Now, they stood together in Weiran’s room a few hours after Xingyu’s lessons had ended and about half an hour after Xiao-Xiao got off work. Weiran was sitting on his bed as per usual, his legs curled beneath him, letting the two brothers take the chairs if they wanted. Neither Xingyu nor Xiao-Xiao sat. Xiao-Xiao stayed by the door, his shoulders tense like a hunted animal, and Xingyu stood next to Weiran, his arms crossed, pretending he was only there because he wanted to see whatever Weiran was doing on his computer and not because he didn’t know how to stand next to Xiao-Xiao.

“How did the party go?” asked Weiran tentatively, once the silence had stretched to be too much for him.

“Fine,” said Xiao-Xiao. The mysterious hoarseness of his voice from a few days ago had faded, probably due to the mountains of honeyed tea that Xingyu had seen Laoma make in the kitchen. “Are you having a hard time quarantined like this?”

Both Weiran and Xingyu blinked. Had Xiao-Xiao just asked…about Weiran’s well-being? Xingyu wasn’t sure which he was surprised more by—the fact that he had worded concern for Weiran, or that he’d noticed even before Xingyu that this could be a problem. Of course it would be difficult to stay cooped up in a hotel room for weeks on end—Xingyu should have realized that, should have looked out for the person he had decided would be his secret weapon the moment Weiran told him about his parents.

“Oh, um.” Weiran shook himself out of his own shock and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s fine. I mean, it isn’t like I’m missing out on family gatherings or anything. Haven’t had those for like two decades anyway.” His tongue traced the bottom of his lip as another awkward silence stretched between them. Then he said, “I’ve been working at their systems.”

Xingyu and Xiao-Xiao both showed physical relief at the subject change.

“And?” Xingyu asked.

“It’s a work in progress. I’ve been able to worm my way into a couple of their systems, but not anything that holds any valuable information. I’m thinking I might be able to use those systems to piggyback into the more protected ones, maybe disguise myself as a kind of Trojan horse that their higher-level security won’t recognize as a threat.”

Weiran had the ability to speak about his talents in a way that someone like Xingyu, who knew next to nothing about hacking and only had a begrudging interest to learn, could still understand. “Would that be difficult?”

Weiran shrugged. “About as difficult as anything else I’ve been doing. If anything goes wrong, I hope you have a new laptop and hotel for me to move to.”

“That can be arranged,” said Xiao-Xiao. “Will they know it’s you if they catch you like that?”