8 and quo/klue holla
It’s not often that Klue gets to teach anyone. Often he’s the one being taught, patience in short supply from his tutors and his own frustration at himself somewhere between ‘I hate my brain’ and ‘What’s for lunch?’ And often, the things Klue might have to teach are considered superfluous or useless; how to get the right ratio of noodles to broth, the three Iridonian numeral dialects ranging from pre to post colonisation, how to clean a gun without spilling the oil even once. Quo drinks in knowledge like he’ll die if he doesn’t know things. At first, Klue’d thought it was simply avarice. The man likes to own things, likes to give things away. He buys presents for people like it’s going out of style, caught between greed and altruism. He’s wordly, he understands why people hate, what the hate and how to trigger it but he’s just delighted at knowledge, eyes wide and smile wider as he slides the noodles from the pot to the plate. "I never learned to cook," he says, and Klue feels the twinge at the bottom of his chest, gives in to the urge to lean against the older man’s side and steal a forkful of noodles for himself. He gets smacked for his trouble but Quo doesn’t lose that small, slightly wondrous smile at the fact that he’s made something for himself, he’s done it from start to finish on his own and he’ll get to enjoy what he’s made. It’s a innocence Klue had thought long beaten out and later, when he’s writing it down, he makes sure to note that seeing it was a privilege.