Arc 1 ~ "The secrets within the manor"
At the end of a poor town sits a tall manor, the towns folk spread all sorts of rumours but nobody knows what's actually in it. And for as long as Jiahao can remember, she's never seen anyone go in or come out, however, she has bigger things to be worrying about.
Damien and Max, her pseudo brothers, burst in through the door of their small, rundown flat, slamming the door behind them. Without even turning to look at them Jiahao sighs and asks, "What went wrong this time?" Max pushes the single braid in his hair out of his eyes, and looks at Damien expecting him to speak. Damien sighs, since he's the older one, only by a year, of course Max is expecting him to speak for the two of them.
Damien stutters for a moment, not wanting to face Jiahao's wrath, but eventually coughs it up. "So, like, we were borrowing... Yeah, borrowing some fruit-" Jiahao finally turns around to face them, her thick eyebrows furrowed into a frown.
"Get to the point." She cuts Damien off, her voice calm but stern. Damien begins to play with his deep red hair, clearly wanting to avoid the subject.
"We lost May." He finally spits out.
"Goddammit." Jiahao mumbles.
"We don't think she got caught..." Max adds in quietly. He's normally more talkative than this, but whenever May isn't around he gets quiet.
"Okay, so where did you last see her?"
"At the fruit stall." Max mumbles, looking like a petulant child. Him and May are both eighteen but look somehow a lot younger than they are. It's probably malnutrition but Jiahao chooses not to linger on that thought.
Jiahao pulls on her tattered knitted vest over what's left of her white long-sleeved shirt, and without any word begins to go get May. The boys follow without much thought, preparing for the incoming doom. They're less scared of the fruit vendor and more scared of Jiahao's wrath.
As they walk out of the flat into the main hall of the building, the landlady stops them. "Jia~ Darling~" She chimes with a ring, it's more patronising than endearing. She's a large lady, clearly she has at least three meals a day while Jiahao and her siblings struggle to find one meal.
"The rent dear, you haven't paid it in a month~" She chimes once more.
Before Jiahao can respond Damien pipes up, "Not paying 'till you fix the hole in the floor, try asking the rats for the rent, maybe they'll pay." He stuffs his hands into his pockets and continues to walk. The landlady's face flushes with anger, but Jiahao and the others are gone before she can retaliate.
"We all know she has no intention of fixing that hole right?" Max asks quietly, while shoving himself between Jiahao and Damien.
"Yeah, and we have no intention of paying the rent until she does." Damien says with confidence before Jiahao contradicts him.
"We'll pay what we can when we have the money, don't listen to Damien, he's a bad influence." She glares at Damien as she speaks. Knowing that it was definitely his idea to rob the fruit stall.
Damien and Jiahao bicker the whole way to the fruit stall, but Max blocks it out, much more concerned with looking for his twin sister than anything else.
Once they reach the market, it's not hard to find May and the aggrieved fruit vendor. A small crowd has formed around the fruit stall to watch the scene.
"If you don't pay, you can't leave!" The vendor shouts.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I have no money!" May shouts back between sobs, her face covered in tears, and some snot.
"I'll give back the fruit, I promise, just let me go!" She shouts once more before Jiahao interrupts.
"She said she'd give the fruit back, let her go." Jiahao smiles, but her voice is stern.
The fruit vendor scoffs and looks at Jiahao, "And what are you going to do if I don't? She owes me money."
Jiahao's smile doesn't waver, "C'mon, let the girl go and you don't get hurt, it's three against one." She's bluffing, Jiahao doesn't fight unless she's left with no choice, but a small threat can go a long way.
Damien cracks his knuckles, he's not very muscular at first glance, but he's tall enough to be intimidating. And Max is glaring at the man with a kind of vitriol that would make you think this man is the one responsible for his parents death.
Maybe it's the piercing bright green, rage filled eyes of a young-looking boy, or maybe it's the fact that he's outnumbered three to one but the fruit vendor gives in. He loosens his grip on May's arm, and she runs to Max cowering and still sobbing.
Jiahao glances at the vendor and then back at May. "Return what you took." She commands sternly.
May hands Jiahao two apples and a small handful of berries, she apologises on behalf of May and the others, and returns the fruit back to the vendor.
Once they resolve the situation and begin to walk away, somebody from behind them, presumably the fruit vendor himself, shouts a racial slur, clearly directed at Jiahao. She doesn't flinch, but Damien turns on his heels, ready to pummel whoever decided to open their filthy mouth.
He's stopped by Jiahao, grabbing his ear and dragging him away. "Ow, Ow, Ow! What was that for?" He asks whilst rubbing the now red mark on his ear.
"All of you have caused enough trouble for one day," Jiahao sounds exasperated. "May, are you-" She stops herself from asking once she looks back and sees that May is back to her usual, straight faced self. You wouldn't even know that she was crying and shouting a few minutes prior.
"You guys took your sweet time to show up, after you abandoned me with that old fart." May scoffs, Max is quiet, his head down, following closely behind May.
"We didn't abandon you. We just needed to get Jia." Damien responds quickly.
"You only needed Jia, because you're both incompetent assholes!" May raises her voice slightly and Max winces at the sound, but May doesn't notice, or more realistically, she doesn't care.
She twiddles with the braid at the front of her dirty blonde hair, the same braid that Max has in his hair. Just to make it clear that they are in fact twins, they really needed something that screams 'We're twins' and apparently, that was the matching braids.
Both Jiahao and Damien can't think of a single time that the twins didn't have those matching braids. As if the matching dirty blonde hair, almost identical faces, and piercing green eyes, didn't already tell you they were related.
Suddenly feeling a little nostalgic, Jiahao remembered the first time she met the twins. She was seven, Damien six, and the twins five. It was a boring day at the orphanage, all the kids were in the yard. This sort of walled off enclosure was more reminiscent of a prison than an orphanage. One of the nuns brought in the twins, those same little matching braids in their hair. Max was latched onto May's arm, on the brink of tears, but May was straight faced as usual. You could tell by what they were wearing they had come straight from a funeral, presumably their parents' one.
Damien and Jiahao had been in this orphanage for as long as they could remember. No memory of their parents, not even a surname to go on to try to find them. Without missing a beat, Damien went over to the twins. Trying to assert that he was the biggest fish in the yard, nobody actually believed this, but he liked to think people did.
"Ew, freaks, what can you two do? Read each other's minds?" He teased but before the twins had time to think, Jiahao responded to him with a smack on the back of his head.
"Look in a mirror before you call people freaks, you're ginger." She retorted calmly. Damien turned on his heels to face her.
"Yeah and you're from someplace in... Asia!" He stuttered, trying to think of an Asian country, but poor Damien, whose orphanage-issued education hadn't taught him the names of any Asian countries.
Jiahao and Damien began to bicker, throwing childish insults at one another until Max burst out laughing at them. From that moment on, the four of them seemed to be inseparable. They considered themselves a small family, brothers and sisters despite their blood.
But Jiahao was sharply brought out of her reminiscing by the landlady, who was standing at the entrance to the building their flat was in. A crudely made cigarette in her hand.