Chapter 116
Silence (I)
For the first ti in a few days, I sat drinking my beal in quiet calm. Every previous ti was addled with a level of anxiety toward learning sothing 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 co that Long Tao and I drop our thinly veiled ga 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, sentints 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 soone, however, who suffers the 'good enough'. That's just how things are.
I headed back 'ho' 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 sothing? He really is like Bob, this cat that I had for a little while. The guy would co 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 like twelve tis over one weekend.
I can't think of him that way, though; it may lead to relax a bit too much and one day accidentally pet his chin or sothing, which is likely a good way to lose my head.
I dove into one of the many books I'd bought since we ca to town. They were mostly your standard-fare travelogues that sounded mostly made up, with an occasional arrangent of poetry or fables or short stories, and very few 'novels'.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The entire industry seed rather ahead of the rest of the world in terms of tiline; 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 ca up suddenly, and a voice right after.
"Senior Lu? Are you inside?" It was a young woman's voice, prompting to frown for a mont before recalling that it was probably the 'guide' Mada Lu arranged for us.
I stood up and walked out, eting 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 sowhat '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 ant for fighting, and had a curious expression on her face as she looked at .
"Junior Wan Lan greets Senior Lu!" She bowed courteously, her voice almost as flat as her face.
"Oh. You must be the girl Mada Lu ntioned. What are you doing here?"
"Mada has ntioned that she has intentions of sending away," she said. "So I ca 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 to persuade the Mada to keep you here?"
"I understand that it's a transgression of the highest order," she said. "And I will take any punishnt you wish to te out. But the Mada 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 Mada is dying, and she is trying to ensure so 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 an?"
"If not with ," I said. "She'll send you out with soone 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 sotis do." I cracked a faint smile. "I won't presu to know the full extent of the Mada'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 mory that I had buried for so many years. During a sumr 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 ti, and ride my bike with them.
My grandpa, however, 'forced' into a sumr internship at the company one of his friends was the CEO of. I genuinely thought he just wanted to piss 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 sumr 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 sa 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 Mada 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."
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