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The date isn’t going very well, Jin can tell. Across the table, Lee pokes the last remaining dumpling with the end of his chopstick, surreptitiously edging it to the far side of his plate. He can’t seem to bring himself to eat it.
“Did you like the dumplings?” she asks politely.
“They're fine,” Lee says gloomily. “It’s all...fine.” He isn’t meeting her eyes, and Jin knows that it’s another lie.
Because Lee’s been lying all night long. Lee’s lied about his name and the village where he’d spent his childhood, he’s lied about how he’d gotten his scar and about how much he’d liked the meal he’d ordered after one hasty glance at the menu at Jin’s favorite noodle shop.
But Jin doesn’t really mind. She had known that he wouldn’t tell her anything about himself from the moment she’d first asked him to dinner. She’d looked into Lee's handsome, wary face and known right then and there that he was going to spend the evening lying to her as though his life depended on it, and that she was going to let him.
Because Jin knows boys like Lee, she’s known boys like him her entire life. Refugee boys who arrive in the city from every corner of the Earth Kingdom, boys with work-roughened hands and chips on their shoulders and faraway eyes that have seen too much of the war that no one speaks of within the walls, boys with no good choices and everything to lose.
You can’t expect a boy like Lee to tell you the truth right away.
But Jin asks him questions anyway, because Lee shows her where the truth is hidden without even knowing it. He looks down at his folded hands when he tells her he doesn’t like the theatre and Jin knows that he does but he’s ashamed of it, he blinks and looks away when she asks him what he plans to do for a living and she understands that he’s trying hard not to look too far into the future.
“Lee,” Jin says gently, “you don’t have to finish your food if you don’t like it.”
He finally looks up at her, surprised. “But I do like it,” he says quickly. “They’re very, ah, slimy.” He shudders.
“Lee,” she says with patience. “You really don’t have to. I don’t mind.”
Lee sighs in relief and drops his chopstick.
Lee’s lied about everything tonight, from his previous employment to his juggling skills. But Jin has one more question for him.
She stretches her hand across their small table. Lee draws back in trepidation.
“I know you don’t want to be in Ba Sing Se,” Jin begins. “But if you’re so unhappy here, then why don’t you just leave?”
She’s not really expecting him to tell her the truth. She isn’t.
But Lee drops his head and looks down at his hands, folded so carefully on his lap.
“My uncle,” Lee mutters, more to his hands than to her. “He needs me. I couldn’t leave him here alone.”
Jin’s seen Lee working in the tea shop. He glares at the customers and shouts at his uncle and talks back to Pao. But even this is a lie, too, because for all his rudeness, Lee drops his tray of empty tea cups and runs to steady the ladder when Mushi, loading jars of tea on the top shelf of the pantry, is about to topple over, and he is the first to push Mushi unceremoniously into a chair and press a cup of tea in his hands when his uncle starts complaining about his aching feet.
For the first time in this conversation, Lee is telling her the truth. And in that moment Jin knows.
Knows that Lee is one of those one-in-a-thousand of boys, the very best kind, a diamond in the rough. The kind that you hang on to with both hands, the kind you don’t let slip away without a fight.
Because boys like Lee might be as tough as they look, but they’re far more fragile than they seem. He’s the kind of boy who’ll take forever to let his guard down and he’s the kind of boy who melts when you touch his cheek. Lee’s the kind of boy who’ll devote the rest of his life to protecting you, if you’re one of those lucky people he’s chosen to love.
Even before he makes the lanterns glow at the fountain, Jin knows what kind of boy Lee is. He’s one of those tender-hearted boys, the kind who can’t bear to see anyone unhappy, the sort who’ll do whatever it takes to please those he cares about. He’s the kind of boy who glowers at his customers but gets flustered by a single smile aimed at his direction, the kind who’ll lie through his teeth but will spend the last of his wages to buy his uncle a new pair of shoes.
And that’s why Jin returns to the tea shop the next day. She walks up to the counter where Lee is slumped with one hand propping up his cheek, and cheerfully brandishes her coupon for a free tea.
Lee’s mouth falls open.
“Jin?” he asks incredulously. “What are you doing here?”
Jin smiles and gives her coupon a wave. “Well, I have this coupon for a free cup of tea,” she explains. “And I wanted to see if you wanted to meet me for dinner again tonight.”
Lee is staring at her. From the kitchen, Mushi gives her a wink.
“But I did everything wrong last night,” Lee says in astonishment. “Why would you want to go out with me again?”
Jin shakes her head. “You did everything right, Lee.”
“No, I didn’t,” Lee insists. “I was rude to you, I was disrespectful, I ran away and left you there all alone—” He closes his hands into tight fists. “You should pick someone else to go out with. Someone nicer, someone who’ll talk to you, spirits, I couldn’t even. . . someone better.”
Someone better than me , he means. But there isn’t anybody better than Lee. He’s the best kind of boy, a prince in disguise. Maybe others don’t see that when they look at him, seeing only his scarred face or disgruntled frown, but Jin does.
“But you’re the one I want,” Jin says patiently, because you have to be patient with a boy like Lee. But she just knows that with a little encouragement, he’ll start to drop his guard—just look at how much he softened in just one night. All she’d offered him was a little kindness, and he’d paid it back a hundredfold.
Yes, Jin knows that Lee’s worth waiting for, worth all the gentleness she can muster.
“I don’t even know why you even asked me out in the first place,” Lee grouses.
“I asked you out because I thought you were very handsome”—his face goes a delicate shade of pink, like the rosy inside of a shell—“and because of how sweet you were with your uncle when you thought no one was looking. That’s how I knew. About the kind of boy you were.”
Lee’s face is flushed all the way up to the edges of the scar. He’s the kind of boy who doesn’t know his own value, and won’t believe you even if you try to tell him that he’s worth everything. But it’s true.
Now it’s up to Jin to make sure he sees it.
So she goes up on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek, the one with the scar. The raised skin is rough against her lips, but she likes it. Likes him, likes everything about him.
When she draws back, Lee’s eyes are open wide. She catches Mushi’s quiet chuckle of amusement at his nephew’s flustered expression.
“I’ll see you tonight, then,” she says. She slips her coupon across the counter. “And I’d like a cup of jasmine tea, please.”
Lee slowly lifts his hand to touch his cheek.
“Jasmine,” he echoes. “All right.”
“If you’re taking a break soon, maybe you could sit with me for a while,” she suggests.
Lee is shaking his head. “I can’t—” he begins, but Mushi is already whisking the apron off his nephew.
“He’s all yours,” Mushi confirms.
"I'll get your tea," Lee chokes out, and vanishes into the kitchen.
Jin thinks Lee might walk her home tonight, if she asks him to. She's also wondering if Lee might be the kind of boy who’ll carry her basket for her at the market, maybe even the kind of boy who’ll buy her a peridot lily at the Jade Moon Festival.
(He is.)