LJ Idol, Season 9, Week 2: The Missing Stair
A late November wind charged through the empty college campus, dousing Jin's bones in ice and smothering the sparks that jumped from the flint of his Zippo.
This cigarette was never going to light, was it?
He dashed over to a girls' dorm, adorned by a majestic twin staircases that led to the main entrance on the second floor. It didn't work. The wind clearly didn't want him to smoke. He rubbed his eyes, struggling to come to terms with his looming nicotine fit. What he needed was a distraction.
A voice shouted from above, "I beg your pardon!"
That would do it.
This distraction took the shape of a yardstick-wielding overcoat and scarf hunched over one of the stairs near the top. The coat stood, revealing a coed whose beauty and posture made him wonder if she might actually be some otherworldly being whose only concept of human females came from movies about princesses. She descended smoothly toward him, declaring, "It is so very fortunate that you're here." Her accent was American--Midwestern and generic--but it should have been upper-class English Royalty.
"Is it?" he asked after looking around to make sure he was indeed the fortunate one.
"Indeed," she replied. "I don't believe we've ever been acquainted. My name is Regina de Costa."
"I'm Jin," he told her. "Harima."
"Mr. Harima..." she began.
"I'm pretty sure we're the same age," he said. "Call me Jin."
"As you wish." She started again, "Jin, there is something... stubbornly... unusual about these stairs, and it is forcing me to reconsider the way in which I observe the world. I fear I need assistance to sort this all out."
Well, it was Thanksgiving break on an empty campus with no homework, so why not? "I can help. I think."
"Splendid!" she said with a grin. "Could you count the number of steps to your left?"
He took a minute to do so and informed her, "Fifteen."
"Very good. And to your right?"
"Sixteen."
She shook her head. "This is troubling."
He frowned. "Why would that be troubling?"
"Because it defies physics."
"Not really," he offered. "Obviously the ground's not level."
"I assure you," she told him, "I measured it twice this morning with the most accurate surveying equipment I could acquire. It is, in fact, perfectly level."
"Where did you get surveying equipment?"
"As is the landing above, as well as the building itself," she continued without him. "Also, what you witnessed moments ago was me measuring the height, length, and width of every single step. On both sides, they are identical."
"That's impossible." He referred both to the problem before them and to the intensity of her obsession.
"Had you my experience," she told him, "you'd understand that the term impossible is applicable less often than you'd think."
"You'd be surprised what I think," he muttered.
"Jin," she stated, a well-restrained hint of desperation in her voice, "I worry that I will be utterly incapable of sleep if I'm unable to solve this puzzle."
"We'll get through this," he assured her. "The first question is, are there supposed to be thirty or thirty-two steps, total?"
She considered this, and then turned to him with a furious glare. "And now I've developed a tension headache to accompany my prior frustration."
He cleared his throat. "Look, I'm about to do something really weird, but I need you to trust me."
"At this juncture," she replied, "unorthodoxy may be our only recourse."
"Your funeral," he said, before bounding up the left-hand flight of steps and bursting into song. "One, two, three four..." After a brief pause to snap his fingers, he resumed, "... five, six, seven eight." He stopped again. "Grouping by fours--it's the best way to keep it straight!" Moving again, he added, "Nine... ten... eleven... twelve!" He held that particular note for a moment before continuing, "thirteen-fourteen-fifteen... sixteen!" In a normal voice, he told her, "Thirty-two. The missing one is one between twelve and thirteen. I don't know why it's missing, or how it's warping physics or whatever, but that's something we can figure out now that we have this to work with."
She stared at him, unblinking.
He dashed down to her. "I know it's not my best work," he apologized, "but it did get the job done."
"You're..." she stammered.
"Insane?" he clarified. "Goofy as shit? Says the one who spent the entire day with a ruler, measuring stairs."
"A phonomancer," she said.
"I don't know what that is."
"You draw magical energy from sound, is that the way it works?" she asked. "Does your use of music create a particular focus, or does it simply entertain you?" She blushed. "I apologize for my exuberance, but I've never before encountered an actual phonomancer. This is very exciting for me."
"There's no such thing as magic," he said.
"Nonsense," she replied. "What do you call that rite you just performed?"
"Look," he explained, "when I sing, I see things that aren't there." He shrugged and licked his lips. "Actually, I see things that really are there." In order to avoid eye contact with this equally crazy person, he fumbled again with his cigarette and still couldn't get it to light.
"Intriguing." With one hand, she closed his Zippo, and she held the other in front of his face. "Dança para mim, chama bebê," she whispered, and a tiny flame ignited between her thumb and index finger. "Jin," she told him, "you and I have much to discuss."