Chapter 116

  Silence (I)

  For the first time in a few days, I sat drinking my beal in quiet calm. Every previous time was addled with a level of anxiety toward learning something new or discovering a potential guide. However, all of that has been resolved--so now, all I had to do was... nothing.

  In two days, we'd leave this damned place and head over to... yet another damned place.

  Haah.

  I find it rather odd that we're not heading in the opposite direction of where everyone who colluded to destroy the Spirit Sword Sect is. It'd be like looking at a tsunami warning and then heading to the beach just because you can.

  Though, I do wonder when the day will come that Long Tao and I drop our thinly veiled game of pretend. A few years? Decades? Maybe never 'cause, to be honest, it's kind of... fun?

  Regardless, I paid for the drink and left, taking a stroll down the central square and then toward the main street. The main chatter today was the murderer who got caught by the chief; everyone was praising the latter, proclaiming how safe the town is compared to the outside world. They weren't totally wrong, I guess, though that's a distinction that's often lost on most people.

  Even back on Earth, sentiments like these were evergreen: the idea of 'good enough'. In that we sacrifice parts of whatever it is we value--freedom, privacy, the right to light up fireworks in public--to get to the state of good enough.

  There's always someone, however, who suffers the 'good enough'. That's just how things are.

  I headed back 'home' a bit earlier than usual, finding it empty. The kids were likely busy 'buying' things (though I'm fairly certain they just grab random crap toward the end of the day and spend the rest of it eating sweets), and Long Tao... well, ever since I gave him that art, he just sort of appears and disappears.

  ... like a cat.

  Hey? Did I just stumble upon something? He really is like Bob, this cat that I had for a little while. The guy would come and go as he pleased, would look at you with these eyes of absolute derision, and would only allow pets on his own terms.

  Bled me like twelve times over one weekend.

  I can't think of him that way, though; it may lead me to relax a bit too much and one day accidentally pet his chin or something, which is likely a good way to lose my head.

  I dove into one of the many books I'd bought since we came to town. They were mostly your standard-fare travelogues that sounded mostly made up, with an occasional arrangement of poetry or fables or short stories, and very few 'novels'.

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  The entire industry seemed rather ahead of the rest of the world in terms of timeline; there were practically zero signs of industrialization anywhere, yet novelizations were a thing, as was a mass production of the books.

  Then again, when you have magic, it can probably act as a decent enough substitute for the printing press.

  A pair of knocks came up suddenly, and a voice right after.

  "Senior Lu? Are you inside?" It was a young woman's voice, prompting me to frown for a moment before recalling that it was probably the 'guide' Madame Lu arranged for us.

  I stood up and walked out, meeting the young girl face-to-face.

  She looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, rather tall for her age, as she almost touched six feet from the looks of it, with broad shoulders and a somewhat 'flat' face. Her nose was ever so slightly crooked to the left, her brown hair appearing a touch oily.

  She wore a tight-fitting robe, clearly meant for fighting, and had a curious expression on her face as she looked at me.

  "Junior Wan Lan greets Senior Lu!" She bowed courteously, her voice almost as flat as her face.

  "Oh. You must be the girl Madame Lu mentioned. What are you doing here?"

  "Madame has mentioned that she has intentions of sending me away," she said. "So I came here to plead with you."

  "..." oh. Looks like there's another heart that I will have to break... okay, that's a weird way to put it. "You want me to persuade the Madame to keep you here?"

  "I understand that it's a transgression of the highest order," she said. "And I will take any punishment you wish to mete out. But the Madame is... old. I don't want to leave her alone. So, I beseech you--please convince her to change her decision!" She bowed even deeper as she begged, yet all I could do is sigh.

  It's not like I couldn't ask in her stead, but I already knew the answer. She was being sent away precisely because Madame is dying, and she is trying to ensure some kind of future for the young girl.

  But, as it goes, teens have their own ways and wants, and the generational clash is as inevitable as death itself.

  "I can plead on your behalf," I said.

  "Thank you!"

  "But it won't change anything."

  "W-what... do you mean?"

  "If not with me," I said. "She'll send you out with someone else."

  "... but why?" She bit her lower lip, her expression dropping. "I worked hard not to be a burden!"

  "It's a selfish thing we old people sometimes do." I cracked a faint smile. "I won't presume to know the full extent of the Madame's intentions, but I'll tell you this: even if it feels untrue, she's doing it for you."

  She gritted her teeth and clenched her fingers into a fist.

  The pose invoked a rather distant memory that I had buried for so many years. During a summer break when I was sixteen, all I wanted to do was go to the pool with my friends and Sarah, the girl I was crushing on at the time, and ride my bike with them.

  My grandpa, however, 'forced' me into a summer internship at the company one of his friends was the CEO of. I genuinely thought he just wanted to piss me off, but it was one of those things where neither one of us really understood each other.

  He himself never had the opportunity and understood how important even just one summer of networking could be in a job market.

  But... I was sixteen.

  I didn't give a rat's ass about any of that. All I knew was that my friends were having a ton of fun, that Sarah started dating Jeremiah, and that every cent I 'earned' from the internship was thieved away by my mom. Granted, she stored it into the college fund, but the same thing applied--I was sixteen. I just wanted to waste it on beer and bad decisions.

  "How about you stay back for a bit and wait for Light?"

  "Light?"

  "The reason Madame decided to leave you to us," I said. "Ah, speak of the devil." I noticed the kids appearing in the back, cutting across the small alleyway nestled between decrepit and empty houses. "They're here."