Thanks to K. Firefly, kickinpants, and rpzeal for helping me make up my mind on the ending. *grin*
Method in It
Another 58 futurefic brought to you by Aki's Wishful Thinking
A brilliant third-quarter moon hung over the copse, seeking to make up in output what it lacked in form. It came through the window unabashedly, stretching the thin shadows of a hundred chair and desk legs into a vivid bamboo grove on the floor. Outside, the night was quiet. Now and then a wind arose, and fell back with a sigh.
On the right-hand corner of his desk, a single candle dripped steadily as it burned. It was the only source of light in the small, windowless room that had been annexed to the schoolhouse ten years ago, when the first learned bachelor to grace its walls had arrived. This far out in the country, there was no electricity, and the township paid for his supplies. By not keeping a fire lit, using only one candle, and numerous small contrivances, he could save enough of his stipend to add a book or three to his shelves every month.
He had a shelf and a half now, no more than two dozen volumes in all. Some were classics he'd known most his life, entwined innocently enough with his memory to survive the ravages of resurrection. Some were new, at least to him. All were beloved, and a few were battered. He lent his treasures out readily and tried to stifle miserly pangs with an educator's solid goodwill when they came back dog-eared and grimy, or worse, unread.
The situation had been better than he'd expected. He'd been warned about rank ignorance and stolid minds, but there were enough clever pupils, even in this small class of twenty five, that he derived both entertainment and satisfaction in the performance of his duties. More than a decade separated the youngest, who was seven, from the eldest.
The latter was proving to be one of his brightest; everyday he racked his brains for another argument to convince her parents to send her for more schooling. In this day and age it was becoming more fashionable for women to be educated, and the thought of that mind, trapped behind a plow or in some farmer's bed, made him
ache for the waste.
He was reading over a composition of hers regarding the relative importance of the military in the past three dynasties when a voice bawled out from the path.
"Cho sensei! Oiii, sensei!"
He put the pen down with a sigh. Footsteps were staggering to the door, and he hastened into the classroom to open it. On very bad nights Gojyo forgot that it was never locked, and pounded loudly enough to raise the dead, let alone the sleeping.
The smell of alcohol struck him when he opened the door, as did the sight of his former housemate, bedraggled and blind-drunk. The red hair was limp and greasy, the ever-present smirk replaced by the slack jaw of exhaustion. His arms were braced against the doorframe, bringing him startlingly close.
He should have been used to it by now. Wrinkling his nose, he spoke coolly. "I told you not to call me that."
Gojyo lifted one eyebrow and detached himself from the doorway. "Why not? They all do."
Yes, but they don't know and you do, and that makes all the difference, he didn't say. He headed automatically towards the stove and sink which served him for a kitchen. "You're a sight for sore eyes." At least the man was speaking clearly, although with Gojyo, that didn't count for much. He could enunciate when he was drunk; it was what he said that grew terrible.
As he filled a glass, he heard Gojyo stumble against something and swear. "Goddammit, Hakkai, why can't you just live somewhere else and have a living room with a sofa?"
He went back into the classroom, glass in hand. His friend was sitting on a desk unlacing his heavy boots with slow fingers, and didn't look up right away. "Now, why would I do anything to encourage you?" His voice was light enough; he trusted the dark to hide his expression.
It might not have been dark enough, with the moonlight, because when Gojyo looked up those long-fingered hands stopped. He hastened to add, "Besides, I have everything I need here."
"Everything, eh." The hands stirred and went back to the task of pulling off uncooperative boots. Drunk, his friend seemed to have the strength of a kitten. He often wondered if that was why he allowed the man to get away with saying outrageous things. Saving the punches for when he was sober rarely worked. Gojyo's charm recovered faster than the rest of him; regardless of how hungover he was in the morning, he was rarely surly. When Hakkai cooked breakfast, he even approached a state close to graciousness.
There were cots in the back of the classroom, for students who felt ill or had to stay the night. It happened, when monsoon rains or winter blizzards set in, and he always had several days' worth of provisions for the same reason. He had to restock them even when the weather was calm as Buddha's smile, because when Gojyo turned up he frequently stayed for a few days. In that time he did what he could to coax his friend into a battered sort of health, largely by shutting him up to eat and sleep and drink nothing but water.
"M'going to bed now, goodnight, sensei." Gojyo pulled off the desk as if there were strings attached to his hips, and headed for the back of the classroom.
The first time, Gojyo had wordlessly dragged the cot into his room. It left almost no space to move but he'd said nothing. Now sometimes he found himself reaching down in the middle of the night, fingers brushing for a face or shoulder. He felt an irrational fear that Gojyo would leave while he was asleep. Somehow he was sure that if it happened, the change would be permanent: His friend would not come back.
"Drink the water," he said quietly.
"Not if you don't want me throwing up on your desk, sensei," drawled from the corner where the cots were stacked. It was darker there, outside of the window's angle of moonlight.
"You've done worse." This time he was unable to repress a small grin, in spite of the epithet.
"M'terribly sorry for the inconvenience, O Worthy Servant of the State." One end of the cot bumped its way past the aisles, until Gojyo was walking by him, pausing to take the glass. He winced, then drained it in one go, the long column of his throat making loud noises as he gulped.
"No you're not. You never are."
Gojyo wiped his lips with the back of his hand and gave him back the glass. With his back to the window, it was difficult to make out his expression. "You might be right." Not waiting for his host to lead the way, he moved into the small bedroom, cot dragging in one hand. He left his boots underneath the desk, and Hakkai made a mental note to retrieve them before class.
"Gods, I feel filthy," his friend grumbled, peeling off his shirt. Looking up, Gojyo seemed almost surprised at the expression on his face. "What?" then, "Oh. I got into a fight."
"I see." He could, even by the light of one candle, now burning low. The bruises were livid against the untanned skin.
"Bastard kept trying to go for my kidneys. Is that fair, in a bar fight? I ask you."
"And what did you do to him, sleep with his sister?" He was startled by the sound of his voice, sharp and angry.
The point was blunted against Gojyo's bloodstream. "I called him an ugly son of a bitch and said that if he didn't have the brains to cheat properly, then he shouldn't play." The words were punctuated by a yawn. "I'm sure you'd have agreed if you'd been there."
"What was he trying to cheat at?"
Gojyo lay back gingerly, and inched forward until the cot edge fell under the crook of his knees. "Dice, of all things. As if I can't hear the difference between chalk and bone." He snorted.
Hakkai stacked the paper together neatly and blew out the candle, carefully, so the wax wouldn't spatter.
"So how's your star pupil?" he heard as he climbed onto the low platform of the bed. "Huawen, or Huazhen, or something."
"She's fine," he said, slightly surprised at the question. "If her parents permit it, I'll be tutoring her for the entrance exams this fall."
"Got her pregnant yet?"
He sat up again. "Gojyo."
"Well, why not? She's a pretty enough girl. Brains, too."
He forced a laugh. "I never said she wasn't attractive." He wished for a window. With the door to the classroom shut, Gojyo's voice seemed disembodied, rising up from the cot like a blunt ghost.
"Then what's the problem? She would surely take you. Educated, steady income, a returning hero who's traveled this country and beyond."
"It doesn't work that way, I'm afraid," he said. "Besides, she's nearly ten years younger than me."
Gojyo sounded more reasonable than any drunk man had a right to be. "Well, for all you know, her parents will get sick of her trying to wait for you and marry her off to some fifty-year-old rich geezer."
He was silent, because Gojyo did have a point. It just was strangely irrelevant.
"Look, I--can't marry Huawen. Goodnight," he added by way of a conversation-stopper.
"Why not?" Still curious.
"She wouldn't want to, anyway." It was the best he could come up with on the spot.
Another snort. "Like hell she doesn't. She asked for your candle, didn't she?"
He halted in his mental arrangement of the next few lines. "What?"
"Your candle. Remember? She wanted the wax, you said, and wouldn't tell you why."
He did recall something of the sort. "What has that got to do with anything?"
"Something all the village girls are doing. You take the wax from a candle your true love has lit, knead it--" his hands flew up in the air, demonstrating the motions, "--into something, say some mumbo-jumbo, burn it or eat or something--I don't know the details."
"So you want me to marry her because she ate my candle."
He wasn't sure whether it was possible to shrug while lying down, until Gojyo did it.
"It's less crazy than the way you live now. In the middle of nowhere, inside a fucking broom closet."
"A broom closet which you are now sharing," he felt compelled to point out.
"A broom closet which I am now sharing," Gojyo agreed amiably.
"Barring the many, many reasons that prevent me from being suitable matrimonial material--"
"--please, Hakkai, I'm too drunk for big words--"
"--if I got married, who would look after you?"
A pause. Vaguely he became aware of holding his breath.
"Ah, if you got married, then I wouldn't need looking after."
He wondered if perhaps he'd gotten drunk too, or if he were halfway asleep. It seemed to him that there was more than one way to interpret that last statement. He couldn't see why it was taking him so long to figure out which one Gojyo had meant.
"Well," he said finally, trying on the words as he went along, "I suppose a lifetime of domestic felicity would hardly be worth getting rid of you."
Another pause, longer this time. Then Gojyo laughed. "You're nuts, you know that?"
"I'm not the one poisoning myself to get attention."
"Just as long as we understand each other," his friend sighed.
In the darkness the ceiling might have been a thousand feet away, for all that he could see it. He couldn't hear Gojyo breathing, which meant the man was still awake.
"You stink of beer and cigarettes," he whispered. The cot would smell for days. Sometimes he was busy and left it there, and the ghost would rise up to confuse him in the night. He dropped his fingers down now, brushing, questing.
They were caught by a gentle grip. "I'll cut back. If you get a real place. And a softer bed."
The promise drifted in the darkness that enclosed them, until it was swallowed up in dreams.
Method in It
Another 58 futurefic brought to you by Aki's Wishful Thinking
A brilliant third-quarter moon hung over the copse, seeking to make up in output what it lacked in form. It came through the window unabashedly, stretching the thin shadows of a hundred chair and desk legs into a vivid bamboo grove on the floor. Outside, the night was quiet. Now and then a wind arose, and fell back with a sigh.
On the right-hand corner of his desk, a single candle dripped steadily as it burned. It was the only source of light in the small, windowless room that had been annexed to the schoolhouse ten years ago, when the first learned bachelor to grace its walls had arrived. This far out in the country, there was no electricity, and the township paid for his supplies. By not keeping a fire lit, using only one candle, and numerous small contrivances, he could save enough of his stipend to add a book or three to his shelves every month.
He had a shelf and a half now, no more than two dozen volumes in all. Some were classics he'd known most his life, entwined innocently enough with his memory to survive the ravages of resurrection. Some were new, at least to him. All were beloved, and a few were battered. He lent his treasures out readily and tried to stifle miserly pangs with an educator's solid goodwill when they came back dog-eared and grimy, or worse, unread.
The situation had been better than he'd expected. He'd been warned about rank ignorance and stolid minds, but there were enough clever pupils, even in this small class of twenty five, that he derived both entertainment and satisfaction in the performance of his duties. More than a decade separated the youngest, who was seven, from the eldest.
The latter was proving to be one of his brightest; everyday he racked his brains for another argument to convince her parents to send her for more schooling. In this day and age it was becoming more fashionable for women to be educated, and the thought of that mind, trapped behind a plow or in some farmer's bed, made him
ache for the waste.
He was reading over a composition of hers regarding the relative importance of the military in the past three dynasties when a voice bawled out from the path.
"Cho sensei! Oiii, sensei!"
He put the pen down with a sigh. Footsteps were staggering to the door, and he hastened into the classroom to open it. On very bad nights Gojyo forgot that it was never locked, and pounded loudly enough to raise the dead, let alone the sleeping.
The smell of alcohol struck him when he opened the door, as did the sight of his former housemate, bedraggled and blind-drunk. The red hair was limp and greasy, the ever-present smirk replaced by the slack jaw of exhaustion. His arms were braced against the doorframe, bringing him startlingly close.
He should have been used to it by now. Wrinkling his nose, he spoke coolly. "I told you not to call me that."
Gojyo lifted one eyebrow and detached himself from the doorway. "Why not? They all do."
Yes, but they don't know and you do, and that makes all the difference, he didn't say. He headed automatically towards the stove and sink which served him for a kitchen. "You're a sight for sore eyes." At least the man was speaking clearly, although with Gojyo, that didn't count for much. He could enunciate when he was drunk; it was what he said that grew terrible.
As he filled a glass, he heard Gojyo stumble against something and swear. "Goddammit, Hakkai, why can't you just live somewhere else and have a living room with a sofa?"
He went back into the classroom, glass in hand. His friend was sitting on a desk unlacing his heavy boots with slow fingers, and didn't look up right away. "Now, why would I do anything to encourage you?" His voice was light enough; he trusted the dark to hide his expression.
It might not have been dark enough, with the moonlight, because when Gojyo looked up those long-fingered hands stopped. He hastened to add, "Besides, I have everything I need here."
"Everything, eh." The hands stirred and went back to the task of pulling off uncooperative boots. Drunk, his friend seemed to have the strength of a kitten. He often wondered if that was why he allowed the man to get away with saying outrageous things. Saving the punches for when he was sober rarely worked. Gojyo's charm recovered faster than the rest of him; regardless of how hungover he was in the morning, he was rarely surly. When Hakkai cooked breakfast, he even approached a state close to graciousness.
There were cots in the back of the classroom, for students who felt ill or had to stay the night. It happened, when monsoon rains or winter blizzards set in, and he always had several days' worth of provisions for the same reason. He had to restock them even when the weather was calm as Buddha's smile, because when Gojyo turned up he frequently stayed for a few days. In that time he did what he could to coax his friend into a battered sort of health, largely by shutting him up to eat and sleep and drink nothing but water.
"M'going to bed now, goodnight, sensei." Gojyo pulled off the desk as if there were strings attached to his hips, and headed for the back of the classroom.
The first time, Gojyo had wordlessly dragged the cot into his room. It left almost no space to move but he'd said nothing. Now sometimes he found himself reaching down in the middle of the night, fingers brushing for a face or shoulder. He felt an irrational fear that Gojyo would leave while he was asleep. Somehow he was sure that if it happened, the change would be permanent: His friend would not come back.
"Drink the water," he said quietly.
"Not if you don't want me throwing up on your desk, sensei," drawled from the corner where the cots were stacked. It was darker there, outside of the window's angle of moonlight.
"You've done worse." This time he was unable to repress a small grin, in spite of the epithet.
"M'terribly sorry for the inconvenience, O Worthy Servant of the State." One end of the cot bumped its way past the aisles, until Gojyo was walking by him, pausing to take the glass. He winced, then drained it in one go, the long column of his throat making loud noises as he gulped.
"No you're not. You never are."
Gojyo wiped his lips with the back of his hand and gave him back the glass. With his back to the window, it was difficult to make out his expression. "You might be right." Not waiting for his host to lead the way, he moved into the small bedroom, cot dragging in one hand. He left his boots underneath the desk, and Hakkai made a mental note to retrieve them before class.
"Gods, I feel filthy," his friend grumbled, peeling off his shirt. Looking up, Gojyo seemed almost surprised at the expression on his face. "What?" then, "Oh. I got into a fight."
"I see." He could, even by the light of one candle, now burning low. The bruises were livid against the untanned skin.
"Bastard kept trying to go for my kidneys. Is that fair, in a bar fight? I ask you."
"And what did you do to him, sleep with his sister?" He was startled by the sound of his voice, sharp and angry.
The point was blunted against Gojyo's bloodstream. "I called him an ugly son of a bitch and said that if he didn't have the brains to cheat properly, then he shouldn't play." The words were punctuated by a yawn. "I'm sure you'd have agreed if you'd been there."
"What was he trying to cheat at?"
Gojyo lay back gingerly, and inched forward until the cot edge fell under the crook of his knees. "Dice, of all things. As if I can't hear the difference between chalk and bone." He snorted.
Hakkai stacked the paper together neatly and blew out the candle, carefully, so the wax wouldn't spatter.
"So how's your star pupil?" he heard as he climbed onto the low platform of the bed. "Huawen, or Huazhen, or something."
"She's fine," he said, slightly surprised at the question. "If her parents permit it, I'll be tutoring her for the entrance exams this fall."
"Got her pregnant yet?"
He sat up again. "Gojyo."
"Well, why not? She's a pretty enough girl. Brains, too."
He forced a laugh. "I never said she wasn't attractive." He wished for a window. With the door to the classroom shut, Gojyo's voice seemed disembodied, rising up from the cot like a blunt ghost.
"Then what's the problem? She would surely take you. Educated, steady income, a returning hero who's traveled this country and beyond."
"It doesn't work that way, I'm afraid," he said. "Besides, she's nearly ten years younger than me."
Gojyo sounded more reasonable than any drunk man had a right to be. "Well, for all you know, her parents will get sick of her trying to wait for you and marry her off to some fifty-year-old rich geezer."
He was silent, because Gojyo did have a point. It just was strangely irrelevant.
"Look, I--can't marry Huawen. Goodnight," he added by way of a conversation-stopper.
"Why not?" Still curious.
"She wouldn't want to, anyway." It was the best he could come up with on the spot.
Another snort. "Like hell she doesn't. She asked for your candle, didn't she?"
He halted in his mental arrangement of the next few lines. "What?"
"Your candle. Remember? She wanted the wax, you said, and wouldn't tell you why."
He did recall something of the sort. "What has that got to do with anything?"
"Something all the village girls are doing. You take the wax from a candle your true love has lit, knead it--" his hands flew up in the air, demonstrating the motions, "--into something, say some mumbo-jumbo, burn it or eat or something--I don't know the details."
"So you want me to marry her because she ate my candle."
He wasn't sure whether it was possible to shrug while lying down, until Gojyo did it.
"It's less crazy than the way you live now. In the middle of nowhere, inside a fucking broom closet."
"A broom closet which you are now sharing," he felt compelled to point out.
"A broom closet which I am now sharing," Gojyo agreed amiably.
"Barring the many, many reasons that prevent me from being suitable matrimonial material--"
"--please, Hakkai, I'm too drunk for big words--"
"--if I got married, who would look after you?"
A pause. Vaguely he became aware of holding his breath.
"Ah, if you got married, then I wouldn't need looking after."
He wondered if perhaps he'd gotten drunk too, or if he were halfway asleep. It seemed to him that there was more than one way to interpret that last statement. He couldn't see why it was taking him so long to figure out which one Gojyo had meant.
"Well," he said finally, trying on the words as he went along, "I suppose a lifetime of domestic felicity would hardly be worth getting rid of you."
Another pause, longer this time. Then Gojyo laughed. "You're nuts, you know that?"
"I'm not the one poisoning myself to get attention."
"Just as long as we understand each other," his friend sighed.
In the darkness the ceiling might have been a thousand feet away, for all that he could see it. He couldn't hear Gojyo breathing, which meant the man was still awake.
"You stink of beer and cigarettes," he whispered. The cot would smell for days. Sometimes he was busy and left it there, and the ghost would rise up to confuse him in the night. He dropped his fingers down now, brushing, questing.
They were caught by a gentle grip. "I'll cut back. If you get a real place. And a softer bed."
The promise drifted in the darkness that enclosed them, until it was swallowed up in dreams.