The park is clean because it is maintained by the government. Trimmed hedges. Flat gravel. Grass in rectangles. A sign that says: DO NOT LITTER. A poster with a smiling family is wired to a fence.

  We sit on a thin blanket near a pond the color of tin. Mother sets down a small box of tea eggs and several buns with different fillings. Father brings a few metal bottles of different teas. No crowds. A patrol walks the path and does not stop.

  “This is the surprise,” Mother says. “We said we would make some good ones.”

  I nod. “It’s good.” Whatever she sees in my expression makes her smile.

  We eat. The buns are still warm. Birds make short sounds in the trees and then stop.

  Father clears his throat. “How was the stall?”

  “Better,” I say. “Word is moving.”

  “How much?” Mother asks.

  “Nine jiao and five fen today,” I say. “After paper.”

  Father raises his eyebrows. “I don’t remember there being so many portraits.”

  “It was mostly portraits. Two group sketches. But there was one for a shop. She said she will hang it in the window. I asked her to pay two jiao.”

  Mother watches the path. “And she agreed?”

  “Yes. If she had asked for color, I would have had to send her away.”

  “Hm,” she says. “Color would elevate your art, but make it pricier.”

  Father drinks. “Would it be worth the investment?”

  “No. The colors are dropped in from Alrescha once a month. Those made here are made in such small amounts that the price is too much.”

  “Oh, I never thought about that,” Father says.

  We eat in quiet for a bit. A boy throws a pebble into the pond and his mother tells him not to. A servitor pushes a trash cart along the path, eyes down, arms steady.

  Mother taps the tin lid. “We can use part of the money for parts, still?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Sundays are enough. I’ll keep selling then.”

  She nods. “I will purchase the first batch for you over the next week.”

  Father folds the blanket edge straight. “You know,” he says, “when I was your age I wasn’t good at anything like that. If I drew a circle it had corners.”

  I smile at him. “That was a very corny joke, Dad.”

  “I learned by doing the same thing until it stopped breaking,” he continues with a chuckle. “You see it twice and keep it. I saw it three times and still forgot.”

  “He has my smarts,” Mother says.

  “He has your beauty,” Father says.

  I eat another egg while they make lovey-dovey eyes at each other.

  People walk by. The patrol returns, looks at my armband once, and continues.

  Mother unties her hair and reties it. For a second I see the pale line along the back of her head, the thin scar that curves back into the hair. She tucks it away without comment.

  Father watches her hands and then looks at me. “Have we ever told you how we met?” he says.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Mother exhales. “Yes, when he was two.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  He speaks first. “A Locust came in hot. LCT-1V. After a skirmish. We were short on the germanium needed to repair myomer, so field work was all we could do. Heat sinks were fouled. Paste cooked. Cockpit gauge climbing.”

  Mother sits with her hands on her knees. “The ejection jammed,” she says. “Head hit the brace. Everything was noise. I had third-degree burns all over my body.”

  “I was supposed to wait for permission from the officer,” Father says. “Procedure. I opened the side panel and cranked the emergency vent.”

  “Cold air and the most handsome man in the galaxy.”

  “I got written up, then I worked two extra shifts. Worth it.”

  Mother pours barley tea into the lid and drinks it like a cup. “I got citizenship for service,” she says. “Recon lance. Or at least what it should have been.”

  “Why stop?” I ask. According to the instructors, those that survive something like that and prove themselves could get a bigger ‘Mech.

  “Trusting the ‘Mech got hard,” she says. “And the numbers.” She looks at Father. “House Qing-Liang made me a good offer after I saved the life of one of theirs. Lian started to work in the depot. The rest is history.”

  She ties her hair tighter. “So we left the CCAF behind. It was allowed after an intercession by the House.”

  We sit for a while. A small child points at a duck cutout clamped to the fence and laughs. There are no ducks in Tikograd.

  “Your drawings are better,” Father says. “Do you think we should ask for a contract?”

  “Let him focus on the school competition,” Mother says. “If he makes a good showing, he could go even further.”

  “I don’t say it to lower him,” Father says. “I say it so he knows he is safe, even if he takes it easy.”

  “I already know. But I— I still want more. More than just drawing for the—” I say.

  Mother nudges the tin toward me. “Eat another egg.”

  I do.

  “You will keep selling on Sundays,” she says. “Good. That keeps the neighbors happy. They see you work when they rest. They will not say you got anything for free.”

  Father nods. “And in the week, you will continue to shadow the senior technicians. They have only praised you. That, and they comment on your adorable cheeks.”

  “Everyone does,” I say with complete seriousness.

  Mother laughs and sets the empty lid down. “The stall will grow,” she says. “You should not raise prices yet. Let people think they found a good thing. Let them tell someone else. When the line forms, you can change the sign and explain it with bigger demand.”

  Father smiles a little. “Your mother understands markets.”

  “I understand people,” she says. “Markets are just people.”

  Wind moves the hedge a little. Plastic strips, a marriage tradition, tied to the fence click against wire.

  “Do you remember your first weeks?” I ask Father. “At a depot?”

  “Brooms,” he says. “And being scared of breaking things that cost more than me. A senior tech made me recite the floor lines every morning. White walk. Yellow wait. Red don’t. I said it until I believed it.”

  Mother looks at me. “He was slower,” she says in a teaching tone while looking at me. “But he lasted. That’s why he is still there.”

  Father shrugs. “I had to choose: be quick and wrong, or slow and useful. I chose the one that led to the least trouble for my father.”

  “Do you think I am too quick?” I ask.

  “I think quick is only good if it makes no mistakes,” he says. “You don’t.”

  Mother wipes the empty tin with a napkin. “You also shut up when told. That helps.”

  We drink the last of the barley tea. The patrol walks by a third time. They look bored.

  “Tell him the rest,” Mother says to Father. “The fine.”

  He sighs. “I just got a reprimand for being the slowest to finish an order from the head technician of that depot. The margin from me to the next was too high, as he put it. His son, who was slightly faster, agreed with him. The reprimand came with a chit that I had to use at the bank to pay. I kept it in my pocket for a year. To remind me that being slow is not always an option. That and connections matter.”

  “Do you still have it?” I ask.

  “At home,” he says. “In the drawer with the yarn and spare buttons.”

  Father looks at Mother.

  She pulls a small metal piece from her pocket. I can’t identify what it’s from. “From the Locust,” she answers as if reading my mind. “I kept it because it cost me a piece of my head.”

  She folds it and puts it back.

  We pack up the tin. Father shakes the crumbs off the blanket and folds it tight.

  “What next?” I ask.

  “Garden path,” Mother says. “Then the observatory dome when the sun goes down.”

  We stand. Father slings the basket around while holding it like a little girl. Mother takes my hand for the first few steps and then lets go.

  As we walk, Father says, “Son, we want you to know that we will always love you.”

  Mother adds, “No matter if you want to be a technician, artist, or something else.”

  I nod. “I know.”

  The smiles they give me are hard to put into words.

  We pass a sign about early contribution. A boy in a drawing holds out a wrench to a man and smiles. The grass is still clean-cut.

  At the gate, Father stops. “The stall,” he says. “Next Sunday. Same price, same place. If the line grows, we plan. If it does not, we still plan.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Mother looks up at the sky. “Clear tonight,” she says. “Good for the dome.”

  We keep walking. The path tells us where to put our feet. The park is clean. The day is quiet. The surprise is simple and good.