"Now that you've taken the prescribed aspirin, I suggest you rest on the bed for a while."
Somsri—the medical-assist android—spoke as her visual sensors clicked softly, tracking the boy's movements for a moment before returning to baseline. She turned and walked to her designated station along the wall beside Nyla's bed. Her posture shifted smoothly, lowering into a stable, low center-of-gravity stance. The lights along her front chassis and eyes dimmed gradually as she entered standby, though her attention remained loosely fixed on Kaodin.
The room fell quiet.
After taking the medicine, Kaodin pounced up to sit at the bouncy edge of the mattress by the footboard-side of the bed, legs dangling as he swung them back and forth a few times against the soft frame.
A moment earlier, while showering, he could hear the others speaking normally—though not in detail—but then, suddenly, it was as if he had heard a sharp scream from outside. It was brief, faint, and he couldn't be certain he hadn't imagined it.
When he stepped out of the bath, Yuri and Dr. Mintra were already by the door. Their faces looked tense—or maybe he only thought they did. Alert. Focused. Still, this was the medical bay. Someone else could have been injured and required an immediate emergency assist. Or maybe it was nothing at all—just his imagination catching on shadows.
He hesitated, then dismissed it. Perhaps it was always like this here. Perhaps this was simply how the world carried itself now—tightened at the seams—standing in a different time than his own.
He exhaled.
Too quiet.
Kaodin wasn't sleepy.
He planted his palms against the edge of the bed and leaned back, staring ahead without fixing on anything. His breathing stayed deep—too deep to be resting—but somewhere between one inhale and the next, his arms loosened. His shoulders hunched forward again—not by decision, but as if his body were leaning toward something it had been waiting for.
Seeing Yuri—seeing any of them—had unsettled something. Not their faces. Faces were easy to forget. Even Arika and Hanxiao, striking as they were, didn't sit at the center of it. What stirred in him wasn't an image so much as a weight: voices overlapping too loudly, the presence of men who filled space without asking, correction and laughter tangled together. A familiar pressure, recognized without needing to be named.
His eyes closed on their own as he inhaled.
The room thinned.
His breath kept its rhythm—steady, contained—but the space around it began to ease. Not falling away, no longer pressing. Sounds dulled at their edges. Time stopped insisting on direction and settled into a quiet drift.
Without realizing when it started, the emptiness never fully formed. Something else took its place—sound arriving before shape, the nostalgic noise of a familiar surrounding before the place itself could reform. Intense heat was felt first, before the image of an old rice cooker in the middle of its cooking cycle surfaced in his mind.
Voices overlapped—the cheer of fireworks and laughter, braided with another current he didn't want to recall. Beneath the joy ran a sense of negligence, the kind that lingered too long and gave rise to a tormenting memory.
An image surfaced—raw meat scraped against concrete.
Was I dropped the meat? Just pork from the market Mom asked me to buy not long ago?
No… that day, I was at the temple festival… was it Loy Krathong? Or just another random festival?... and where is Sansab…, I need to find Singh bro, it was almost time to go up the stage already and why was I left alone…
The clatter of life refused to stay ordered. Warmth rode in the air, heavy with oil and smoke.
That was the tent near the kitchen station for performers, the organizer normally prepared for us…then perhaps….the smell of the cigarette…Singh bro must be nearby, I should go find him to ask for Sansab before the organizer announce us on the stage then.
It wasn't calm. But he could feel it, what he had been yearning for was there.
He didn't turn away. He stayed with it, let it press in. The noise filled the space the stillness should have taken, and his breathing followed, uncorrected.
The pull didn't carry him far. It didn't have to, but only to the nearest place that held the same weight—the closest his memory could offer...for now...
The first night at SAI—the closest resemblance—carried there the way water carries a leaf, and nothing in him resisted it.
A narrow street hidden in a back alley of the slum sector, tucked behind the towering spires of upper-downtown SAI. Metal walkways stacked overhead, bolted together to link one building to the next, sparing those above from ever needing to pass through the damp, crowded ground below. Their undersides were webbed with cables, some hanging just low enough to brush the path. Neon signs leaned at tired angles, half-dead, bleeding uneven green and amber light onto wet pavement scarred by old stains and layered repairs.
It wasn't clean. It wasn't orderly.
But people moved through it with a practiced ease—work-worn, voices rough, still pressing forward with something unspoken intact. Plates clinked. Laughter cut and overlapped. Life carried on without ceremony.
Imperfect.
But real.
And beneath it all—the noise of friends and families talking, threaded through the upbeat tunes spilling from the DJ at the street-stall bar.
An upbeat, energetic, and powerful tunes rammed through the night.
Precisely orchestrated through Manoch's intricate skill, he masterfully utilized melodies drawn from more than two different sets of records, switching back and forth on his left turntable to create high-pitched, otherworldly synthesized melodic lines woven into the tracks. And because he could craft enjoyable remix versions while still preserving the originals' signature tones, he single-handedly gave the town—supposedly the most depressive part of the city—a rare sense of pride, and a chance to dream.
According to Yuri's conversations with Albert, these psychedelic-trance remixes of legendary heavy metal tracks and prewar classic rock masterpieces could only be heard here—at this no-name spicy barbecue skewer DJ bar. It was the kind of music routinely rejected and openly insulted by civilians from the upper-class residential sectors.
Unlike the secluded façade of CSDS—living and operating mostly within the luxury of vault automation, controlled by layers of programs regulating other programs. Too safe. Too organized. Too secretive. Or the highly militarized SAI—greater-downtown community that overtly showcased majestic grandeur, where upper-class citizens were more-often-than-not profoundly ignorant. That was what he disliked about Bangkok.
"Kaodin, have you tried this skewered meat? Don't be shy. I know you're hungry—we all heard your stomach growling, so eat up."
Arika, seated at the center, smiled as she picked up one of the shop's signature spicy meat skewers by the tip of its chromium–aluminum alloy stick, lifting it from the sizzling plate before placing it onto the flat aluminum plate in front of Kaodin.
"And don't forget to blow before you eat," Hanxiao added with a smile from across the table. "Or you'll burn your tongue."
Kaodin quickly picked up the heat-steaming skewer, its surface completely coated in red chili powder. Kaodin, mouth-watering, was about to blow on the meat to cool it down when he suddenly remembered something he was often scolded for by his mother.
He immediately set the skewer back onto his plate and performed a Wai—palms pressed together, fingers pointed upward, facing Arika.
"Thank you, Arika sis," he said.
Then he turned back to the skewer, lifting it again. His face flushed almost instantly, heat blooming across his cheeks as sweat broke out along his temples—yet he still insisted on biting into the piping-hot, spice-laden meat with quiet determination.
Unbeknown to the boy, that single gesture froze the entire table.
He blew gently on the skewer and began taking quick bites, working his way down piece by piece.
"Umm—this spice… it's so good," Kaodin blurted out after the first bite, already breathing harder, his face drenched, turning beet red and burning hot—but clearly unable to stop.
Arika and Han Xiao just chuckled softly.
"Yeah, kid. DJ Manoch says he uses a secret blend from the prewar days," Yuri said with a faint smile.
The gesture didn't go unnoticed.
Everyone at the table recognized it—everyone except Albert, who was still half-lost in the music, head bobbing to the pounding rhythm, his attention split between the DJ booth and the girls seated behind him.
Yuri caught it instantly.
Not the Wai itself—but the way a few nearby patrons had seen it. The brief hesitation. The eyes that lingered a moment too long before turning away.
His instincts kicked in. This was the kind of attention that could spiral in a place like this.
That gesture wasn't something people learned anymore. Not openly. Not for generations.
It had once been authentic to this region—before the fall of the nation, before the world fractured and customs like that were buried, dismissed as obsolete, impractical, quietly forgotten.
And yet—
Yuri's gaze flicked briefly to Kaodin. Then to Arika. Then Hanxiao.
Nothing was said, but the thought passed cleanly between them.
Someone had taught him.
Not a system. Not a program.
May be an elder.
Someone inside CSDS—someone shaped by old habits—was still alive.
Yuri shifted in his seat, subtle, already adjusting the flow of the night, already mapping how to pull the focus away from the boy before curiosity set and questions followed.
Albert moved.
Too fast.
He lurched to his feet, nearly clipping one of the bar's two-legged service androids as it glided past with trays balanced in both hands, auxiliary limbs flicking into fine corrections mid-stride to keep the load steady.
He froze when he realized he hadn't hit it—his sword still secured across his back—then laughed it off and turned toward the small podium where the DJ was deep in his craft.
"Hey, Manoch!" Albert called, pushing closer through the noise.
The man's eyes snapped up. He pulled one side of his over-ear headphones back just enough to hear, his other hand still riding the mixer, nudging a knob as a synthesized high note cut cleanly into the end of the chorus.
"Sup, Albert?", while his left hand still slightly tilting the knob on the mixer, causing the synthesized high pitch at a precisely ending the chorus part of the song.
"The electric guitar," Albert said, leaning in. "The riff, sounds very familiar. I swear I've heard it before."
Manoch's thick brows rose. His already wide eyes widened further as he grinned.
"Then enjoy the song while it lasts, kid."
Albert blinked, momentarily dumbfounded. He shrugged it off a second later and went right back to headbanging to the tune.
Ken noticed that Kaodin had just finished his skewer and was now looking curiously toward Albert, who was still talking with the DJ. He leaned slightly toward the boy.
"Kaodin, you should try calling him 'aniki'," he said quietly. "Aniki means senior brother in the old-world speech, before things broke."
Kaodin smirked. "Ken bro, what about you?"
Ken slapped his forehead unapologetically, sending the others into immediate laughter.
"Come on, kid. Albert's family held onto one of the old tongues," Ken said, waving a hand. "Passed it down for generations—with a bit of genetic weirdness mixed in. One of his ancestors might've been from the far west, but his parents weren't. His father even taught him the old speech, back when it still mattered."
He tilted his head toward Albert. "Sure, he's blond with light eyes, but if you actually look—there's still something there. In the face. In the eyes."
Ken turned to look at each person at the table, his eyelids lowering as if searching for support. The response was blank stares all around, uncertainty written plainly across their faces—no one quite sure what he was trying to prove.
"Ken, if you ask the boy to call you aniki, I'm sure he'll do it," Hanxiao cut in, the corner of her mouth lifting as she glanced between them, amused.
Ken gave a small shrug, one shoulder rising higher than the other. "I don't know who my parents were," he said, voice even. "Someone brought me to SAI. That's all." His gaze drifted briefly toward the DJ booth. "But Albert—his father even taught him the old tongue, you know, right before—"
Yuri cleared his throat.
Ken stopped mid-sentence, lips pressing together as he leaned back in his chair, the moment quietly sealed.
Yuri's attention shifted—not abruptly, but with intent.
"Kaodin," he said, "your fighting. Who taught you?"
Kaodin looked up. "My father."
Yuri nodded once. "So anyone your father taught could do what you did?"
"Yes," Kaodin said. Then, after a brief pause, added, "He taught anyone who wanted to learn."
Yuri's gaze stayed on him.
"And for free?"
Kaodin shook his head. "Not for free. But if someone was desperate, Pop would give them work instead."
Yuri leaned back slightly. Not smiling. Not frowning. Just listening.
"I would've liked to meet your father," he said at last, his eyes still on the boy, who was happily working his way through the skewer.
Kaodin swallowed the mouthful before answering. His voice came quieter, his gaze drifting down.
"I wanted to meet him too."
Yuri didn't follow up. He didn't need to. The absence in that answer was clear enough.
"Kaodin, you can call me Hanxiao Jie," Hanxiao said, gently steering the moment away from its weight. She turned fully toward him, her smile soft but expectant, eyes lingering just long enough to show she cared how he answered.
Kaodin met her eyes. "Hanxiao Jie."
Han Xiao face brightened immediately. She leaned toward him, both arms extended as if to pull the boy into a hug, "Oh boy, you are too adorable."
Then his gaze drifted to the next skewer on the plate—this one covered with a lighter red spice than the last, the texture also wasn't dried powder flake, but chili paste. He glanced toward Arika, hesitating, as if asking for permission. Arika caught it immediately and answered with a small nod and a faint grin.
Yuri chuckled. "Kaodin," he asked, shifting slightly in his seat, his tone casual but attentive, "what happened to Wawa? I saw you leave him with Nyla."
"He was very exhausted," Kaodin replied, lowering his voice. "That was the first time I tried doing something like that too…."
Yuri nodded once, slow and measured, as the music rolled on around them.
Suddenly, a matte-black android slid in fast—white, hand-marked letters reading 'Double O' stamped on the left side of its chest. Its wheels hummed as it cut in behind Kaodin's table, slipped past Albert just as he was turning back, and came to a precise halt before the DJ booth, alert and waiting.
"Boss. Extended-duty stimulant overdose detected among guests. Emergency protocol: active," the android reported.
"The store's Automated External Defibrillator is non-operational. Mainframe circuit failure confirmed. Cause: repeated excessive usage. Emergency repair unavailable."
DJ Manoch slid the master volume knob down with practiced precision—just enough to avoid bruising the beat—then leaned toward the mic and shouted, "Have you asked the Three Six at the BBQ station yet? One of the small 'Six' units likes to juice itself up."
From the grill corner came a confused chorus of electronic protest.
Beep. Beep-beep.
"What, EDS overdosed again?" Albert aniki sounded different now—louder, slower—and he was already halfway out of his seat, like he meant to go handle it himself. Yuri caught him by the arm and pulled him back before he could get any farther.
Kaodin watched it happen, unsurprised. It was the kind of urgency adults slipped into after too much to drink—earnest, slightly off-tempo, convinced it was still a good idea.
"Hanxiao, Ken—go check. Contact central and request a medic while you're at it," Arika ordered, even before DJ Manoch could lift a hand to say anything. He let the track run. He knew them all too well to bother asking.
He only offered a brief, grateful look as his gaze met Yuri's. Yuri answered with a slight bow and an easy smile, like this was already handled.
"Yes, Ma'am," the two replied in unison, then slipped away, disappearing into the narrowing corner of the shop where a cluster of bystanders had begun to gather around the overdosed guest.
The melody had changed without him noticing—once, then again—until the sound drifting through the night grew gloomy and melancholic, nothing like the upbeat music that the night had started with.