The Kunlun Files

Chapter 10: The Village Guardian

Old Li wiped his eyes. "I've heard of them," he said. "They say every village has one — a grown person who keeps on living in their childhood. To keep the village peaceful, they take all its bad luck onto themselves."

"Your grandson, in his last life, was a village guardian." I turned the teacup slowly in my hands. "And the two of you were the closest of friends, from the time you were small."

"Us?"

"You grew up. He didn't. An accident kept him in your childhood forever — his mind stayed a child's while his body grew. And you were good to him, Old Li. When the other children bullied him, you stood in front of him. Whatever you had, you shared with him. And he — he was good to you, the way his whole heart knew how to be good."

Old Li had stopped breathing. I went on.

"Then came the summer at the reservoir. You went into the water to swim, and you drowned."

"No—"

"He was on the bank, watching. At first he thought you'd gone under to feel for fish, the way boys did. He waited. He waited a long time. When you didn't come up, he ran shouting for the village, and they came and pulled you out of the water."

The restaurant noise seemed very far away now.

"Even then he didn't understand. He thought it was a game you were playing — until the day they put you in the ground. That was the day he went mad. He went to your grave and dug at it with his hands."

Old Li broke. Tears ran down his face and he made no move to hide them. "Ah, that silly boy," he choked. "That silly boy. What was he doing digging up my grave—"

"He didn't succeed. Your family stopped him. But from that day on, he came to your grave every single day. Everything he couldn't bear to eat, couldn't bear to use — he brought it all to you. And often, they found him lying on top of the mound, crying into the earth."

"So that's why," Old Li whispered. "The first time I saw this child — my grandson — he felt so familiar to me. So familiar it hurt."

"His mind was never whole in that life, but he fixed one thing in it: he believed to the end that he was the one who had killed you. He carried that belief with him when he died, and it was strong enough to steer a soul. So this time, he came back as your family." I let that sit. "The crying isn't fear of you, Old Li. It's a debt of grief he doesn't know how to pay."

Old Li sat with it for a long time. Then he looked up, and his voice steadied.

"Master. Is there any way to make him stop crying when he sees me?"

"The memories of a past life fade as a child grows," I said. "They'll fade for him too. But I'll tell you the truth: between you two there will be a distance you won't be able to name. You'll each want to be close, and find it hard. You'll be forever afraid, in some corner of your mind, of making him sick again — and he'll grow up feeling, without ever knowing why, that you don't love him."

"Then help me get rid of that distance. Master, I'm begging you."

"Karma is complicated. Some things can only be attempted. I can give you an idea — whether it works, I can't promise."

"Promise or not, if you say it, I'll try it."

"Find a swimming pool," I said. "A public one. Have the family bring the baby and stand at the edge of the water with him. You go in quietly at the far end, and swim across. Let them guide the child to watch you climb out of the pool. Then you say one sentence to him: *Done playing? Let's go home together.*"

Old Li stared at me.

"The water took you from him while he watched," I said. "Let him watch the water give you back."

He was out of his chair before I'd finished the sentence, phone already in his hand. His family didn't believe a word of it — but they were afraid of breaking his heart, and that was enough. We were barely out of the restaurant before he was gone, off to the pool they'd agreed on.

"That grandson of his," Wu said, watching him go. "You really think a swim can fix what's between them?"

"No," I said. "The swim can't fix anything. But he doesn't need fixing. He needs to finish."

Wu didn't ask what I meant, which was just as well.

At nearly four that afternoon, Wu called me. Old Li was beside himself, he said, and had insisted Wu pass on his thanks first thing.

"The baby stopped crying?"

"Listen to this. Old Li says the moment the child saw the swimming pool, his mood went wrong — and a minute later he was bawling. The family wanted to take him and leave. But by then Li was already in the water at the far end, so they had no choice but to wait for him to swim over."

"And?"

"Sixty years old, and he swam that pool like a young man. Li says the whole way across, he could hear the boy crying over the echo of the water, and every stroke felt like a year. Then he reached the side, hauled himself up out of the pool right where the child could see him — soaking wet, gasping, hair plastered flat — and he said the sentence. *Done playing? Let's go home together.*" Wu paused, and even he sounded moved. "The child stopped crying on the spot. Stared at him, with the tears still on his face. Then he looked at his grandfather, and he smiled."

After I hung up, I sat for a while, and couldn't have said whether what I felt was joy or sorrow.

So many souls have spent a whole life waiting to watch someone climb out of the water. So many hands stay clenched because they fear that letting go means never meeting again — and fear, just as much, that staying clenched will lose each other anyway.

The wind will smooth the footprints out of the desert in the end. And every soul beside us has its day of true farewell —

My phone buzzed. A message from Wu.

*You've seemed unhappy lately. I'll introduce you to a new friend.*

I typed back: *Stop introducing your middle-aged club to me.*

His reply came in ten seconds, and I could hear the grin in it:

*I have young ones too.*

He did, as it turned out. And that one — that one was going to be a problem.