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Chapter 10 - The Long Road to Recovery

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He wakes about a week after they pull him from the rubble and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

They ask him where he’s from, but he can’t answer. He knows it’s a few days away and that it’s a mid-sized town, but… that’s it. Like the child he isn’t, he never bothered to learn the name of the place he lived. Home was always just called ‘home’.

They assure him that they will find out where he’s from and get him home safely, but even through the haze of grief and pain, he knows that they’re just telling him what they think he needs to hear.

He’s distantly grateful for the attempt.

They put him in an orphanage. It’s a large, drafty building, more functional than welcoming, and always bustling with noise and activity. The matrons are overworked, with too many children and not enough resources. Still, they manage to carve out moments to tend to him, the poor boy who was caught up in that awful business.

They get a healer to come and look at his injuries – both the burns from his own stupidity and the cuts and bruises from having a portion of the city wall fall on top of him. He’s given an ointment for the burns, told to wash the cuts with clean water, given a pat on the head, and sent away.

That’s it.

After the initial fuss when they first bring him in, he is left to his own devices. His days fall into a repetitive cycle: meals in the crowded dining hall, the dull murmur of other children around him, and long hours spent in the dormitory. He watches the other children play, but he doesn’t join them.

The matrons, for all their effort, can’t give him the attention he needs. They’re stretched too thin, always busy with another task, another child who needs them. They bring his meals and help him dress until his burns have healed enough for him to do it himself, but they simply don’t have the time to sit and talk or listen to his questions.

He shrouds himself in apathy, trying to convince himself that he doesn’t care.

It doesn’t work very well.

***

Life in an orphanage is harsher than he expected. Two weeks into his stay, he returns to his bunk to find that his mattress, blankets, pillow, and spare clothes have all been stolen.

He stares dully at the stained, bare timber of his bedframe. Of the six other children in the cramped room, four avert their eyes in shame while the other two snigger at him.

So that’s how it is.

He can see that it wasn’t one of them who stole his belongings, but none of them did anything to stop it either. In a strange way, it’s almost a relief. The hot flush of anger that rushes through his chest is the first thing to penetrate the haze of grief he’s been living in.

He hoists himself up onto the hard surface, wrapping himself in what little cold dignity he can find. There’s little to no chance of finding his possessions, he already knows that. The orphanage houses almost four hundred children in a space designed for a quarter that number.

It’s likely that whoever stole his belongings did so because they had none of their own – it’s a vicious cycle.

Regardless, even though he cannot bring himself to try cycling his Qi, cannot bring himself to see the damage he has caused in his impatience, he is still a cultivator of at least the Third Stage of the First Realm. It will take more than imperfect sleeping conditions to bother him.

And while spite and anger are poor substitutes for his possessions, there is little better when it comes to motivation.

***

The emperor’s decree that all orphans receive a basic education means that every day, Zhujiao is expected to attend lessons with the other children. The classroom is cramped, the air heavy with the scent of chalk and unwashed clothes. Children of various ages sit at rickety desks, squinting at the faded texts and trying to make sense of the words on the page.

He’s not the youngest in the class, but he’s not far off either. From what he can gather, the younger kids just don’t have the patience or maturity to sit still for large portions of the day, and the teachers are not paid enough to put up with their shenanigans.

He can’t blame them – he firmly believes that, with few exceptions, children are monstrous little brats. Naturally, he has precisely no desire to be stuck in a classroom with a bunch of them, particularly as he can already read and write just fine. The noise and activity grate on him; his injuries, although mostly healed, still pain him if he’s active for too long. Whenever he looks at a scroll, all he can think of is his mother teaching him to read.

Now she’s dead, and he hates the reminder.

It doesn’t take much to convince the teachers he doesn’t need to be here – he reads a short section from a scroll and writes out a few phrases. They have more than enough children to look after already – one less is fine by them.

Convincing the matrons that he hasn’t just snuck off is much more difficult. He would be annoyed at how they simply refuse to believe him without checking with the teachers, but right now, he’s too numb to really care.

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***

It takes a while – he’s not sure how long, given that he’s not paying attention – but the matrons finally confirm his story, and the teachers verify his level of education. With that resolved, he was called in to see the head matron, Madame Liu.

Her office is a stark contrast to the rest of the orphanage. While the building itself is large and drafty, with worn floors and peeling paint, Madam Liu’s office is surprisingly tidy. The walls are lined with shelves filled with neatly organised stacks of papers and ledgers. A small but sturdy desk dominates the centre of the room, its surface cluttered with documents, quills, and ink pots.

The meticulous organisation doesn’t completely cover up the cramped nature of the room, nor the signs of wear and tear on the furniture. Zhujiao is somewhat gratified to see that the head matron isn’t living the high life while her charges shiver through each night.

Madam Liu herself is an imposing figure. She’s an older woman, her hair streaked with grey and pulled back into a tight bun. He’s never really understood the concept of a handsome woman until now but calling her anything else would be a disservice. Her features are striking, and though she looks like she’s on the wrong side of sixty, he still wouldn’t want to see her annoyed.

“Sit,” she commands, not looking up from the papers on her desk. He obeys, perching on the edge of the chair, his hands clenched in his lap. Madam Liu finally looks at him, her expression as unreadable as stone.

“You’re Lin Zhujiao, correct?” she asks, her tone clipped.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She nods, shuffling some papers before setting them aside. “The teachers have confirmed that you’re already proficient in reading and writing. This means you’re not required to attend the daily lessons.”

He feels faintly satisfied, but it’s short-lived as her sharp eyes lock onto his. “However, this also means you will need to find something productive to do with your time. The emperor’s decree ensures every orphan receives an education, but once that is completed, you have a year to either earn enough to pay for your room here or find other arrangements.”

Zhujiao’s stomach drops. “Other arrangements?”

“Yes,” she replies, her tone matter-of-fact. “If you cannot pay for your room, you will be asked to leave. We simply do not have the resources to support children indefinitely. I will not sugarcoat it for you—it’s a harsh reality, but it’s the truth.”

Great.

No, really, that’s just… fantastic. Within the span of three weeks, he’s managed to possibly shatter his cultivation, give himself permanent burn scars, get his mother killed, and now he learns he has a year to figure out how to support himself or he’s going to be homeless.

He’s eleven years old. How the hell is he supposed to get a job that pays enough to support himself? Sure, the age of majority in this world is fifteen instead of the eighteen he’s used to, but even though a fifteen-year-old is technically considered an adult, that doesn’t usually mean they have the responsibilities of one.

And there’s a rather significant difference between a fifteen-year-old and an eleven-year-old.

If he goes around asking for work he’s going to be laughed out the door. All he can think is that the universe clearly loves to kick a man while he’s down.

He takes a deep breath, forcing his mind away from the negative spiral it’s started down. ‘Focus on what I can control,’ he thinks, trying to figure out where he can go from here.

“Is… do you know of anyone who’s looking for a worker?” he settles on. The way his day is going so far, he’s half expecting the matron to kick him out for the temerity of asking for help.

She narrows her eyes at him, pinning him with the intensity of her stare. For a moment, he thinks she’s going to refuse outright, but then her expression softens ever so slightly.

“Normally, I don’t make it a habit to help individual children find work,” she begins, her tone still sharp but tinged with something else—perhaps a hint of sympathy. “However, I can acknowledge that your situation is… somewhat more pitiable than usual. I will see what I can do.”

He’s so relieved he doesn’t even care about the insult. He is desperate right now and adult mind or not, getting a job as an eleven year old with no marketable skills and nothing to offer would be all but impossible without her help.

“There is an old friend of mine,” Madam Liu continues, “who runs a small clinic in the slums. It’s not much, but he always needs extra hands. The work is hard, and the pay is meagre, but it’s honest. If you’re willing to put in the effort, I can speak to him on your behalf.”

He nods desperately, unwilling to let the chance slip out of his grasp. “I’m willing to work hard, ma’am. Thank you.”

This is better than he dared hope for. No matter the time period or situation, doctors are highly prized, and though the clinic she’s talking about is likely to deal more with folk medicine than anything else, it’s an excellent start.

Now, he just has to impress his new boss enough to get himself whatever training he can, and maybe he can turn this whole situation around. And besides, while he’s never really thought about being a doctor or healer before… he likes to believe that his mother would be proud of him for learning to help people.

He had eleven wonderful years of love and care thanks to the beautiful woman, more than he thought he would ever get and more than he probably deserved.

It’s nice to think of paying it forward.

***

That night, he lies on the hard wooden frame of his bunk, staring sightlessly at the ceiling and trying to piece together his thoughts.

He’s self-aware enough to recognise how much he’s repressing right now, and while it may be keeping him functional at the moment, he knows he’s borrowing against the future.

He knows, intellectually, that any child in his situation would be paralysed by the enormity of the loss. The grief, the fear, the uncertainty—they would be too much to handle. He also knows that feeling those emotions is natural, a necessary if painful part of the healing process.

But no matter how hard he tries, the tears just won’t come.

He turns onto his side, feeling the roughness of the wooden frame against his hip and starts forcing himself to confront things. It’s probably just as unhealthy, if not more so, but he really can’t afford to break down messily at some unspecified point in the future.

So he thinks about what he’s lost.

His mother, his home, his sense of security—all ripped away in an instant. The world he had known, the life he had carefully built for himself, was gone. He tries to catalogue these losses methodically, as if doing so could contain the enormity of his grief.

He has no family left. The woman who loved him, cared for him, taught him to read and write, is gone. Her voice, her smile, the gentle touch of her hand—they are all memories now, and he clings to them desperately. His home, for all that he only cared about it because of who he shared it with, is gone.

He has no place to return to, no sanctuary to seek comfort in.

His cultivation, the essence of who he is, lies in tatters. The years he spent honing his skills, the countless hours of practice and meditation, all seem wasted. He doesn’t know if he will ever be able to harness Qi again, and the thought terrifies him. It’s not just the loss of power but the loss of identity, of purpose.

The walls he’s built around his grief finally begin to crumble, and the emotions he’s been holding back surge forward, overwhelming him.

He curls up on the hard wooden frame, his body shaking with silent sobs.

He cries for his mother, for the life they had together, for the love and warmth she gave him. He cries for the home that is gone, for the safety and security that have been ripped away.

And finally, he cries for himself, for the boy who has lost everything, for the child who must now find a way to survive in a world that seems so cold and uncaring.

The tears flow freely, a cleansing tide that washes away some of the numbness, some of the apathy.

When the tears finally subside, he feels drained but also a little lighter. The pain is still there, a constant ache in his chest, but it’s different now. It’s not something to be pushed away or ignored; it’s a part of him, a scar that will always remain. But he knows he can survive this. He has to.

For his mother’s sake, if not his own.