Chapter 63: Chapter 61: Self-mercy

“I don’t know much about immortals but I always thought they’d live in less dusty places,” Bo spoke thoughtfully. “Cleanliness is a virtue and all.”

“It’s a big… temple… manor… building?” Li Baobao held out his hands as though trying to measure out the building in his mind. “It’s big, maybe she just doesn’t have time to clean it all?”

 

“Why would she clean this place?” Ji Ying sniffed. “Do you think she’s a maid or something?”

 

Bo frowned at Ji Ying, who had been nothing but unpleasant to everyone and refused to remove her presence under some claim that she was their ‘guide’ and ‘acting host’. It made no sense to Bo which just angered him more. “Well, why don’t you clean it? You’re a girl right? Girls do the cooking and cleaning and the-” Suddenly she was in his face, her eyes wide and her small mouth set in a frown.

 

“HEY!”

 

She started speaking in a low ominous voice, “If you want to die so much and see the Empress of Hell I can help you with that you limp-”

 

“H-hey, lets not fight,” Li Baobao pleaded. “Liu Xie, help!”

 

Liu Xie was sitting nearby with his back to the wall and his head turned up to the ceiling. He had been extremely quiet. But he lowered his head to stare blankly at Bo and Ji Ying. “Stop. Do not.” He said flatly before looking back up at the ceiling.

 

“Th-that’s not helping!”

 

“Look I’m just saying that maybe if you got in touch with your womanly side and stopped being lazy,” Bo scooted back from Ji Ying, who simply leaned closer to him. “Look at you, you have a pretty face but you have the expression of someone who just ate shit. No wonder you’re all holed up on a mountain with a bunch of other lonely girls.”

 

Ji Ying was silent for a moment before she leaned close to Bo with her hand held up as though to hide a secret, “you have a small penis. Really small. It might as well be a-”

 

“You flat chested no-hip crushed nose bitch!” Bo yelled, his face so red that he felt his ears were about to burst. He tried to slap her but she quickly moved away from his hand.

 

“Bo.” Rui Yifu’s voice was weary. He stood in the darker part of the room, far more disheveled than when he went in. Bo furrowed his brow in concern and stood up. He moved to Rui and reached out for him only for the other man to step away and lean against the wall with his head hanging low.

 

Li Baobao also got to his feet quickly and walked over to Rui. “What’s wrong?” He asked worriedly.

 

“...Gu wants to talk to Bo.”

 

“Rui?”

 

He pointed at the door. “Go, now.”

 

Bo crouched down in front of Rui Yifu and looked up at him, trying to peer through the curtain of hair. “What happened?”

 

Rui Yifu did not answer, instead he placed his foot against Bo’s chest and slowly pushed until Bo was forced to get up so he would not fall over.

 

Bo huffed while patting away some of the dirt on him. “Fine, I’ll go. I didn’t want to stick around that ugly bitch anyway.”

 

“Rui Yifu isn’t ugly, Bo, please be polite,” Li Baobao protested. “He’s very upset about something.”

 

“I wasn’t talking about Yifu I was talking that bitch over there,” he pointed at Ji Ying. Then before Li Baobao could say anything else he turned on his heel and went to Lady Gu’s room.

 

The room was brightly lit by a strange red and yellow lantern made of stuff that Bo could not recognize. No fire burned in it but Bo thought he smelled sea salt in the air and wrinkled his nose. Dust streaked the floor and caked the various chests which sat in the corners. Lady Gu sat placidly and still, her long hair spreading out over the ground like thousands of tiny dark streams. He could find nothing comfortable to sit on and eventually settled on the floor before the small woman.

 

She stared at him, unblinking, unmoving.

 

“So, uh, hello.” Bo shifted around in discomfort. Without his friends' presence around him he felt strangely exposed. “My name is Bo.”

 

“Just Bo?”

 

He smiled awkwardly, “well, yes. Where I came from we all sort of just knew each other. We didn’t need family names or anything. It was a small village.” A happy village.

 

“Where is this village?”

 

He shrugged, “it was in a forest by a river. In the Southern Kingdom. I can’t really give you an exact spot…”

 

“Why not?”

 

“I…” Bo chewed his tongue for a moment. “I can’t read maps. We didn’t have any maps showing us where we were.”

 

Lady Gu frowned slightly, “so how will you get back?”

 

“How will I get back?” He repeated without understanding at first. Slowly the words sank down into him. Bo turned his gaze down to his hands. But he was not staring at the tensing fingers that dug into his knees. He saw fire that swallowed buildings, splintering wood collapsing as forms shrouded by the flames raced away or collapsed into the mud. “I… I can’t.”

 

“You can’t what?”

 

“Go back,” he whispered. “There’s… there’s nothing to go back to.”

 

“What happened?” Lady Gu asked. There was no pity in her voice, or sympathy. It was a question without emotion and Bo feared to meet her gaze.

 

“There’s a group… called…. There’s a bunch of…” He swallowed. Why were words so hard to speak suddenly. “They were called Banners, or Zhang’s Banners, after their leader.” He spoke slowly while focusing on a spot on the ground. He smelled offal and mud. Memories twisted around in his mind. The flames, rickety houses falling down. Hurried voices whispering to him and pale fearful faces trying to smile at him.

 

“What about them?”

 

“They burned down the village,” Bo whispered softly.

 

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“Why?”

 

Bo shook his head, “I don’t know!” He dug his fingers into his thighs. “I don’t know why!” He felt like he was lying to himself. “I just know… that I need to find them, I need to find their stupid shitty boss so I can kill him.” The words felt strange on his tongue, something was tugging on his heart. Like a rotting rope pulling a cart.

 

“Zhang’s Banners were known as monster hunters-”

 

A surge of anger and grief exploded in Bo’s chest, “my family weren’t monsters! Nobody in that village was a monster! The only monsters that were there were those stupid Banner-”

 

“Then why did they attack your village?”

 

He ground his teeth, “I don’t know! I don’t know!” The more questions Gu asked the more he remembered. Things he had been able to stuff away in the darkest corners of his mind since he had met Liu Xie, Li Baobao, Rui Yifu, and Zhu Er. He had been so caught up in the journey he had been able to sleep without smelling smoke and burning flesh. But now it was all coming back. Among the panic and the smoke he glimpsed his sisters coming towards him. They were pushing him away from the house and to the pit they threw their trash in.

 

Their faces were covered in sweat and tears… he remembered Rui Yifu’s face in the warehouses at the Free City. The realization struck him breathless.

 

They had been Fish People.

 

Everyone in his village, they had all been Fish People.

 

“They were not monsters,” Bo spoke through gritted teeth. “They never hurt anyone! We were happy being left alone.” He looked at Lady Gu, expecting accusation or hate in her eyes but he found none.

 

“When the Banners came to your village to destroy it, what did you do?” She asked.

 

“I hid under some trash,” Bo admitted darkly, crossing his arms as his heart felt like it was being squeezed. He closed his eyes, the memories like bright sparks. “N..no, that’s not correct. My sisters hid me under the trash. I…”

 

“Your sisters hid you under the trash? Were you a child?”

 

“Yes, but it’s the same as if I did it myself since I stayed there,” he growled. “I was a coward who hid under garbage like shit and listened to his family and friends get killed and did nothing about it!”

 

“What could you have done about it?”

 

“I could have fought!” Bo slammed his hand down on the floor. “I could have crawled out and fought them!”

 

Lady Gu looked unimpressed. “Would that have changed anything?”

 

His sisters had not gotten far, he remembered. He was peeking out from under the trash as several men surrounded them. When the men moved away, what was left of his sisters looked like the cuts of animals nobody wanted.

 

He waited all night, all morning, into the afternoon to move out from under the trash. He crawled towards the rotting meat, trying to put his sisters back together.

 

Even their heads had been crushed to bits.

 

Bo covered his wet face, sniffling.

 

“You could not have done anything.” Gu said flatly. “You could not have saved them. If you had emerged from the trash, you would have been killed. You would have made their sacrifice meaningless.” Bo clasped his hands over his ears to block out the woman’s words but they found him anyway. “You know this, deep inside that nothing else could have been done. Nothing would have saved them.”

 

“Shut up!”

 

“You were just a child, Bo, be merciful to yourself.”

 

“I said shut up! Shut up! I don’t want to hear anything else from you! Shut up! Shut up!” He doubled over, until his nose touched the ground and his hands pressed against his ears so tightly he felt like he was about to crush his own skull. He dug his nails into his skin until they cut through and blood began to drip down.

 

“Your sisters wanted you to live, are you really living Bo? How long has this grief and anger been sitting in your heart? What would they think?”

 

Bo screamed.

 

"You cannot go back and like this you cannot go forward," Lady Gu continued, unperturbed by his gasping screams.

 

Why was nobody coming in? His voice seemed to echo throughout the room and yet Lady Gu's calm voice cut through the noise like a knife. He could not scream loud enough to silence her. He could smell burning flesh. "Shut up, just shut up! Why are you still talking?!" He demanded through tears.

 

"Because we're both students of the same teacher, it's my duty to help," she replied.

 

"I don't want your help!"

 

"We don't always get a choice. Bo, you are still growing and can become something more than just a orphan, wandering the roads alone with hate sitting in your heart. But you need to forgive yourself," she said gently. "You and Rui Yifu share that."

 

He was quiet, his throat felt raw and painful. He listened to the uneven noise of his own breathing while Lady Gu remained still and utterly quiet like a stone. "I don't share anything with that bastard," he sniffed petulantly.

 

"Take my name."

 

Bo moved his face from the snot, tear, and dust covered ground to look at her. "What?"

 

"Take my name, become Gu Bo, or whatever proper name you eventually take for yourself. Liu Xie will never give you anything you cannot attain yourself, but that doesn't mean that I have to follow the same rule." Her tiny hands, like little pale spiders, settled in her lap. "We're brother and sister now, you know, so don't feel so alone."

 

Bo remained in his awkward position, staring up at the immortal dumbfounded. He did not know what to say, or to do. Lady Gu stared back at him, unblinking, still. Then, slowly, she closed her eyes and seemed to return to being a dusty pile of fabric and too-long hair.

 

The meeting was over, he realized. Still stunned, he got onto shaky legs and wobbled to the door.

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