The heavy, chromed spatula lay where Ah-Jin had slammed it down, a scarred length of metal that resonated still in the stunned silence of the Rust Wok. The sound hadn't just disturbed the air; it had carved a cleft in it, separating the humid, spice-laced interior of the café – Haerin's wide eyes fixed on her Appa, clutching the mended bear; the bubbling vats whispering secrets to themselves – from the figures shadowing the grimy shield-glass door. That visceral declaration of defiance hung like smoke amongst the actual steam coiling from the giant wok. He didn't wait for them to breach the threshold. The air in the alley tasted like burnt ozone and damp decay as Ah-Jin pushed through the beaded curtain that served as a door, its rattle sharp in the thick quiet. The beads snapped shut behind him, a final barrier.
He stepped onto the uneven deck plating directly in front of General Sandor Cho. The disparity was jarring: Ah-Jin in his grease-stained apron, thick arms crossed over a simple, sweat-dampened tunic, radiating contained heat and simmering suspicion; Cho, a cliff face sculpted from grimy tactical gear, the livid scar cutting across his brow like a fissure, his very stillness an offensive posture. The looming military figure blocked much of the alley, but Ah-Jin filled the space before his café door, an immovable object no less formidable for its lack of regulation armor. His gaze, dark and flat as cooled slag, swept past Cho's imposing insignia and locked onto Yeji standing slightly behind and to the side. That fleeting connection felt like jumping a live wire – accusation, warning, raw protectiveness crackling across the gap. Then his eyes flicked back to Cho, dismissing everything else.
"Whatever poison you're selling," Ah-Jin stated, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated in the chest more than it carried through the alley, "I ain't buying and i am not interested, whatever job, favor, confession, or piece of skyland guilt you're peddling… get off my block, Now." There was no bluster. It was a bedrock statement. He even took half a step closer to Cho, a silent challenge, his posture radiating a willingness to meet force not with ambition, but with simple, fundamental endurance. He started to turn away, back towards his steaming sanctuary, back to the wide-eyed little girl peering through the beads.
"It's the Belt," Cho grated out. His voice sounded like artillery being dragged over scrap metal, cutting through Ah-Jin's dismissal. "Your peace and happy place someone's aimin' to burn it clean tomorrow and going to torch the whole turn."
Ah-Jin froze mid-turn. His broad shoulders stiffened, the frayed edges of his tunic tightening across his back. He didn't immediately face them again, but his body had become utterly still, a predator catching a scent on a changing wind. The steaming alley held its fetid breath. Then, slowly, with deliberate weight, he rotated back. His expression hadn't softened; if anything, the disbelief that flickered was colder, harder. He looked directly at Cho, his dark eyes narrowed.
"Burn it clean?" The words were bitten off. "Corp cleansers, they are being sent down by him." His gaze slid back to Yeji, a fierce, damning acknowledgement. "The big boss playing exterminator. Figures." He spat on the deckplates near Cho's sturdy boots; not at them, but close enough. A gesture of contempt, not just for Vahn's plan, but for the poisonous world Vahn, Yeji, and their kind represented. His focus returned to Cho. "Didn't peg you for their messenger boy, General." The lack of honorific was deliberate, stripping away perceived authority.
Cho's scar didn't so much as twitch, but his flint-chip eyes seemed to sharpen, reading the currents of fury and weary cynicism in Ah-Jin in a single pass. "My forces got jurisdiction skyfalls and orbital plumes. Not dirt-side pit fights sparked by inside bloodletting." His delivery was brutally matter-of-fact. "I ain't a messenger but just a signpost." He jerked his chin towards Yeji. "She got the bad news and brought me for weight and seems I pointed her to the wrong rock to hide beneath."
Ah-Jin's harsh bark of laughter scraped the air like rusted metal. It was a sound utterly devoid of humor. He looked at Yeji again, a long, appraising stare that swept from her expensive, practical boots to the stark exhaustion etching lines around her eyes that no neural patch could hide. Then he included Min-ji hovering nervously behind, out of her depth in the grime. "Don't need your weight and don't need your heads-up, it ain't a stitch of surprise on me." He thumped his own chest, a dull, dense sound. "I ain't upstairs." The words were heavy with implication. I don't float above the consequence. I live in it. I know the rules. "I already figured something venomous was circling, smelling weakness, smelling that Eclipse oil trailing her." He pointed a thick, scarred finger, hard and accusatory, directly at Yeji. "It always spills down and it always lands in the gutter. On us."
His posture stiffened again, the anger transmuting back into a solid wall of resolve. He took a breath of the foul air like it was his birthright. "Whatever comes – buyin' my silence? Movin' me out? Somethin' worse? Don't matter. You can haul yourselves back up your silk rope." He gestured vaguely, dismissively upwards towards the invisible city miles above the smog ceiling. "If fire pours…" His knuckles whitened where they gripped his apron. "When fire pours…" He corrected himself bleakly. "We bury deep. We fight in the grime they made. We protect our own." He gave Cho, Yeji, and Min-ji one final look that encompassed them all as outsiders, necessary as spare parts on a junked hauler. "We always have. We always will. we are done now, please clear my step." He turned decisively again, shoulders set, hand already reaching for the beaded curtain.
"Appa!" The voice, clear and unafraid, sliced through the tension from inside. Haerin emerged, pushing beads aside with tiny hands. She held her repaired bear, Bori, prominently, the clumsy stitching visible on the little arm. She looked directly at Ah-Jin, her face a canvas of intense childish displeasure tinged with confusion. "You never say 'Go away' when someone stands at the door! Never! Maama teached us!" The memory invoked was vivid, a principle ingrained. "Maama teached us even hungry ghosts get scraps! Even shiny-suit people gotta sit sometimes!" Her small frame vibrated with the scandal of his implied incivility. "It's Rule! Rule!"
Ah-Jin stopped dead. His hand, inches from the beads, tightened into a fist that trembled minutely – a microcosm of the tectonic struggle within him. Rule. Kiri's Rule. The unbreakable table law inherited by their daughter. Hospitality wasn't a choice in the Belt; it was survival, woven into its rotting tapestry. A guarantee against turning feral. He'd broken promises, he'd turned his back on the world above, but breaking Kiri's Rule? Violating Haerin's fierce insistence on it? That was stepping over a line bricks couldn't build.
"See?" General Cho's voice cut in, a low counterpoint to Haerin's piping accusation. He hadn't moved an inch, but his gaze was fixed on Ah-Jin's rigid back. "The sprog knows protocol better than you, Scrapyard." He shifted his weight slightly, the sound of thick boots grinding on grit surprisingly loud. "Put the kettle on. We've come bearing death threats and least you can do is offer char while we deliver 'em." There was a dangerous rumble beneath the words, a challenge wrapped in bleak humor. Sit down, listen, face it like you face that grease vat.*
Ah-Jin didn't turn back. He stood frozen for three long, hammering heartbeats, the pressure of the choices – defiance vs. Kiri's memory, rage vs. Haerin's wide, expectant eyes – visibly warping his posture. The steam billowing past him seemed to thicken, clinging. Then, with a slow exhalation more profound and weary than any sigh, his shoulders slumped, not in defeat, but in a temporary, bitter acceptance of the intrusion. His hand dropped limply from the curtain. He gave one sharp, almost imperceptible nod.
Min-ji let out a small breath she hadn't realized she was holding, some subtle signal passing between her and Yeji, a silent 'well, that happened'. Cho merely pushed past the beads with an audible rustle, his broad frame making the small café seem even smaller, like a warship docking in a rowboat. He scanned the space – the mismatched scavenged stools, the vast simmering wok, the humming freezer unit – with the detached scrutiny of a man checking structural integrity. He chose the sturdiest-looking stool, heavily bolted to the deck, and sat down without ceremony, his tactical backplate thumping against a salvaged sound baffle on the wall. It creaked protestingly.
Awkwardly, Yeji followed, Min-ji darting a step after her, her own forced curiosity battling her clear desire to be anywhere else. Yeji carefully chose a stool near Cho's, its legs squeaking on the deck plates. The reality of the crowded space hit her – the close air thick with chili vapour, spices, and an ingrained smell of recycled life. Haerin watched them all, more curious than afraid, patting Bori reassuringly. Her eyes settled on Min-ji, whose expression, momentarily unguarded, showed a flicker of sympathy and unfamiliarity with this depth of… lived existence. Min-ji caught Haerin's gaze. She offered a tentative, tight smile, still trying to process the little girl's forceful intervention mere moments ago.
"Well," Min-ji said, her voice bright with artificiality in the heavy silence, directing it gently down at Haerin while Ah-Jin remained with his back to them, perhaps communing with the contents of the wok. "You certainly know how to shout at grown-ups, little star!"
Haerin seemed to take this as a compliment. She puffed her chest out slightly. "Appa forgets Rules sometimes," she declared with the confidence of six vastly knowledgeable years. "Maama's Rules are importantest."
"Ah," Min-ji murmured, the hint of awkwardness returning. Her gaze flicked towards the faded image pinned beneath the counter clearplate – Ah-Jin and Kiri, younger, less weathered, clinging to each other. Her voice softened further, genuinely curious now, tracing the threads of disruption that had brought them here. "And where… where is your Maama now, kiddo?" The question hung, perhaps too bluntly in this setting, too loaded.
Haerin blinked. There was no flinch, no sadness clouding her expression, only the clear-eyed directness of someone stating an immutable fact. "Oh," she said simply, her voice still light, "she died." She scrunched her nose slightly, a purely practical adjustment. "'Right after I was born."
A beat of stunned silence swallowed the café, thicker than the steam. Yeji visibly stiffened. Min-ji sucked in a sharp breath, her carefully constructed social mask slipping completely, replaced by genuine, horrified embarrassment. "Oh. Oh, child. I… I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have…"
But Haerin just shrugged, a small, dismissive movement of her thin shoulders. She held Bori up, pressing its mismatched button eye to her own cheek. "It's okay," she stated matter-of-factly. "It was a long time ago" Her small face tilted back up, no sign of tears, only serenity. "I got Appa." She squeezed Bori, its ragged fur squashing against her thumb. "An' I got Bori." She beamed a pure, uncomplicated smile that seemed to pierce the gloom and tension. "So it's all rules now. 'Cept when Appa forgets." She threw a pointed look towards her father's broad, motionless back.
Ah-Jin didn't turn. But his head dipped infinitesimally lower. The muscles along his shoulders shifted, roping tight beneath the worn fabric. He gripped the edge of the massive wok, the metal creaking faintly under the pressure, his knuckles bone-white. He didn't correct his daughter's grammar. He didn't speak of Kiri. He simply stood there, a silent pillar anchoring the raw pain Haerin carried so innocently, absorbing the aftershock of the reminder that landed like shrapnel in the dense air. The silence stretched, a fragile thing now, woven from Haerin's acceptance and Min-ji's guilt and Yeji's detached observation of this intimate wound laid bare. The only sounds were the relentless bubbling of the vats, the hum of ancient refrigeration, and the distant, mournful bleat of a cargo drone struggling through the deeper levels of the Belt. Below it all, the chromed spatula remained on the counter, its declaration still echoing in the charged quiet – a line drawn, but the script momentarily rewritten by a child invoking the dead.