Chapter 60: The Song
After dinner I went back to my room and cultivated until the second hour of night.
I lay on my broken bed and looked up.
I had not heard anything from it since the night I was pulled in. A door that stood at the end of the corridor and was what it was.
"Zhen,"
"Mm."
She was already in the corner.
She had simply arrived at some point between me closing the skill tab and me lying down, and was now sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed.
"The room, When I go in again. Will it pull me in the same way."
"I am here now, It will not do anything I do not permit."
"You can control it."
"It is my cave, The room is an entry point. I can open or close it as I choose."
"Why did you let it pull me the first time?"
A pause.
"I was curious,"
"You were curious."
"I had been in the cave for three hundred years. A girl walked past the entry point at three in the morning and looked tasty and I was curious."
"So you pulled me into a cave."
"I wanted to see what you would do."
"And what did I do?"
"You fell over immediately."
...
"Zhen."
"Yes."
"Why did you really come out of the cave?"
The long silence..
"Because three hundred years is a very long time,"
"For what?"
Silence.
"For waiting," she said quietly.
"And I have been waiting for my master for three hundred years and he has not come back. And..."
"You are not sure he is dead."
"No," she said. "But I am sure that I have been alone for three hundred years and I am sure that is not nothing."
I thought about Ren in the chair. About what it meant to show up every day for someone who could not acknowledge it.
"It is not nothing,"
Zhen made a sound. Her tail moved .
Then, very quietly, she started humming again. The same melody as before.
This time she added words.
Just a few lines, low and half-formed, like she had not decided to sing them and they had come out anyway.
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide...
She stopped.
The room was quiet.
"Zhen,"
"Go to sleep," she said. "You have training at dawn."
I looked at the ceiling.
"That song,"
"Go to sleep."
"Did you write that in the cave?"
"Go to sleep, Rin."
She had never used my name before.
I closed my eyes.
The humming continued, very quietly, until I was not sure whether I was still hearing it or only remembering it.
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
***
I woke up in the morning to find Zhen asleep in the corner.
She lying on her side on the floor, curled slightly, one hand under her cheek. Her cat ears were flat in a relaxed way. Her tail wrapped around herself like a blanket.
She was laughing quietly in her sleep.
Not the hehehehe.
It would creep me out.
I looked at her for a moment.
Three hundred years alone in a cave writing sad songs about someone who did not come back.
And she laughed in her sleep. I should take her to a mental hospital.
I got up quietly and got ready for training without waking her.
At the door I looked back.
She was asleep.
I went to training.
***
Two weeks later.
The core was nearly complete.
I could feel it.
The pure root method produced a different quality of foundation than the standard method. It was more uniform.
Leo had noticed something.
He had not said anything. But he had been watching me differently for the last four days.
I ignored it and cultivated.
Zhen had taken to following me everywhere.
The corner of rooms, behind me on paths, the window of wherever I was when I was inside. She did not announce her presence.
On the third day I said: "You are following me."
She had said: "Meow."
On the fifth day I said: "You are still following me."
She had said: "I am oriented toward the world, which currently contains you."
On the eighth day I had stopped mentioning it.
The girl had gone through my locker again.
This time two more uniforms were missing and my extra shoes had been moved to a different locker, which was petty in a way that took effort.
I had straightened everything and closed the locker.
Not now. Core first.
But I was keeping a record.
***
Two days before the deadline.
I was sitting in the training ground after the formal session had ended, everyone else having returned to their dorms.
I felt it before I understood what I was feeling.
Something shifting below my sternum. The core was complete, finally, the structure of it finished.
The way Ancestor Shen had described: the container reaching sufficient structural integrity to absorb ambient mana on its own.
It was working.
Zhen appeared beside me.
She was sitting in the dirt of the training ground in her robes, her tail curled around her feet.
"I can see it," she said quietly.
"The absorption."
"Yes. A very small atmospheric disturbance. To most cultivators here it would be undetectable." A pause.
"To the people I mentioned, it would not be."
I sat in the training ground in the golden late afternoon light and felt my Foundation Core begin to form and thought about a month ago when I could not walk.
She was quiet for a moment.
Then, so quietly I almost did not hear it:
"Meow."
I looked at her.
She was looking at the tower.
Her ears were slightly down.
The song from the cave was in my head again.
The ceiling counted every day.
I wrote your name on all the walls.
"Zhen," I said.
"Yes."
"When I go back. You are coming with me."
She looked at me.
"That is not how it works," she said.
"I do not know how it works," I said. "Neither do you. Neither does the system, apparently, since their understanding of current conditions is limited."
A pause.
"That was my words."
"Yes."
She looked back at the tower.
Her tail moved once.
"I will think about it,"
"That is not a no."
"It is not a no,"
The Foundation Core settled into place below my sternum with a warmth that had nothing to do with temperature.
[Main Quest Updated.] [Objective: Reach Foundation Core: Complete.]
[Reward: 500 Power Stones.]
[Current Power Stones: 743.]
[The higher beings are less entertained. New objectives incoming. Be ready to die.]
I looked at the notification.
Then at Zhen.
She was still looking at the tower.
She was smiling.
