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Ling was a very lonely child. It didn't take much of a genius to guess that. He had a very odd personality compared to the other children, seeming to act more like a caricature, or mimic of what a child should be. There was something deeply unsettling and off-putting about Ling Yao, the boy with the thick accent and a single mother. He does not speak Amestrian English, and he plays a bit too excitedly and a bit too rough. Children pull their eyes back at him and say things in a language he does not know. Why they do this, well, Ling Yao doesn't really isn't sure. He thinks they are being friendly and attempting to conquer the language barrier which puts them worlds apart.
There are very little non-Amestrian born children in his first grade class, which makes Ling feel like the only six year old in the world, or maybe just his school, with no friends.
He goes through first grade very lonely. He has one friend, who was the nice lady he was a bit too small to see the entire face of, unless she knelt down and met him at his level. She's tall for a Xingese lady, at least to Ling, and she is much older than he is,—probably like, 20, if Ling had to guess. Super old—and she is much smarter. His head only reaches her hips and his biggest issue right now is missing out on reading those picture books of the funny looking animals native to Amestris. She pulls him out of class for an hour or so with him to teach him English and how to play chess. She says he's 'growing a-cord-ing-lee' for his age when she sees him for the first time, whatever that means.
She asks him about his mama and gives him a doll and asks him to point where she touches him. To his confusion, he simply points to his hands and his upper body and his face, and he fails to mention when his mama holds his face a little tight when she kisses his mouth and doesn't let him go until a few seconds pass. She seems relieved, and Ling can't possibly fathom why that is. His mama was only a little weird sometimes, though it's only because his bastard father made her sad. He didn't really know what the word bastard meant, but he knew that's what his father was.
In second grade, he has lost his accent just a little bit, and he can speak in slightly advanced broken English. He knows how to play a mean Aerugian defense in chess, and he can read basic sentences in Amestrian English. He can write the alphabet, and can string small words together. There is a little girl who also immigrated from Xing into his apartment complex, likely due to the civil war between the clans. Ling did not understand what the word 'civil' meant, but he knew what war was. Him and his mama had to run away from it, and that's why they were in a refugee camp for a short amount of time before coming to Central.
War was a big scary monster that killed and ate people, Ling's mama told him. Never become a soldier, she warned, or else you will be on the plate for War to devour. That thought alone had scared him out of a handful nights of sleep. Anyhow, the girl's name is Lan Fan, Ling figured out, and to his pleasant surprise, she also spoke Yao-Xingese. She was a rough and mean girl who would pull his hair and kick him if he bothered her too much, but Ling didn't care, because he was a rough boy, or so his teachers had told his mama.—He wasn't allowed to roughhouse her back, though. Mama told him to never hit girls, and Lan Fan was always scolded intensely when she would hit him—Lan Fan was about the same size as him, though she was a few inches taller, making her just a bit skinnier, while Ling was still small and chubby.
Ling is teaching Lan Fan how to play chess while their ESL—english second language, Ling took pride in himself for memorizing those big words—teacher was out of the room. She had gone to print out more worksheets for them to fill out, likely. "What was your refugee camp number?" He asks, talking around a bite of an apple stuffed into his right cheek. Their teacher told him to make an effort to not speak to her too much in Xingese, but neither Ling nor Lan Fan were that good at speaking the language yet, and there was a considerable gap in knowledge between the two, anyway.
Lan Fan furrows her brow, moving a light colored knight on her end. "I don't know." The girl replies, chewing on the thin plastic straw that was in her empty carton of chocolate milk. "I don't remember my numbers." She admits, puffing out her cheeks in frustration as Ling managed to snag a pawn of hers. He swallows the flesh of his apple, licking his fingers before moving his wooden piece. "It's okay. I don't remember mine, either."
Lan Fan looks at Ling for a moment, before pointing a finger in his face. "You have sad eyes like my daddy did when he was sent to be a soldier." Ling pales, staring at her with wide headlight eyes. He shakes his head furiously, then looks around as if his mama would hear. "My mama says being a soldier is the worst thing you can do, because you feed War." He takes another hearty bite of his apple, and he is nearing the core of it. "Is your father dead?"
To this, Lan Fan tears up and yells a shrill profanity at him in Xingese. Ling stares at her, mouth slightly ajar. He wasn't aware she was allowed to say that. "That's not something you ask people!" She cries, eyes misty and rubbing her tears with the back of her hands before they can think about falling. So he is, Ling thinks as he shuts his mouth. "My father isn't around, either. I came to the country with only my mama." He says in an attempt to reassure her. Lan Fan snivels and looks at him through the tears clinging to her eyelashes. "I don't have my mommy or daddy. My daddy was a soldier and my mommy was killed crossing to Amestris. My grandpa is my daddy now." She says, and it's the most honest and heartfelt thing she has said in the span of a month of knowing each other.
Ling doesn't say anything for a few moments, and they continue their game of chess in silence. "I don't know who my father is." He admits, then drops the core of his already browning apple into his still full lunch tray. He doesn't like much of the school food, and he wonders if he's always been this picky. He'd grown up eating rice and broth and meat and greens, and no matter how much he'd been around Amestrian food, he just didn't want to eat it at all. His teacher told his mama something about an autism evaluation, whatever that was, but mama seemed very upset at whatever it was, so he didn't like it by default.
Lan Fan looks at him confusedly. "What do you mean, you don't know your daddy? Doesn't he live with you? Or was he also a soldier?" Is he also dead? is the silent question Lan Fan really wants to ask. Ling takes a second to consider the bombard of questions. He shrugs hard, mimicking the irritation in his mama's face when she's frustrated that his school won't stop calling her when Lan Fan manages to take his queen. "My mama doesn't like my father." Lan Fan can't grasp the idea of a mommy and daddy not loving each other. Grandpa Fu told Lan Fan that mommies and daddies are supposed to love each other unconditionally.
Grandpa Fu is a wise man, and was very nice to Lan Fan even when she would be nosy and probe him for stuff about her mommy and daddy, and was still very nice to her when she would say that she misses them. His eyes would go a little unfocused, and he'd eventually agree. "Checkmate!" Ling points at the board, grinning wide. He has a missing canine and there was another missing tooth closer to the back of his mouth on his bottom row, but his grins somehow were always toothy. Lan Fan makes a noise of surprise, looking around the board as if perspective would change the pieces around and allow her an opening of escape. "No fair! I wasn't paying attention!" She squawked, crossing her arms petulantly.
"It's okay. I wasn't good when I first started playing, too!" "I am good at the game!"
When Ling is 7 years old, his mama tells him he has a half sister who also lives in Amestris now, and asks if he wants to meet her. He doesn't, really, because he has Lan Fan, and he doesn't need any other friends. But he's never had a sister, and he's curious. Her name is May Chang and she is 1 year old and understands more English than Xingese. Jealousy hits him in the chest a bit at the thought.
They are at a playground a bit far away from their apartment complex, and Ling is digging in the dirt and pulling beetles and worms from the ground and letting them crawl around in his palms. Some of the beetles pinch his fingers, but he doesn't mind. His mama calls him and he drops the creatures on the ground and he's tottering towards her. She scolds him for his dirt covered hands, and he hides them behind his back in shame. May Chang is very smart and able-bodied for her age,—she is standing on her own without the threat of her legs giving out on her, and she can run and jump without holding her hands out to her sides—and she looks like a girl version of Ling. He'd believe it if his mama had said they were fully siblings. She isn't old enough to speak many words, her father says, and Ling looks up at him.
He is a tall, scary looking man, with red eyes and white hair and brown skin. He looks strong and he has a big x-shaped scar along his face. He looks considerably younger than his mama, and even though his height makes him a bit intimidating, he has kind eyes and tries to offer his mama a nervous, strained smile. He has to fumble with his phone to use it to translate some of his English to Xingese, and it's a bit janky, because Xingese has 43 distinct dialects, but it seems to work. Ling's mama is also learning English, but she is a little slower at it. Ling is proud of his mama either way.
Ling dusts off dirt behind his back and raises a hand to wave at her. "Hi." He says, and she smiles wide at him. She only has four teeth, but Ling is missing about the same amount she has. "Hi." She says slowly, trying to mimic his voice. He tilts his head curiously. May is so small, and it makes Ling wonder if he was that small when he was her age. "I'm Ling Yao." The boy says, scuffing the ground with the bottom of his shoe. May babbles at him and she's gripping her father's index and middle fingers between her own little fingers. Ling would hold his mama's hand, but his hands are grimy and there's debris under his fingernails. Ling's mama is then coaxing him to go off and play with May so she and the big scarred man can talk. He offers a hand that was cleaned to the best of his ability, and she grabs his thumb as they head towards the playground.
The playdate was boring, for lack of a better word. There's not much to talk about with someone who can only say 'hi', their own name, and 'papa'. Ling reconsiders why he even came in the first place. It feels like years before Ling's mama calls him to the car so they can go back home. He waves goodbye to May and her scary-but-nice father, and then climbs into the passenger seat of his mama's car. She now has a stable job and is working to secure a bigger apartment for the two of them. Ling's mama asks him if he'd want to see May again on the way home, and he shrugs, before seeing Lan Fan on her new scooter outside and asks if he can go play with her. His mama smiles and makes an unsavory comment about Lan Fan becoming his wife, before nodding her head and making her way to their room.
Lan Fan runs headfirst into him on her scooter, and they both take a hard tumble on the concrete together. Ling falls face-first onto the ground, and Lan Fan narrowly avoids bonking the back of her head on the concrete sidewalk. "Watch where you're going!" Lan Fan barks at him, dusting off her shorts and wincing at her bleeding knees. Ling whines and rubs his mouth, feeling his wiggly tooth jostle in his gums. "You ran into me!" He protests, Lan Fan crouching in front of him to see what was wrong. "What's wrong with your mouth? Were you talking too much?" Is the question that comes out, rougher than she'd intended.
Ling pouts and moves his hand to the corner his lips. "My tooth is wiggly." He says, opening his mouth and prodding at a premolar. It's not very wiggly at all, but when Lan Fan tries to argue with him on it, he insists that it is and she's just not looking correctly. Ling leans his head and looks at the blood dripping from Lan Fan's knees. "Hey, you're bloody. My mama has bandaids in our bathroom." He says, pointing ingenuously. The girl looks down and makes a whimpery noise of fear, before Ling hoists her up by her hands and drags her up the stairwell to his home. They—thankfully for Lan Fan—only have to go up one set of stairs. She watches Ling wiggle his key inside the keyhole and open the door.
He calls out for his mama, loudly exclaiming that Lan Fan had a nasty fall and they need the bandaids in the bathroom. Lan Fan doesn't really pay attention to her reply as he opens the door next to the front door that leads to the dingy little room that Ling very graciously calls a bathroom. They live in the same complex, but Lan Fan is grateful to live in one of the nicer rooms with her grandpa. Ling lived a very frugal life,—though not by choice—once telling Lan Fan casually when she had showed him her little bedroom that he had to sleep in his mama's bed. The girl felt particularly sad whenever she'd see her friend's home, and she couldn't quite describe why. Ling was happy, and so was his mother, so Lan Fan should be, too.
Lan Fan is a bit more knowledgeable on how to bandage herself up than Ling, so he left her alone after she's sat on the off white edge of the bathtub and fumbling with the first aid kit. Lan Fan was very boyish, at least, that's what other kids told her. She didn't really get what 'boyish' and 'girly' meant, anyway. Grandpa Fu had told her that there was no point in those terms, because boys could be what those people considered girly, and girls could be boyish. Lan Fan just knew that she was a bit clumsy and rough and took enough tumbles to rattle her brain around and knock a few brain cells out.
Lan Fan carefully cleans her own knees, sucking pained breaths through her teeth as she rubs the stinging, clear fluid of antiseptic onto her raw skin. Usually, grandpa Fu would help her with this, something about Lan Fan not cleaning her wounds thoroughly enough, but Lan Fan had watched her grandpa do this enough times to the point she got the gist. When she was done sticking colorful, tie-dye patterned bandaids onto herself, she looked up at Ling, who was standing on a plastic stool and leaned over the edge of the sink. She couldn't see what he was doing, even with the reflection of the mirror, but his fingers were in his mouth and pulling hard. A pit of unease settles in Lan Fan's belly. "Ling?" She said, lips faintly curling downwards.
The boy turns around, mouth bloody and slobbery. He gave Lan Fan a mouth-open grin, and she could see where his tooth was ripped out and where blood welled in the gummy gap in his mouth. Ling ran the water to rinse blood and spit off his hands, and shook them lightly. His tooth was stained pink at the half dissolved roots, but was otherwise off-white as he held it up between Lan Fan and him. "Yeah?" He tilted his head, licking the blood from his lips. Lan Fan's eyes stared at him, wide and terrified. A short and shrill squeal of fear tears from the girl's throat, eyes watery and bottom lip quivering. "What's wrong?" Ling is almost equally terrified now, but for the most part, confused.
"You're bleeding!" Lan Fan shrieks, waving her hands towards Ling's face. "You just ripped your own tooth out!" Tears were streaming down her face, and Ling looked almost guilty. It's not like he ripped her tooth out, right? So why was she so upset? The boy frowns in confusion. "It's okay! It doesn't hurt. See?" He holds up his wet tooth, and he swallows hard around blood in his mouth. Lan Fan cries shrilly and shields her eyes. She cries out a slew of 'stop's and 'put it down's before Ling puts the tooth on the bathroom counter and sits beside her. He stares at her for a moment.
"Why are you so scared?" Ling asks. He looks at Lan Fan, who's shaking considerably less. He leans his head on her shoulder and closes his eyes. She breathes out a shaky sigh. "Why aren't you scared?" Lan Fan asks in reply. She looks tired, and her face reminds Ling of her grandpa for a moment; sad and tired. "Don't you remember seeing all the blood and dead people?" She's fidgeting with her thumbs, and her fingers are laced together. Ling frowns, opening his eyes and staring at the bath rug by the sink. "No." He feels weirdly bad that he doesn't. Lan Fan doesn't say anything.
"I'm sorry." Lan Fan looks down at Ling. He looks awful. "It's okay." She stares at the door, because she can't bear to look at him anymore.
Ling is now completely fluent in Amestrian-English. He has been for years, now. He is 14 years old and on his way to highschool. Lan Fan is still sort of mean, but she's much sadder now. She always has bandaids taped to the undersides of her wrists under hair ties and beaded bracelets. He knows why this is,—he's not stupid—but he doesn't want to ask her about it. They're lounging around in her living room, and Ling is playing a bad, mindless mobile game on his phone. Lan Fan is watching whatever's playing on the TV. It's a random netflix show neither of them really care about. Ling is laid across her legs, initially done to irritate her, but now neither of them could be really bothered to move. Ling is warm and Lan Fan is solid.
There's a thought that's been on Ling's mind lately, ever since they'd broken up. He'd given in to the pressure of his mother and asked Lan Fan out on a date. She decided to humor him, moreso out of a curiosity for what a relationship felt like. That experiment lasted exactly a week before Lan Fan folded and told him that dating him wasn't interesting. He was glad she said something first, because he thinks he likes boys. He didn't dare admit that to her in the moment, though.
He's not very sure when this revelation hit him. Ling is aware of his own oddities and other children having an aversion for him in his younger years. Children must have a 6th sense to sniff out those who weren't like them, before the victims even know themselves. Ling believes that dating Lan Fan is the final nail int he coffin, but that feels mean. There's nothing wrong with her, but dating her felt no different from them being friends. The only difference is the awkward cheek kisses that make Lan Fan scrunch up her face and Ling squirm in mild discomfort.
Lan Fan was mean, sure, but she wasn't a complete asshole, or anything, right? Ling suddenly feels very clammy in his shirt. He clears his throat. "Lan Fan?" The aforementioned girl groans dramatically and looks down at him. "What? If you need cash again, no." Ling stares holes into his cracked phone screen. "I think I like boys." He blurts out ineloquently. He's not really sure how to start this, so diving in face first is the next best solution. The boy's eyes are squeezed shut, as if he's bracing for a physical impact. Lan Fan purses her lips. "Okay? …And?" She looks genuinely puzzled. Ling frowns and sits up. "You don't care? Like.. At all?" The girl groans and rolls her eyes. She's 100% sure Ling is the last person to find out he's gay.
"Why would I? Nothing changed. You're still annoying, and eat all my food, and owe me money." She pauses for a second. "Plus, I like girls." Oh.
Lan Fan seems to read his face and scowls. "Do I look straight?" Ling retorts by elbowing her in the ribs and telling her to shut up with a grin on his face. She retaliates by snorting and shoving his face with the palm of her hand, using the heel of it to try and push harder to get him off the couch. He hits the ground with a solid thud and a laugh that tore it's way out of his diaphragm. Lan Fan takes advantage of the newly freed space on the couch, moving to lay down on her belly. Ling sits up by the edge where she's laying. His back is pressing against the sides of the cushions, and he's now also propped up and watching the show.
About ten or so minutes of silence manage to pass by. "…Do you wanna order a pizza?" "Oh my god."
Despite her words, Lan Fan is then looking over Ling's shoulder, pointing out toppings and sides while they look at their combined funds. They know they're going to bother Fu until he gets them food regardless, but it's a bit fun to pretend. Ling idly thinks they have not matured that much past small children, but have rather evolved in tastes and wants and needs. "Wait, dude, who the hell is getting anchovies on their pizza?"
They're going to be okay, Ling thinks. They have to be. There's better things to focus on in the world, like going to bother Lan Fan's grandfather with her for food, or Lan Fan trying to trip him in the hallway while Fu orders on the phone, or Ling barely managing to keep himself up straight, but trying to drag her down with him by the wrist either way. He's sure it must sting, but Lan Fan doesn't make so much as a face to indicate she's in pain.
She's laughing—genuinely laughing—as they make their way back to the living room. It's the first time she's done it in seemingly months. Ling tries to not look astounded as he laughs with her.