors of the ER yawned open, taking their sweet time as Rin felt she was running against it.

“I’m here for my son,” she panted as she shoved her way to the intake desk. “His name is Keahi, he’s four, he had a seizure—“

The nurse behind the desk didn’t even look up right away, which made Rin want to climb over the counter and throttle her.

“Family name?” the nurse asked, fingers still moving across the keyboard.

“Trengsin. T-r-e-n-g-s-i-n. He’s four.” Rin’s voice cracked on the number. “Where is he?”

The nurse clicked something, finally glancing at her with a trained kind of calm that only made Rin’s pulse spike harder. “He was just brought back. Someone will come update you as soon as possible. Please have a seat.”

A seat? As if she could sit. As if she could even breathe.

“No. I need to see him.” Her palms slapped against the counter. “He’s alone, he doesn’t—he needs me.”

The nurse’s eyes softened, but her tone didn’t budge. “Ma’am, I promise he’s not alone. A doctor is with him. Let me flag the team.”

Rin forced herself back, her legs moving before she’d decided where to go. She ended up by the plastic chairs anyway, arms wrapped around herself so tightly it hurt. The smell of antiseptic clawed at her nose. Every time a set of doors opened, she snapped her head up. In her pocket, her phone buzzed incessantly, but her hands were trembling too much to fish it out. All she could picture was Keahi’s tiny body wracked by something she couldn’t fight for him.

The doors swung again, and this time a doctor in scrubs strode out, scanning the waiting room.

“Family of Keahi Trengsin?”

The first time Keahi had a seizure, it was right after his third birthday. She was in the kitchen, helping her mother with the dishes after dinner. Keahi sat at the rickety kitchen table, picking at the fruit that Hanelai had sliced for dessert. In hindsight, she should have noticed something was wrong. Earlier that day, Keahi had tugged at her sleeve while she was revising a string of code for a contract gig. The deadline had been looming, the money already half-spent in her mind on groceries and rent. 

He had said he felt fuzzy.

It happened too fast, but the details never blurred in retrospect. One moment he was staring blankly at the wall, a slice of plum slipping from his fingers. Next, his small body went rigid. Before she could set the dishrag down, he crumpled sideways, convulsing on the dingy linoleum floor of her mother’s kitchen.

Later, at an ER too much like this one, she learned that Keahi had experienced a tonic-clonic seizure. The ER doctor had said that the tonic phase was the quiet before the storm. Then came the clonic phase, when Keahi’s small body jerked and twitched and spasmed. But the terminology didn’t matter to Rin when her child was writhing on the ground. The only thing that mattered was that it all felt like her fault.

Now, Rin followed another doctor down another corridor too similar to the one at Speer General Hospital. It was as if nothing had changed.

“Keahi is stable,” the doctor said as she led her past the triage ward. “He seems to have gone into status epilepticus, which is when a seizure lasts over five minutes or when there are a series of seizures. It’s quite dangerous if prolonged, so the school definitely made the right decision in calling the paramedics.”

Rin’s phone buzzed again in her pocket. She silenced it quickly without checking the notification. The doctor peeled back the partition of a small room. Rin’s heart dropped to her feet at the sight behind it.

“We gave him some lorazepam to stop the seizure activity in his brain,” the doctor explained, her voice softening. “He’ll be asleep for a while, but you should be there for when he wakes.”

It was worse than the first time in the ER. At least then, Keahi had regained consciousness fast enough that he was awake while the doctors and nurses poked and prodded him. Now, he was laying limp and pale, swallowed up by the scratchy sheets of the hospital cot. Her eyes traced the IV line tethering him to a machine that captured the rhythm of his heart. 

Rin rushed forward, every step feeling like it would give out beneath her. Her only comfort was the rise and fall of his chest, deep and steady.

“Is this the first time this has happened?” the doctor asked.

Rin shook her head but couldn’t take her eyes off Keahi’s resting face. “It’s never been like this. He– he’s always bounced back quickly.”

Her phone buzzed again like a pesky insect, interrupting the beeping like a knife slicing through water. She reached down to silence it.

“Sometimes, it’s possible for epilepsy and the presentation of seizures to escalate,” the doctor continued. “Especially in— should you take that?”

The doctor gestured to the phone humming in her pocket. Rin fished it out and silenced it once more.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Especially in children so young,” the doctor said. “We’ve sent the information from this visit to his neurologist. My guess is that they’ll recommend in-patient monitoring to see if it happens again. In the meantime, I would continue giving him the medications he’s been on and follow whatever other instructions from his neurologist and pediatrician.”

Rin nodded absently, her gaze flickering back to her son. She barely registered the doctor’s footsteps or the sound of the partition being pulled closed. She swallowed back a sob.

Keahi had never stayed in the hospital overnight. Even after his second ER visit, a few weeks after the first for another seizure, she was able to bring him home the same day. Doctor’s offices terrified him enough; he hated needles and bright, fluorescent lights, and the feeling of strange hands on him. How would she explain to him that he would have to stay in a place where all those things converged? She reached forward and brushed his hair back from his face, as if that would soothe his future fears.

“I’m sorry, Keahi,” she whispered. “I wish this had never happened to you.”

Just as she said it, her phone exploded. Setting her jaw, she finally opened it to ten messages and six missed calls from one sender. Nezha’s name was on her screen, over and over and over, creating a wall of notifications that she could not possibly scale.

What happened? Is it Keahi?

Is he okay?

Please pick up.

Rin, I’m calling you.

Rin.

Rin!

Rin?

She sighed through her nose. Nezha was insistent, but he was also incredibly selfish. Her thumbs ghosted over the screen.

I’ll call you later.

She dreaded the later. It was bad enough that Nezha found out about Keahi through sheer dumb coincidence. Now, she had to explain to him that the little boy he barely knew existed was chronically ill. 

Wouldn’t that be fun?

Keahi stirred, his breath coming out as a whimper. Rin leaned over him, heart pounding against her chest as she waited for him to open his eyes. But he just shifted as much as he could in the stiff bed, the lorazepam still coursing through his body. She glanced down at her screen as it buzzed with another message.

Just call me now.

She rolled her eyes. Nezha was entitled, too. He had always been a prick, though. And that was what made her pause on telling him. Sure, he wanted to be involved. He wanted it so much that he had cornered her in an office demanding paternity. That was when he thought that Keahi was this perfect little copy of him, down to the slope of his nose and the shape of his eyes. But Nezha had never been in the ER, stunned, while doctors threw out medical terms that meant nothing. He had never measured out pills to put in an organizer, or spent sleepless nights researching a condition that had no seeable cause or cure. He had never held Keahi in the aftermath of a seizure, when he was confused and scared and so, so small that she was afraid he would vanish.

It was clear to her that he wanted a chance. But would Yin Nezha, perfect VP of Shenlong Industries and perfect son of the richest family in Nikan, want a child with a disability?

Rin, call me!

The text wasn’t enough. Her phone vibrated with a call, which she swiftly answered.

“Rin, what the hell?” Nezha hissed through the phone. “What happened? Where are you?”

“Stop blowing up my phone. Everything is fine,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Fine? You ran out of the project meeting mumbling about a family emergency! How am I supposed to interpret that?”

“I have other family, you know.”

There was a brief spell of silence on the other end, as if Nezha was turning the possibility that Rin had a life over in his mind. She imagined him pacing in whatever corner office he had, blinds drawn and door locked as he agonized over a little boy no one knew was his. The mental image did not inspire sympathy.

“Is it Keahi? Is he alright?”

“He’s fine,” she said. “He just had an accident at school, and they took him to the hospital. But he’s fine.”

“What kind of accident?”

“It’s nothing major. Don’t worry,” she lied.

“Rin, just tell me what happened,” he insisted.

Rin stole another glance at Keahi. He still showed no signs of waking, though the monitor beeped and beeped and beeped in tandem with his steady pulse. She couldn’t hide it from Nezha. She had already crossed that threshold, for better or worse. But the sooner she knew, the sooner she could shatter the illusion that maybe this would work.

“He had a seizure,” she said, forcing herself to stay carefully neutral. “He has epilepsy, and he gets them sometimes, but this one was different, he—“

As much as she tried, her voice broke into a betraying crack. 

“Epilepsy?” Nezha echoed.

Rin swallowed back another pathetic noise. “Yeah."

For a while, Nezha said nothing. Rin’s heart beat mercilessly against her ribcage as the seconds of the call dragged on until, finally, it dropped and dead silence filled the void. She set the phone down, hands shaking. It was just as she expected: Yin Nezha only wanted the version of Keahi that existed in his imagination.

“Mama?”

Rin’s head shot up. Keahi’s eyes cracked open, bleary and unfocused under the unforgiving hospital lights. 

“I’m here,” she whispered.

Her voice trembled, but she managed to smooth his hair back like nothing was wrong. Her chair screeched against the floor as she lurched to the bedside and grabbed his hand.

“I’m right here,” she repeated.

His lips parted. His words came out tiny and slurred. “I didn’t see the fish.”

Rin’s heart cinched. “I know.”

“I didn’t go to the ‘quarium,” he said, his fingers curling weakly in hers.

She didn’t know what to say. All she could think of was how he had memorized pages of his book so he could point out all the animals he knew to his teachers. He wasn’t crying, at least. She had never been very good at comforting him when he cried. 

“I wanted to see the sea dragons. And the sharks and the jellyfish. And the penguins.”

His words stuttered into a hiccup. Rin fought to hold herself together while his world shrank to one missed field trip. He was just too young to understand what was happening. Terms like status epilepticus held no meaning for him. All he knew was that while his classmates pressed their noses against aquarium glass, he was in the hospital tethered to a machine.

“I’m sorry, Keahi,” she managed.

He tried to rub his eyes with the hand that was pinned by the IV. Rin reached over him and gently pulled his hand away from his face, but he cried out.

“‘S not fair,” he whimpered, little sobs catching at the end of each breath.

“We’ll go,” Rin insisted, flinching as if she were the one in a hospital bed. “Just you and me. We’ll see the sea dragons, and the sharks, and the jellyfish, and the penguins, and anything else you want to—“

But Keahi just twisted away. Beneath the sheets, his small frame shook. Tears carved shiny tracks on his pale cheeks and dripped onto the pillow beneath him.

“I wanted to go,” he sobbed, the tears falling thicker and heavier. “I wanted to go.”

Not for the first time, Rin was utterly at a loss. All she could do was rock their joined hands together as if the gesture alone could fix everything she knew it couldn’t. So, she sat back, her heart twisted in knots, as Keahi cried himself back to a drug-induced sleep.

She had never felt so helpless since the first time he had seized.

By the time his breathing had evened out again and the tears had dried on his face, his grip in hers had long gone slack. Rin held on anyway.

“We can go,” she whispered, pressing his hand to her lips. “Wherever you want. I promise.”

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

Nine Years Ago…

Rin swiped her student badge at the front door of the library, fighting back both a yawn and the caffeine shakes. It was finals week at Sinegard University, and the library may as well have been an active war zone. The commons had been turned into no-man’s-land, with people sequestered in carrels as if guarding foxholes with calculators and styluses. If someone dropped a pencil or scraped their chair too loudly against the floor, it may as well have been a grenade detonating.

She tiptoed past the commons and to the study rooms. As with everything else at Sinegard, people took the study rooms seriously. Reservation slots opened two weeks in advance of a date, and with it being finals season at Nikan’s most prestigious university, it was more impossible to reserve a room than win the lottery. Rin had set alarms to book as soon as the portal opened, prepared to yank people out of the virtual queue if it meant having a good place to study.

So, it was an unpleasant surprise to find her reserved room for the night already occupied by one Yin Nezha.

Things had gotten better between them since last semester. Maybe it was the sense of camaraderie lingering after Baby Bastard’s victory in CSC 116. Or maybe it was because he wasn’t in every section of her every class. Even in the classes they did share, he at least had the decency to sit across the room from her.

Yet, there he was, hunched over the whiteboard desk with a dry-erase marker clutched in his fist like a knife. He hadn’t even noticed her slide the door open.

She cleared her throat. “Excuse me.”

Finally, he looked up.

Now, Rin was nothing if not a hater, but even she could admit that Nezha was above average-looking. Scratch that– Nezha was pretty. She’d sat behind him in a cramped auditorium for a whole semester, catching whiffs of the expensive shampoo he must use to keep his long hair so shiny. His skin was so healthy that he could be an ambassador for one of those useless skincare brands that fooled the masses into thinking that perfection could be achieved with an overpriced serum. She had witnessed their TAs, the supposed best students in their cohorts, giggle and blush when he smiled at them.

And he was tall. That was enough said.

Basically, Rin was convinced that if you put Yin Nezha in hanfu and had him walk around Sinegard’s historic campus, someone might confuse him for a time-travelling prince. But right now, with dark circles under his eyes and his hair half-falling out of its stupid bun, he looked as ragged as the rest of the mere mortals in the library.

Nezha blinked at her like he had no clue how she ended up there. He capped his marker with deliberate slowness, like she might disappear if he stalled long enough.

“What,” he said flatly.

Rin raised a brow. “What are you doing in my study room?”

“Your room?” He wrinkled his nose as if she were the one with greasy hair. “I booked this two weeks ago.”

“So did I.”

She pulled up the confirmation email on her phone. Nezha narrowed his eyes and then flicked his gaze back to the desk. There were rows and rows of neat physics formulas scrawled across it, the writing getting progressively more crooked.

“Funny,” Nezha mumbled, pulling out his own phone. “Because I got the same email.”

He shoved his phone in her face. Rin had to squint at the dark screen, but sure enough: study room F226 was booked for Yin Nezha. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then, Rin dropped her heavy backpack onto one of the beat-up chairs.

“Alright, whatever,” she huffed. “You’re studying for PY 205, right?”

Nezha rolled his eyes and gestured to the desk. “What do you think?”

“Tiger’s tits, chill,” she grumbled. “I’m just saying maybe we could study together since the system seemed to double-book the room.”

Rin could practically see him solving the equation in his head. Two top students study together for one of the most difficult exams of their academic lives. If they come together to pool their brilliance, what are their chances of setting the exam curve?

“Okay,” he ceded, sinking back into his chair. “Just don’t touch my formulas.”

But it was too late. Rin had already swiped the sleeve of her hoodie through his work, leaving trails of red dry-erase ink on the desk like blood patterns at a crime scene. She wiped at her nose, the smell of the marker fumes tickling her sinuses.

“What did I just say?” Nezha said, exasperated.

“Well, where am I supposed to write?” she scoffed.

He glared at her over the desk. For a moment, Rin thought he was cooking up a particularly nasty insult, but the corners of his lips just turned up into a smirk.

“You have marker all over your face,” he snickered.

Rin furiously ran her clean sleeve over her nose. She pulled out her physics notebook and fished around for a spare mechanical pencil. Briefly, she thought of pointing out the inflamed red pimple marring his otherwise perfect cheek, but she wasn’t that much of a bitch.

“Alright, genius,” she said, flipping to a page in her notebook. “A missile is launched horizontally off a cliff a hundred meters high with a velocity of fifteen meters per second. What is the missile’s velocity at the point of impact?”

Nezha scribbled a formula on the corner of his desk, plugging in the numbers at an alarming speed. “Fifty-six point seven four meters per second.”

“Loud incorrect buzzer noise,” Rin said with too much glee.

Nezha blinked. “What? No. Look at my math.”

Rin did just that, peering over the desk to inspect his work.  “Well, you put a negative value for gravity when it should be positive in the direction of travel.”

Under the fluorescent library lights, Nezha’s face went pink. He huffed wordlessly and adjusted his work without looking at her. 

“Alright, my turn.” He yanked her notebook toward himself, ignoring her noise of protest. He squinted. “Holy shit, I can barely read this.”

She wrenched it back from him. “You don’t have to read from it.”

He stared at her. “You’re insufferable.”

“And you’re slow. Next problem. A fifty-kilogram Nezha is standing on a frictionless surface. If Rin shoves him with a hundred newtons of force--”

“--he accelerates at two meters per second squared and then sues Rin for battery.”

They went on like this for a while. It was only when Nezha shot her a weary smirk after getting a circuit problem wrong three times that she realized how tired he really looked. She’d been avoiding mirrors like the plague since the start of finals, but she was sure she looked no better.

“We need caffeine,” she decided. “C‘mon. Vending machine break.”

“I was actually thinking of calling it a night,” Nezha said, stifling a yawn. “It’s pretty late.”

“Sleep is for losers and quitters,” she scoffed.

“Sleep is for the smart people.”

“Are you a loser and a quitter, Nezha?”

He scowled. She giggled, even though it wasn’t that funny. She really needed some caffeine before she started laughing at his bad jokes.

“Fine. But I am not drinking fucking Monster,” Nezha finally said.

“Coffee isn’t gonna cut it.”

“I don’t like coffee. What about tea?”

“Tea?” Rin laughed. “What are you, a geriatric?”

“There’s boba downstairs.”

She considered this. On the one hand, not enough caffeine. On the other hand, boba. She hadn’t consumed anything that actually tasted good for days, it felt. Only the bare minimum for sustenance and an astronomical amount of stimulants for staying awake. So, they left a hastily scrawled sign on the door saying, occupied brb, and made their way down to the library cafe. Her stomach rumbled at the sweet smell of tapioca pearls cooking in syrup. 

“What do you want?” Nezha asked as they inched toward the register. “I’ll buy.”

“I can pay for it myself,” she said, digging into her bag for her card.

When they reached the register, Nezha took the lead. Rin stared up at the menu, squinting. Black tea had the most caffeine, but green tea tasted better…

“… And whatever she’s having.”

Rin was about to protest, but the underpaid student worker behind the counter didn’t seem very patient, so she swallowed her pride and let Yin Nezha buy her boba. He probably thought that campus money wasn’t real money anyway, so she treated herself to as many toppings as she liked.

“Really?” Nezha asked, wrinkling his nose. “Jelly, popping boba, and pudding? And an egg tart?”

Rin bit into the tart, savoring the dense custard, as a response. “You were offering.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. What were you, raised in Speer?”

She brandished the pointy end of her straw at him like the tip of a sword. “Watch it, Yin.”

Nezha took a small sip of his own drink— a hot jasmine tea with a milk cap— as they wandered back to the elevators. Why he insisted on boba and got the most boring drink was a mystery to her. Rin was just about to insist on taking the stairs when the elevators finally opened on their floor. The crowd inside it emptied, and the crowd outside it poured in. Rin found herself wedged between the wall and Nezha, who was blowing on his drink to cool it down. People chattered around them, but the elevator grew quieter the higher it climbed.

“-- couldn’t pass that exam if I didn’t have extra time because of my dyslexia.”

Rin caught the tail end of a conversation about some organic chemistry exam as the last people in the elevator exited on the floor just below theirs. It wasn’t her business by any means, but they were so loud, that she had no choice but to listen. Next to her, Nezha stiffened.

“Well, that’s not fair,” he muttered as the elevator dinged on their floor.

“What is?”

“Didn’t you hear that girl?” he asked, stalking through the book stacks back to the study room. “She said she gets extra time on exams.”

Rin frowned, straw halfway to her lips. “She said she has dyslexia.”

“I guess. But imagine how much easier this physics exam would be if you had an extra half hour to get through it to make sure your answers are right.”

Last semester, Rin handed in her blue book and exam booklet to the TA with minutes to spare on the clock display that loomed menacingly on the auditorium screen. She checked her answers in a frenzy, sending a prayer to whatever deity pitied poor college students. Her final score was an eight-eight with the curve. If she had an extra few minutes to check over her work, she was certain it would have been at least a ninety.

“I guess,” she echoed, pushing open the door to the study room. “But I also don’t have a learning disability.”

“Neither do I.” Nezha set his drink down a little too forcefully on the desk. “But that doesn’t mean someone should get special treatment for having one. Not when the rest of us are working our asses off.”

Rin picked up her notes again. Nezha was right; they were nearly illegible, especially the problem sets she’d tried to solve in the last hour. She wondered if this is what every exam felt like to that girl in the elevator.

“I mean,” Nezha continued, erasing another corner of the desk to make more room to write. “This is the most elite university in the country. Should you even be at Sinegard if you can’t make it without some sort of handout?”

There it was. In the past few hours of exhausted, desperate studying, Rin had forgotten a very important truth: Yin Nezha was a fucking dick. She’d let the boba, the late-night camaraderie, even the stupid little smile when he caught her with marker smeared on her face, trick her into thinking he might actually be an okay person. But he wasn’t; he was still the same pompous boy that made her feel like less than dirt at orientation. She snapped her notebook shut and swiped her bag off the chair.

Nezha looked up from his problem set. “Don’t tell me you’re leaving. We still have to work through kinematics.”

“You can manage alone,” she scoffed, shoving her things into her bag. “You don’t do handouts, right? Me helping you is a handout.”

He blinked. “Huh?”

Rin dragged her zipper shut. The sound of it made her skin crawl. “Don’t be fucking dense, Nezha. Do you even remember what you said to me when we first met?”

“Not really--”

“They have to stop letting these people in,” she mimicked. “It’s embarrassing.”

Nezha scoffed, “That. That’s not the same.”

“It is the same. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for your family’s philanthropy,” she said. “You said it yourself. That’s a handout.”

“Oh, come on,” he protested. “It’s not like you get special treatment for it. Clearly, we can both keep up with the rigor. If you can’t, you simply shouldn’t be here.”

Rin stared at him, her chest tightening. He looked on the verge of falling asleep, with his eyes bleary and the veins beneath his pale skin so shockingly blue in the dingy lighting. For a second she almost laughed, because it was absurd how she’d let herself forget what kind of person Nezha actually was. The sweet aftertaste of milk tea curdled to something sour on the back of her tongue.

“Rin,” he said, cruelty creeping into his voice. “Come on.”

“The only one who has an advantage here is you, asshole,” she said, shouldering her bag and shoving her way out of the study room before he could say another word.

Chapter Text

Nezha spiraled.

He spiraled after he dropped off the call. He spiraled as he sat in a meeting with the finance department. He spiraled as he went home, dressed himself in a stupid tux, fastened his stupid cufflinks, and spritzed on his stupid aftershave. By the time he handed his keys to the valet and walked into the Nikara National Art Museum, he wasn’t even spiraling anymore; he was in full-on free-fall and headed straight for the cement.

“… And thank you all for coming together and making a difference for the poor girls of the rural South!”

The foyer echoed with the polite applause of Sinegard’s socialites as his mother weaved through the crowd with a microphone in hand. Next to him, Venka snorted into her drink. But Nezha didn’t even care to hush her. His mind was far away from Shenlong’s annual charity gala, with its fluttering evening gowns and dimmed chandeliers. No, he may as well have been at a hospital with glaring fluorescent lights and floors that smelled like antiseptic solution. The clinking of glasses had turned into the beeping of an ECG. The conversations in the foyer had become diagnoses from faceless doctors. Everything about the gala reminded him that he was far from where he should have been.

He had almost rushed out of the office and broken all traffic laws in an effort to get to the ER. But his keys dropped out of his trembling hands the instant he grabbed them. When he swooped down to retrieve them, he couldn’t find it in himself to get up.

And now, here he was, hiding out behind art galleries while whispers of wealth covered his tracks on the pristine wooden floors. If loathing himself even more were possible, he absolutely would.

“Hmm… How much money should I put on this one?”

Venka had dragged him to peruse the auction items. She paused in front of a case containing a well-preserved sword.

“Speerly mineral…” she read, squinting at the plaque beneath it. “Last wielded by the Phoenix General. Pfft, whatever. You could get one like that off Etsy.”

She dragged him back towards the open bar, where she ordered herself a double Cosmo with an extra splash of lime juice. When she offered him a sip, he just shook his head.

“What is wrong with you tonight?” she asked, looping her arm through his. “I figured you would be good company since you’re also forced to be here, but I may as well be accompanied by a dead fish.”

“I’m just tired,” he muttered.

Venka narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve been tired a lot lately.”

Nezha didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to breathe through the tightness in his throat, trying to pretend it was from his stupid collar and not the guilt that had been strangling him since the morning.

“Nezha,” interrupted a smooth, perfectly rehearsed voice before Venka could probe any further.

He didn’t even have to look up to know who it was. The air always seemed to change when Yin Saikhara entered a room; it was as if the temperature had politely adjusted itself for her comfort. He forced himself to smile.

“Mother,” he greeted. “You’ve done it again.”

His mother smiled, the pink corners of her lips turning up into her blemish-free, wrinkle-free face. The sapphires dangling from her earrings sparkled as she turned her head to examine her handiwork.

“Yes, this appears to be another successful gala,” she murmured. “I let Muzha do most of the planning this year. If something goes wrong… Well, I’m certain everything will be alright.”

Venka coughed into her drink. Nezha’s mother turned her gaze towards her, even if her smile dropped the slightest bit.

“Sring Venka,” she greeted coolly. “It’s nice to see you, dear. How is work? Will you be covering Sinegard fashion week this year?”

“I’ve been a director at Shenlong for months now,” Venka deadpanned.

Saikhara pursed her lips. “Have you now? That’s a shame. I always thought you were well-suited for the fashion industry, given your sense of style.”

Nezha didn’t miss how his mother glared at the bare tops of Venka’s shoulders. He almost shrugged off his jacket and draped it around her, but he was certain she would throw her drink in his face if he did.

“Yeah, well,” Venka sighed dramatically. “My boss was sexually harassing me. And your son offered a higher starting salary, so it was a no-brainer.”

Saikhara’s eagle eyes zeroed in on the plunging neckline of Venka’s dress. Nezha knew his mother had never liked Venka; according to her, the Sring girl was far too brash, irreverent, and vulgar for her tastes. Still, he let go of Venka and instead steered his mother away before she could victim-blame her. If she did that, he refused to be responsible for any “accidentally” spilled drinks or torn dresses.

“Her parents must be so disappointed,” Saikhara scoffed as he led her back towards the galleries. “Though, you know how the Srings are. All that real estate money could never buy class.”

Nezha tried not to roll his eyes. “Mother, I have a suggestion for next year’s philanthropic cause.”

Saikhara tilted her head. “Oh? You’ve never shown much interest in my work.”

Nezha swallowed down a new wave of guilt that manifested as nausea. “I’ve been, uh, doing some research. And, I mean, I can only imagine how much money we raise each year with the gala and the auction and all that. You do such a good job organizing it.”

Saikhara’s eyes twinkled like the jewels at her collarbone. “Last year, we brought in nearly four million dollars in relief for the victims of the Four Gorges Dam flood.”

“Exactly. I think that next year, we could consider the university’s children’s hospital as a potential benefactor. I met this little boy the other day, and–”

“The children’s hospital?” Saikhara echoed, frowning. “Nezha, dear, we’ve already given them so much money.”

Nezha tried to keep his shoulders from drooping. “I don’t think payment for my treatments counts as philanthropy.”

A manicured hand flew to Saikhara’s chest, right over her heart. “Of course not. But they don’t name hospital wings after people who just pay for medical care.”

“Research money is always put to good use,” he argued. “Mother, this little boy I told you about has epilepsy. I–I don’t know what kind, but–”

He cut himself off before he said too much. Right now, one careless, emotional slip could cost him everything. Well, everything that was left. After today’s phone call, he wasn’t sure if Rin would ever let him see Keahi again. So, he was doing what he was raised to do– to throw money at things until something gave way.

His mother just sighed. She walked over to an impressionist painting depicting white-sailed ships sailing on the blue waters.  An original work from a very renowned Bolonian artist, apparently, according to the plaque beneath its heavy frame.

“Research never helped you,” she said, inspecting the portrait. “The doctors said it was chronic. But you’ve been managing well for years, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but there are always new medical breakthroughs, new treatments–”

“There are so many needy people on this Earth, Nezha,” she decided, an edge sharper than the Speerly blade creeping into her voice. “That we can’t afford to appear too partial to one cause. It’s simply not equitable.”

Nezha couldn’t respond. The words were nearly pouring out of him– he’s my son, your grandson, it’s all my fault, and I have to try to fix it, fix him, fix myself– but all he could do was nod and stare at the floor. Saikhara turned her face towards him, saccharine lines of concern wrinkling her eyes.

“You could always donate yourself,” she said. “You certainly earn a high enough salary. Or, you could encourage that boy’s family to apply for a foundation grant. Perhaps his treatments would be covered if the committee selects him for an award.”

“I’ll suggest it,” he said, as if on autopilot.

“Good.” Saikhara smiled again and reached out to pat his cheek. “Now, I have to convince people to bid higher on these pieces. The poor girls of the rural South truly deserve it.”

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

By the time the winners of the auction had been announced, Venka was thoroughly sloshed.

Nezha watched her down a glass of wine at dinner, alongside an additional double Cosmo that she stumbled out of her seat to get during dessert. Then, she knocked back the digestif at the table like it was a shot. Needless to say, Nezha felt responsible for making sure she got home safely— even if it meant physically hauling her to his car.

“—fuckin’ bitch,” she slurred, her breath warm and distinctly vodka-y in his ear. “Your mom is such a fucking bitch, Nezha. Did you know that?”

“She often is, yes,” he grumbled as he signaled to the valet.

Venka giggled and slid further down his arm. He had tried to drape his arm around her shoulders earlier for stability, but she had wriggled out from beneath him and latched on like a particularly clingy koala. He’d tried to rush her out of the building as soon as dinner was over, just so his mother— and all the other Sinegardian ladies— wouldn’t see her so wasted. That would certainly do numbers in the country club group chats.

“The poor girls of the rural South,” she mimicked in her best impression of Yin Saikhara. “Give me a godsdamned break. When has your mom ever cared about poor people?”

He adjusted her so she wouldn’t send them both sprawling onto the curb from their combined weight. “You don’t care about poor people either, Venka.”

She blew more hot air into his ear. “No, of course I fucking don’t. But at least I don’t make a circus out of pretending I do.”

When the valet finally pulled up to the curb in his car, Nezha wrangled her into the passenger’s seat like he was putting a child in a booster. He cringed as she flung the seat all the way back, making enough room for her to pluck her impossibly high heels off her feet. She threw them in the backseat without a glance. If literally anyone who was anyone saw Sring Venka, Sinegardian real estate princess, kicking her feet up on the dash of a car, there would be headlines. So, he sped off before anyone could even speculate.

“You know,” she drawled, putting her window all the way down. “It’s only, like, eleven. Let’s go out.”

“We have work tomorrow, meimei.”

“Oh, please!” she exclaimed. “You have work tomorrow.”

He stopped at a red light on an empty street. Venka’s head was halfway out the window. She was safely buckled in, but if she puked… 

“Nezha, what the FUCK!!!”

In the second that the light had turned green and he had torn his worried gaze off her, Venka had turned around. Her seatbelt strained against her shoulders as she twisted towards the backseat. 

“Nezha, what the fuck!?” she repeated. “Is that a fucking booster seat?”

Fuck.

He twisted against his own seatbelt to peer in the rear view. Right there, forlorn and in plain view, was Keahi’s booster seat. 

“It’s, uh—“ he started, but Venka wasn’t having it.

“That’s a fucking booster seat!” she gasped. “Whose booster seat is that? Oh, my gods. Tiger’s tits. Do you have a kid?”

Nezha gripped the steering wheel tighter, as if the car was going to flip over if he didn’t. “It’s complicated—“

“Or are you dating someone with a kid?” Venka pressed. 

“Venka, please—“

“Holy shit, you’re dating a MILF—“

“Venka!” he finally snapped. “STOP!”

Venka froze mid-giggle. For once in her life, she shut up. Nezha pulled the car into an empty city lot and turned it off. The only sound was the dying hum of the car’s engine and Venka’s uneven breathing. His hands trembled over the push-to-start button. He had never raised his voice at his meimei before.

“Fuck,” Venka breathed. “Fuck, Nezha, what—“

“He’s four,” he murmured, lowering his hands into his lap. “He’s four, and he was in the hospital today, and I didn’t go, and—fuck.”

“Fuck,” Venka echoed, turning towards him. 

He unbuckled his seatbelt and slumped forward. His hands shook, his shoulders shook. His throat burned. His eyes burned. Venka placed a surprisingly gentle hand on his thigh.

“I’m really fucking drunk,” she whispered. “So, I need to sober up so we can talk about this. Let’s get some food.”

Fifteen minutes and several instances of Venka nearly face-planting onto the sidewalk later, they were sitting in sticky plastic chairs at a sticky table waiting on an order of lamb skewers from a questionable stall at the night market. Venka had demanded them and, even if he knew that neither of them would be caught sober or emotionally whole at this establishment, the smoky scent of charred meat was just too tempting to refuse. 

“So.” Venka leaned forward on the table like a detective questioning a suspect. “You have a kid.”

Nezha ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Yes.

“You are deadass someone’s father.”

“Yes.”

“You impregnated some woman—“

“Yes,” he snapped. “Yes, all of it. Yes.”

Venka sat back. “And he’s four?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I didn’t know he existed until a few weeks ago,” he explained. “His mother… She didn’t want me to know.”

“Who is she?”

He hesitated just long enough for Venka’s mascara-smudged eyes to go impossibly wide. Her mouth formed a lipsticked o.

“Oh, gods,” she whispered. “It’s Rin, isn’t it?”

Nezha couldn’t bring himself to confirm. Venka blinked rapidly, as if the buzzing bistro lights strung above them were stinging her eyes.

“Holy shit,” she muttered. “Tiger’s fucking tits. Rin. You have a kid with Rin.” She covered her mouth with her hands. “Great fucking tortoise. Rin. Why did she not abort it?”

Nezha flinched. “I don’t know.”

“What’s his name?”

“Keahi.”

She tried to sound it out on her liquor-laden tongue. “Hmm. Never heard it before.”

“It’s Speerly, I guess.”

“Ah. Yup.”

The vendor called out their number. Before he could get up, Venka stumbled out of her seat and toward the stall. Miraculously, she made it back without dropping a single skewer.

“My treat,” she said, placing the paper plate on the table. 

Never mind that she had no clue where her wallet was, so he ended up paying for them. Venka tore into a skewer. Cumin dust and chili flakes filled the balmy air. 

“So,” she managed in between chomps. “How did you find out?”

Before Nezha knew it, he was recounting the unbelievable whirlwind of the past few weeks. By the time he had wrapped up telling her about the carpool, Venka had finished her second skewer. He reached for one too despite himself.

“Yin Nezha, you moron,” Venka scoffed. “I told you it would look bad to favor her at work. And now you guys have a fucking toddler? Do you know how bad this looks?”

“I know,” he said. “But it was the only way I could get close to her. She wouldn’t talk to me, Venka. If I hadn’t run into them that one day, I—“

He trailed off and took a bite before his voice cracked. A bit of skewer juice ran down his chin. Venka offered him a limp napkin.

“We’re keeping it between us,” he murmured, even if no one he associated with was at this night market. “And, well, I guess you know now. But I need you to keep it a secret. Please.”

Venka nodded slowly. Even when she was drunk, he knew that she wasn’t one to break promises. 

“What about your family?” she prompted. “You think your mom wouldn’t lose her shit if she knew you had a secret baby out there?”

“They won’t know,” he said, maybe a bit too forcefully.

But it was inevitable. He knew there would come a time when he would have to admit the truth to his parents. Fortunately, Keahi wouldn’t be their first grandchild, seeing as Jinzha already had three little girls of his own. Still. The thought of his mother, who claimed to love helping the less fortunate, finding out who his son’s mother was, where she was from, was something he wanted to keep a secret for as long as possible. If Yin Saikhara wouldn’t even approve of Venka, who was everything she should want for a daughter-in-law on paper, how could she possibly accept Rin and, by extension, Keahi? 

“Good luck with that,” Venka muttered sourly. “But whatever, yes. My lips are sealed.”

To demonstrate, she dragged an oily finger across her lips and tossed an imaginary key over her shoulder. Nezha went for another skewer. The bacteria from the vendor’s unwashed hand surely cooked off on the grill, right?

“Why was he in the hospital?” Venka asked, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“He had a seizure,” he answered without a beat. “It’s my fault.”

Venka blinked. “How the hell is that your fault?”

“I—“ he started, but cut himself off.

Venka didn’t know. No one knew, aside from his family. On the surface, Nezha knew there was nothing wrong with it. His epilepsy wasn’t a death sentence. He functioned very well. He graduated with honors from the country’s most elite university. He studied an MBA abroad. He was now a vice president of a multi-billion-dollar company at twenty-eight. He worked out regularly, drove himself places, could make his own meals if he wanted to, didn’t need assistance for the basics of living, and so on. He hadn’t had a seizure since he was nineteen. He wasn’t disabled, not really. He may have a chronic condition, but he wasn’t even chronically ill. 

He was fine.

But deep down, he knew that it was something to hide. He knew it was a source of shame. He knew it was the reason his little brother was dead, and his family would never let him forget it.

“I just should’ve been there,” he corrected himself. “From the start. That’s why it’s my fault.”

“Then what the fuck are you doing hanging out with me? Go be with them!”

He let out a weary laugh. “It’s not that easy. Rin doesn’t really want me there.”

“Rin is stubborn and stupid.”

“I hurt her, Venka.”

“By doing what? Putting your big ass baby in her?”

He grimaced. "Venka. Please."

"Rin is five feet tall, and you're built like an Olympic swimmer." Her nose wrinkled. "My vagina hurts just thinking about it. Like, imagine the shoulders on that baby."

He put his hand up to silence her. "Okay, no, I really don't want to think about the miracle of childbirth. Or... Female sex organs." Then, he sighed. “Rin said I wouldn’t have fought for them.”

“Well, have you?” Venka demanded.

“I’ve tried,” he insisted. “I want to be involved. I even took this shitty deal of doing school pickup because then I would get to see him, and then Rin might trust me with more, and–”

He winced, recalling how he hung up on her. How he froze in his office instead of rushing to the hospital, paralyzed by guilt.

“No,” he murmured.  “I haven’t.”

Beneath the harsh lights hanging overhead, no one could look anything but sharp. But Venka’s face softened for just the briefest moment before she rolled her eyes.

“There’s your answer, genius,” she scoffed. “You can’t complain that she doesn’t want you when you throw yourself a pity party for not prioritizing your kid.”

For a moment, he almost snapped back. Venka didn’t understand– it was never about prioritization, at least not now. It was about culpability; the crushing feeling that he was solely responsible for someone else’s suffering. Venka wouldn’t get it. She had never been accountable for anything she had ever done, even if it hurt the people she cared about.

"It's not about that," he insisted. "I missed the first four years of his life, and now he's sick—"

"That is not your fault," Venka hissed. "Rin didn't fucking tell you. You're many things, Nezha. You're stupid, you're too idealistic, and you're bitch-made sometimes. But you are not a deadbeat. If you were a deadbeat, you wouldn't be sitting here with me looking pitiful because your child's mother is being a dumb cunt."

But today, Keahi had been in the hospital, and Rin had been left alone to pick up the pieces. It was his fault, no matter what Venka said.

“So, grow a spine and stop being a bitch," she said, dabbing at the sad remnants of her lipstick with the last oily napkin between them. "Just don't do it at work unless you want HR involved."

Oh, what Venka didn't know and what he wished he could share with her. Still, she was right about one thing. He needed to fix it. Not with research dollars or foundation grants, but by putting aside his shame at being the reason behind his son’s suffering. If he could do that for one godsdamned second, maybe he could convince Rin that he was still worthy of them.

“And you may as well throw that dress shirt away." Venka grabbed the last skewer from the plate and brandished the pointy end at him like a sword. "Because that grease stain is never coming out.”

•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*

Unlike Venka, Nezha couldn’t take the next day off. He simply had too much work: endless meetings, the review of a new design for an aircraft carrier, and the never-ending stream of email threads he was obligated to read and respond to. But as soon as he finished with his tasks, he made a quiet retreat from the office and drove through the rain straight to a little bakery tucked away in a corner of the university district. It was a favorite among Sinegard students back in the day, Rin included.

He tried not to fidget with his tie as he waited for the doorman to let him up. If he’d had more time, he would have changed into something less stiff than his usual business formal. But here he was, in the mundane lobby of her building with its worn floors and fake plants, wearing a designer suit and shoes that were far too nice for city streets.

If he was being honest, all of this was a long shot. He had no right to speak to her after yesterday, much less see her. Showing up to her building was the riskiest gamble; he didn’t even know which unit she lived in, and his entire plan hinged on the front desk being willing to let Rin know he was requesting to visit her. After hanging up on her, he wouldn’t be surprised if she asked the building to call the cops.

So, when the doorman stepped aside and let him into the elevator, he exhaled all the oxygen that had been trapped in his lungs. The bag of steamed buns from the bakery weighed him down as if he were carrying granite to build a tombstone.

Rin stood outside a door at the very end of the long hallway on the twenty-sixth story, arms crossed over her chest. She wore a familiar Sinegard hoodie that draped off her small frame as if it had long adjusted to her body. Up close, the stitching on the letters was torn, and the navy fabric on the sleeves was pilling, but otherwise it was just as he had bought it from the campus book store almost a decade ago.

So, that was where his favorite hoodie had been all those years. He swore he lost it during the move to Hesperia.

“You have some nerve showing up at my building,” Rin called as he neared. 

Nezha could’ve stated the obvious—Rin, you let me up— but he couldn’t bring himself to. Instead, he paused a few feet away from her, letting the distance between them speak for itself.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She just stared at him. The dim hallway lights cast shadows over her face, darkening the circles beneath her eyes. Her hair was gathered back in a limp ponytail that was close to coming undone. He offered her the buns.

“I stopped by Tai Pan Bakery,” he said. “I didn’t know if you’d had dinner yet, so—“

“Nezha, why are you here?”

He swallowed hard, lowering the bag when she didn’t take it. “I wanted to see how Keahi was doing.”

“He’s sleeping,” she said flatly.

He nodded. Maybe he should’ve left it there and turned back towards the elevator with his steamed buns, but he couldn’t. “It was my fault.”

That earned him a blink from Rin. “What?”

“The seizure,” he said, his throat constricting around the words. “It was my fault.”

Rin squeezed her eyes shut and forced air through her nose. “Nezha, no. He has epilepsy. We don’t know his triggers. You don’t get to make this about yourself when my kid spent all day in a hospital—“

“It’s genetic, Rin,” he pleaded. “I have it too. He got it from me.”

He was met with stunned silence. Rin just gaped at him, her lips parting like she was trying to decide if she should laugh at him or tell him to get the fuck out of her building.

“Are you—“ she started and then cut herself off with a sharp exhale. “Nezha, that’s crazy. You didn’t give him a seizure. You didn’t—“ She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Gods. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You think you cursed him, don’t you?”

Nezha shook his head. “I didn’t mean—“

“Yeah, you did,” she scoffed. “You’re projecting your own bullshit onto my kid.”

“No—“ His voice cracked. “I’m sorry, Rin. I should’ve been there. I shouldn’t have left you hanging the way I did. But when you said he had a seizure, I—I just…”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence. Rin’s proud shoulders drooped, betraying even more of her obvious exhaustion. “Okay, fine. I get it. Come on. If you stand out here any longer, people are going to think I have a stalker.”

He blinked at her, startled, but she was already unlocking her door and stepping back to let him through.

“Well?” she prompted. 

He followed her inside without needing to be told again. Rin’s apartment was as small as he expected, but exceptionally tidy. Next to the door was a shoe rack with a few pairs of neatly aligned shoes, both for an adult and for a child. He slipped his own shoes off and set them on the rack, and followed her past the tiny entranceway into the kitchen.

“You can put those on the table,” she said, nodding at the buns. “And keep your voice down. I don’t want you to wake Keahi.”

He did as instructed and took a seat across from her at the dining table. His chair wobbled as he sank into it. 

“How old were you?” she asked. “When you started having seizures?”

“Twelve,” he said. “It came out of nowhere. You said he was three?”

Rin nodded. “I thought it came out of nowhere, too. But I think he had an aura that day, and he…”

“Yeah.”

He allowed himself a glance around the kitchen. The laminate counters were spotless, as were the linoleum floors. A vibrant sprig of green onions grew in a jar of water on a shelf above the sink.

“I didn’t think it could be genetic,” she admitted. “I’ve spent years leaving your history blank on medical forms, and it just never crossed my mind.”

“A doctor never suggested it?”

Rin shrugged. “There are so many other things that could cause it that it wasn’t the first lead for anyone.”

She reached for the buns and fished one out of the bag. Nezha wrinkled his nose. “They’re probably cold.”

Rin tore a piece off, anyway. “Still good.”

They sat there for a silent spell that was only punctuated by the stomping on the ceiling coming from the upstairs neighbors. Rin nudged the buns towards him, but he shook his head.

“I brought them for you,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “I can hear your stomach rumbling from here. But if you don’t want that, I have congee.”

From the way she said it, it wasn’t an offer. She moved around the cramped space without thinking, opening cabinets and drawers and reaching for a bowl, for a spoon. The motions felt rehearsed, like a choreography she couldn’t unlearn even when she was bone-tired and ragged. So, he didn’t refuse further when she placed a warm bowl of rice porridge in front of him. And really, he couldn’t refuse it– it smelled like the food equivalent of a hug.

“This looks wonderful,” he said. “Thank you.”

Rin already knew that she was an excellent cook, so she didn’t thank him for the compliment. “It’s one of Keahi’s safe foods. But the ER gave him lorazepam to keep him sedated, and it messed with his appetite. He hasn’t eaten much. And I haven’t either, I guess.”

“Lorazepam tends to do that, yeah. A lot of the meds do.”

Rin shifted in her seat like she didn’t quite know what to do with that. He set his spoon down and leaned forward.

“Rin,” he murmured. “You can ask me anything.”

The next thirty minutes consisted of questions that he had never been asked outside of a medical office: what his auras were like, his triggers, and what medications he had taken. He answered as best he could, sometimes relying on foggy memories from his teenage years. There was something almost dangerously freeing about speaking so openly about his secret with the one person he wished he’d shared it with long ago. Rin paid close attention, nodding along and asking follow-up questions. It was uncomfortable to be so scrutinized. But if it were for Keahi, he would do it a million times over.

When her questions finally slowed, Nezha let out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. That was when Rin hit him with the one question he never wanted to answer:

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

At that moment, he thought of all the time they had spent together all those years ago: going to sleep with her and waking up next to her, even if only for a few stolen months before everything crashed and burned. He had been good at taking his meds either in the early morning when she was still sleeping or right as she was dozing off. That way, she would never ask about the pill organizer tucked into the bottom of a drawer in his bathroom. 

“I never wanted people to know. They start treating you differently when they do.” He tried for a weary smile. “I mean, could you ever imagine me needing to take meds all the time so I can function like a normal person?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What if Keahi has to be on meds his whole life like you?”

“The meds help,” he added quickly. “I haven’t had a seizure since I was nineteen.”

“But does that mean he won’t be a normal person without them?”

Her voice had gone sharp again, just like the block of kitchen knives sitting next to her sink. His fists clenched in his lap.

“It’s not like that,” he insisted. “But you’ve seen it up close, even if you haven’t felt it in your own body. You always feel like your brain is going to betray you. It’s exhausting, Rin. I don’t want that for him, and clearly you don’t either because you’re asking me all these questions—“

“I’m asking all these questions because I want him to be well,” she snapped. “Did you know he had a field trip yesterday?”

It wasn’t a question, not really, but he shook his head. “How could I have known that?”

“His school was taking them to the aquarium,” she continued. “He’d been talking about it for weeks. He memorized the names of all the animals he wanted to see. It happened in the lobby as they were checking in.”

Rin’s voice wavered. He wanted to reach for her and fold her into his arms. He wanted to hold her while she cried all those tears she certainly had denied herself. But her rickety little dining table had become a chasm of used tos and not anymores, and he was forced to stay on the other side.

“It’s like that,” he repeated, swallowing down the knot in his throat.

“He woke up crying about it,” she said tonelessly. “And made me promise to take him, but it won’t be the same. So no, Nezha, I don’t want him to be fucking normal. I just want him to be okay.”

Nezha didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe because there was nothing to say other than, me too. The hollow silence that Rin had left in the wake of her confession was broken when she pushed out of her chair. The legs scraped against the linoleum.

“I can’t do this with you,” she said, stalking toward the door. “Get out.”

He stood from his own chair. “Rin, hold on.”

“No.” She pressed her hands to her tired eyes. “I thought I could, but clearly I made a mistake.”

“That’s not f–” he started, but it was useless against the immovable force that was Rin.

“How am I supposed to trust you with him?” she demanded, throwing the deadbolt open. “You want to make him feel shame before he even knows what the word means.”

“It’s not shame,” he argued, tempted to block the door. “I just know how everybody else either feels pity for you or treats you like you’re incompetent. He should never have to feel that way.”

“Fat fucking chance when his own father lives in denial about his disability.”

“It doesn’t have to be a disability, Rin.”

She opened her mouth to probably tell him to fuck off and die, but then froze with her hand on the door handle. Soft, sock-covered footsteps pattered across the tile of the living room and the linoleum of the kitchen. Slow seconds later, Keahi emerged from behind the wall separating the foyer from the rest of the apartment, his blue dragon clutched tightly to his chest. Rin immediately tore away from the door and went over to him.

“Is everything okay, baby?” she asked him.

Keahi shook his head, making Nezha’s heart clench. “I’m fuzzy.”

Nezha’s breath caught in his throat. Keahi’s hazy eyes wandered over to him. He tilted his head.

“Mama, why is he here?” he asked Rin. 

It wasn’t malicious. It couldn’t be— Keahi was a four-year-old whose entire world had just been upended in the past twenty-four hours. The sight of a stranger in his safest space was certainly unwelcome. Still, it made Nezha’s throat tighten.

“Mister Nezha was just leaving,” Rin explained, shooting Nezha a look over her shoulder that said get the fuck out of my house.

But Rin had given him a chance, even if she hadn’t meant to. And he’d be foolish not to take it and run with it. He took a deep breath that he hoped no one noticed.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, softening the harsh edges of his voice that remained after he argued with Rin. “I heard you were in the hospital. That must have been scary, huh?”

Keahi brought the stuffed toy to his face and chewed on one of the dragon’s soft ears. Nezha would have never thought a dragon would even have ears, but maybe they were meant just for that. Keahi bobbed his head— the only indication that he agreed with him. 

“I know what that’s like,” he murmured. “I was in hospitals a lot when I was a kid, too.”

Keahi lifted his head. His stubborn little waves were stuck to his forehead in dark, delicate strands. 

“Really?” he said, though he didn’t sound like he believed it. Then, softer. “I don’t like hospitals.”

“That makes two of us. The lights are too bright and the noises are too loud, right?”

“Yeah,” Keahi whispered. “It makes my head feel big.”

If Rin wanted to stop him, she would have. At least, that’s what he told himself as he made his way over and sank to his knees. 

“You said you felt fuzzy?” he asked him. “Can you tell me what that’s like for you?”

Keahi hesitated. His eyes flickered to Rin, whose lips were pressed in a thin line. To Nezha’s complete surprise, she nodded. Keahi motioned to the tufts of blue hair on his dragon’s tail.

“Like that, feel,” he said, holding Longlong out to him.

Nezha ran his fingers along the stuffed animal’s body carefully. “To me, it always felt like someone put a really heavy blanket over me and I couldn’t get out from underneath it.”

“That’s scary.”

“It was,” he agreed. “But I had to be really brave about it.”

Keahi blinked up at him, processing. Nezha could practically see the gears turning in that little head from the way his bottom lip tucked in and the way his fingers found the frayed corner of Longlong’s wing. He was overwhelmed, Nezha could tell. He was still scared, even if he didn’t have the words for it.

Rin brushed a hand through his hair. “Do you want to go back to bed?”

Keahi hesitated as if contemplating the idea of a heavy blanket smothering him. 

“Okay,” he finally whispered.

Rin shot him a final look that said stay the fuck where you are, but then Keahi tugged on her hand.

“Can you carry me?”

Rin’s shoulders sagged further, but she gave him a little nod. “Okay.”

Keahi couldn’t weigh that much, but Rin was small and clearly fatigued. She struggled as she tried to lift him off the ground, and Nezha just couldn’t justify her throwing her back out when she was already at her limit physically and emotionally.

“Here,” he murmured, stepping close. “Let me, if that’s okay with you.”

Rin set Keahi down and blinked. Keahi didn’t seem to mind, though, as he went over to him. He looked back at his mother for permission.

“It’s fine,” Rin said, sounding strangled. 

Keahi did weigh that much. Or maybe it was the metaphorical weight of holding this precious being in his arms. Either way, he didn’t mind when Keahi wrapped his arms around his neck and hung on as he lifted him and carried him back to what he presumed was his bedroom. He vaguely noticed Rin’s footsteps behind them, trailing almost uncomfortably close, as if she might need to catch Keahi if Nezha somehow dropped him. She reached around him to flip on the light switch.

The walls were covered in decals of friendly-looking dinosaurs, and the cube organizer in the corner was filled with books, toys, and stuffed animals. Nezha treaded carefully, his feet soon sinking onto a warm throw rug at the foot of Keahi’s tiny bed. 

“I’ve got you,” he couldn’t help but murmur as he peeled back the soft bedding and gently lowered Keahi down onto the mattress.

Keahi burrowed beneath the covers. The red stuffed dragon he had gotten peeked out from beneath the bedspread. 

“Am I brave too, Mister Nezha?” Keahi suddenly asked, his voice still so tiny. “Like you were?”

Nezha allowed himself a smile. “Even more than me.”

“How?”

Many reasons. Nezha could say that, at least until the incident at the river, he had as normal a childhood as any other wealthy child. His mother loved him. She still did, or so he had to tell himself. But Keahi was only four years old. He hadn’t had the chance to be a kid yet. He was more familiar with hospitals and doctors than most of his peers would ever be. 

But he couldn’t tell him any of that. So, he reached forward and adjusted the dragon so it was lying next to him.

“Because that’s just how you are,” he said. “You were so brave for coming up to me when you got lost, remember?”

Keahi furrowed his brow as if trying to retrieve a memory buried beneath layers of dragon fuzz. 

“Or even right now,” Nezha continued. “You came out of your room to see who was talking to your mama. That’s really brave when you’re already not feeling good.”

“You two were angry,” Keahi whispered. “I was scared.”

Nezha floundered for a response. That was when Rin lowered herself down to sit on the bed and combed Keahi’s hair back from his forehead.

“We were,” she admitted gently. “And I’m sorry for that. It was never my intention to scare you.”

Keahi looked up at Nezha with a conviction that he could have only inherited from Rin. “Please don’t make my mama upset, Mister Nezha.”

Nezha flinched, but nodded. “I won’t. I’m sorry, too.”

The boy curled in on himself as soon as Rin pulled the blankets over his shoulders. The overhead light hummed softly. Keahi was already drifting, long lashes fluttering, his tiny fist still curled in Longlong’s tail.

Rin lingered a beat longer after shutting the lights off, as if making sure he was really asleep. Then she exhaled— this sharp, fragile sound— and stepped back into the hall. Nezha followed, closing the door halfway with the gentlest push he could manage. The second the lock clicked, Rin’s whole posture deflated. Her spine wasn’t stiff anymore. Her jaw wasn’t clenched. She just looked tired. Bone-deep, soul-thin tired.

She didn’t look at him when she spoke.

“He has an inpatient observation next week at the hospital. I think you should be there.”

He almost didn't believe her. "When?"

"I'll text you the details."

"I have some meetings on my calendar," he said, fumbling for his phone. "But I can move whatever around, just—"

"I'll text you the details," she repeated, finally turning to look at him. In the dim light of the hallway, he could barely tell that her eyes were watery. "We have a lot of details to work out before we move forward with... Whatever this is. But I don't want to talk about them right now, and I would really appreciate it if you left me alone for the night." 

Nezha couldn't do anything but nod. "I can do that."

She said nothing else as she led him toward the door again. It was only when unlocked the deadbolt that she glared up at him with a look in her eyes that he had already seen once before today. Keahi may have had his eyes, his nose, and his illness, but his fire was all Rin's.

"This is your final chance, Nezha," she warned. "If you fuck up again, it's over. You will never see me or him again."