Episode 4 - The Voice in the Well
767 Words
'Open your eyes,' Gu Yan said.
She did. The courtyard was still silver, but quieter now. The petals were still falling, but slower, like a song that had almost ended. Gu Yan looked a little pale. The small star in his palm was gone.
'It is all right,' he said. 'It went back to sleep.'
'What was it?'
'A memory. An old one. Nothing more tonight.'
They stood together in the silver light. Lin Yue did not realize until then that she was shaking, just a little.
'I am sorry,' she said again. 'I should not have come.'
'No,' he said. 'You should not have.'
But when he looked at her, his eyes were gentler than she had ever seen them.
'But I am glad you are safe,' he added, so softly she almost missed it.
He walked her home. Neither of them spoke much. At her door, he paused.
'Lin Yue,' he said. 'Tomorrow, pretend nothing happened. Can you do that?'
'Can you?' she asked.
A very small smile touched the corner of his mouth. It was the first smile she had ever seen on his face.
'I have had a lot of practice,' he said.
Then he was gone, and the moon above her head was just a moon again, pale and ordinary, and she stood in her doorway holding a plum blossom that still glowed faintly, as if it remembered.
For three days, they pretended.
Lin Yue went to class. Gu Yan sat beside her, reading his worn blue book. They did not speak of the Silver Moon, or the bell, or the well. Shen Xi continued to be cheerfully curious, and Lin Yue smiled at the right moments and laughed at the right jokes. She was, she realized, getting rather good at pretending too.
But on the fourth morning, she found a slip of paper inside her desk. It was small, folded twice. Her name was written on it in careful, old-fashioned handwriting.
'Fourth floor. End of the west corridor. After last period. - G.'
She looked across at Gu Yan. He did not look back. He only turned a page of his book.
After last period, she went.
The fourth floor of Mingyuan High housed the library, the art room, and a handful of storerooms nobody cared about. The west corridor was the oldest part of the building, with high windows and floors that creaked just enough to make you aware of your own footsteps. At the end of the corridor, there was a plain wooden door with no label on it.
Gu Yan was already there, leaning against the wall.
'You came,' he said.
'You knew I would.'
He smiled, just a little. It still caught her off guard.
'I decided,' he said, 'that pretending nothing is happening is not good for you. So I am going to show you something. But only if you promise, again, not to tell anyone about it.'
'I promise.'
'For real this time?'
She gave him a look. 'I did not lie last time. I broke my word, which is different.'
'A technicality.'
'A true one.'
He laughed then, a small, surprised laugh, as if he had not expected to laugh that afternoon. He reached out and placed his palm flat against the plain wooden door. The wood shivered under his hand, and the door opened inward on its own, silent as a dream.
Behind the door was a room that should not have fit inside Mingyuan High School.
It was a library. But not the library on the fourth floor that everyone knew about. This one was older, deeper, taller. The ceiling rose far above her head, crossed by beams of dark wood. Tall shelves stretched away into dim rows, packed with books whose spines were bound in leather, silk, and things she could not name. A quiet, buttery light came from lamps that did not seem to have wires. The air smelled like paper, cedar, and faintly of plum.
Lin Yue took one slow step inside. Then another.
'How,' she said, and could not finish.
'It has always been here,' Gu Yan said, closing the door behind them. 'Most people cannot find it. You could, if you wanted. That is one of the reasons I wanted to show you.'
She turned to him. 'What is this place?'
'It is the memory of the school,' he said. 'Every old place that has woken up at least once has a room like this. It keeps the records. Stories. Names. Warnings. If something is going to happen here, the answer is usually in this room somewhere.'
- Writer
