The question remained.

  Not answered — that was the point. Maybe never. Maybe it was not answerable — that might have been the larger point. The question existed in the category of questions not designed for answers but for carrying.

  It would drive me. Into the investigation the question demanded — not of the world, not of qi not of the architecture of cultivation, but of myself. Of whatever I was. Of the protection that was mine and that was not his. The crime. The accusation directed at me. At whatever part of me was the mechanism. At whatever part was the dao or the curse or the fundamental condition that selected for my survival and against his.

  But not today.

  Today, I was standing in the forest with a question.

  The wind moved through the trees. The branches shifted. The sound of a forest breathing — creak of wood, rustle of leaves, the small sounds that constituted the background. The world's way of saying, that it was here and it was not listening but it was here.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  I stood.

  The brown circle was steady at three paces, not growing, not shrinking — the equilibrium of an emission that had stabilized because the emission was tied to something that had reached its floor. This level. This radius. This amount of dying.

  I would carry the question. Into whatever came after this forest, after this rain, after this grey series of days that constituted the aftermath of a death that had no parallel. The question was the thing I would carry because carrying was the only verb available.

  Whatever protects me — why not him?

  The answer existed. Had to exist. Somewhere. In the architecture of whatever I was and whatever it was, that kept me alive, unharmed. The answer was findable.

  But not today.

  Today, the question stood. Alone. Without answer. In a forest. In rain that had stopped. In the brown circle of a woman whose grief killed grass and whose question killed something else — the comfort of not-knowing, the peace of assumption, the safety of believing that the universe's indifference was general rather than targeted.

  The protection was targeted. At me. But the targeting excluded everyone else.

  And the exclusion was the thing I would dismantle.

  But not today.