Tales of the End of the Century

The old lady turned to the last page of the booklet and pushed it in front of Bai Ye.

"Sergei stopped copying this page for seven whole days. After seven days, he turned the page over and wrote something on the back. Later, he crossed it out."

Bai Ye looked down at the yellowed page. The tiny characters were copied with meticulous care, each stroke perfectly aligned, as if the scribe had been reciting the words aloud as they wrote, finishing each character before placing a single stroke. The paper was old, the edges brittle and yellowed, but the ink was clear—he recognized the four characters of the title. The last few pages of Sergei's notes in the backup repository had been torn out, soaked in water, and largely untranslatable. Those torn pages were now laid out on the stone table before him.

"He finished copying the whole text." The old lady picked up the teapot and poured half a cup for Bai Ye, then poured a cup each for Lan Susu and Tie Niu. The tea was warm and slightly bitter, with a very faint aftertaste on the tip of the tongue after swallowing. "But when he copied this page, he didn't understand. He asked Yun Xu's master—who was still alive at the time—what this page was about. The master said it was about mirrors."

She placed the teapot back on the stone table, its spout pointing towards the old locust tree, as if it had been there for a long time.

"Sergei said he had many mirrors. There was an entire wall of mirrors in the Aurora Project laboratory, and the subjects would perform a confirmation ritual in front of the mirror every day—checking if their hands were still there, and whether their blinking frequency matched the reflection. He would also look in the mirror himself. After the rift period began, he looked in the mirror even more frequently, asking himself who he was every day, and the person in the mirror would ask him the same question with the same mouth movements. He could never tell who asked first."

The old lady picked up her teacup, took a sip, and placed the teacup next to the teapot.

"The old master said that the mirror can reflect images, but it can't reflect what's behind the reflection. Sergei didn't understand—isn't a mirror just for reflecting images? The old master said no. A mirror can reflect images because light shines on the reflection. The light shines on you first, reflects off you, hits the mirror, and bounces back. The reflection you see isn't created by the mirror; it's your own light. What is the crack? The crack is when you finally see that beam of light—not the reflection in the mirror, but yourself outside the mirror emitting light. The reflection is a beat behind; it's not that it can't keep up with you, it's that you're moving too fast in the light."

Bai Ye looked down at his hands. The scabs on his palms had long since fallen off, and the new skin was a shade lighter than the rest of his body, tinged with a faint pink in the twilight. The day he stepped into the Resonance Realm, his reflection on the water raised its hand in sync. He had never thought about where that beam of light came from. He assumed he had finally caught up with his reflection. But perhaps not—perhaps he had finally stopped, allowing the light to catch up with him.

"It took him seven days to finally understand." The old lady gently tapped the page with her finger. "'Returning to the Center' is not the end. It's just opening the door and letting the light in. He hadn't figured out where the light would go after it came in. When used on subjects in the rift phase, it helps stabilize their consciousness frequency, locking the reflection in the mirror so it doesn't follow out. But light isn't a lock. After the light comes in, it will continue to go out and reach other people."

Lan Susu placed the enamel mug on the stone table and moved it forward half an inch. "So he wrote 'Reflecting People'."

"Yes. On the seventh night, he sat under the old locust tree and suddenly realized something. He wrote in his notebook—'The light does not shine for itself. The mirror does not shine for itself. After turning the light inward and returning to the center, it shines on others.' After writing it, he tore this page out of the notebook, folded it, and handed it to the old master. He said he wanted to bring this sentence back to Project Aurora, but the time was not right."

"Is the time here?" Bai Ye asked.

"We've arrived." The old lady poured the last bit of tea from the teapot into her own cup, put the pot down, and said, "Your time has come; now that you're sitting across from me..."

Bai Ye placed the enamel mug on the stone table. The small round mirror was still beside it, back up, with the tin bird folded in its wings and tilted its head, as if listening. He turned the mirror over. The crack was still there, cutting his face in two. He raised his right hand, and the person in the mirror raised his right hand as well, in sync, without delay. He turned the mirror back over, back up.

Lan Susu took Sergei's notebook out of her canvas bag and flipped to the location of the torn pages. The copy in the backup was waterlogged, the handwriting almost illegible. She spread the blank side out on the stone table and asked the old woman if Sergei had left the torn pages here before he left. The old woman stood up and went into the house, returning a moment later with a flat piece wrapped in old cotton cloth—the cloth was faded from washing, the edges frayed. Inside were several yellowed pages. Russian, blue ink, the handwriting messy, several places waterlogged, the edges brittle and crumbling.

Lan Susu took the book and examined it against the light for a while. Her finger traced the text line by line, stopping abruptly on the third page. She turned the page to show Bai Ye. Her finger touched a line of text slightly below the center of the page—not Russian, but four Chinese characters. The handwriting was stiff, straight and rigid, like a tracing from a calligraphy book. It was Sergei's handwriting.

"He traced those four characters across an entire page. After he finished writing them, he added a sentence in Russian next to them." Lan Susu read the line of Russian aloud, "'These are the only four characters that don't need to be translated.'"

Bai Ye took the paper and placed it between the enamel mug and the small round mirror. A gust of wind blew, and the edge of the paper fluttered. He reached out and pressed the edge down, his fingers landing on the line of "Returning to the Center" that Sergei had traced. The first stroke of the trace was still trembling—Sergei had just learned to hold a brush then, and too much ink had been used, causing the first stroke to bleed slightly; the middle strokes gradually became steady, the horizontal and vertical lines straight, each stroke falling slightly outside the ink mark of the previous one, like drawing contour lines on a map; the last stroke suddenly loosened up—it wasn't tracing, it was writing. The strokes no longer closely followed the traces of the previous strokes, they had their own beginnings, endings, and pauses, and the horizontal turns even had a slight connection. By the end, Sergei wasn't tracing those four characters anymore, he was writing his own name.

"He didn't come to borrow anything," the old woman said, looking at the four Chinese characters. "He came to find his way. He'd already walked a long way and didn't know how much further ahead. The old master said the road doesn't go forward, it goes backward. When you reach the farthest point, you'll find that it was actually your starting point. He understood. So he was no longer afraid of the reflection—the reflection wasn't an enemy, it was himself in another direction. The reflection in the mirror raised its right hand, and he himself raised his left. It wasn't a confrontation, it was the same beam of light shining from two directions."

Bai Ye removed his hand from the paper. On the stone table lay Sergei's tracing paper, yellowed and brittle, its edges crumbling; beside it was his own enamel mug, the chili oil on the surface long gone, leaving only a faint shimmer; next to that was a small round mirror, back facing up, the tin bird with its wings folded and head tilted. He remembered the time he sat before the mirror on Millennium Night—a time when he didn't know if he could complete the journey. He placed everything he could think of on the water's surface, the old flowing away, the new rising. The reflection also watched him on the water. They didn't confront each other, just looked at each other. Then the reflection raised its left hand. He raised his right hand. Then they both laughed.

"He left this at the temple before he left." The old woman turned the last page. There were no words on the back, only a drawing. It was a pencil drawing of a person standing on shallow water, only ankle-deep. The reflection in the water was in the opposite direction. But this one was different from the ones in the air-raid shelter—the person on the water and their reflection were both raising their right hands. Not symmetrical, not mirror images, but raised together. At the very bottom of the drawing was a line of pencil writing.

Lan Susu glanced down and read aloud: "'When we come together, we are a complete person.'"

Bai Ye finished his tea and placed the enamel mug on the stone table. The mug was empty, with only a single, unfurled tea leaf clinging to the bottom. He asked the old woman what Sergei had done on his last day at Yunlong Temple.

"Chopping wood." The old woman tucked the last page back into her cotton bag. "He chopped all day. He chopped with his left hand, then his right, then his left. Eventually, he couldn't tell which hand was chopping anymore. He returned the axe to his master, thanking him for teaching him to write. Then he went down the mountain."

Tie Niu stood up from the stone bench, walked to the pine tree, and pulled the axe from the side pocket of his backpack. His left-handed axe was now very steady, with an accuracy no less than his right. He weighed the axe in his hand, then put it back.

The old lady closed the booklet and pushed it in front of Bai Ye. "Take this one with you."

"Where are Sergei's notes?"

"Put it back where it belongs. That empty cabinet in the backup repository was originally meant for him."

Bai Ye tucked the booklet into his pocket. He looked at the old woman and slowly asked the question he had wanted to ask since stepping into the courtyard—where exactly had Sergei gone? The old woman picked up the teapot and poured Bai Ye half a cup of tea, then put it down and said, "Behind the mirror." Then she stood up, turned and went into the house, closing the door behind her.

Silence reigned beneath the old locust tree. The booklet lay open on the stone table, beside it an enamel mug and a small round mirror. Sunlight filtered through the locust leaves, casting slowly shifting dappled patterns on the table. Bai Ye finished his tea, stood up, and walked to the courtyard gate, turning back to look at the stone slab with three characters embedded in the wooden door. Sergei had stood here years ago, clutching a booklet he had just borrowed from his master, looking back at this door. He didn't know how much longer he would live; all he could leave to those who came after him was this door—an unlocked entrance, a booklet to be taken away, and four characters he had traced countless times on a single page. He opened the door to its widest extent possible, then placed the key under the threshold.

Now it's his turn.

Bai Ye returned to the stone table, tucked the booklet into his pocket, placed the enamel mug under the pine tree, and nodded gently towards the old woman's door. Tie Niu slung his backpack over his shoulder, and Lan Susu put the oscilloscope into her canvas bag. The three of them walked down the gravel slope. When they reached the bottom and looked back, the branches of the old locust tree on the flat ground halfway up the mountain stretched towards the gray sky. There was no one at the stone table, only a cup of steaming tea.