By the time Monday evening came around, I was up to version twelve of the Raiden’s Spark. I turned off the lights. I aimed my hand at the door, thumbed a button, and let fly a ragged cone of neon-bright wires.
The wires streaked across the stone chamber in a brilliant flash and wrapped Gunner’s steel helm before he could even begin a backswing of his bastard sword. The rest of my party cowered in awe as a nest of lightning enveloped Gunner’s armored torso, turning him into a marionette gone mad with jittering death spasms, with absolutely no hope for a saving throw against this: a +9 magic bonus attack.
The wires of Raiden’s Spark retracted smoothly into the spring mechanism via a small hand reel. Gunner lay steaming on the flagstone.
I turned the lights back on. I flipped my face shield up. I blinked back into my room.
I opened my lab book, which I had meticulously decorated into the hammered-iron style of medieval blacksmithery.
DIY FANTASY FX—SUNNY DAE
From the tiny arms of a tiny standing knight I took a tiny sword that was not a sword but a pen, and muttered words as I wrote them.
“Raiden’s Spark, success.”
Fakery
You’re not wearing that,” said Mom.
“I always wear this,” I said.
“Not to dinner at the club, you’re not,” said Mom. She had traded her usual WFH yoga pants for a long gray wool skirt.
I looked down at my clothes. Glowstick-green vintage Kazaa tee shirt. Cargo shorts the color, and shape, of potatoes.
Dad appeared in a suit and tie, which is what he always wore. He put down his phone, sighed at my room and its many white plastic storage containers, at the newly completed Raiden’s Spark, and at me. He shook his head.
“Still with the toys,” he murmured to Mom. “Shouldn’t Sunny be into girls by now?”
“The book said kids mature at their own pace,” murmured Mom back.
“I hear everything you’re saying,” I said. “And the Raiden’s Spark is hardly a toy.”
Dad went back to his phone. Dad also worked twenty-four-hour days. Dad and Mom worked at the same company, which they also owned and operated.
“We’re at the club tonight,” said Mom. “Please wear slacks and a button-up and a blazer and argyle socks and driving loafers.”
“And underwear and skin and hair and teeth,” I said.
“And a tie,” said Dad, eyes locked to his screen.
“Get your outfit in alignment—now, please,” said Mom, and turned her attention back to her buzzing phone.
I changed my clothes, hissing. Then I prepared to descend the stairs. I hated stairs. People slipped and fell down stairs. Our old place back in Arroyo Plato had not been cursed with stairs.
Gray, my older brother, once called me fifteen going on fifty.
He didn’t call me anything now.
* * *
—
Dad’s blue-for-boys Inspire NV wound silently through the spaghetti streets of our neighborhood: Rancho Ruby.
Rancho Ruby was developed all at once in the late nineties as a seaside mega-enclave for the newly wealthy. It was the setting for Indecent Housewives of Rancho Ruby. It had its own private airstrip for C-level executive douchebags of all denominations.
If you thought Playa Mesa was fancy, that meant you’d never seen Rancho Ruby.
Rancho Ruby was 99.6 percent white. We, the Daes, were one of the few minority families, and one of two Asian families, possessing the wealth required to live in such a community.
Being a minority in a crowd of majority meant having to prove yourself worthy, over and over, for you were only as credible as your latest divine miracle. For Mom, this meant seizing the lead volunteer position at my school despite her unrelenting work schedule. For Dad, this meant pretending to care deeply about maintaining an impeccable address setup and swing amid the endless poking and ribbing at the Rancho Ruby Country Club.
Mom and Dad’s company, Manny Dae Business Management Services, was started by Dad’s late father, Emmanuel Dae, a first-generation Korean immigrant who gave his only son his name, his charisma, and his client list. Once upon a time, the company was run out of his old house in Arroyo Plato, which after his death became our house.
This was the time when big brother Gray and I would rattle the floors of the old craftsman with our stomps and jumps and sprints. When clients—all immigrant mom-n-pops from the neighborhood, understandably intimidated by American tax law—would happily toss back any toy balls or vehicles that happened to stray into the living room, where Mom and Dad held meetings in English, simple Korean, and even simpler Spanish.
It was also the time when Gray helped me make my first costume—a tinfoil helmet—so that I could play squire to his knight. Together we conquered the backyard lands and stacked the corpses of pillow goblins ten high, often joined by customers’ children enchanted by Gray’s charms. Even back then, Gray had charisma like no other.
Magic missile! Gray would scream. And I could practically see it!
Magic missile!
But.
Mom and Dad—hustling like hell all over every county in Southern Californialand—landed their first C-level client with C-level cash. After that, they could not imagine going back to the mom-n-pops with their handwritten checks and collateral jerk drumsticks.
Landing a few more C-level clients—all in Rancho Ruby, all acquired through word of mouth—enabled them to move us into the seven-bedroom monstrosity we lived in today.
“We’re here,” said Dad.
I jerked awake. The Inspire NV had taken us to the cartoonishly oversize carriage house of the Rancho Ruby Country Club. Three young valets—one for each of us—helped us out of the car. They wore hunter green. They were all Hispanic.
“Sup,” I said to my valet.
“Have a wonderful evening, Mr. Dae,” said the valet. He looked about twenty-one. Gray was twenty-one.
Dad handed him the key fob. “I appreciate everything you and your team do,” he said.
The valet, unaccustomed to such sincerity, brandished the fob with a smile.
“Of course, Mr. Dae,” said the valet.
Lion’s-head doors opened to reveal a heavily coffered oak corridor leading us toward the restrained din of a dark velvet cocktail lounge and beyond, deep into the cavern of the dining room proper to sit in deep leather booths as rusty crimson as a kidney.
A waiter—dressed in real steakhouse whites with a real towel draped over his forearm—led us to our booth.