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Fei Foon regained consciousness for the third time that day, although the first time he was not entirely sure it could truly be called regaining consciousness, considering he had only opened his eyes for a few seconds, seen a white light above him, the blurred outline of someone’s face, and immediately slipped away again, while the second time he had managed only to hear the low, furious voice of a doctor throwing someone out of the room before sleep closed over him once more like deep, heavy water. The third time was different. The third time, the pain already had clear boundaries, spreading from his right side toward his back and stomach, throbbing steadily but not violently, and his body, although heavy and exhausted, seemed to belong to him again. Fei Foon needed several long seconds to remember where he was, what had happened earlier, and why the smell of disinfectant was so strong he could almost taste its bitterness on his tongue. He needed a few more to notice the man sitting beside the bed.
Leuk To was sitting perfectly still.
That alone was worrying.
Leuk To was not the kind of person who could sit still when something irritated him, worried him, or slipped beyond his control in any way. In situations like that, he paced. He walked circles around the room, answered calls, gave orders, irritated everyone around him simply by existing, and forced the world to adjust itself to him even when the world had absolutely no intention of cooperating. But when he was genuinely afraid, when fear was no longer an emotion that could be transformed into anger, money, connections, or action, Leuk To became strangely quiet.
Fei Foon knew that silence by now.
He did not like it.
“To…”
The man lifted his head.
He did not answer immediately. His gaze moved slowly over Fei Foon’s face, almost methodically, as if checking every detail separately, making sure his eyes really were open, that his breathing was even, that his lips really had moved a moment ago and it was not simply another image his exhausted mind had decided to offer him. Only then did his shoulders lower slightly, so little that someone who did not know him well probably would not even have noticed.
Fei Foon noticed.
Of course he did.
He always noticed too much, even when he had been unconscious for half the day, stitched up in several places, and connected to machines that beeped beside his head with irritating regularity.
“You look terrible,” he said quietly.
Leuk To simply stared at him for several seconds.
Then his face hardened.
“You’re the one who got shot.”
Fei Foon blinked.
“Yes.”
“So shut up.”
“Fine.”
Silence settled between them for a moment.
Fei Foon very sensibly decided it would be best not to smile too obviously, because Leuk To currently wore exactly the expression that usually appeared on his face shortly before he issued an order that was either very expensive, very illegal, or—as was most often the case—both.
He was not wrong.
“You’re quitting the police.”
Fei Foon stared at him for several seconds.
Not because he did not understand.
He understood far too well.
“No.”
The answer came as quickly and naturally as breathing.
Leuk To narrowed his eyes.
“Then we’re implanting a tracker in you.”
Fei Foon blinked again.
This time more slowly.
“What?”
“A tracker.”
“I know what a tracker is.”
“Excellent.” Leuk To nodded as though they had just made significant progress in the negotiations. “Then choose.”
Fei Foon stared at him with growing disbelief.
Any other person would have been joking.
Any other person saying something like that would have had at least a hint of amusement hidden at the corners of their mouth, or that particular glimmer in their eyes revealing the absurdity of the entire suggestion.
Leuk To looked deadly serious.
And suddenly Fei Foon stopped seeing only the ridiculousness of those words.
He saw the bruised shadows beneath his eyes. Several days’ worth of stubble. A shirt with a crumpled collar, even though Leuk To usually looked as though someone ironed his clothes while they were still on his body. He saw hands clenched so tightly that the knuckles had gone white, and only then did he realize something that had escaped him earlier through the pain, anesthesia, and his own amusement.
Leuk To was genuinely afraid.
Not only earlier, when Fei Foon had been kidnapped and held against his will for several days.
Still.
Leuk To was still afraid.
The fear had not ended when the doctor walked out of the operating room and said the surgery had been successful. It had not ended when Fei Foon’s condition stabilized a few hours later. It had not even ended now, when Fei Foon had opened his eyes and started arguing with him.
Leuk To was still trapped in the same moment.
The moment when he had not known where Fei Foon was.
The moment when the phone went unanswered.
The moment when someone told him that everything had gone wrong.
Fei Foon knew only some of the details, but he did not need more. He could imagine the rest. Leuk To must have called half the city. He must have threatened at least several people. Probably bribed several more. Maybe driven personally to a few places before someone finally gave him the right lead. And throughout all of it, he had not known whether Fei Foon was injured, dead, trapped, or perhaps lying somewhere alone, waiting for help no one was able to give him.
He had run around like a headless chicken.
Fei Foon nearly snorted with laughter at the thought, but managed to stop himself.
Almost.
“A tracker?” he asked again, quieter this time.
“Yes.”
“Implanted.”
“Yes.”
“Inside my body.”
“Yes.”
“Leuk To.”
“Fei Foon.”
Now he really did have to smile.
Leuk To looked offended.
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’m trying.”
“You’re not trying.”
“I’m trying a little.”
“You almost died.”
Those words ended all the amusement.
Leuk To said them quietly, without shouting, without anger, without even a trace of the arrogance he usually wore like a second skin. And precisely because of that, they struck Fei Foon much harder than all of his earlier demands.
You almost died.
Fei Foon knew that.
Police officers lived with an awareness of that kind of risk. Every outing could be the last, every routine intervention could turn into something no one had expected, every decision made in the space of a few seconds could later determine who went home and who became a name written into a report. Fei Foon had accepted that a long time ago. He did not underestimate death, did not think himself invincible; he had simply learned to live with its presence somewhere at the edge of his awareness.
Leuk To had never accepted anything like that.
And probably never would.
To him, risk was not part of the job. It was an enemy that needed to be eliminated.
“I can’t stop being a police officer,” Fei Foon said calmly.
Leuk To’s jaw tightened.
“You can.”
“I don’t want to.”
“That’s not an argument.”
“It is to me.”
Leuk To looked away.
Fei Foon watched him carefully.
“Leuk.”
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“That’s very impressive.”
“You’ll say it’s your job, that you’ve been a police officer for years, that it’s part of who you are, that you want to help people, that you can’t abandon everything just because you got hurt once.”
“Twice.”
Leuk To whipped his head around so fast that Fei Foon immediately regretted the comment.
“Don’t help your case.”
Fei Foon fell silent.
Apparently, that was the correct choice.
Leuk To suddenly stood from the chair and remained beside the bed for a moment, straight-backed and tense, as though he did not know what to do with his own hands. Eventually, he shoved one into the pocket of his trousers and dragged the other over his face, closing his eyes.
“I didn’t know where you were.”
This time Fei Foon fell silent for an entirely different reason.
“I called you. You didn’t answer. I called the station. They told me you were out in the field, but no one wanted to tell me where. I called your superior. He didn’t answer. I sent people to every place you might have been. Your apartment. The station. The warehouses in the east. The harbor.”
Leuk To was speaking faster and faster, although his voice remained surprisingly calm, which somehow made every following sentence sound even worse. “Then someone told me there had been a shooting. No one knew how many people were injured. No one would give me any names.”
Fei Foon felt a heaviness in his chest that had nothing to do with his wound.
“Leuk…”
“For three hours, I didn’t know if you were alive.”
Three hours.
It was not long.
Three hours could pass during a movie. During dinner. During a flight between two nearby cities.
But three hours could also be an eternity if a person spent every minute wondering whether the person they loved was still breathing.
Fei Foon held out his hand.
Leuk To looked at it.
For a moment, he did not move at all, as though he was still too proud, too angry, or simply too frightened to allow himself what he truly needed.
Then he came closer.
Fei Foon wrapped his fingers around his.
Leuk To’s hand was cold.
“I’m sorry.”
Leuk To immediately frowned.
“Don’t apologize.”
“You were just yelling at me.”
“I’m yelling at you because you’re an idiot. That doesn’t mean you should apologize to me because someone shot you.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t say ‘fine’ in that tone.”
“What tone?”
“That one.”
Fei Foon looked at him.
Leuk To looked at Fei Foon.
For several seconds, both of them remained silent.
Fei Foon was the first to look away, because he knew that if he kept staring at him for another moment, he would start laughing, and Leuk To was definitely not in the emotional state to appreciate that particularly well.
“I’m not agreeing to a tracker under my skin,” he said eventually.
“Why?”
Fei Foon stared at him in disbelief.
“Are you seriously asking me that?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m not a dog.”
“I never said you were a dog.”
“Or a suitcase.”
“Suitcases get lost.”
“Leuk.”
“So do you.”
Fei Foon closed his eyes.
It did not help.
“You are not implanting anything in me.”
“Then a watch.”
Fei Foon opened his eyes.
Leuk To looked suspiciously pleased with himself.
“What?”
“A watch.”
“What kind of watch?”
“One with a tracker.”
“No.”
“Your phone.”
“I already have a phone.”
“You turned off location sharing.”
“Because you were checking where I was every five minutes.”
“That’s what location sharing is for.”
“That was before all of this happened.”
“Which only proves I was right.”
Fei Foon stared at him for a long time.
A very long time.
He was certain there had to be some provision buried somewhere in police regulations concerning what to do with a man who used the fact that his partner had been shot as evidence that his previous invasion of privacy had been completely justified. If no such provision existed, Fei Foon intended to personally propose that one be created.
“A bracelet,” Leuk To suggested.
“No.”
“A necklace.”
“No.”
“Shoes.”
Fei Foon raised an eyebrow.
Leuk To shrugged.
“Technology has advanced.”
“I’m not wearing shoes with GPS.”
“The car.”
“The car is fine.”
Leuk To went still.
Fei Foon realized one second too late that he had made a mistake.
“That’s not enough.”
“I knew it.”
“A watch.”
“Leuk…”
“Not under your skin.”
Fei Foon studied him.
Leuk To did not look away.
And then Fei Foon understood that this entire absurd negotiation was not really about technology.
It was not about control.
Or at least, not only about control.
It was about the fact that Leuk To needed something. Some concrete safeguard, a tiny point on a map, a blinking dot, a number, a signal, anything that would allow him, the next time something happened, not to live through those three hours all over again.
Fei Foon sighed.
“The watch.”
Leuk To blinked.
“What?”
“I’m agreeing to the watch.”
Leuk To’s face remained still, but Fei Foon saw the change in his eyes.
“You’ll wear it all the time.”
“Don’t push it.”
“Fei Foon.”
“It could get damaged during an operation.”
“I’ll buy you an armored one.”
“I don’t need an armored watch.”
“Apparently you do.”
“Leuk…”
“Waterproof.”
“Leuk.”
“Fireproof.”
“Leuk To.”
“Bulletproof.”
“Bulletproof watches don’t exist.”
“For the right amount of money, someone will make me one.”
Fei Foon stared at him for a moment.
Then he started laughing.
Quietly at first, because his wound immediately reminded him of its existence with a sharp pull in his side. Then a little louder, despite the pain, despite the exhaustion, despite the equipment around him suddenly beginning to beep faster. Leuk To stared at him in offense for several seconds, but eventually the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
“I don’t see anything funny about this.”
“I know.”
“You almost died.”
“I know.”
“Don’t do that again.”
Fei Foon stopped laughing.
The sentence was absurd.
As though death were a choice. As though promising to be careful were enough to ensure that nothing bad would ever happen again. As though the world respected agreements people made with each other in hospital rooms.
And yet Fei Foon squeezed his hand.
“I’ll try.”
Leuk To did not look satisfied.
“I don’t like that answer.”
“It’s the only honest one I can give you.”
Leuk To knew.
Of course he knew.
And that was exactly why he hated it so much.
He could not have a promise that Fei Foon would never be hurt again. He could not buy safety, force it into existence, or guarantee it with his family name. He could not make the world stop being dangerous simply because, for the first time, he truly had someone in it he was not ready to lose.
All he could do was hold his hand.
So he did.
“The watch will be here tomorrow.”
“Of course.”
“Two.”
“Why two?”
“One spare.”
Fei Foon sighed.
“Fine.”
“The phone too.”
“No.”
“Fei Foon.”
“No.”
“The car.”
“The car is fine.”
“Good.”
Leuk To nodded, apparently deciding the negotiations had ended in a reasonable compromise, although Fei Foon was almost certain he had just agreed to a level of surveillance normally reserved for shipments of extremely expensive diamonds or people placed under witness protection.
“One more thing,” Leuk To said.
Fei Foon groaned.
“What now?”
“When you leave the hospital, you’re living with me.”
Fei Foon looked at him.
“That has nothing to do with the tracker.”
“It does.”
“How?”
“You’re easier to find when I know where you are.”
Fei Foon closed his eyes.
This time, it was not because he was tired.
“Leuk To.”
“Yes?”
“You just want me to move in with you.”
Silence.
Fei Foon opened one eye.
Leuk To was looking toward the window.
And suddenly everything became clear.
Truly.
Absolutely.
Painfully clear.
Fei Foon started laughing again.
“Don’t laugh.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You almost died.”
“Stop using that as an argument for everything.”
“No.”
“For how long?”
“The rest of your life.”
“Whose?”
Leuk To turned his head.
This time his gaze was calmer. Tired, still full of that same fear that would probably remain inside him for a long time, but calmer.
“Yours,” he answered.
Fei Foon stopped smiling.
Something soft and painful tightened around his heart.
Leuk To leaned over the bed and for a moment looked as though he intended to say something more, but ultimately did not. He had never been particularly good at saying the most important things when they were truly needed.
Instead, he lifted his hand and carefully, almost uncertainly, brushed his thumb across Fei Foon’s cheek.
Fei Foon leaned into his palm.
“Fine,” he said quietly.
“Fine what?”
“I’ll move in.”
Leuk To froze.
Fei Foon smiled faintly.
“But no tracker under my skin.”
“We’ll see.”
“Leuk.”
“I was joking.”
Fei Foon gave him a suspicious look.
Leuk To held his gaze for approximately three seconds.
“Mostly.”
Fei Foon sighed as deeply as his aching side allowed, then shifted slightly on the bed to make room, although both of them knew perfectly well that Leuk To was not supposed to lie down there. Leuk To knew it too.
He lay down anyway.
Carefully, on the very edge of the mattress, so that he would not touch any dressing or cable, he wrapped an arm around Fei Foon and for a long time simply held him close. Fei Foon could feel the tension in his body, the caution behind every movement, the way his fingers tightened around Fei Foon’s shirt every so often as though Leuk To needed to check that he was still there.
He was.
He was breathing.
His heart was beating.
And the small green light on the monitor pulsed calmly, steadily, stubbornly, giving Leuk To exactly the kind of information he needed most.
Fei Foon was here.
For now, that had to be enough.
“Leuk?”
“Mhm?”
“If you actually bring me a bulletproof watch tomorrow, I’m throwing it out the window.”
Leuk To did not even open his eyes.
“I’ll find it with the tracker.”
Fei Foon stared at the ceiling for several seconds.
Then he burst out laughing so suddenly that his wound protested, the monitor began beeping faster, and Leuk To immediately raised his head with panic written all over his face.
And for the first time in many hours, that fear no longer looked like something capable of swallowing him whole.
Fei Foon was still laughing.
Leuk To was still complaining.
And the world, despite everything, continued turning exactly as it should.