A neat circle of dirt lifted up as the shock waves from their fight pushed me back. The inn had blinked out in the span of a second.

"I would really appreciate not dying on my first day here," I said, getting into a jog heading away from ground zero, "Sweet, merciful, and all that is holy if I could just explain to these guys that fighting isn't always the answer..."

Next to me a running, smiling bald man caught up. His robes looked immaculately in place. I felt like I was huffing and puffing and he didn’t even seem to be making an effort.

"Things seem really bad right now. But they can always be worse."

"Bwuh?" I said as the man evenly kept pace with me despite me sprinting with all my might. On the fight or flight spectrum no one would put on a fight right now. The grinning bald man didn't even look like he was bothered. I had to hope that his intentions weren’t terrible.

I ran around a food cart, narrowly missing it.

"Pardon me sir, but do you have a moment to speak about the sect of Green Velvet?" The bald man said to me, keeping his sales person smile while pitching his sect to me.

I stopped full out. I had been part of many casual interactions with people trying to convert me to their church, but the sight of the smiling bald man in monk's robes? It felt prophetic. This went a bit further than just rapport building.

"You know what? Sure," I said in between breaths.

The bald man's eyebrows, the only pieces of hair in his head rose ever so slightly.

"That's wonderful. I don't usually get people taking me up on my offer. You must be new in town, Cultivator?"

It took me a whole five seconds to realize I was being addressed as a cultivator. It's okay, the wheels were rusty. It was my first day after all.

"The name is Pidge."

"Pleased to me you Pidge, this one is initiate Wu of the Green Velvet sect. If it isn't too much of a bother, you do seem to have reached the qi gathering stage. Perhaps you already have some training? We would be very interested in your budding ability."

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. I knew that in the fantasy books that Sects were civic institutions or some sort. Or was it a social club? I paused, slowing down to catch my breath. He walked beside me.

"I do not. I was traveling when I suddenly..."

"Ah! Wondrous! You came here and the high aura in the atmosphere caused you to tap into your latent powers! Truly the Dao is always the way.”

Wu looked like he was ready to weep. A happy one, I was willing to guess. He was probably a bit too invested, but he seemed nice.

"Look Wu, don't get the wrong idea here. I am very new to all of this."

I gestured vaguely at the universe.

Wu nodded along.

"Oh, you mean the whole thing? It's not like you got dropped into town without any regard for..."

Wu looked like he was thinking about what to say as he appeared to backtrack.

"but nevermind that. You're here now. Tell me what you know about the Dao?"

I stiffened. I had read a few stories about eastern Asian fantasy, and if this was a fever dream in his imagination it might have aligned itself to the dream. The Dao was something important to cultivators. Or at least to the demonic ones? Heavenly ones? Did it matter? I wasn’t certain. I knew that it was about the Dao and Cultivating something but there had been a lot of hand waving magic going on to make sure that the stories kept going at a breakneck pace and, well I wasn’t a breakneck type of pace kind of guy. That didn't work for me long term. I needed breaks, damnit.

As a kid I had organized a labor union to come in and do a ballot count at my supermarket because I thought it would mean an easier job. I did work less hard but then had to help the shop steward because I had taken a pivotal role in getting the shop up and running. In trying to do less, I had done more. My love for the social aspect of the union led me to become a social worker, specifically the therapist kind so that I would be able to help people one on one. That and working on civic social justice.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It was just a manly thing for a manly man like me to do.

Sure sometimes I had a frustrating client, but overall I liked the work. It was always varied and every day was a different challenge.

And now I found myself sitting in a lotus position across from a try hard bald guy that looked like he ate his feelings for breakfast.

"First off, let's make sure that we're far enough from the blast, second off what the heck do you eat because I need to know," I said, trying to derail him and get more information.

"That is an amusing line of inquiry, and so you should know that I keep myself on a steady diet of pills."

I frowned. Time to build rapport.

I had heard of a bunch of crash diets, like a particularly whack one involving grapefruit, but pills?

"And how does that make you feel?"

The smile slipped. Got him.

"I'm sorry, what?" He asked.

"You're only eating pills. How does that make you feel?" I replied.

The bald man twitched. I sat back.

"I... you know what... no one has ever asked me that."

Seeing myself on the outskirts of the neighborhood, I slowed. Following my lead, Wu did as well.

"No one has ever asked you about how you're feeling?"I said.

"That just seems like... why would you do that?"

The look was one that I was familiar with. The look of someone who has been asked to think through something, having never processed it.

"I ask people that all the time. It's just a nice thing to do. Let's have a seat."

Wu sat across from me, next to a convenient Inn. One that I was hopeful didn’t have a cultivator infestation.

"Now I know what you're about to say, You're not alone. I see a lot of men in my practice who are trying to get through something," I said.

Without even thinking too hard about it, I jumped into my ‘what therapy is and isn't spiel’. And then right there in the middle of a new city, in a new world, I had unintentionally found a new client.

"What I do, now that I have your undivided attention, is to be an active listener and..."

___

Thirty minutes later, Wu was a lot better acquainted with terms like boundaries and taking space.

"So if what you are saying is true, then I should be able to call it... establish a boundary? With my sect?" Wu said. His face was a messy contortion of emotion.

"Yep! Because you have to set an expectation that you will only try to convert new members sometimes. This is where taking space for yourself comes in. You don’t have to do this all the time. When are you taking time for yourself?" I said.

“That is… hard to say. Now that we’ve been talking for a while, is there a reason that you’re wearing women's robes?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea where you got that notion. These definitely belong to a man,” I replied. “But this isn’t about me. It’s about you and setting reasonable boundaries at work.”

Though I was unable to see the cultivator's power level, if he had one, I knew that Wu was strong. Wu had a nomadic life, as a messenger slash evangelist for his Sect.

To be completely honest, I had to turn down his offers to join the Sect several times. It was like being asked out by a female client. Flattering, but in a most unprofessional way.

It was only then that Wu glommed onto the feeling that he needed to think about the narrative that he was making in his life versus the narrative the Sect was putting on him.

I knew that often a client would say one thing about their wife before their divorce; painting half a picture, then a totally different half would emerge after. It was about then that the truth would get muddy.

The Sect was like a wife for him, almost worse because it was all downside. I had to point out more than once that the Sect had been one sided in every interaction. I had seen a few bad breakups, indeed a lot of presenting problems in his office derived from that.

It was as if the man behind the Sects outreach had never paused to think of what he wanted out of life except for training.

I knew the type of hard working nose to the grindstone type of person who realized in his fifties that he'd been sacrificing his nights and weekends for a company that didn't give a rat's ass about him. The same man that could no longer relate to his wife and kids if they had even stuck around.

I hadn’t wanted children. To be more accurate, despite not having wanted any, my ex wife had insisted. I had lost that battle. Then she had skipped town a few years ago and I made the best of his situation with the girls. I had done my best and when they were close to getting out of high school ...well I had gotten a little too into my head and that might have been where the problems started.

"I'm sorry what? You're really required to do all of this, without question?" I said.

The cultivator only nodded. I had set the man off on a tangent and besides wishing I had some way to take notes, I had just sat there interjecting every so often.

"Wu, I feel like we need to wrap things up here, but you're welcome to return. Not that I'm on a schedule, but I need to take care of some things before it gets dark. Namely finding a room at an inn that won't instantly explode."

"Ah, of course. Can I drop by again soon? I haven't felt this refreshed since I filled my core for the first time."

I nodded.

The man grabbed at his pockets looking for something. He pulled out a piece of paper and five odd stones. I gladly accepted his offer.

"Here, this ought to cover a room at the Green Air Inn, and here's some pocket change until you get on your feet."

I didn't know how to thank the man fully, as he disappeared in the blink of an eye. I was left staring at the paper and the stones. One looked like proper currency, the other like board game money.

You could guess which one I thought was real.