The sky had not yet brightened.
The candle in the Mirror Palace had been burning for a long time. He had not risen to replace it himself, nor had anyone entered. Those who passed outside the door naturally lightened their steps by half a degree compared with usual. No one had told them to be light, no one had instructed that no one need enter tonight. Their steps had learned on their own, like water finding its way to low ground, like wind passing through a crack in the door, needing no reason.
On the desk lay those characters.
"I am not certain." "Not certain is also acceptable." "Let this matter rest for now." "This matter will not be handled for the time being."
From that night until now, he had not erased a single line. They stayed there, like stones in a riverbed, their edges worn smooth by time but not washed away. He had once thought about whether to put them away in a drawer, or move them to some corner where they would not be seen, or simply burn them. Those thoughts came and went. The paper was still there. The characters were still there. He was still there.
He looked at those characters. Not reading. Looking. Like looking at a tree that had grown for a long time, no longer needing to identify what it was—you knew it was a tree, it was here, you were here, needing nothing more.
The edges of the earliest sheet, the one on which he had written "Let this matter rest for now," had begun to curl slightly. Not folded. A curve left by time itself. He did not know when that curve had started to curl, only that it was there now. The paper had its own memory, like hands had their own memory, like footsteps had their own memory. People did not need to keep thinking; the body remembered on its own. So did the paper. The fibres adjusted their own positions, the edges curled on their own, needing no one to touch them.
When morning light seeped through the crack in the window, as it passed that curve, it slowed by an extremely short beat compared with elsewhere. That beat was too short for any instrument to capture, too short for human awareness to register. But he sat there, and as the light passed the edge of the paper, the extremely short empty space at the bottom of his breath also breathed the same beat. He did not know what it was. Did not pursue it. Because pursuit no longer applied here.
Morning light seeped through the crack in the window. It moved slowly across the desk.
From "I am not certain."
To "Let this matter rest for now."
Then to "This matter will not be handled for the time being."
Finally, it stopped at the brush that had not been picked up. The tip of the brush glowed with an extremely faint light in the morning light. The ink had dried, but the shape of the tip was still there, like a person who had already walked far away, but the chair still held their warmth.
He did not move. Not that he had decided not to move. His body had already not moved first. That pathway which had once been activated every day no longer sent signals. Not suppressed. Not severed. Quiet on its own. Like a river that had changed its course: the water in the old channel slowly receded, stones emerged, wind blew the dust away, until even the shapes of the stones grew blurred. He did not know which day it had happened, only that one day he passed by and found he no longer walked that road.
No new characters rose from within his body.
He wrote nothing.
Not because he had nothing to say.
His body had already arrived there first.
The Emperor was only the last to know.
Morning light continued moving. Passed that brush, passed the curled edge of that earliest sheet on which he had written "Let this matter rest for now." The edge had curled slightly, the curve very light, like a sentence not yet finished, settling into its own period. Not a period he had written. The sentence had found it on its own.
Those characters were still there.
"I am not certain." "Not certain is also acceptable." "Let this matter rest for now." "This matter will not be handled for the time being."
He wrote no new characters.
Only stopped.
Morning light moved to the edge of the desk, to the windowsill. Light outside the window shifted from dark to grey, from grey to white.
Day broke.
Breathing continued.
Not him breathing. Breathing passing through him. Like wind passing through a crack in the door, like water flowing around a stone, like morning light passing that gently curled edge of paper.
Breathing continued.
[CHAPTER 298 · END]