SU TANG (素醣)

  Day 22, 4th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Taishan Province, Tian’an Sect

  “How’s my condition?” I asked, already knowing the answer but hoping that maybe An Lingqi would look at me with those emotionless eyes and lie for once.

  I needed to clear my head anyway. Ever since I fainted at Princess Changping’s residence, I’d been avoiding the inevitable conversation. The one that came with needles and silence.

  She slipped a silver needle from my wrist like a blade from its sheath.

  “Truthfully,” she said, voice as still as frozen water, “you are incurable. I am sorry.”

  Incurable.

  How delightfully poetic.

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” I tried to smile. It didn’t stick. “I fully expected it. I…”

  Could I turn death into a joke? No. Not when it’s about me.

  Her voice continued like an arrow through mist, describing my condition in that clinical and impersonal way. I tried to keep up a cheery disposition, I really did. But somewhere in the middle of ‘spirit fragmentation’ and ‘qi collapse,’ something cracked.

  Her cold words turned muffled. All I could hear was one word: death. A stupid, slow, meaningless death. The word metastasised into its ugly cousins of dying and decay…until even if she wasn’t saying anything related to that, I wouldn’t have known.

  I couldn’t uphold my smile.

  Her words has been so unpassionate that I wasn’t prepared to receive. I thought that because I was her friend I actually meant something. I wasn’t just another one of her patients. I was me. Su Tang. The only alchemist that the aloof An Lingqi befriended.

  The different one.

  But I guess…that’s what everyone thought too.

  I blinked. Her mouth had stopped moving.

  She was done.

  We sat there as I cycled through my memories.

  Was this it? Was this all?

  My life, a pathetic contract that had ended a little too early.

  My brain flipped through my memories like a maniac rifling through scrolls, praying that somewhere—somewhere—I’d find the precise moment it all went wrong. I must’ve caused it. I always cause everything. I did a wrong thing, and this was all just some big accident, or just some bad karma.

  But if I could find that moment, if I knew exactly why, I could solve it. Just like all those other problems. Just like—

  I hugged my elbows. My skin felt alien. My bones, hollow. Everything in me wanted to curl up and vanish. But no amount of folding in on myself would make me smaller than the truth.

  Where was that pivotal moment where it all went wrong? When did my countdown begin? Or maybe—the part I hated most to think about—was it always meant to be?

  Burning wood crackled in the fireplace, like a metronome counting down to nothing. I would be just like the kindle, crackling merrily as the Paws of Fate caressed it’s form, only to be reduced to nothing but ash.

  Ash has no voice. No colour. No purpose.

  I used to think I was greater than death. As if being young and mildly clever somehow made me untouchable. As if sheer momentum could outrun the Grim Reaper. What an idiot.

  If I’d known that his scythe was so long, I might have crawled instead of sprinted. I might’ve stopped to watch the sunrise more. Held Lao Zhe’s hand. Told Ju Ying I…

  I didn’t even know what I would’ve said.

  Everything I ever said to them was already out there. Every stupid, flippant, selfish little thing. I had always argued with her in my mind and argued with her even more in person. And that was the unbearable part. I couldn’t take it back. I couldn’t rewrite the scenes.

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  I could already see Ju Ying’s face, the infamous storm brewing between her eyebrows. She’d stare at me like I was the world’s worst puzzle. Her staff clutched in one hand; her weight shifted sassily on one hip. Then she’d sigh, a big and audible one, and shake her head.

  Lao Zhe would wrap his doughy arms around me, and I’d rest my chin on his shoulder, breathing in that old-laundry scent, staring at the age spots on his neck like they held some ancient wisdom. He’d squeeze the life back into me if he could. I’d go limp in his hug and wish I could stay there forever.

  And when I told them—if I told them—he’d ask me if it was a joke. A real one. Not the sarcastic ones I used to hide behind. And I’d have to watch as the sparkling joy in his eyes dwindled, snuffed out like kindle burnt to ash. Ju Ying would step forward and poke me with her staff, demanding me to tell them I am lying. I would watch as her demands turned to begging.

  But I wouldn’t say anything.

  Because sometimes silence is the only answer you can give when you’re dying.

  It’s not that I expected them to love me and to miss me and cry for me. I didn’t want them to do that. I’d rather they smiled. I’d rather they laughed with me. Or even laughed at me.

  But they were kind people. Such kind people.

  And once I told them the truth, there would be no going back. I would not hear that melodious tune or deep-bellied chuckle. Thoughts of death would consume them, just as they consumed me now. They would try their best to pretend everything was ordinary and everything was normal.

  But each morning would be a little quieter. Laughter would be tinged with fear. The sun would shine, but it wouldn’t be warm. Until now, I hadn’t known there was a peace in ignorance. I had taken it for granted, as I had done with everything that mattered.

  In their eyes, I’d become different. Again. For all the wrong reasons. Known as the ‘one who is dying.’ The frail one.

  I listened to the white hum of the empty room. Part of me was glad to know. It felt clean. Neat. A diagnosis, not a question.

  But it also wasn’t fair. The phrase screamed across my mind like a bratty child throwing a tantrum: It’s not fair. Not fair. Not fair.

  I thought I would’ve wanted to kick and yell. But not really. I didn’t want to kick. I didn’t want to yell.

  I just wanted to curl up into a ball and wait.

  The thing I had wanted most of my life was to be normal. But everything I did, everything that happened to me, took me further and further away…until normality was nothing more than a pipe dream. When had I ever been normal?

  I couldn’t even die normally.

  And that was what hurt me the most about knowing that the sand in my hourglass was draining.

  Distantly, Qi Qi had pulled me into her embrace. Now, she was stroking my back. Her hand moved in a gentle rhythm. I wondered what she thought, behind those unflinching eyes.

  Did she feel sad? Did she feel anything?

  She always kept her feelings in a sealed vault, behind a fortress, buried under centuries of discipline. I’d never been able to crack her code. The only expressions that left her were planned and intentional. I often wondered what made An Lingqi like this.

  Why she seemed permanently guarded against everyone.

  I liked to believe that one day she would tell me her true feelings instead of getting me to always guess her intentions. After all, I did not spend six-thousand-years with her for nothing, as I hoped that she did not either.

  Yet, during all that time, I only saw her crack once.

  It was the first time I met her. The day of her mother’s passing. I remembered watching her kneel before her mother’s tablet for seven straight days, dressed in white, and consuming nothing but water. A beautiful angel. That was the only time I’d seen her cry.

  Death did matter to her.

  Somewhere behind the marble facade, it still did.

  I smiled briefly. I had forgotten that. I had forgotten what kind of person she was underneath the perfect posture and poised indifference.

  My mind filled with scenes of her as she smiled at her patients; sighed relief when a wounded soldier lived; counselled a crying person. Every moment was speckled with a dash of emotion; small but enough to flavour the memory. She rivalled the Grim Reaper over and over. It was her job and people praised her bravery.

  Perhaps though, it was not bravery, but fear that drove her. She had a funny way of showing it, but she too was also battling her inner demons.

  Like me.

  But her fear had been sharpened into discipline.

  Mine was dressed as sarcasm.

  And now, I’d become the one thing she couldn’t fix. Her first terminal case. I wondered if she resented me for it. If she hated me for dying in a way that made her powerless.

  I knew she wouldn’t, just as I knew Ju Ying wasn’t really angry at me all the time. An Lingqi never blamed anyone.

  But some part of me wished she did. I wish she blamed me and stopped bothering to find a cure. I wished I blamed myself more.

  This was my fault. It must have been. Then why did it hurt so much to know my days were limited? I knew it in my head, but my heart couldn’t reconcile it.

  Because we all dreamed that same dream.

  To be cultivators adventuring along the path to endless beauty, youth, and power. We dreamed to be Immortals.

  How ironic.

  I gripped her shoulder tighter. The scent of her hair wrapped around me. Sweet chai and vanilla notes, like winter warmth in a cup I couldn’t quite hold.

  “I…” My voice cracked. “How long?”

  She hesitated. Her fingers pressed gently into my spine. “Three or four months,” she said quietly. “Half a year maybe.”

  “Okay,” I croaked, my words nasally and cluttered with mucous from trying to withhold my tears. It wasn’t okay.

  I want a chance Mr Grim Reaper.

  Please stop chasing me.