How could one master another? How could I give him that sort of access to everything that fundamentally made me me? Was that even possible?
Elder pushed ahead, forcing himself to reveal more, as if apologetic for the honesty he’d just let me glimpse. “I met someone when I was eleven. A guy I saw practicing martial arts on my block. Considering my heritage and the stories I’d grown up with, I immediately had a kindred connection. I asked him to teach me. He did.”
He rubbed his face then squeezed the back of his nape. “My parents didn’t know who I fought with. They believed I went to the community gym, and I didn’t tell them otherwise. I went from a scrawny kid who never saw the sun with bleeding fingers from playing the cello to a muscly fighter who learned to master his own body. I didn’t look my young age. I shot up and piled on power. I knew every ligament and tendon. I studied textbook after textbook on the best way to strike, what a punch did to the human tissue, and how to kill with every part of me.
“I became good. I became a master. I became noticed.” He scrubbed his forehead, shaking his head as awful memories turned sinister. “At twelve, I was recruited to be security for the same men my father had borrowed money from. Even so young, they said if I helped them out, they’d forget about the debt and excessive interest they charged him—even after three years, he was still paying them back. I agreed, willing to take the pressure off my family, knowing how complicated it was having a son like me.”
He looked up, his face tight as if preparing himself for the worst. “I want to say I believed them when they said they were into import, export. I pretended not to notice when some containers held screaming people instead of crates of food. I lied to myself that they weren’t bad men even as I was used to teach lessons to those who defaulted on drug money or failed on a run. I was a stupid fucking kid who only wanted to focus on fighting, cello, and origami. I couldn’t afford to obsess over anything new.”
I inched forward off the bed, dropping to my knees before him. I didn’t do it out of servitude but as an avid listener to his tale. Hesitantly, I placed my hand on his knee.
He jolted as if watching me touch him didn’t prepare him for the physical heat of it.
With his eyes locked on my hand, he said, “It started slowly. They told me they’d need my skills to protect a shipment, and I went. They said they’d arranged a fight to showcase my talent, so I fought. I didn’t care my opponents were all terrified or that they all lost. I became drunk on my own stupid power until one day, I became addicted to the look on their faces. I needed that fear in their eyes. I went searching for it.”
He flinched. “One day, when I was thirteen, I picked a fight with my little brother just because I needed to see that fear.” He choked on a swallow. “I broke his arm.”
I hid my gasp, doing my best not to show any judgment. He threw me a quick glance then dropped his gaze as if he couldn’t stomach looking at me.
“My father was the one who found us. Me in tears. Kade in tears. His arm hanging weirdly. We took him to the hospital. When we got home, Okaasan hit me, and I let her. She hit me until I bled, and then she disowned me. My father tried to defend me. My brother, too, even as he stood with his arm in a cast because of me. I was given one last chance. Cease to fight for the Chinmoku or leave.”
Elder stood, shoving his hands into his hair as he paced. “I went that afternoon and handed in my resignation. I was a silly kid who thought it would be a simple goodbye.” He snorted. “Needless to say, they didn’t accept it. They came after me that night. Otosan was the one who answered the door and told them I would no longer fight for them. He knew who they were. He understood the shit I’d landed our entire family in. He’d done the unthinkable and borrowed money from the Chinmoku, but I’d signed our death warrants by becoming one of them.”
Elder’s voice turned tortured and thin. He cleared his throat twice before he continued, “The next night, I woke to a burning house with a message painted in blood on the living room wall. ‘Once a Chinmoku always a Chinmoku. You chose family. Now you have no one.”
Those words hovered in the room long after Elder had spoken. He didn’t speak for an eternity until he finally murmured, “There was no way out. They’d drilled the windows closed and barricaded all the doors. I was the only one not locked in my room. It was as if they expected me to escape and return to their brotherhood rather than fight for my family.”