Concerns

Bi-Han glanced across at Cyrax with a puzzled expression.

“What do you mean?” Bi-Han questioned as he shovelled a bunch of rice into his mouth. Kuai was fine, this was the longest he’d ever gone without getting into trouble and he was actually doing kind of well with his missions. This was the least worried Bi-Han had ever been about him.

“He’s been so quiet and unresponsive lately.” Cyrax replied and Bi-Han just shook his head. Wasn’t that a good thing? It meant Kuai was keeping his head down and not causing problems. “Bi-Han, he’s been hoarding food.”

“What?” He blinked, hoarding food? What did Cyrax mean by that?

“The other day I found a loose stone in Smoke’s room, filled to the brim with dried meat and other things that won’t spoil easily.” Well, if it was in Smoke’s room, surely that meant it was his stash, right? “I confronted Smoke about it, but he had no idea where it came from. Kuai ended up admitting it was him. He admitted he has several stashes all over the temple.” Cyrax lent across the table and lowered his voice as he added, “I’ve also noticed other concerning behaviour. He flinches if you approach him too fast, and I keep noticing these weird bruises on him.”

“Weird bruises?” He hadn’t noticed any bruises.

“On his wrists. I’ve not been able to look closely at them, but it almost looks like there's ropeburn there too.” Cyrax glanced around the room before taking a deep breath. “I don’t want to point fingers, but he gets jittery whenever Master Fang is in the room.”

Master Fang. That bastard. He’d always had a vendetta against Kuai, and Bi-Han had never figured out why. If he was doing something to Kuai, then what was it? To make him so jittery, and flinch and hoard food? And why had Bi-Han paid so little attention to not notice something was wrong?

“Right.” Bi-Han agreed numbly. How badly have I failed my brother? “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

And if he figured out that Master Fang was abusing his authority? Well. His corpse would make a nice apology present to Kuai Liang.

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