“About what?”
“My righteousness. I cannot be righteous until my actions reflect it. ‘By nature men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.’”
“轻生重义.11 What do your actions reflect if not that? Did you not despise life in order to value justice?” Flint tried to spark in Jinzhao’s eyes but before it could light, Tinseng said, “What do you think of your father’s actions, then? Has that changed?”
As he asked, he realized: For once, he was asking neutrally. The argument about that was over. Jinzhao seemed to feel the same. Instead of the knee-jerk defensiveness of the past, he answered softly, “I meant what I told your sister. At that moment, I understood not only what he did, but what you have been arguing.”
“And don’t think I don’t regret it!” Tinseng cried, “I wish I’d argued that the most romantic thing you could do was wait for backup!”
Jinzhao’s lips twitched. “I’m glad you didn’t. I’m glad for your honesty. Your clarity. If you had not been so insistent, I would have stayed ignorant and . . . alone.”
“Alone? You think it’s so easy to get rid of me?”
Annoyance shadowed Jinzhao’s features.
“Sorry, sorry. I’ll stop interrupting. You were saying?”
Jinzhao chewed his words. Tinseng distracted himself trying to clean and bandage each of the injured wrists. Only after the second wrist was cleaned did Jinzhao say, “‘To know a certain thing directly, you must personally participate in the practical struggle to change reality, to change that thing.’”
Tinseng hummed thoughtfully, then completed, “‘Only through personal participation in the practical struggle to change reality can you uncover the essence of that thing and comprehend it.’”
“Love is participatory,” Jinzhao said, “as is justice. Only understood through the struggle. I set myself apart and had neither.”
“Jinzhao . . .”
“They chose to participate. How can I fault them for that?”
Tinseng sighed and smiled a soft, adoring smile. He really had no chance, did he? He should have known Jinzhao was going to play dirty, with his ideals and his conviction like towering pillars in an ancient temple. He was his most beautiful like this: If Jinzhao ascended to heaven right now, he would question the very gods themselves about their choices. And he’d be right. He’d never see his own goodness and would insist on seeing goodness in people like Tinseng. It was insufferable, really.
“So you finally admit I’m right?” Tinseng said instead of anything he was thinking. “No, no, no, no need to acknowledge it. Ah, one thing though: Are you saying I should expect more of these heroics in the future?”
Jinzhao blinked, then asked with no expression, “Is there another list you know of?”
Tinseng laughed so hard that neither had the chance to say anything more before the others finally arrived.
Yukying started crying the moment she saw them and kept crying as she took the washcloth from Tinseng and kindly elbowed him out of the way. He considered pouting about it but, without a task to busy his hands, exhaustion hit him. Suddenly nothing sounded better than slumping down into a chair and never moving again. He floated into something like sleep as everyone swirled around him.
When he came back to himself, his siblings were talking quietly over Jinzhao. Yukying dabbed iodine to Jinzhao’s face while Cheuk-Kwan rewrapped the bandages Tinseng had tied, probably muttering about poor technique if Tinseng cared to listen. When Cheuk-Kwan held out his hand, Yukying handed over the iodine; when Yukying needed a new washcloth, Cheuk-Kwan had already barked at Chiboon to fetch her one. This wasn’t the first time they’d tended a patient together. Hadn’t Yukying said her volunteering had included some nurse training? That sounded vaguely familiar; Tinseng probably should have paid more attention, or asked follow-up questions. He’d been so distracted. So neglectful of them both. Hopefully that would end soon.
To his left, Yingtung sat at the desk reading from a piece of paper into the phone—the room service menu, and oh, Tinseng was hungry. When was the last time he ate? The tartine at Julian’s? He spared a moment’s gratitude toward his sister’s husband, who might be useless, but was at least the kind of useless who always remembered mealtime.
Chiboon, for his part, was upending an entire suitcase on the second bed and setting out their necessities. With any luck, they wouldn’t be here more than a night, but to an itinerant like Chiboon, that didn’t matter; he swore by the habit of unpacking everything to settle into a space. In the midst of upheaval, Chiboon wrote at the beginning of all his guides, the oldest routines bring the greatest relief. Clothes in the drawers, all in their neat stacks. Pajama sets laid out at the end of the bed for easy changing. Toiletry bag in the bathroom. There would be a toothbrush and paste for Tinseng when he wanted it, right there next to the sink, easy as home. Some strange pressure built up in Tinseng’s throat at the thought. If he could just change his clothes and brush his teeth, he’d feel able to think again. Maybe there was something to Chiboon’s routines after all.
Yingtung hung up the phone, then picked it up again, for who knew what; probably to complain to the concierge about the towels. Cheuk-Kwan finished on Jinzhao’s injuries. The room’s tide ebbed—his sister leaving, his brother going to the bathroom and closing the door. Chiboon followed Yukying out, and Tinseng couldn’t pretend like he was asleep anymore: he had been watching Jinzhao’s eyes droop and wanted a moment, just one more, before letting him sleep.
“I won’t bug you for long,” he said as he sat on the bed and took Jinzhao’s hand, “but we never agreed what we should tell them.”
“Tell them everything.”
“Please.”
“Everything. Why else are we here?” Jinzhao’s eyes flickered around the room. Yingtung murmuring into the phone, the supplies Yukying and Cheuk-Kwan left scattered on the bedside table, the pajamas sloping off the bed, back to Tinseng looking at him adoringly. All the evidence of love. Why else were they struggling, his gaze seemed to ask. “Change reality, Tinseng.”
And what was one supposed to say to that? What was there to do, except concede?
“For you?” Tinseng squeezed his hand. “Anything.”
“For all of us.”
“But you first,” Tinseng lobbied.
He had no reason to expect Jinzhao to answer: “I love you.”
“Jinzhao!” he hissed. Tinseng had needed grave peril to say it. How could Jinzhao just say something like that? How could he be this way? But of course, that was why Tinseng loved him. Once the floodgates were opened, it’d be like this forever from Jinzhao.
“I love you,” Jinzhao said, in case it hadn’t been devastating enough the first time, then said, “and it’s for all of us, which you know.”
Christ. Tinseng wanted to swoon, or dance; something absurd and spontaneous. It wasn’t the moment. They’d have others. Right now, he could content himself to squeeze the hand he was holding and promise absolute hell with the twinkle in his eyes. “If you insist on the truth, I’ll do my best. Leave it all to me, okay?”
Jinzhao fell asleep with his hand tightly clutching Tinseng’s. Tinseng was reluctant to let go, even when the food arrived and Yingtung walked over to them with a covered plate for Jinzhao, eyes dropping to their clasped hands. Tinseng and his brother-in-law stared at each other for a moment, all the distrust of decades-long animosity flashing between them. Yingtung proved the bigger man, saying nothing when Tinseng almost certainly would have dug a knife in. All Yingtung suggested was that they all moved to his room, so they wouldn’t wake Jinzhao with their talking. They left the plate and a note for the sleeping man, then piled into the other suite. Yukying and Yingtung sat close together on the couch, while Chiboon and Cheuk-Kwan took the chairs. Tinseng sprawled on the floor, pouring himself a large glass of wine from one of the bottles Yingtung had ordered.
“So, how was your day?” he asked, smirking at their reactions.
“A-Seng,” Yukying admonished.
