K woke up in bed.

  It was a relief on his back, which ached horribly. He wasn’t too perturbed by the location. In fact, it was familiar.

  From the concrete walls to the thin curtains that separated his bed from the handful of others in the room. This was one of the Triads’ safehouses. Filled with black-market medicine and handsomely paid doctors.

  This was his private hospital room. Only the doctors that Banzai had personally screened could treat him. Anybody that could tamper with the Phantom’s ailing body was a danger to the Triads.

  There were still some of his personal items here, stashed away for longer bedrests. Volumes of traditional poetry. A collection of short stories. An unfinished wood carving project.

  A box of pistols. Five daggers. Records of every mission he’d ever completed.

  Somewhere, he could hear a mouse shuffling.

  K drew the sheets from his body—

  Only to feel an awful, searing pain in his lower abdomen.

  A hand landed heavily on his torso, almost out of nowhere. “Don’t move too much. Any deeper, and that knife would have punctured your abdominal aorta.”

  K blinked. “Master Banzai.”

  Indeed, the man was there by his bedside. He sat in a wooden chair, laying his legs on K’s mattress.

  He had that admonishing look in his eye, the crinkle in his brow making the thick scar across his head waver. Still, he continued to smile.

  “Kizuna.” Banzai sighed loudly. He picked at his teeth with a fingernail. “You have deeply disappointed me.”

  “Master—”

  “Pachinko already told me everything.”

  K jolted and stared, mute.

  “You were planning to lie to me?” Banzai shook his head. His smile turned rueful. “I must have done something wrong while raising you, Kizuna. I never thought you could be so manipulative.”

  K chewed on his tongue. “I only wanted the best for the Triads, sir. I thought that—”

  A slap ravaged his face.

  “You thought wrong.” Banzai grinned until pink gums were visible beneath his lips. “The death of one of Tianxia’s elite. The Langs’ darling public representative. A fire on the newspaper’s front page, for Xian’s sake—”

  K shrunk into himself. He burned with shame.

  “The Guos are upset. They don’t want this affair getting tied up with them.”

  “I…” K swallowed his words. He knew how much Banzai hated apologies, but this was all he could manage to say at the face of all his failures. “I am sorry, Master.”

  Banzai sighed, running a hand through his hair. He moved in a brash manner, almost taking out his own hair strands as he drew his hand away. “I want to be clear on one thing: I don’t need the Golden Phantom anymore. It is the combined forces of the troupe that I am looking for.”

  The hand in Banzai’s hair moved to twist at the skin of K’s exposed arm, pinching him horribly. He flinched and held back a cry as Banzai continued, “If you don’t complete this mission, you’re useless to me, Kizuna.”

  K didn’t understand before. But after tonight; the reasoning was far too clear.

  Pachi had been telling him the truth— Chin Hae knew of the Golden Phantom, and he’d prepared in advance.

  They even knew his greatest weakness: a penchant for pity.

  The stab wound he sported will be his penance. Banzai knew this as well, and offered him the softest of his punishments.

  K hated them. They were not the needlessly cruel, explosive sort. The type that Master Banzai delivered upon any of his other men. Missing fingers, lashes on the back, ears sliced open.

  No, K got soft punishments. His hair twisted and tugged at. A pinch at his ears. Slaps against his cheeks.

  Too rough to be kind, and yet too gentle to be coming from the Triads’ Master.

  ‘Hands off.’

  A snake zipped from behind K’s shoulder, sinking its fangs into Banzai’s hand.

  “Hun!” K admonished in terror. As K turned to look at his Beast, he noticed Chin Hae’s ticket peeking out from the sheets.

  Banzai looked at the Beast with interest, gently prying Hun from his hand. “I see that Pachinko has completed one of his tasks.”

  K’s voice was faint. “His… tasks?”

  “He can tell you everything himself.” Banzai stood up, leaving K alone in the room. “I expect you to fix this, Kizuna.”

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  As the door was drawn open, a new figure stepped in— Pachinko, who smiled up at the Master as he entered. Banzai patted the boy’s shoulder as he went.

  K bristled.

  ‘There he is,’ Hun whispered in awe. The tone made something heavy drop in K’s stomach. ‘Why did he give me these abilities?’

  Pachi went over to K’s bedside with a massive bouquet of marigolds. “The troupe and I chipped in to get you a lil’ something to brighten up the room. Mr. Yoon sends his regards as well.”

  K took the bouquet and cradled it in his arms. Their scent was not flattering— musky and only halfway alluring. Still, he appreciated the smell of something other than antiseptic.

  ‘Who are you?’ Hun slithered closer, sliding up Pachi’s arm. ‘You… feel so familiar to me.’

  The Beast and Pachi stared at each other for a long time.

  The other boy beamed, “You must be Hun. It’s wonderful to finally meet you, face to face.”

  K breathed pitifully. “What happened to me?”

  Pachi smiled, sitting down on the mattress and not the chair. Hun came to rest on his shoulders. “Once the fire started, we decided to bust down the door. We split up to look for you— only for you to careen into Wen… on your Beast’s back.”

  K grinned under the gauze of his face. He would have paid good money to see Wen’s reaction.

  “You’re smiling,” Pachi noted with a crinkle in his eye. K instantly let it drop. “You know… I’m beginning to get a good read on you, Kizuna.”

  The globes of K’s eyes shifted to stare down Pachi’s. “What do you see?”

  “I see what you see. You see the error in your own ways, and you carry no pride— at least when Banzai’s involved.”

  “Watch it.” K hissed. “Don’t drop honorifics when addressing him.”

  “See?” Pachi laughed. “Anyway, I assume that you’ll actually try to train with our troupe this time around.”

  K nodded stiffly.

  “You’re not who I pictured, you know.” Pachi smiled kindly. He plucked one of the marigold petals from the bouquet, twisting it idly between his fingers. “I always imagined the Golden Phantom to be cruel.”

  K’s laughter tittered between them. “You have a warped understanding of kindness if you think I’ve been nothing but cruel to our troupe.”

  “You wanted to keep them safe,” Pachi held up the petal in his hand, aligning it with K’s eye. He was comparing the hues.

  “Who cares what I want?” K didn’t want to answer at first, but decided to give in. “At the end of the day, it is your actions that matter. Nobody gives a damn about what’s going on inside my head or why I did it.”

  K breathed deeply. “And I have done wrong. I drove fear into the troupe. They hate me. I have failed our Master.”

  Pachi blinked owlishly, before flicking the petal into K’s face.

  He swatted it away, hissing. “Hey! You—”

  “What a surprisingly juvenile way of thinking.” Pachi snickered.

  “You’re a child too, you know.” K spat bitterly.

  “I think I understand what you mean, though. You see people through their actions— and so far, most actions have shown you the worst sides of humanity. You see people at their worst.”

  K was almost defensive, “Is that wrong?”

  “No, in fact I do the same.” Pachi took another petal and tossed it straight into K’s eye. This time, the latter caught it and threw it at Pachi’s chest. “But that’s why you choose to control others through fear. You don’t want to connect to people that do nothing but wrong in your eyes.”

  “I take it you have a different outlook.”

  “That’s right. I believe in love.”

  K rolled his eyes so far into his skull, he thought they would disappear.

  “You’ll be surprised.” Pachi smiled, blindingly. “Showing just a bit of empathy, having a gentle hand… it will turn even the worst people into loyal pups.”

  “You’re saying I should be nicer to the rest of the troupe, then?”

  “Being kind is different from nice,” Pachi moved away. “And, well… it worked for you, didn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “All I had to do was listen with an empathetic ear,” Pachi winked, “And you felt more alive than you had in years.”

  K’s eyes widened.

  The restaurant.

  That waiter who ended up seeing right through K. Who managed to understand him in such a deep way—

  And now, he could see how Pachi had wormed his way into Master Banzai’s favor. Into Hun’s interest.

  While K was being tossed away, forgotten; his use slowly getting consumed by this boy—

  “Form a Pact with him,” Hun said from Pachi's shoulder.

  The suggestion was a smart one. This would tether their Cores. Make it so that K’s death irrevocably affected Pachi’s Core as well. If they had a Pact between them, Pachi could never form a Pact with anyone else ever again. The same goes for K.

  They’d rely on the other… and therefore, K cannot be tossed away.

  K raised his head slowly.

  Pachi smiled.

  "You formed a Pact with me," K announced.

  'What?’

  That’s why K had felt so sick. Why Hun suddenly gained a physical form. It wasn’t just because of Pachi’s Figure Eight—

  Pachi laughed, fond if not for the way his lips sneered.

  There was something from Pachi’s Core that fundamentally changed the Beast.

  K never once tried to form a Pact with anyone, not even with Sunren. Was this normal?

  It had to have been expected, at least, because Banzai was already aware of it. But then that also meant that not even a Pact could solidify K’s place in the Triads, not anymore.

  K was blank and ashen as Pachi finally clarified, “We’ve had a Pact ever since we first sparred. When you passed out from tapping into the Beast’s Blessing, I formed one.”

  Trembling minutely, K asked, “Why did you do it?”

  “For the same reasons you just discovered,” the gleam in Pachi’s eyes darkened. “I did it to gain control of my position.”

  In awe, Hun whispered, ‘What have you done?’

  Pachi turned to Hun. He had heard him.

  But the boy just shrugged, and left the room. K watched helplessly as Hun remained on Pachi’s shoulder.

  The Beast happily left alongside him— and loneliness gagged at K’s throat.

  Still, K was victorious with one thing:

  With a sigh, he slipped his hand out of the blankets.

  In his palm was the bone flute, which he had snatched out of Pachi’s coat.