Wei slept. The predictable depth of a boy whose days were full enough to produce exhaustion.
I felt his core from the doorway. Two weeks ago, I’d felt it from a meter. A week ago, from two. Tonight, from the doorway — four meters.
The range was expanding.
I crossed the room and knelt in front of his bed. The nightly arrangement — my knees on the floor beside his bed, my hand hovering, the two-centimeter gap between contact and assessment.
Light bled through his shirt — golden, warm, steady, the candle-behind-paper quality that was beautiful and was also the indicator of output exceeding containment. And the containment being insufficient.
Four twitches per minute.
I counted. The count was automatic. Four contractions of qi-stability. Four moments where his core stuttered, flickered and reset. Four interruptions in what should have been smooth emission — indicating strain, indicating fatigue, indicating a progression.
Four. Yesterday: three. The day before: three. Weeks ago: two.
The arithmetic. Two, three, four. The slope. Positive. Slow. Consistent. The kind of consistent that said that this wasn't random, that this was progression. Progression had an endpoint.
I withdrew my hand.
"Your qi is loud," I said. To him. To the room. To no one.
He stirred. "Mmh."
"Turn over."
He turned, mumbling something about radishes. The glow dimmed slightly — side-sleeping compressed the broadcast, changed the angle. A half-measure. Like holding a candle sideways.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
I went outside and shut the door quietly and carefully behind me.
The night air was cool, the settlement sleeping around me — dark houses, dark paths, the occasional ember-glow of a fire banked for morning. Somewhere a dog. Somewhere a stream.
I extended my perception across the qi-field — a hundred meters, enough to feel the settlement's perimeter. Lao Chen, asleep, his qi like old iron — dull, stable, the resonance of someone who had peaked decades ago and settled into peace. Auntie Huang was bright. Loud even in her sleep. Shen was dim, muted.
I stopped.
Beyond the settlement, the field held something. Something subtle — the qi-equivalent of being watched, a shift in the ambient pressure when attention was directed at a location. This settlement. The boy it contained.
Weeks ago — at the market — the attention had been directional. Three cultivators, three lines of interest converging on Wei. Navigation. Triangulation.
This was different. This was ambient. The field itself altered by looking, the way a lake's surface reflection changes not by touch but because something is looking into it. The look had weight.
It wasn't me. My presence was suppressed, compressed, the signature of void. No. Not me.
Someone else.
The attention was on the boy. On the golden light broadcasting through cotton. On the signal that he was and that I could not stop him from being.
It if was only me, it would be simple. I hide. They seek. I move. They lose track.
But if they sought him, then hiding was a problem. He had qi that screamed and he had a core that glowed through fabric.
I could hide myself. I could not hide him. Not without permanent suppression — and permanent suppression would do more damage than was acceptable. My qi would accelerate his growth and the instability would increase. Until—
I went back inside, to look after Wei again.
I stood over him. Sleeping. The glow softer now, the core cycling down. But still visible. Still broadcasting.
Four twitches.
I knelt. Pulled his blanket higher. The gesture — the same gesture, every night.
"You're still there," he murmured. Half-asleep. Not a question.
"Yes."
"Good."
He was gone again. Into sleep. Into the depth that was trust made horizontal.
Tomorrow he would wake. Would stretch, yawn, run to Lao Chen's. Would be bright. Would broadcast.
And I would sit. And count. And not tell him.
Because not telling him was the thing I could not stop doing. And could not start. And the space between the two was where I lived now.
The space between.
