some day my prince will come [reit]

tagged: hayden. time: may 10th, 2pm. notes: none.

If you had told Lucien two years ago that he'd find himself dawdling around Chinatown gift shops for something to do, he'd have laughed so hard he would have cried. It would have seemed beyond absurd for him. Why would he, someone with power and money, go to some little Chinatown gift shop? He had better things to do with his time, and absolutely better things to do with his money.

He didn't anymore. Now he was entirely at the mercy of someone else entirely. Kun Shui gave him shelter, food, and money. If he wanted to leave his glass tower, he did so at Kun Shui's whims. Kun Shui had certainly been kind, letting him out after less then two weeks in LA, and Lucien had found his new freedom overwhelming. He'd gone to fetch books on his first day out, and then he'd tried to make daily trips out. It wasn't generally to do anything--he just wanted to be out of the house. Physically he was week and frail, and getting out of the house was exhausting to start. Every day out had made him a little bit more fit, and a little bit less exhausted by doing even simple things.

Realistically, he didn't think anyone would have mocked him for being physically week after two years of captivity, but then he was his own worst critic--a far cry from when his ego had been large enough to generate his own gravity.

Mostly he'd kept to Chinatown, local enough to the tower that it didn't raise concern. He picked through shops, rarely finding things he had any interest in. He wasn't a hoarder, and most of the stuff was useless. No, if he was going to buy something to decorate his room, he was going to get something he liked.

In his time out, almost no one had bothered him--so when someone spoke to him (and there really couldn't be any mistake, there wasn't really anyone in the store but the shopkeeper and the guard, who wasn't even in the store--just lurking outside, waiting for Lucien to emerge.

The man wasn't asking him to move or reach something or anything--he was asking for, of all things, random cat trivia. He stared at the man--boy really--in abrupt confusion, trying to work out what he was looking for. "I... I don't know. Some folklore, probably." Things like that were always folklore. He didn't know the particular folklore, although he had the distinct impression... well, might as well just say it rather then mentally musing over it. "I think it's Japanese, anyway." The characters were all wrong for Chinese, even with his limited written understanding of the language.

tagged: hayden. time: may 10th, 2pm. notes: none.

Alphabet? Pictoral? Lucien was only vaguely aware of which terms were used best to describe things. Really, he wasn't very good at all at explaining that sort of thing. Now, if you wanted him to explain to you the intricate details and crossover of European languages... well, he could do that. Not so much Asian languages, with foreign alphabets and alien writing structures. Even if he could speak Cantonese fluently, his ability to read the characters was limited. He knew the big ones, the major ones he'd need to know, but there were simply so many characters, and he wasn't at all used to them. It was just hard to remember when you were used to having to learn words.

"The Japanese use... three or four alphabets. One is sounds, one is more complex sounds, and one is Hanzi. They have a different word for it though--but the third one are Chinese characters, which is all they use." Oh good god, he was no good at explaining that.

"Chinese." He answered quickly enough. There was no point in hiding it. "Cantonese, in specific." Which was lucky, because Cantonese was the main language of LA's chinatown. If they'd spoken Mandarin, he'd have been utterly doomed--at least he could speak (albeit timidly) to the shopkeepers.

tagged: hayden. time: may 10th, 2pm. notes: none.

Well, that was an awkward question if there ever was one. He wouldn't have chosen to learn Chinese. Certainly not. He had, once upon a time, had better things to do with his time. He hadn't chosen to learn Cantonese--it had been a choice made for him by others. Kun Shui had decided he should learn Cantonese, and so he had been taught it by an older tutor who could be trusted to be quiet. He didn't even really need Cantonese, considering how rarely he spoke to the staff, but it had proved helpful. It let him communicate with guards and cleaning staff, after all. But with Kun Shui, a lot of the time they simply spoke in English, because Kun Shui's English was fluent, compared to Lucien's workable Cantonese.

"I didn't - I mean, I didn't teach myself." He was fairly sure that doing so would be next to impossible for a European to manage. There were so many complexities in the language that anyone would almost certainly need someone fluent in the language to assist. "I was tutored when I moved." Which was a very, very polite way of putting it. 'Moved'. Jun Shi would probably have laughed so hard he cried at that choice of terminology.

The thought of him being Chinese... no, absolutely not. Two-years-ago Lucien would have bristled at the very idea. "No. I'm just a gweilo." What was the closest equivalent? "A foreigner." Which wasn't a proper translation, but it was close enough. "I'm French." Which was about as far from Hong Kong as it got when it came to language.

tagged: hayden. time: may 10th, 2pm. notes: none.

Foreigner probably wasn't clear enough, and Lucien took a moment to struggle over how to properly translate it. He knew at least the basics, even if there were about fifty variants.

"Gwei is a ghost, and lo is just a person. So they would call white foreigners Gweilo, which would be like ghost people. Now it just means... well, any foreigner." He paused, slightly nervous. It wasn't that the boy was talking too much--just Lucien was unused to talking at all. Any amount of talking was going to be too much for him, and he forced himself to take a few deep breaths.

"There's a lot of... variants. But it's just a way of describing foreigners."

He really felt the need to explain anything. Most people would simply have taken the boy's comments as compliments and moved on with their life, but instead Lucien found himself squirming slightly, responding to ever word.

"Living there means you.. you pick up a lot of stuff." Even if most of the stuff he'd picked up verbally, having had only the rare trip outside. He still knew a lot of the little things then.

He wasn't sure what to do about the whole thing, and he felt his stomach twist a little bit. A decoration? He'd decorated once upon a time, but he certainly hadn't decorated in the past two years. It wasn't his nature to turn things down though.

"No, I mean... I'd be happy to help. If I could." He offered

tagged: hayden. time: may 10th, 2pm. notes: none.

He had never really gotten to use gweilo or any of the variants. After all, he was the foreigner, and he was generally referred to as gweilo. He did know a few variants, and he paused, raising his hand and lowering fingers as he counted them off.

"Gweipor, which is for women. Gweizai and gweimui for boys and girls..." He took a long moment to try and remember a few others, but in the end he simply couldn't remember. "There's variants for different skin tones--if you want to specify a European compared to an African for example, but those were relatively rare. Mostly you're just called gweilo." He hadn't even been called it very much. It was relatively rare--only if he was out in Hong Kong, which always meant he was with Kun Shui. People rarely even addressed him. He was a footnote, no more notable then the color of Kun Shui's shoes, and it was only in the markets, travelling too and from, that anyone addressed him at all. A foreigner was more likely to buy, after all.

He had noticed, hadn't he? That he was nervous. That he was jumpy at everything. Lucien was aware of it, aware of just how ridiculous he was. He jumped at everything. Even things that shouldn't have frightened him were still enough to stress him out.

"I'm - I'm really fine." He tried his best to insist, even if it didn't sound very convincing. "I just don't get out much." Which was technically true, if a tiny bit misleading. He hadn't been allowed to get out. Most people would just assume he was a shut-in. They were common enough.

tagged: hayden. time: may 10th, 2pm. notes: none.

The man was wrong--but he felt the need to correct him after a moment, waiting for him to pause before doing so. He sure did seem to talk a lot--the sort of habit that would have drawn Lucien's rage a few years ago.

"It wouldn't - I mean, it wouldn't be the same way in China's mainland. It's Cantonese, so only in Hong Kong." And some expat cities. Most of Chinatown LA was Cantonese after all. It made things far, far easier, especially since none of the shopkeepers thought he spoke a word of it. They'd turn away and chatter away at what the lowest they could go is to the cashier or owner or whoever, and Lucien would simply listen and then respond in English, as if he hadn't understood at all.

It was about as close to cunning or deceptive as he got. He didn't have the spine for anything really sneaky. He could have conned them out of so much when they spoke vile little lies to each other, when a young bilingual shopkeeper would attempt to trick someone older then him without knowledge of English, saying that Lucien was saying things he wasn't.

He could have ruined them, but he didn't. There was too much risk, too much chance of horrible, horrible consequences.

He didn't think he was lucky to have been in Hong Kong, but then explaining that would be impossible. There was no way to explain why it wasn't lucky without giving it all away, and secrecy was his priority. No one could know. He was in the country illegally, and he had little doubt there would be consequences if his presence was known. So discretion was the name of the game.

"Just - just a few weeks really." Vague and impossible to track without actually lying.

At the very least he seemed sympathetic at the moment. He seemed to understood, even if Lucien was quite confident that no, their situations weren't the same. Even after two years of mental destruction, Lucien still considered himself apart--he just did so for much different reasons the second time around. He wasn't different because he was better--he was different because he was worse and paying for it.

"It's - it's fine really. I'm doing better." Which he was, because the first time out he'd felt like everything was going to get him, and he'd jumped every time someone so much as looked at him.

tagged: hayden. time: may 10th, 2pm. notes: none.

Lucien actually wasn't entirely sure about the sort-of-question that had just been posed. He hadn't gone to school in Hong Kong. He'd gone to school at a classy private school in France, and by and large he'd done whatever he wanted there. He'd had no interest in academics, and his skills in math, science, or really anything but languages were sorely lacking. Simply put, he'd never needed any of it. Not even now. He knew things that mattered, things he might need to know on his own, and anything that he'd have time for he could simply look up. Why pack your brain with useless knowledge when you could simply pull out a phone?

Only he didn't have a phone. He might very well have been the only person in all of LA without at least some kind of phone. He didn't even have an old phone, and he somehow doubted that Kun Shui would ever let him have one. There were too many risks associated with it. Plus, he knew his guard had a phone, so what reason was there for him to have one? It wasn't as if he could use the excuse that it was for emergencies, either.

"I... I don't think so?" He really wasn't sure at all. "I mean, most speak Cantonese, and then English. More people speak English then Mandarin, so I don't think it was... well, I don't think it's really a major thing?" Which probably sounded odd, but there was all that history he only half remembered.

Really, he felt a tad out of his element when trying to explain Chinese culture. He knew what he'd learned from his lessons, and what he'd directly picked up--mostly from Jun Shi. At best he could only give it a try.

"Well... it's not called a phoenix, but I don't remember what it's called. It's the ruler of all birds. It's... south I think." He had a rough idea of the directions and what animals they were. "It means a lot of good things. Justice and grace. It was used for the royal family of China for a long time, along with dragons."

He swore there was more to it, and he took a long pause before continuing.

"And I think dragons are yin, and the phoenix is yang. Dragons rule the water, and the phoenix rules the sky." Little did he realize he'd reversed the yin and yang, even if he'd managed to get the rest mostly right.

tagged: hayden. time: may 10th, 2pm. notes: none.

Lucien was relieved he'd picked one. After all, every thing he asked about just left Lucien stretching what little he knew more and more. His understanding of Canontese was far better then his understanding of Chinese culture, and the more specific it got, the less he knew. What if he wanted to know the importance of something that wasn't a major figure?

"It's alright." No, it was better that he didn't shake his hand. Lucien was uncomfortable with that level of physical proximity, and he replaced the handshake with a simple nod. "I hope your friend enjoys it at least."

What else? All his manners seemed to have flown away from him. What was the right thing to say? He didn't even know the mans name. How familiar was he supposed to be with him? What should he say?

After a moment, he simply gave another small nod. "It was nice meeting you."

And with that he was off--out of the store, the guard falling into step behind him as he left. He was emotionally exhausted just from a small chat, and he was eager to return home. As much as he'd missed his freedom and missed being outside, it was all a bit too much for him.