At the train station, Yuen wasn’t as snappy with Iahn as usual.

 

An uncomfortable switch in the kid had been flipped as soon as they left Gill’s house. Iahn returned to the silent, skittish preteen that Yuen was familiar with and had only ever seen until today, but at least the suffocating atmosphere of despair that permeated around him as of late had lightened until he could almost convince himself that he had been imagining it.

 

It was quiet on the ride home. They didn’t talk to each other, and Yuen glanced over to watch Iahn stare out the window as if he’d just been drafted. Iahn didn’t notice his gaze, or if he did, he didn’t care, and Yuen wasn’t so polite as to stop staring at him because he was trying to figure out which one was real. This quiet kid or the ball of enthusiasm that spent all afternoon running around the yard with his friends. He could have just been excited to see them, and Yuen had never seen him excited about something before this trip, but Yuen had a sinking feeling he knew exactly which one was his normal self.

 

He watched him right up until the kid fell asleep with his forehead squished against the glass, with nothing but a mop of soft black hair to cushion against the cold pane.

 

Yuen shifted, intending to get some sleep himself and think about this later when he had more time, but something crinkled in his pocket as he got comfortable, and he remembered the envelope.

 

He pulled it out, finally getting a chance to open it. He hadn’t noticed before, but it was addressed to, ‘Iahn’s brother’ aka, him.

 

All that was in the dark brown envelope was a piece of paper and a small stack of pictures.

 

He didn’t know what he was expecting or if he had any expectations at all, but nevertheless, his eyebrow rose, pulling his pensive look into something more quizzical before he tipped the package and dumped the contents into his open hand.

 

The pictures caught his eye first. The first one was a toddler — who bore resemblance to the 13-year-old next to him — with large curious eyes, standing in a fish tunnel that you often see at aquariums and stupidly large theme parks, suckling on a deep blue binky that covered his entire mouth and nearly touched his nose. A tiny hand pressed to the glass as a means to stand on his own, his reflection on the glass unseen by the boy in the picture and blue light casting over chubby, round little cheeks making the already soft-looking child look even more like a little marshmallow. He stared through the glass, with curiosity (the way most kids did with animals) at an octopus on the glass that had a single tentacle pressed against the other side, right where tiny Iahn’s hand was. His gaze was almost communicative as if he understood the many-limbed creature.

 

There was something wondrous about the photo. Whoever took it was skilled.

 

“Or got lucky,” Yuen added as an afterthought.

 

The corner of his lip slowly rose as he looked over the photo. He was a cute kid. It reminded him of his own baby pictures.

 

The next photo was of Iahn and his grandfather, and a man Yuen’s never seen before.

 

A tiny toddler Iahn was clinging to the man’s leg, looking up with an illegally cute grin and something that Yuen dearly hoped was chocolate all around his lips; although it looked suspiciously like mud, the other two were smiling down at the boy, and Iahn was reaching up towards his grandpa, offering the brown thing, so it was unlikely that the child had eaten mud.

 

Yuen had no idea who the man was. He didn’t think Iahn had any uncles, but his mother must have had a good boyfriend at some point. It’s the law of large numbers. He guessed this person was one of them and the man just realized that she was nothing but trouble and got out (good for him). That is...until he turned the photo over and read the names on the back.

 

Ryan, Iahn, Gill - Iahn’s first chocolate strawberry.

 

Yuen felt the sour twist of shame.

 

He had forgotten that the kid had a father when he was this young. For some reason, he had just assumed that he passed away before Iahn was born. He doesn’t remember Gill mentioning when exactly the man died, he just knew that it was early in Iahn’s life.

 

Yuen placed the photograph back into the pouch with extra care and held the packet a little closer to himself, protected by his jacket. He didn’t know if this was the only picture Iahn had with his dad and he didn’t want to risk damaging it.

 

The next photo was of Iahn as a younger kid, maybe 7 or 8? He was painting on the wall in a spot that Yuen recognized from the house. He looked at the photo more carefully and what the little guy was painting in the photo is actually still there. Yuen saw it only a few hours ago.

 

The back was titled ‘Little Painter paints the pain away’ but nothing else.

 

Yuen wracked his brain for several minutes trying to figure out what that could possibly mean, but he had no way of knowing, so eventually he moved on, resolving to ask Gill about it the next time he sees him.

 

The next picture was old. Very old.

 

It was two surfers standing side by side at the beach laughing at each other, and Yuen had to read the back to realize it was Gill and his brother.

 

They looked so much different from each other, you wouldn't even guess they were brothers, but Yuen pointedly noticed that both of them had all of their toes in this picture, so it was before the .45 incident then. Maybe… the sea lion story?

 

That considerably lightened his mood and put it back on a lighter track than it had been steering towards.

 

The next picture Yuen recognized right away. It was actually an image he already had in his head but from a slightly different angle than he had imagined.

 

A tiny child in atrociously pink & glittery stilettos, on top of the kitchen counter pulling half a jar of cookies off the top shelf, looking like the most triumphant toddler in history, who was also about to drop his reward down his back and fall backward off the high counter.

 

In the corner of the photo, he could barely see a sliver of Gill, standing nearby looking like he had decided not to ruin the toddler's “secret” mission, but ready to jump forward and catch the kid if needed.

 

The next picture was a more recent one by the looks of it. Iahn couldn’t be much younger than he is now, and it was with his grandpa in the backyard that Yuen spent almost all day staring at today.

 

In the photo, Iahn was in the treehouse and his grandpa was below it, passing him tools. Art tools. Both of them were covered in paint, but Iahn was by far the worst.

 

The wood of the treehouse looked fresh, and Yuen realized — recalling a story Gill told him about building the treehouse. They built that treehouse together and painted it by hand. This picture had the slightest bit of someone's thumb in the bottom corner of the frame, and it wasn’t as centered as the others like it wasn't taken by the same person who had taken the other ones.

 

Before today, Yuen barely knew Iahn could paint, much less how much of an artist he is. Yuen's never seen him painting or drawing anything. Thinking back now, he might have seen evidence of it in Iahn’s room from time to time, but it was just like pencils. He hadn’t seen anything else — nothing like paints or anything even close to that artsy and elaborate.

 

The final photo was of that man Yuen now guessed was Iahn’s father, standing with three other men Yuen didn’t recognize.

 

He turned the photo over and all it said was, ‘First comes foes, next comes bros.’ ‘<- that’s lame hahaha,’ ‘shut up, you little shit. Stop writing on my photos, Abe.’ ‘You write on them.’ ‘They’re my photos! And it’s informational.’

 

Yuen chuckled under his breath. He assumes the argument was moved to a verbal one after that because it was the only one like this.

 

Looking at these pictures, Yuen noticed two distinct things: There was only one that Iahn wasn’t in, and his mother was not in a single one. Not even mentioned on the back.

 

At first, he thought she might be the one taking the photos but after remembering who the hell he was talking about and staring at the photos for a minute, he quickly stomped the thought. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway because a moment later he noticed a reflection in the aquarium one. There was a second person’s reflection that was sort of hidden because of the toddler’s reflection, but it was an older woman with dark grey hair, smiling behind the camera.

 

Iahn’s...grandmother?

 

Yuen doesn't know anything about Iahn’s grandmother. She wasn't at the house, and neither Iahn nor Gill ever mentioned her. He...could guess where she was, especially considering that Gill said “at his age, the list of folk you know from the good ole days, is a short one.”

 

Annnnd he was back to the depressing thoughts. Wonderful.

Yuen shook his head, pinching his eyes with his fingers for a moment before putting the photos back and moving on to the other object that was in the envelope. The paper was pretty old but it was important enough to warrant laminating.

 

Yuen read the short paragraph written in loopy but beautiful handwriting that looked like something out of a fairytale on the front, ‘You may not share blood, but he’s your big brother, my dear. Don’t let guilt poison you, he’s not mad at you. Just apologize for hurting him and be there for him, that’s all you have to do. This will go a long way to soothing Mr. Stubborn’s toe, chocolate always helps pain ;).’

 

He raised an eyebrow again, not just because of the terrible pun, and unfolded the paper. It took a minute to work out what the jumbling of words was, as it was in an uncommon format, but when he got to something he recognized, it clicked. It was the hot chocolate recipe.

 

Yuen looked back through the pictures again, rereading that phrase. It's the same handwriting on all of them except the one of the treehouse, and after flipping through all of this and having what felt like a museum’s worth of information on his head, he finally looked at the kid asleep in the seat next to him.

 

The boy in these photos is so different from the one next to him, from the one he saw at the house today.

 

It's like he left his soul behind.

 

Is he really that different from the person Yuen sees on a daily basis?

 

He can’t be…

Is he?

 

Yuen thought back, trying to pick out the differences and decipher which one is real but, he came to a realization he should have a looong time ago. One of his friends had actually pointed it out and he looked right through it.

 

Has he ever had a real conversation with the kid?

 

Does Yuen know anything about this kid that he didn’t get second-hand? Has Iahn ever even talked to him of his own accord? Just to talk and not because there was a pressing reason to?

 

Yuen became an asshole after his mother left. Even more so after his neglectful father had suddenly tried to become buddy-buddy with him and then sprung his engagement to a woman Yuen had only met once and hated from the second he saw her.

 

Yeah, he doesn't like Iahn’s mom, and he hated the idea of having other people in the house when he’s practically been living alone for the last year and a half. He didn’t want a sibling either but… has Iahn ever actually done anything to make him hate him so much? Other than being drop-kicked into the exact same situation Yuen was?

 

-

 

Iahn went straight to his room as soon as they got home, and Yuen spent the whole goddamn night lying awake in bed. Thinking.