There is always something about the sight of Naiyana that makes Lightning want to run away immediately. Lightning, ever so confrontational, does not run away from anything — except, perhaps, for the one he once held the closest to his heart, the one to whom he once shared all his hopes and dreams. And it is perhaps that fact that makes him flee every time. It is that swirling of guilt that begins in his gut and breaks through to his chest — to be faced with Nai is to be faced with all his shortcomings, to be faced with she who had sacrificed everything in order for him to be able to pursue his dream, that dream which he had so recklessly cut short in a fit of short-tempered passion. Nai had given everything for Lightning, and Lightning had so selfishly taken everything she had to give. All for what?
And so Lightning has not seen his sister in two months — has not sent a single text, nor any sort of indication that he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere. It was she who had told him that by instructions of their patriarch and matriarch he was to return either to the land where their blood originated — Bangkok — or that land which they had built their empire — Shanghai — because they could only suffer so much of his antics, because he had crossed the line one too many times and now he was to suffer the consequences of his actions, now he was to be kept on a close leash and reforged to become what he has always been supposed to be. Lightning did not take particularly well to this, and Nai was the mere messenger, but he treated her as though she were the one threatening to take his freedom away. So Lightning had fled the hospital to go god-knows-where in an attempt to hide himself from the reach of his family, nonetheless spending the money that his family had earned all for himself. That was two months ago. Now he has returned to New York, and now, by some sick twist of fate, finds himself before her in some sordid little hole-in-the-wall dumpling place in Chinatown, his head tilting fatefully to the stranger to his side only instead to meet the gaze of his meimei — his little sister, a term that has not touched his lips in many years.
He doesn’t know what to say to her. He never does. The familiar beginnings of discomfort and awkwardness shifts through him: Lightning and Nai, once inseparable siblings, diverged their paths twenty years ago, and despite every beautiful word of promise, their paths were never to converge again. A fault that was entirely his. He considers his options: he could simply turn around and walk away, and how tempting of an option it seemed now. Instead, he utters, not in the language of their homeland, a language that has long been foreign to his tongue, nor the language of the land they both occupied now, but a middle ground, Mandarin: “They have good shengjian bao here.” A pause, and then: “Please don’t make me go home.”
@naiyancs