Hints We Never Saw

Saadiq was the one who'd found Uncle Jam's dead body in his one-bedroom flat on the outer skirts of London, in Ilford. 
Saadiq had, admittedly, been excited that fateful day. Uncle Jam (or Jamal as the rest of the family called him) had invited Saadiq over to his flat for the first time. It was a first because Uncle Jam was as secretive as they came—straight after A-Levels he'd moved out of their family house in South London and right to the farthest edges of the East. A strange move, especially for a Bangladeshi boy who lived in quite a traditional household where children weren't expected to leave even after marriage.
But whatever, a then sixteen-year old Saadiq was merely happy to have a room to himself. And there would be ample time to link up with his uncle, with whom he'd grown up as basically brothers, whenever they fancied. Ilford wasn't that far from South, in any case. And distance made hearts grow fonder, as they said.
But it seemed as if Uncle Jam's heart hadn't grown fonder—it had frozen over entirely.
For a few months, aside from random sporadic texts, Uncle Jam kept little contact with Saadiq, Saadiq's parents, and everyone else in the wider family. Visits weren't allowed—it wasn't actively said, but the message was clear.
Why else would someone move out so quickly after becoming an adult, essentially dropping off from everyone's radar? And have to live, at least initially, in a shared house with only part time work and their student maintenance loan and bursary to live off?
It didn't make sense to Saadiq.
But as he would come to learn with Uncle Jam, little sense did make.
Until it all would make sense.
But that part was for later.
That day, Saadiq had been excited because, after four years of only talking through texts and speaking over voice chat in Call of Duty Warzone, Uncle Jam mentioned something in the morning.
“Yo…what d'you think about…coming over to visit, innit?”
“What?” Saadiq had exclaimed, head jerking back from surprise so hard that his headset fell off. Thumped the carpet that cushioned his bare feet.
In the resulting distraction of frantically picking it back up, Saadiq had been killed in-game. Meaning he had to wait thirty seconds until he respawned, so long as Uncle Jam managed to stay alive and not succumb to the opposition himself. After readjusting his headset firmly back on his skull, Saadiq asked—
“Come over to visit? Like, your house?”
“My flat, yeah,” the reply came after a few seconds of pregnant pause. “Like, come over and we can…like, chill and get some PFC and all that, you get me.”
Saadiq hadn't been able to believe his ears, so after rubbing the side of headset a few times, he said—
“Bro—is Jamzy, the guy who basically fell off the planet like four years ago, legit telling me to come over?”
“Yeah I am,” Uncle Jam said, though his voice was a little terse. A level of tension injected into it that Saadiq hadn't heard before.
Uncle Jam was, although an avid slang user who sounded like they both smoked drugs and dealt them, someone with a remarkably soft voice. He'd always been someone who pleaded rather than fought—a trait Saadiq always found odd, but never commented on.
Everyone was different at the end of the day. Different personalities and traits that all meshed to form the person themselves. And in Islamic history, there were some companions of the prophet who were fierce whilst others were more shy and meek. That alone didn't make them any more or less in the eyes of Allah.
So what gave Saadiq the right to view Uncle Jam negatively for his traits?
Regardless, Saadiq did always find it odd. And it made Uncle Jam's tense tone even more odd to hear.
But the excitement of visiting his uncle quelled his fears, then stomped on them, then banished them to the farther corners of his mind.
“When you thinking, then?” Saadiq asked, having respawned and even gotten a kill.
“Like, three o’ clock.” Uncle Jam took a deep breath, then let it out, sounding grainy over the voice chat. “Don't bring no one else though, just you innit. Cool?”
“Definitely cool,” Saadiq said, elation brimming in his chest for the first time in years.
They both died in-game moments later, and were consequently forced back to the menus to start another one.
But Saadiq hadn't cared one bit.
He was seeing Uncle Jam later that day, after all.
At least that part—unlike almost everything else—wasn't a lie.