The wound

He left the Harbor temple-runner program because he disagreed with the priestly board, and he has spent four years quietly not knowing whether he was right. Harbor still gives him favor — generously, unusually — and he doesn’t know whether that’s a comfort or a lure. The standing favor he carries is the one he’s afraid to spend, because spending it would be admitting he’s still owed.

The longing

A stable life that includes the crew, and he doesn’t know if those two things are compatible. He grew up watching his uncles age into the slow rhythms of fishing families. He suspects he’s not built for it. He suspects he is. He’s twenty-seven and these are the years where the question matters.

Skills

Boats of every size and configuration, moto-couriers, MTR system knowledge that includes maintenance access patterns, the entire taxi network’s fixer-friendly drivers, weather reading, basic combat. Speaks Cantonese, English, functional Mandarin and Tagalog. Knows the harbor better than most Harbor priests do.

Relationships within the crew

• With Min — mutual respect, unacknowledged romantic tension. Both are aware. Neither will move first; the crew rule that nobody runs Settlements has an unwritten cousin that nobody risks the crew with sex.
• With Jin — half older brother, half hero. Faan handles the worship by ignoring it and treating Jin as a competent adult.
• With Bo — practical mentor. Teaches him to drive boats. Listens to him talk about girls.
• With Nadia — peers. They drink together when work is light.
• With Dr. Kwan — deference. She’s older; he treats her with the formality his fishing-family upbringing trained into him.

Series arc

Harbor will ask something of him that he can’t refuse and shouldn’t accept. The standing favor will get spent — not by him, possibly. His uncle in Aberdeen will reach out for the first time in four years. The question of whether he goes back to the boats or stays with the crew, and whether either choice is even available, is his arc.