40: The Walk Back

I logged out of the Premium pod at six-twenty AM IRL on the Tuesday morning of the second week of October — eight in-game days mapped at the launch-week 2:1 dilation to four IRL days of running session, plus the small additional sleep windows that had broken the running session up into three roughly twelve-hour stretches that I had managed to fit around two computer-architecture lectures, three cafe shifts, and one half-cancelled programming lab — and the small careful descent off the Premium pod's reclining chair was the small careful descent of a man whose IRL legs had not been used in roughly twelve hours and whose IRL back, despite the Premium pod's small careful ergonomic engineering, had developed a small specific knot at the junction of the right shoulder blade and the spine that the cradle band's small additional sensor pads had been logging for the last four hours of the trial as a small low-grade muscular alert.

Manager Fang was at the front counter eating a pre-packaged bun. He looked up as I came out of the back office.

He did not say anything.

He inclined his head. The inclination was the small careful inclination of a man who had, by the small mechanism of the cradle band's session-end notification on the front-counter terminal, just learned that the four-day session had ended at six-twenty AM and that the customer was about to walk out of the cafe in a small specific physical state that the cradle band's session-end report had flagged.

He said, "Cangtian."

"Manager Fang."

"You will go to the western alley noodle stand. The auntie has a small thermos of bone-broth congee that I have, on her standing tab, paid for. You will eat it before you go to your dorm. You will then sleep for at least six hours. The cradle band has flagged your right shoulder blade. The flag is yellow, not red, but it is yellow. Do not, this morning, do anything that requires your right shoulder."

"All right."

"Mn."

"Manager Fang."

"Mn."

"Thank you."

"Walk."

I walked.

The Hangzhou predawn at six-thirty had the small clean cool October air that the city was famous for in its small two-week autumn window between summer and the first cold front. The plane trees along the cafe's small side street were beginning to drop their first yellow leaves. The small fruit-vendor at the corner was just opening her stall. The small newspaper-vendor across the street had not, yet, opened his.

I walked to the western alley noodle stand.

The auntie at the stand was already at her counter. She did not say anything. She handed me a small enamel thermos of bone-broth congee in exchange for the small folded slip of paper on her counter that Manager Fang had put there at some point in the past hour. I took the thermos. I sat at the corner table. I unscrewed the lid. The pre-dawn light caught the small steam.

I ate the congee slowly with the small wooden spoon the auntie had wedged through the thermos's lid for me.

I had finished perhaps half of it when Wanqing arrived.

She came down the alley at a small unhurried walk, with the white hoodie I had seen her in two weeks ago and her hair loose and the small canvas bag she carried to her early lectures at her hip and a small paper bag in her free hand with what looked to be — by the small visible bulge at the bottom — a small soft pastry from the small bakery she liked at the corner of her dormitory street.

She did not, as she came into the noodle stand, look at the auntie.

She did not, as she sat down across from me at the corner table, say anything.

She set the small paper bag on the table between us. She unfolded its top. She removed the small soft pastry — a small round egg-yolk bun, slightly squashed from the carry — and broke it in half with the back of her thumbs. She offered me the half.

I took it.

She bit her half.

The small launch-week pass-through engine of the Premium pod was, here at the corner table of the western alley noodle stand at six-forty in the morning of an October Tuesday IRL, not running. The IRL fidelity of her face across the table was the IRL fidelity that the launch-week pre-render team had been faithfully approximating. The freckles I had noted at the in-game level were the IRL freckles. The small loose strand of hair at the cheekbone was the IRL strand. The amber-flecked brown — no, in IRL the iris was the small green-flecked brown that the launch-week pre-render had carried faithfully — was the IRL iris.

She was — with the small precise IRL fidelity that no launch-week pass-through engine could match — eighteen years old, alive, awake at six-forty in the morning across a small corner table in a small noodle stand in Hangzhou on the second Tuesday of October, eating half of an egg-yolk bun.

She had not, this morning, said anything.

I had not, this morning, said anything.

I finished my half of the egg-yolk bun. She finished hers. The auntie at the noodle stand brought us each a small paper cup of cold tea. We drank them.

The pre-dawn light came up across the alley.

She set down the small paper cup.

She said, "Cangtian."

"Mn."

"You logged out twenty minutes ago."

"I did."

"Manager Fang's cradle band flagged your right shoulder."

"It did."

"You will go to my dorm room. My roommates are at their early lab. The room is empty until ten. You will sleep on my bed for at least four hours. I will make sure you do not move your right shoulder. I will sit at my desk and I will write the data structures problem set I should have written last week. You will sleep. You will eat a second breakfast at ten. You will walk back to your dorm at ten-thirty. You will not log in until tonight at eight. Are we clear."

"We are clear."

"Mn."

She stood up. She picked up the small empty paper bag and the small empty thermos. She inclined her head at the auntie, who inclined her head back. We left.

***

Her dorm room was on the third floor of the southwest girls' dormitory, four blocks from the noodle stand, in the small bright specific morning light that the building's third-floor southwest exposure produced for roughly twenty minutes between sunrise and direct sun. The room was a four-person dorm with two bunks, four desks, four small wardrobes, a single small window that looked out across the courtyard toward the boys' dormitory four blocks east, and the small precise organizational layout that I knew, without having ever seen the room before, would be Wanqing's because Wanqing's organizational layout was the same in every IRL space I had ever seen her occupy.

Her bed was the bottom bunk in the southeast corner.

Her bedspread was the small green polyester from the Suzhou night market, the one she had kept since secondary school, the same bedspread I had seen — with the small specific clean fold along its right edge — in a single small low-resolution photograph she had texted me at lunch on the day of the second-month patch in old timeline year three when she had been moving into her first Shanghai apartment.

The bedspread was the same bedspread.

I stopped at the door.

She did not, at the door, say anything. She gestured to the bed.

I sat on the edge of the bed. I unlaced my shoes. I placed them carefully under the bed. I lay down on the bedspread, on my left side, with my right shoulder uppermost — the position that the cradle band's small careful muscular alert had implicitly recommended.

She crossed to her desk. She pulled out the small wooden chair. She sat.

She opened her laptop.

She did not look at me.

She said, "Cangtian."

"Mn."

"At the cairn this morning — at the in-game cairn, I mean, an in-game-hour ago — I told you not to say it until the cap was not the cap."

"You did."

"The cap is not the cap."

"I know."

"Mn."

She did not turn her head from the laptop screen. She typed. The small clean rhythm of her typing was the small clean rhythm of a freshman computer-science student writing a data structures problem set at six-fifty on a Tuesday morning in October.

She typed for the small space of twelve seconds.

She stopped typing. She did not turn her head.

She said, "Cangtian. The bed is the bed. I am at the desk. My back is to you. Say it now if you would like. Or not. The cap is genuinely not the cap. I am not going to make a thing of it either way. But — Cangtian — say it now if you would like. Please."

I lay on her bedspread on my left side and looked at the small fold of her green polyester at the edge of the bedspread that I had seen in an old-timeline photograph from year three of her first Shanghai apartment in a city she had not, in this timeline, yet been to and would not, in this timeline, ever go to in the small specific way the old timeline had taken her there.

I said, very quietly, to the small green-polyester fold, "Wanqing. You were the first person I added to the To Save list on launch morning. Not last. First. The list was in pencil. I wrote you at the top. The reason I wrote you at the top was — you were the first person I had been thinking about, in five years, that I had any chance of saving. I have been carrying you at the top of the list for nineteen IRL days. You are still at the top of the list. You will be at the top of the list for the rest of my life regardless of how many other people I add to it. I have been trying — for nineteen days — to figure out where the second sentence goes. The second sentence goes where it goes. I am not, this morning, going to be precise about where. The place will be — between us, in whatever way the small specific weeks ahead of us decide. I am, however, going to be precise about this: that I am, in this timeline, in love with you. I have been since launch morning. I will be for the rest of this timeline. I am — telling you. Now. While the cap is not the cap. While my right shoulder hurts. While you are pretending to write a problem set and not turning around. I am — telling you, Wanqing."

She did not, for a long beat, type.

She did not turn her head.

The small late-October pre-dawn light was coming through the small window in long pale stripes across her desk and her keyboard and the small folded sleeve of her white hoodie at her elbow.

She said, very quietly, to the laptop screen, "Cangtian."

"Mn."

"I have been in love with you since I was eleven."

"Wanqing."

"You did not know. You were an eleven-year-old boy. Eleven-year-old boys do not know. You were also the only eleven-year-old boy on the playground who would sit with me when I cried over the dead pigeon. I noted the sitting at the time. I did not, at eleven, have any way to file the noting except as the small specific category of *Cangtian is the one who sits with me when I cry.* The category became, in time, a larger category. The larger category became, in time, the small specific category of *Cangtian is the one I am going to do my life with.* I have been carrying the category since I was twelve. I have been not telling you about it for seven years. I would have continued not telling you about it for the rest of my life if you had not, on launch morning, started behaving like a person who had spent five years in a hard summer and had come home with a small specific awareness of who I was. You came home with the awareness. I have been waiting, since launch morning, for the small specific moment in which it became — possible — to put the seven years of the category into a small specific sentence. The cap is not the cap. The sentence is — the sentence is what I just told you. Cangtian. Mn. Sleep. We will, when you wake up at ten, eat a second breakfast and walk back across the courtyard and we will — we will figure out the small specific weeks ahead of us. You are not, anymore, putting the second sentence anywhere alone. We are putting it together. Sleep."

She did not turn her head.

She typed.

I lay on her bedspread on my left side with my eyes open for one full minute.

Then I closed them.

I slept.

***

When I woke at ten-fifteen the small October sun was high in the small window and Wanqing was sitting on the edge of the bed with her back against the wall and the laptop closed beside her and her eyes on my face.

She had been watching me sleep for some unknown number of minutes.

She did not, when I opened my eyes, look away.

She said, "Hello, ghost."

"Hello, Wanqing."

"Eat the second breakfast."

She had laid out, on the small low chair beside the bed, two bowls of millet porridge from the first-floor canteen, one small plate of pickled cabbage, one small saucer of soy-marinated quail eggs, and a single small enamel cup of fresh tea with a small visible plum-blossom petal floating in it that I knew, without asking, she had picked up off the small ornamental plum tree in the courtyard between our two dormitories on the way back from the canteen.

I sat up. The right shoulder was, by the small mechanism of four hours of sleep on the left side, no longer in the small low-grade muscular alert. I ate the millet porridge. I ate the pickled cabbage. I ate the quail eggs. I drank the tea. The plum-blossom petal floated on the surface for the small space of three sips and then settled, very softly, against the small inside lip of the cup.

She watched me eat.

She did not say anything during the eating.

When I had finished she took the small empty bowl and the small empty plate and the small empty saucer and the small empty cup from me and stacked them carefully on the small low chair.

She turned back to me.

She lifted her hand. She put two fingers, very lightly, against the line of my jaw — the same gesture she had made at the foot of the temple steps eleven IRL days ago, the gesture she had made through the launch-week pass-through. She held the two fingers there for one breath.

She said, "Walk back to your dorm. Sleep again. Log in at eight tonight. Wenqing has scheduled the leadership council for nine. We will, after the council, walk to the western alley for noodles. The cap is not the cap. The cap will, going forward, not be the cap. Move."

I stood up. The right shoulder held. I laced my shoes.

She walked me to the door.

At the door she stopped.

She did not, at the door, lift up onto her toes. She did not, at the door, kiss me. The small specific kiss at the launch-week cairn three IRL hours ago had been the small specific kiss for the launch-week cairn. The IRL morning at her dorm room door at ten-twenty AM on a Tuesday in October was the IRL morning. The small specific morning had its own small specific gestures.

She put her hand, very lightly, on the front of my chest where the launch-week-rendered Iron-Boar Torso had been four IRL hours ago and where the small soft cotton t-shirt under the new blue cotton shirt was now, with the small precise pressure she had used at the in-game cairn eight in-game days ago.

She held the pressure.

She said, "Cangtian."

"Mn."

"You came back."

"I came back."

"Mn."

She lowered her hand.

She opened the door.

I walked into the corridor.

She closed the door behind me very quietly.

I walked across the courtyard in the late-morning October sun toward my own dormitory four blocks east, with the small new clean weight in my chest of a small specific morning that I had not, in old timeline, ever expected to live to see, and the small clean trace of two fingers along the line of my jaw, and the small clean trace of the small soft pressure at the front of my chest, and the small fifth voice that had said *here* at the in-game cairn now saying, with the small added precision of an IRL morning at a dorm-room door, *here.*

I climbed the stairs to A-7. Fatty Chen was, this morning, at his ten-thirty class. The dorm room was empty.

I lay down on the lumpy pillow.

The cracked-egg ceiling stain was over me.

I did not look at it.

I closed my eyes.

I slept.