The nightly song of the cicadas was approaching its crescendo when the knock came. Cheung woke from a heavy, sickening sleep. “Are you here for me, you murderers?” he shouted.

The knock came louder.

“Have the courtesy to kill me in the morning.” He dropped back into a nauseous doze.

Still the knocking continued.

“Are you so bloodthirsty that you must drink in the middle of the night?”

He went down to the door and opened it.

Who should be standing there but his own beloved son, the only one that remained, hair wild, eyes bloodshot, skin white as the scum on a barrel of soy milk. He limped, and a bloody bandage bound his right hand. “Tak-Wing.”

The young man smiled at him, all teeth. He slammed a battered leather briefcase on the foyer table.

“What do you have in there?”

“Let’s go to the parlour.”

“What are you up to, son of mine?”

They went into the parlour, and Cheung cleared the coffee table.

“What is it?”

Tak-Wing put the bag on the table and opened it.

The case was full of little boxes of Immortal Carp, the Carp’s Eye type, precisely the variety of anti-opium pill that had killed Cheung’s father and been banned from the market forty years ago.

“Where did you get those?”

“The court ordered Old Mah to destroy them when you won the case against him. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, because of all the thought and labour he’d put into developing the product. So he gave them to his daughters to dispose of. Violet did as she was told and had her portion incinerated at the dump. But Emily kept hers. She’s kind of sentimental, you know? She was attached to the memory of her father’s joy when the pills first hit the market. But she left them when she fled the house.” Tak-Wing’s toothy smile widened and grew gleeful.

“How did you know I wanted them?”

“Lee came to me, worried about you. He should have worried about me too.”

Cheung looked at his once beautiful son. Something noble dug at it his heart, but he willed it away. “Do you understand my plan?”

“Lee told me about it.”

“I want to get rid of the monster babies,” said Cheung.

“The only monster baby we know is Raymond. The sight of him makes me sick, Father.”

“I thought Emily would give me my first grandson.”

“The sight of her makes me sick too.”

“I told you not to marry her.”

“You were right, my dearest father. You were right. Not only have I married a whore, I’ve married the whore of my worst enemy. And she has borne his child. Now she’s running off with one of his henchmen, some stinky hole translator. If I kill her, does that make me a murderer?”

Cheung jolted for a minute into his old, kind self. “My son.”

“Does it?”