[ Granted, it's just an Okay. But it's not the content. It's the fact that she's willing to come over at all. His mind makes one of those associative leaps to the lazy afternoon with the lobster too. But he'd be delusional to think it's similar to that. The evening with the lobster was a test, true. A way to gauge his own capacity for patience. A way to gauge Korra's ease around him. But this is different. He doesn't expect her to be easy around him -- not in light of what transpired between them. But he'll do his best to rebuild that tenuous foundation, stone by stone. The dessert is an olive branch. And his offer -- a coded I've been thinking of you. ]
[ His own reply is just as brief. ]
Come by at 5:00
[ It's a freakishly warm day, the kind he associates with Hong Kong's monsoon season. Afternoons where people abandon their coats, where flies spawn inexplicably like alien invaders and buzz into the windows of overheated apartments. Hei can't sit indoors in the thaw. When Korra arrives, she'll spot him on the apartment stoop. Sprawled on a rattan armchair next to his elderly neighbours, in slacks and a T-shirt, slurping a popsicle that stains his lips blue. A game of quan dui is laid down neatly in front of them, and there is iced tea, a bowl of dry fruit and a nutcracker. ]
Sunday! \^^/
[ Granted, it's just an Okay. But it's not the content. It's the fact that she's willing to come over at all. His mind makes one of those associative leaps to the lazy afternoon with the lobster too. But he'd be delusional to think it's similar to that. The evening with the lobster was a test, true. A way to gauge his own capacity for patience. A way to gauge Korra's ease around him. But this is different. He doesn't expect her to be easy around him -- not in light of what transpired between them. But he'll do his best to rebuild that tenuous foundation, stone by stone. The dessert is an olive branch. And his offer -- a coded I've been thinking of you. ]
[ His own reply is just as brief. ]
Come by at 5:00
[ It's a freakishly warm day, the kind he associates with Hong Kong's monsoon season. Afternoons where people abandon their coats, where flies spawn inexplicably like alien invaders and buzz into the windows of overheated apartments. Hei can't sit indoors in the thaw. When Korra arrives, she'll spot him on the apartment stoop. Sprawled on a rattan armchair next to his elderly neighbours, in slacks and a T-shirt, slurping a popsicle that stains his lips blue. A game of quan dui is laid down neatly in front of them, and there is iced tea, a bowl of dry fruit and a nutcracker. ]
[ A disturbingly domestic scene, all in all. ]