The Gaze of Caprice (The Caprice Trilogy Book 1) (32 page)

        Xiaoyu looked down at the mess he made out of the boy he met.  He searched for signs of life among the wreckage.  There were faint movements in the boy’s fingers and legs.  Xiaoyu wasn’t sure if the movements were reflex or voluntary.  Tada rolled over.  He crouched on his knees trying to crawl.  He couldn’t.  Xiaoyu studied the boy for seconds and realized he was trying to move out of the corner.  No creature living or dying felt comfortable being cornered.  Xiaoyu was the only person in the entire room who understood.  Xiaoyu grabbed Tada’s right arm.  He dragged Tada to the center of the cage, the broken ribs feeling like being dragged over sharp rocks.  Tada let the audience share his suffering.  As Xiaoyu dragged him, he shrieked loud enough to wake his half-dead self.  When his body stopped moving, the pain lost much of its sting but the sharp rocks had awakened his consciousness, making him more aware of his own pain.  Xiaoyu didn’t have time to feel sorry for Tada, a sudden banging on the cage got his attention.   He looked to his right to see Deni on the other side of the cage wall.  Xiaoyu’s eyes met with Deni’s.  Deni brought his hand in front of his face with his thumb tucked in showing only four fingers.  Xiaoyu squinted trying to understand the message.  It wasn’t numbers.  It was language, Mandarin.  The Mandarin word for the number four sounded like the word for
death
.  Deni was asking Xiaoyu for murder.  Xiaoyu raised his right hand and made a hook with his index finger—the symbol for the number nine, speaking the same language.  The number nine in Mandarin sounded like the word for
to save
.  Xiaoyu was pleading for Tada’s life.  Deni shook his head and flashed the number four emphatically.  The joints in his fingers seemed to lock.  Xiaoyu looked at Tada.  He was lying on his back with his right arm outstretched and his left arm covering his ribcage, as if to protect them from further assault.  Xiaoyu thought of several ways he might end Tada’s life.  He settled his mind on using his heel to cave the boy’s chest in.  Then he just stood.  He stood so long, loud whistles erupted from the crowd.  He wasn’t sure what the whistles meant.  Xiaoyu didn’t know what the audience would rather see.  The only one to mention the boy dying was Deni.  That wasn’t enough.  Xiaoyu suddenly realized the principle of the cage.  You could lock two opponents in a cage and hope for anything but the caged-two were the only ones to decide.  The two were locked in, but the world was locked out.  Deni was locked out.  There was an ultimate power in locking the world out.  Xiaoyu decided if Deni wanted the boy dead, he could open the cage and do it himself.  It was too easy for him to be outside and make demands.  Xiaoyu turned around with his back facing Tada.  It was an easy signal to everyone that he wasn’t going to do anything else.  The fight in the caged world was over.  It didn’t make a difference the reaction on the outside.  Xiaoyu stood with his back facing Tada.  Xiaoyu had his back turned to his opponent for an apparent hour that was a presumptive minute.  The crowd started to laugh.  The baby boy wasn’t ready to get his hands dirty.  Their logic was flawed.  Xiaoyu was used to getting his hands dirty but he had shown his prowess.  As far as Xiaoyu was concerned, he didn’t have to kill the other boy.

        After standing for too long, Xiaoyu ran toward the side of the cage where he entered.  With one bounce against the cage wall he was able to go up and over.  Dropping almost four meters to the hard concrete floor.  He felt the impact in his knees and ankles.  He ran through the crowd and up the stairs in the southeast corner.  A white-tiled four-by-three meter room used to clean fish tanks and equipment was at the back of the
Emporium
.  It doubled as a shower room for survivors.  All blood had to be washed down the drain before fighters left the
Emporium
.  The room smelled of fish to match its purpose.  Xiaoyu went to the far side of the room and stood below the spigot; he turned his head sideways staring at the corner.  He closed his eyes meditating on the corner, not the one in the room or the one in the cage but the idea itself—the place where the floor and the walls met and ended together. For Xiaoyu the corner represented the utmost cooperation, it wouldn’t exist if all sides didn’t meet.  Xiaoyu felt like he learned something.  Fighting wasn’t about being against; it was about cooperation.  He understood he won the fight because of Tada’s cooperation.  Xiaoyu wasn’t one to show off but Tada was.  Someone had to give the crowd a show.  Tada ran through his arsenal for the crowd’s sake, while running through his energy for Xiaoyu’s sake. 
Cooperation
.  Xiaoyu wasn’t interested in show. He was interested in survival.  The difference was great.  Xiaoyu moved toward the corner and dropped his shorts.  He went back to the water spigot and turned the water on.  He let the water soak his hand wraps making them heavy.  He unwrapped his hands and tossed the wraps in the corner with his shorts.  Dipping his head in the water he heard the loud rush.  He tilted his head downward letting the faucet decapitate him.  All he heard was the water rush, a marathon.  But he didn’t hear foot steps and he didn’t see shadows.  He saw only the warm white static rushing down the sides of his face.  Without warning, he felt an immense pulse.  The pulse sent him flying forward into the tiled wall.  He felt it again.  A tickle.  A burn.  His body instinctively moved away from the sensation, but there was no where to go.  The pulse kept coming.  Repeatedly flicking him in the back.  He fell to the floor, eyes on the corner.  The pulse kept coming.  It hurt like punishment.  Xiaoyu saw black shoes that disrupted the pristine white tile in the room.  Suddenly the pulses ended.  Xiaoyu could feel his throat and struggled to catch his breath. A hand grabbed his face forcing his cheeks inward to his teeth.  The hand tightened its grip sending the pain in a circle around his face.  The hand angled his head upward forcing him to stare into eyes lit like coals.  It took him several seconds to orient his mind.  The eyes were unfamiliar but the face was Deni’s.  He was staring at Xiaoyu with a piercing look.  There were at least two people behind him, dressed in black. 

        “
Remember what I told you?  Remember
?” said Deni.  Xiaoyu’s breaths were heavy.

        “
Wha
?” said Xiaoyu.

        “
Remember what I said I want from you
?” said Deni, “
Loyalty
.”  Deni looked Xiaoyu up and down.

        “
You’re no good to us if you don’t follow orders, yeah
,” said Deni, “
A Jade Soldier. OK, but what good is a soldier that doesn’t follow orders?  That’s like a dead soldier, a useless one.  If you don’t do as you’re told you’re useless.  Do you understand
?”  Xiaoyu nodded his head still in Deni’s hand.  Deni released his grip on Xiaoyu’s face and took one step back.  Xiaoyu rolled his head sideways to look at Deni and the two men standing behind him.  As his eyes focused, Xiaoyu could see they were carrying metallic stun batons.  The batons were used to give him the separate pulses. 

        “
You’re not too young to know the price of disloyalty in our organization
,” said Deni.  Deni reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a thin stack of paper cards.  He threw the paper cards down on the wet tile floor.  Slightly submerged the cards began to float away from Xiaoyu.  Xiaoyu dragged his body over the slippery tiles to catch the cards in his right hand.  Pulling the cards to eye level, he saw that they weren’t cards.  They were photographs.  The photographs showed a naked body in a bathtub.  The body was unique because the pieces had been taken apart and put back together.  There was severe discoloration of the skin near the seams where the limbs had been amputated, giving the impression the man was alive while his body was taken apart.  The body was lifelessly reassembled and rested peacefully in a bathtub stained as a grave.  Xiaoyu understood the body had been put back together for the sake of recognition.  Xiaoyu did recognize the body; it belonged to his uncle, Li Xing.   

• • •

        Xiaoyu sat on his bed in the hotel.  The ride back had been long and silent. Deni looked back at Xiaoyu with the same burning coal look.  He suggested that Xiaoyu keep the photographs to help him remember their conversation.  Xiaoyu half agreed with Deni.  He would keep the photographs, but his reason was different.  He put the photographs under his bed so that only he knew they were there; how he wanted it.  He would approach his next fight differently.  He had no choice. It was nearly five months later.  His opponent was from the Mainland.  Before his
conversation
with Deni, he would have wondered what brought another Mainland boy into a violent life in Hong Kong.  He would have felt a natural kinship with the other boy, another victim of circumstance.  That was before.  Now, he let no emotions leave his body so he would feel no remorse.  He managed time by managing his own energy level.  Every kick was well placed and every punch hit its target.  He was faster than the other boy which gave him an advantage energy-wise.  In a particular display of skill, Xiaoyu peppered the other boy with a series of punches to his face and rib cage before retreating and catching a cross to the face for his efforts.  The combination cost Xiaoyu more energy than he wanted but the effect was necessary to weaken the boy’s breathing ability and anger him.  The angered boy began to swing and kick wildly burning through energy while his damaged body couldn’t support enough airflow to keep his blood oxygenated.  The result was blurred and starred vision, along with shortness of breath.  This affected the boy’s mobility and allowed Xiaoyu to get behind him flooring him with a hard kick to the back of his right thigh.  The boy fell to his knees first then to his hands.  Xiaoyu turned and looked at the audience without much to see.  The light remained over the cage not the crowd.  He spent enough time in darkness to be able to read it.  Although he couldn’t see their faces he could read them.  Xiaoyu spun around and kicked the kneeling boy in the back of the neck.  The kick was the hardest he had dealt.  The boy’s head hit the floor with a thud, as his body collapsed over itself.  The boy was dead.  There was no cheering, only rhythmic applause from the audience.  He could hear mostly high-pitched noises sounding like satisfactions.  It was clear to him most people had bet on him.  He didn’t think about the boy he had killed.  If the boy was like Xiaoyu, he wouldn’t have anyone waiting for him to come home.  Xiaoyu calculated the odds in his head and the odds were he had done the boy a favor.  He tried to keep his mind on the fact that he didn’t disappoint.  The idea was supported by the
Emporium
employee who came to the cage door and unlocked it on the side where Xiaoyu entered.  He exited passed a clapping Deni Tam and a group of Moons he didn’t recognize.  He went straight to the white-tiled room and took a shower with his back to the wall and his eyes facing the entrance. 

        Xiaoyu’s days and nights were spent at the
Emporium
.  He trained in the storage space below while business went as usual above.  He trained himself without equipment.  He might have been given training equipment if he wanted but he never asked.  He went through the rigors that Master Song had taught him and tried to remember his advice.  But the Jade Soldier was supposed to be a weapon in and of himself, needing no tool, advice or instruction to do damage. So Xiaoyu was put in charge of his own training and conditioning.  With his life at stake, he punished himself more severely than any instructor, using bare concrete pillars as a target for his wrapped fist and bare feet.  To accelerate his transformation into the Jade Soldier, Deni tried to make his matches more frequent.  Eventually he did so by placing a gag order on Xiaoyu’s matches.  No one in the Moon Dragons was allowed to speak of the fights and the results would be known only to those in attendance.  The reputation of the
Heigui
would hinder his ability to get matches.  Few would want to train a fighter before sending him to what was beginning to be seen as certain death.  Xiaoyu’s matches began to end more quickly on average.  Rarely did he use the strategy of letting his opponent use up their energy.  He was more of a predator, not looking for a fight but having it end quickly. By his sixteenth birthday he was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of eleven other boys.  He was given a sixteenth birthday present befitting a Jade Soldier.  Deni had the hotel room next to Xiaoyu’s emptied out and a wood dummy placed in the empty room.  Xiaoyu was given the only key to the new room so he could go and practice whenever he wanted.  The room with the dummy became his sanctuary.  He wasn’t allowed visitors so he made the dummy his other.  If Xiaoyu was aggravated, the dummy would know about it.  The dummy was the perfect tag-along, easy to manipulate.  It could be Deni, it could be an opponent, past or present.  It was his sister more often than not.  Xiaoyu’s favorite match up was against his sister and they played the Blame Game. 

       
Genesis
was the designated fight on Monday night, June 30, 1997, almost four months after Xiaoyu’s sixteenth birthday.  The audience was full.  While there were many celebrations around Hong Kong,
Genesis
was the most exclusive.  At midnight, Hong Kong would lose its status as a British Colony and return to The People’s Republic of China as a special administrative region.  An effort was made to toast Hong Kong’s colonial past.  The Moons found an eighteen year-old fighter from Belize to match up against Xiaoyu.  The Moons thought Belize was an appropriate country because at midnight Hong Kong would join Belize as a former British Colony.  The shared colonial lineage made for a fight with mixed emotions.  It was easy for a Hong Konger to sympathize with a boy from a tiny place like Belize.  Like Belize, Hong Kong itself had its share of foreign friends who overstayed their welcome.  The night was meant to be a celebration, a celebration without bloodletting, at least not enough to be permanent.  But the fight would be full-contact.  The audience was full of members from multiple branches of the Triad family and their guests, as well as first time invitees.  One of those invitees was an American businessman who had given the Triads a way around customs procedures in Hawaii and Los Angeles.  This allowed the Triads to start expanding their operations to the American West Coast.  He sat in a back row on the west side of the cage.  He was appropriately dressed to the point of over-meticulousness.  He wore a custom multi-fiber suit in a sky-colored gray.  His light yellow shirt was accented by a yellow pocket square.  He wore no tie but he had earlier in the day.  His hair was brown.  With gel, it looked black.  His hair was neatly combed, parted on the right side.  He was clean shaven, as always, with fierce blue eyes noticeable even in the dim light of the back row.  The yellow shirt and pocket square contrasted the man’s blue eyes making them more blue and more fierce.  He sat on the end to keep a good eye on the cage.  He sat alone with no one to talk to and no desire for conversation.  The only tools he brought with him were his blue eyes and an open mind.