Chương 26: Playing it Cool

Mr. Cheng, Sharon the receptionist, and I stood in the sea of glass left by the inhaler-huffing thug who ended up going full Free Willy out the window of Laushu's acupuncture business. The guy did not end up sailing over a twelve year old and then swimming off to freedom. He ended up bellyflopping onto concrete, fully conked out, squishing any living creature beneath him. But, realistically, that should have been the ending of Willy the Whale too.

The behemoth's skin was still tinted indigo, with the matted black hair that now covered his arms. That inhaler really did a number on him. Maybe the asthma kids have been holding out on us this whole time. He'd said something about working for an alchemist– the Alchemist. Some guy who clearly took his DnD character's imaginary potion-making to the next level. Sharon took out a wooden broom and began sweeping up the glass.

"I can help," I offered, eyes searching for another cleaning device, but Mr. Cheng dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"No, Sharon will take care of it. We must finish our tea. We have much to talk about." My face drooped and I stood still for a moment. Something about the way he said it made it sound like this was not just about wanting to quench his thirst. And I clearly couldn't use cleaning up as a distraction. So I turned around, and trudged into the kitchen with him following behind me. The brown, kiln-fired tea set sat on the table completely undisturbed, not a cup tipped over or a spoon out of place.

As if a rhino hadn't just rampaged the room next to it. What a simple life fine china must live.

"You know, Mr. Cheng." I teetered on my sneakers, hands thrust in my pockets.

"It's probably time for me to go home now. It's kind of been a big day what with the hour of hypothermia before and the attack from the big purple dinosaur…" He had been standing still with his arms folded, looking out the now dusky window.

"If you want to be my student, you must always finish the tasks I give you."

"But won't the tea be too cold and too strong? Aren't you all about it being properly made?"

"Yes." His hand smacked loudly on the table.

"So we will start again. You will wash the tea things." I gathered the teapot, strainer, infuser, cups– everything and placed them into the sink. He put a new kettle on the stove as I washed, scrubbed, and rinsed. His eyes stared at the kettle, not looking at me, tapping his foot in an agitated manner. Once the kettle's piercing whistle broke the silence between us, he told me to sit down and the ceremony began again.

I watched his movements more closely this time, the way his hands swiftly flowed between the containers, yet handling them delicately. Almost like a musician's fingers moving over their instrument, and, truthfully, the small clinks of the china as his hands moved did make a kind of song. He used a heaping tablespoon of tea leaves for the infuser and let it steep for three minutes. If this was my last lesson from him, I would learn to do it someday for Gran.

His arm leaned forward and poured the steaming liquid into my cup. As he stood straight to fill his own cup, I raised a hand to stop him.

"Here, let me pour it for you." His black eyes locked on mine, gaze searching before sighing and looking back to his tea set.

"No. You are not ready." I sipped the hot tea with gulps of air, the taste like a May rainfall, but my tongue couldn't appreciate it as last time. My mouth opened once to tell him how impressive his fighting had been, but that would bring up subjects that didn't feel safe to talk about right now. So I just drank in silence. Strangely, he did the same. I must have gotten my drinking form right this time because he didn't correct me about it.

Maybe he'd decided he wouldn't be my teacher anymore and therefore didn't care if I drank my tea right. He wouldn't even look at me, staring at the table with his cup in his hand, drinking loudly with air flowing through his lips. Finally, he sighed.

"Next time, you will be ready to do it yourself." I choked on my tea a bit. After I finished coughing, I asked, "Why?" His eyes finally met mine, a smile touching them.

"Because you have shown that you respect it as a form of art. It requires restraint and delicacy, things you need for everything I will teach you. I did not know until now that you were capable of such things, Miss Keene, most particularly being quiet. But you watched and you learned and, most importantly, you tried to help, even when you were afraid. Keep doing that." There was something in the tone of his voice that made me not want to stare directly into his eyes.

I had the feeling that if I did I would see that he was talking about more than the tea. Still, it was rare that I received a compliment from anyone but Gran. I looked down at my cup.

"Thank you, Laushu." His head tilted.

"Now, if you are going to be my student, you will need a Chinese name." He placed his hands on his knees, eyes looking down, thinking.

"I will call you Ben Niao." I opened my mouth to ask him what that meant, but noise came from the front room just then: the sound of footsteps and Sharon's high-pitched voice calling for Mr. Cheng. He turned, then shook his head, and stood up.

"You, go out the back way." Laushu walked me to the sliding door.

"Why?" I asked, walking through the opening into the chilled evening air.

"So you won't meet the people out front." He shut the door in my face. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. —--- The next day at school, I had questions. Not the kind like "What are we learning today?" or "Why was Ben Topher's finger always up his nose?" I already knew the answer to that. He had terrible taste in food. No, today's mission was to find out more about the Alchemist and those elusive White Dragons that Mr. Cheng mentioned.

If you put me on a gameshow to answer questions about superheroes, I'd only win five bucks. If you made it about villains, I'd owe the show money. Lacking a phone or a computer, I had to utilize an ancient method humans hadn't used for about a hundred years or so: Talking to people. Unsurprisingly, it didn't yield good results.

"Hey, do you know anything about the White Dragons?" I whispered to Annalise Whitmore during chemistry.

"Why? So you can try to join them?" She snorted then went back to writing on her paper.

"So, what do you think about the Alchemist?" I asked a group of freshmen standing near their lockers.

"Are you trying to recruit us or something? Or are you a narc? Go away." How do you do, fellow kids, indeed. Finally, Orion's tutoring session came round, so I clutched onto that. We were back in his abandoned classroom. To think this place used to look like a science fair was currently going on with each table loaded with tube-covered robots and machines that looked like they belonged in outer space. Now every surface was completely bare with only a fine layer of dust on top of it.

I had a feeling even the drone wasn't in the cabinet anymore. I still hadn't told him what happened to the weapons and I wasn't going to. No need for one more person to look down on me. Orion sat at one of the tables, head bowed over his latest writing assignment. It was for the Crucible and once I went over the main themes of mob persecution versus individual truth, he got really into it.

"I get it! I completely understand John Proctor's perspective." His eyes take on this slightly manic sheen to them as he explains.

"He has the whole town coming for him, he's given the choice to live as long as he tells a lie, and he sticks to what's right instead. Because he knows after they hang him, he'll be laughing at them from heaven while they burn in hell." His pencil scratched away at the paper in silence. I fiddled with the zipper on my jacket. All of my previous attempts to ask people about the White Dragons had gone wrong.

Apparently, asking direct questions to another human being was a no-go, unless it was for directions or asking how they are when they can only answer back with 'fine'. So we were going to try the subtle way.

"Did you see that new commercial with Water Woman in it? Where she talks about the purity of mountain springs and then liquefies herself into a plastic bottle?" He looked up, his face scrunching from the interruption.

"Yes. Can you stop making that noise with your zipper? It's distracting." My hand stopped moving. I'd forgotten I was doing that.

"It just made me think about how much money super heroes make, so why would anyone choose to be a villain?" My fingers began tapping on the table. He shrugged.

"They don't have to be in it for the money, they're most likely in it for the pain they can cause. Same with serial killers. I've studied them a lot."

"Serial killers or villains?" I asked.

"They're often both."

"That's cool." I leaned back in my chair, playing it smooth.

"Villains are interesting. Is there anything else you noticed when studying them?" He raised an eyebrow at me.

"You're being weird. What do you want?"

"I don't want anything." I raised my hands up.

"Who says I want something?"

"I may not be a people person myself, but you have the social skills of an angry cat. When you want something you either jump right to the point or circle around it endlessly." My feet continued to teeter the chair back and forth while I divulged.

"I was just wondering if you knew anything about the White Dragons. I asked a few kids at school, but I'm kind of a social leper. I can't ask Mavis about it and even the freshmen don't want to talk to me. Nobody likes the zero." Orion grimaced and shook his head.

"Don't be stupid, I like you." My chair suddenly had a fight with gravity and lost. I tipped too far back and fell right on the floor. From my new home on the ground, I glanced up to see Orion looking at me with a raised eyebrow. My feet scrambled to stand up, I put the chair back in its proper place, and sat down.

"So about the White Dragons, what did you know about them?" I asked non-chalantly, as if none of the last thirty-seconds just happened. He smiled slightly, then scratched his chin in thought.

"Well, they are one of the oldest villain-led gangs in the city. Their leader is called The Silver Fist. He's powerful, but likes to operate under the radar, and makes sure his henchmen and minions do the same." Something about my blank stare made him pause.

"You know what a henchman is, right?" He asked, eyebrows knit together. I leaned back again, this time keeping my hand securely on the table.

"Psshh yeah, of course I do. They're the underlings of supervillains that strangely prefer job titles we haven't used since the sixteen-hundreds..." Orion ran his hand over his face in frustration.

"Yes, henchmen work for villains, but they have powers and are more like lieutenants. The White Dragons are pretty big. The Silver Fist probably has a couple dozen henchmen working under him."

"And even more minions under the henchmen?"

"Exactly, except they don't have any powers. So it's like a whole corporation of people united in infamy and yet able to keep everything a secret." This part never made sense to me. My chair slammed down on the floor.

"But it's clearly not a secret since everybody knows about them. I'm sure the police and superheroes know where they are, so why don't they just take them out?" He scoffed, shaking his head.

"The same laws that protect heroes also do the same for the bad guys. The villain under the cowl is legally separate from his secret identity. They have to be caught either in the act or in costume." My lips frowned and my eyebrows sunk together. It was hardly surprising, but it felt like one more thing to add to my list of Reasons To Never Trust The System.

"Oh, one more thing." I put my hand underneath my chin, sitting forward.

"What do you know about the Alchemist?" His pencil kept moving, eyes staying on his paper. After a moment, he shrugged.

"I don't know anything about him, actually." I lifted up a hand of astonishment.

"You've studied all of these bad guys, serial killers and villains alike, but not the one that's the rising star on the cell block right now?" He shook his head.

"Just doesn't interest me." A loud scraping sound scratched through the air as his chair dragged backwards, and he began shoving his papers and books into his backpack.

"I'll finish this at home, thanks for your time." He walked out without meeting my eyes. —--- My feet dragged to Mr. Cheng's Best Acupuncture slowly, kicking out half-heartedly at passing empty soda cans and bits of garbage on the way. There was a party going on in one of the nearby buildings with loud music spilling out the windows. Everywhere I looked there were friends hanging out or couples holding hands, even neighbors making catty comments about the other's apartment.

And here I was, walking alone like I always did. After the last bell rang, I'd slipped into the library at school to use a computer there. There were a surprising amount of fan websites for super villains, so it was not hard to find what I was looking for. Turned out The Alchemist was a D-rank villain, making a name for himself in our very own Chicago with drugs and enhancing supplements. He was growing in popularity, but obviously nowhere near the A-listers.

Orion's face had gone so tight when his name was mentioned and he'd abruptly left the room soon after. Whatever it was, he clearly wasn't going to talk about it with me. But who could blame him? You'd get better responses from a tree than me for your emotional problems. I finally arrived at Mr. Cheng's red building and shuffled to the back like usual. When I slid the door open to the garden, two people were waiting for me.

"Cass," Laushu greeted me with a smile.

"Come meet your brother."