Heng wandered, aimless, for a while. The sun was slowly rising, its cursed rays blinding him whenever he looked in the wrong direction. It was a piece of garbage, to treat him like that, why couldn’t it just go annoy someone else?

  Isn’t that plain impossible?

  His feet kept going through alleys and stairs, streets and little parks, never knowing where or if to stop. They hurt.

  The unfamiliar world wasn’t as exciting as it had been just a few hours earlier. It was just blurry, confusing, and far too noisy in the whispers he heard here and there.

  How long will it take? Will it even make sense, if they’ve grown old before I can come back?

  He plopped on a chair outside a little shop. The workers, cleaning the place, gave him odd looks. He didn’t see them.

  His eyes were closing on their own. Legs would refuse to carry any weight. Shoulders slackened, together with his arms. His breaths came slower and slower. The immense tension that his body had endured in those last few days was simply… gone. He was so tired. He yawned as his eyes watered on their own.

  And even if I manage to, what guarantees me he’ll follow through on his word?

  When someone shooed him, he brushed his dirty hands on them to clear them, then left without saying a word, dumping the backpack on his back.

  As he walked, each step was made shorter than the one before it, and worn leather shoes dragged on the ground under him. How many hours of sleep had he lost those last few days?

  I knew how this would end when I went there. I knew I had ruined everything. Why did I even get my hopes up?

  The boy found a side street, blessed in the few shadows left, and sat down; or rather, he let himself fall on his ass, and rested his back on the cold wall. His hand rested on something that felt dirty. There was an unpleasant smell.

  I shouldn’t sleep here, should I?

  For a moment, he was ready to get up and leave, when another question came: Where else would I go?

  He let his mind be swept away by exhaustion. Heng fell asleep with tears in his eyes.

  …

  When he woke up, the Sun was high, but far from its peak; it was probably halfway through the morning, maybe slightly later.

  To greet him were the unpleasant sights and smells of a disgusting side of the city. Wrinkling his nose, he left the place.

  I stink.

  Walking through the unknown ways and asking for directions, he managed to find a public bathhouse; entering the changing room, he looked for the more hidden corners where to leave his stuff.

  Taking off his clothes, he was careful to hide well the Fifteen Years Minor Sanctity Root. Stuffed in a pocket, he found the map of the city, which made him think of what to do later instead of drifting with no purpose.

  Butt naked, he entered the only room that was completely free. Frigid water and poor soap awaited him, while those with money to spend would enjoy a hot bath and good care. The people there were like him- thin, dirty, and with gloomy eyes.

  The warm water room isn’t even that expensive if they don’t want a full treatment. They must be really poor, not to- we’re so damn poor we can’t even afford that… I need to find a way to live, for this next couple of weeks, but who would ever hire me for anything? I must be the laughing stock of the city…

  He did not notice, lost in his thoughts, but the people around him were whispering.

  Whispering about him, some, but most about the woman he had lost to. The name Xin was told with great respect.

  After far too long, he left the cold bath, still as troubled as before, if not more, but at least with a purpose.

  The Sun had just started going down when he reached Lung’s shop.

  There were people outside entering, waiting, or leaving with a smile and something to eat. Too many of them for Heng to be comfortable. Still, he forced himself to skip the line and enter. To those who complained, he gave a quick “I’m just here to give a thing back to the owner- and saw the inside was packed more than he thought possible.

  Loud, chatty people filled the place, many stained with the grime of work. Only a few were sitting, bowls of soup or rice in front of them, and they had to suffer the bottoms of huge men too close to their faces for it to be worth it. Everyone else preferred sandwiches of thick bread and even thicker fillers, or waited for it, some complaining how it was slower than usual.

  To reach the counter where Lung was working, he had to say goodbye to the pleasant smell he had gained that morning, crossing a crowd that didn’t care for how much their work made them sweat or left their clothes dirty.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Lung was where he expected, rushing in and out of the kitchen, being tossed coins and tossing some back, taking orders, handling complainers, making the sandwiches or the bowls or whatever was asked of him, then shouting to find whoever had asked for them.

  He was an absolute mess.

  “L- sorry, sorry,” the boy shouldered people to get close enough to be heard. “LUNG! I’m here for your map!”

  “UH?!” It took a couple of seconds for the man to register what he had said. “I don’t care right now, leave it at the base of the stairs to my rooms or something!”

  The boy did as told, but only after gaining far too many mortal enemies for himself due to the sheer number of shoulder-checks he needed to make to get there. Then, he waited in a corner of the kitchen for the man to come.

  He did so in a rush, slamming two pieces of bread on a board and some meat and vegetables on top of one of them.

  “Sorry to bother, Lung-”

  “NOT NOW, KID.”

  The man rushed back out immediately.

  “I was looking for something like a job, or a place to stay.” Heng continued when he came back with an empty bowl. “Do you happen to know anything?”

  The man looked at him, stunned, the first seconds of stillness since lunch break everywhere had begun. He then smiled profusely, washing and refilling the bowl as he spoke.

  “Yes now, kid! You’re hired! You get my spare bedroom if you promise to stay at least a week!”

  “I want to, but I-”

  “Good! You make some flaming chicken rice bowls, and I take care of the idiot who asked for three different types of noodles at this hour!” The man spoke at superhuman speeds.

  “I was going to say, I don’t know how to cook!”

  “Too bad, kid! You’re going to learn!”

  …

  …

  …

  About three hours later, the last client left the shop. Or restaurant. Or tavern. Or bakery. Or whatever the place was. Heng was too tired to care to ask. Physically, he was fine, but mentally, he wasn’t at all.

  “How… how in the Nine Hells do you do this alone every day?” The boy asked Lung, splattered on a chair where customers sat only a few minutes earlier.

  “I usually have two assistants with me. They were never the most reliable, but them not showing up at all together is new. I swear I’m firing them as soon as I find someone to take their place.”

  “That… isn’t it a bit harsh?”

  “If anything, the opposite. I should’ve done it much earlier, with all the troubles they’ve caused me. Damn loveybirds.”

  “Oh…”

  Heng gave a look at his huge backpack, tossed in a corner. He was too tired to train, but he had been left many materials to study. Since he was now free, it was probably the best time to get to it; he had no idea what awaited him once he left the city.

  “Can I call you “Heng”?”

  “Hum, yes, of course. It’s… It’s all I can be called, from today. No more Chang. So, yeah. Yeah.” He tried to hide his emotions, but they bled out far too easy. He did not want to say anything, but he couldn’t. Who knew what would happen if he claimed a clan’s name he had been openly stripped of.

  Better than “kid”, at least.

  “Heng, here is my offer.” Lung continued without missing a bit. “You can stay here and do your Cultivator stuff, but I need you to help me with my work, as you can guess. There is a spare bedroom upstairs, you can have it. But no funny business.”

  He pointed with his thumb to the space behind the counter. It connected to two doors: one was the kitchen, the other, apparently, both to the basement and the upper floor.

  “What do you mean, funny business?”

  “That you as is already a good sign.” The man smiled at him with the barest hint of superiority. “I don’t want to be woken up in the middle of the night by you bringing in some guy or gal, or drunk, or whatever kids do at night now.”

  “N-NO! I… I would never.” The boy blushed.

  “I hope that’s true… now, people lie even when it’s stupid to, but you seem like a nice person, Heng, so I’ll trust you. The morning starts before dawn for us, so don’t screw up with our sleep, or the day will not be fun. You know the lunch hours, and you have a few hours free until the next shift begins. The schedule is always the same, and there’s no vacation for someone who stays for only a couple of weeks. I recommend you get acquainted with the place. The basement stays private, but we’ll share a bathroom and a living room. Now, let’s eat. I’m starving, and I’m sure so are you, kid!”

  Lung grinned at him and went to the kitchen, coming back a moment later with some of the leftovers from lunch. When they were done, Heng excused himself and went to check his new bedroom, the books in his backpack striking his back annoyingly as he walked up the stairs.

  His room was small, just a bed by the side of the entrance, a small table in front, and some shelves nailed into the walls. Dust lightly covered everything, so he shook it off the blanket, planning to clean the floor later, and opened the window to a busy street.

  The bathroom was just as small, but there were some books left inside.

  The living space was for sure more… well, livable, the room fairly big, with a sofa and a low table in front of the fireplace, and an armchair by the window, one of the walls covered by a huge bookshelf that was far too full.

  A wave of nostalgia hit Heng as he stared at it.

  “You like reading, kid?” The soft man asked him, leaning on the doorframe.

  “I spent a long time doing only that. Years. If I didn’t love it, I would’ve gone crazy a while ago.”

  “Heh. Didn’t know people could grow up like that. I like it, too, but most of these are not mine, so I can’t really recommend anything.”

  “Oh? And whose are these books then?”

  “You should take more care of what you ask. There were my wife’s. Now she’s gone, and I keep them out of… I don’t know.”

  Damn, I hadn’t noticed anything! Why did I need to ask it?

  “I’m… I’m sorry for your loss, Lung.”

  “I don’t know if I should call it a loss. She just disappeared one day. For all I know, she is far away with some other man, enjoying her new life, like those cursed lovebirds that didn’t show up.”

  The silence lingered for some more time before the man left without saying a word.

  Cha- Heng, went back to clean his new room, and when he was done, he began reading the manuals that had been left to him.