Ten's life is a matter of stipulations and specifications. There are no requisite texts left to remember the life of the boy; no family that remains and all but one are food for worms these days. So, wherever there is truth, whatever principles still provide a life that makes sense, it only really goes that far out. Some days even the last of the fifteen doesn't remember exactly what was sine qua non; that is, Ten doesn't remember the vivid details of his childhood back in Bangkok, or the sharp edges of his father's hats and suits. The linger of his family is lost in translation at best.
They are there, in the photographs and notes, in the moments that remain, but he knows there was more to them than that. But time is an oil spill, time is a white wash of days so that new learning can begin, time and time again. So, this is as it is:
Li Yong Qin was the young and only son of a businessman who became a diplomat to settle into Bangkok with his lovely young wife. The boy was made for more — always more, it seemed, with everything lavished on him before he was old enough to walk. More was America, sent with his mother two years before his father could even join them. Yong Qin was a perpetual splendor, never one to disappoint in his name.
