[Accidental Visual] / [Location]
Another cold day; Long had the heat in his own rooms cranked up as high as possible (to a degree most might have found uncomfortable), and bundled himself in coat, scarf, gloves and hat for the forays between tram and library.
Winter was a ridiculous season. He amused himself with damning mental discussions to have with whoever had invented it.
The library itself was too large to crank up the heat throughout, but he had hatched a small space heater to squirrel away beneath the big information desk, and in the long days during which he saw few real patrons, the white noise of the heater humming was a pleasant background accompaniment, albeit one that often tempted him to doze.
Words in rough Cantonese interrupted one of these almost-naps, at the edge of hearing... "You will lose your chi. Also you will leave behind you all pride of body, pride of mind. You will be reduced. Like me..."
Long started, his nearly-shut eyes flying open. He sat bolt upright and looked around him with the guilty air of a misbehaving student, eyes flicking to the shelves, the doors. Nobody there.
"You are a fool!"
He stood. Still there was nobody, although the words were words he knew very well. Memory had polished them until they were like the beads of a chain.
"Yung Chung-Jo?" he asked warily, but old man did not reply and was nowhere to be seen. Mayland Long made a circuit of the library desk, peering down the long aisles of books, and then returned to his chair where-- feeling very ridiculous-- he peered under the desk to see only the space heater. Long made a face and dropped back into his chair. He reached for a pen, and fidgeted with it, not noticing the blinking tablet nearby.
In his many years he had encountered spirits and shades more than once. The presence of one did not discomfit him immensely for its own sake-- the dead were the dead, they could do little to truly harm the living in his experience-- but he did not particularly want this spirit around. Why not Saara? Or Donne? Or Bodhidharma, or even-- sages preserve his sanity-- the most aggravating Gaspare?
"If you must be present, then show yourself that we may talk like people and not like children with a hiding game," Long said in testy Cantonese to the empty library lobby. No answer, not that he had expected such. Long scowled at the pen in his strangely long fingers, bending it until he could feel the tension point of the snap approaching, then slowly relaxing his grip upon it.
"You told me to leave China," he sighed, this time in English. "I think I have gone more than far enough away that I am owed the fulfillment of your promise, by now."
Winter was a ridiculous season. He amused himself with damning mental discussions to have with whoever had invented it.
The library itself was too large to crank up the heat throughout, but he had hatched a small space heater to squirrel away beneath the big information desk, and in the long days during which he saw few real patrons, the white noise of the heater humming was a pleasant background accompaniment, albeit one that often tempted him to doze.
Words in rough Cantonese interrupted one of these almost-naps, at the edge of hearing... "You will lose your chi. Also you will leave behind you all pride of body, pride of mind. You will be reduced. Like me..."
Long started, his nearly-shut eyes flying open. He sat bolt upright and looked around him with the guilty air of a misbehaving student, eyes flicking to the shelves, the doors. Nobody there.
"You are a fool!"
He stood. Still there was nobody, although the words were words he knew very well. Memory had polished them until they were like the beads of a chain.
"Yung Chung-Jo?" he asked warily, but old man did not reply and was nowhere to be seen. Mayland Long made a circuit of the library desk, peering down the long aisles of books, and then returned to his chair where-- feeling very ridiculous-- he peered under the desk to see only the space heater. Long made a face and dropped back into his chair. He reached for a pen, and fidgeted with it, not noticing the blinking tablet nearby.
In his many years he had encountered spirits and shades more than once. The presence of one did not discomfit him immensely for its own sake-- the dead were the dead, they could do little to truly harm the living in his experience-- but he did not particularly want this spirit around. Why not Saara? Or Donne? Or Bodhidharma, or even-- sages preserve his sanity-- the most aggravating Gaspare?
"If you must be present, then show yourself that we may talk like people and not like children with a hiding game," Long said in testy Cantonese to the empty library lobby. No answer, not that he had expected such. Long scowled at the pen in his strangely long fingers, bending it until he could feel the tension point of the snap approaching, then slowly relaxing his grip upon it.
"You told me to leave China," he sighed, this time in English. "I think I have gone more than far enough away that I am owed the fulfillment of your promise, by now."