Xie Song-jun

2022 years after The Long Night

Huibàn Lagoon

There were fingers on her wrist, checking her pulse. That was how Song-jun knew she wasn’t dead. Eyes flying open, she immediately sat straight up and the pain in her lungs as she coughed up handfuls of water was somehow nowhere near as painful as her forehead colliding with a solid, rock-like object.

“Ow! Fuck-”

For a moment, Song-jun wondered why her voice sounded like that. Then she blinked and realized Su Lan was kneeling nearby and he was rubbing his head too.

Clearing her throat she hoarsely mumbled, “Sorry.” Then finally got a look at where they were.

It’s almost like a room. The earth is packed in so well on both the ground, walls, and ceiling, that it feels like a very round, very cold room. Song-jun pauses her search as she realizes that the tree roots hanging from the ‘ceiling’ are almost reminiscent of a chandelier, and that the way the underground waterfall had converted itself into a spring encompassing the room, the longest roots able to dip into it, is very… designed. Ingenuous almost.

“Woooow…” she couldn’t help but gape, “The underground spring feeds the tree and the whirlpool feeds the spring.”

Already on her feet, Song-jun examined the room for anything that would indicate it had been built by human hands, but there was nothing… could that mean it was naturally occurring?!

Glancing over at Su Lan, Song-jun remembered why she’d actually come down here in the first place, and that was not to let the strange man out of her sight.

Su Lan was standing in front of one of the larger roots, gazing at nothing but looking like he was listening intensely.

Song-jun blinked.

“What are they saying now?”

Su Lan pressed a few fingers to his temple and seemed to ponder this with a deep sigh, then his eyes widened slightly.

“The voices, they’re… not making much sense, but… I swear I recognise some of them now.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Song-jun made a gesture for him to go on. Su Lan seemed to listen for a moment, then relayed what he’d heard. At least he seemed a little more aware of things now.

“Do you think we’ll have any more good days? Um… there’s another voice, a younger voice saying; bring back my father, he’s yelling it. Someone’s telling someone goodbye, on their deathbed… and-”

This is where Su Lan stops short, his entire aura changing in a heartbeat as his face goes even paler as his eyes go sharp.

“What?” Song-jun rushes over to him, afraid to get too close and too far at the same time, “What is it?”

She watches Su Lan swallow, whispering something under his breath. It sounds a bit like; is it you?

He’s truly lost to it now, eyes rolling back a bit as Song-jun has to steady him from falling. How could these voices be doing this to him?! Where were they even coming from?

“Su Lan!” Song-jun almost wants to shake him awake, but he is awake, he’s just hearing things that she can’t.

And then, suddenly, almost as if the universe is teasing her, she can.

“I wish you didn’t have so many nightmares about the past. I wish it were only good dreams of our future.”

Song-jun hears it. Her own voice, as clear as day, as if she herself had spoken.

She stays very still, afraid to so much as breathe as whatever hallucinations Su Lan had been experiencing on his own are now being shared with her.

She hears more of what she doesn’t understand than what she does…

“It does resemble your scales. It’s very pretty, don’t you think?” And then a soft, carefree laugh. Song-jun almost thinks she recognizes the voice. Almost.

“With all our missing pieces, I love everything you are.”

Okay, now that was familiar. That had to be Lan Kai-Le’s voice. She half expected to hear Reian answer, but everything that came after was nonsense spoken by unknown ghosts;

People cried, voices sang… there were children that begged for their mother to come back from the dead, and vows whispered at the altar. Song-jun heard so many pieces of what she felt was the universe without end, that when at last the voices slowed to a stop, it took far too long to regain her sense of self before she realized what Su Lan was doing.

Su Lan has… wrapped one of the roots around his hand. For just a second, Song-jun has the strangest notion that it looks like he is holding hands with some much larger creature, but then she blinks again and sees the shimmering glow of energy passing through the tree. It’s… it’s not going into Su Lan. It’s being taken from him.

Oh no, oh crap-

Panicking, Song-jun grabs the branch in his hand and tries to yank it off. The damn thing feels more or less fused to his skin!

“You’re…” she huffs, grabbing a different root from up above and wrapping it around her own hand, a bit petulantly. “Not allowed to die yet, idiot-”

You have to come back to Hei’an City for that last sunrise, and if I have to physically withhold you from jumping off that ledge myself, then so be it.

Song-jun closes her eyes.