Chapter 1
This Town Sucks
Siyue Town
Not Sure When
Time for another list!
In Siyue Town, the streets echoed with the voices of many. These voices were notorious for shouting, whispering, loudly whispering, subconsciously whispering, and sometimes, these voices would actually speak at a normal, human volume. Rather, speaking was putting it mildly.
They would complain.
Whether that complaint involved unreasonable prices, or simply yesterday's "hot" story, these villagers would complain about anything under the sun. And when they weren't complaining? Well, the answer was simple. They would discuss whatever prosaic event had happened that week, regardless of who actually graced the subject.
Better put—The sister of complaints: gossip.
To explain this not-so-shocking phenomenon, let's simplify it through a monologue of unsolicited advice. When encountering such a beast, the rule of thumb is to understand each step carefully.
Rule 1: If it happened, the town knew.
Rule 2: If you weren't aware that it happened, then it was only a matter of time. This "revelation" was typically discovered through your neighbour. You know, that neighbour who always welcomed them into your house, preparing tea for two.
*Your tea, not there's.
Rule 3: Engaging with the topic was accepting the rumours.
Rule 4: All rules are hidden behind the mask of a smiling tiger. Therefore, it's best not to question it.
Now, what would happen if someone did go against the grain of familiarity? Well, that's where our protagonist comes in. A man best known as our tale's "princess," Tao Hua.
He pushed through the crowd, paying the whispering wives no mind, but halted at an unfortunate issue. The problem? People, all standing in the middle of a walkway. Not only was this crowd obnoxious, but blind to the begging of the small man.
So he waited. Tao Hua bounced on the heels of his shoes, desperately begging each person to move. It all fell on deaf ears.
It was so aggravating; the annoyance practically nestled under his skin. If it were him, he'd be yelled at, berated even. But them? They could do whatever they pleased, as long as the village liked them. Which was literally everyone in the village, with the exception of Tao Hua, of course.
What's worse, the longer they ignored him, the more likely he was to be noticed. Which is exactly what happened next!
The clicking of fingers bounced off each grey building, increasing the longer our poor princess tried to avoid them. Each time Tao Hua tried to squeeze past, he'd be met with an unpleasant shout amid the snapping.
He let out a sigh, just as the unrelenting litany of unholy hostility moved onto its second step.
"Think he's gone deaf? Should I be louder?" said an old voice, both deep and raspy. "Lemme try--KID! How does Master Tao handle him?"
"Master Tao is just happy to have him distracted, Father," said another voice. This one was younger in tone; however, still masculine. From the sound of jingling coins, it was clear he was the one manning whatever stall stood behind Tao Hua. "Spoke to him the other day after his return from the Imperial Capital. Our Lordship said, and I quote, 'He'll be sent off soon.'"
"Huh…wonder what that means," replied the merchant. He returned to his questionable hobby of snap, snap, snap, nearly causing Tao Hua to rip out his hair at the repetition. "He just turned of age, right? Right?"
But there was no response, assuming the son didn't know.
"Eh, useless. I'll find out!"
In the merchant's persistence, Tao Hua was left with no other choice but to quell the situation, lest it got out of hand. So, he took one longing stare upward. The peach reflected each drifting cloud, lonesomely travelling along the blue sky.
Guess being oblivious isn't in the books for the day. Tao Hua thought through each attempt at yelling his name. Oh well.
"What a waste of a son. Of course Master Tao refuses to bring the kid around," said the man. However, his voice didn't sound mad, nor annoyed. It was amused, and even more so with his next statement. "He'd be better off with a daughter at this rate."
Tao Hua cringed, but his moment of grievance was cut short with a more demanding yell of his name. Er, correction—the demanding yell of another one of his names. The flavour this time?
"VILLAGE DISGRACE."
Fortunately, this screech was so loud it grabbed the attention of the barricade, and startled them off to the edges of the street. The street was cleared; finally! Of course, the caveat was that these people moved merely to hide behind their tattered fans and watch the show.
After a quiet groan, Tao Hua's annoyance was promptly replaced with a look of strained delight. He twirled around and popped back into place, causing his robe to flutter outward and fall like a wandering jellyfish. During his performance, he made sure to focus on one key detail, an important one.
The book he once held to his chest was now hidden behind his back.
The scene before Tao Hua presented three people all stationed at a terrible-looking stall. The merchant, dressed in poverty's beige, sat next to it, and was in the middle of his arm getting slapped. He didn't seem at all bothered, however, and neither did the woman enacting it.
It was playful, rather.
"Oh, don't involve him! Master Tao already has enough on his plate. Why add more?" said the woman, just as the son reached over and carefully steadied her basket. "He and Gui Chang are already drowning in preparations for the ceremony."
"Ceremony or not, a man's gotta answer to his elder. That's a clear disgrace." He reached up his hands, and with one final snap, the merchant yelled, "Get over here!"
Didn't they say I'd be better exchanged for a girl? Shouldn't that mean I don't have to answer to my elders?
Alas, there was no reasoning with the unreasonable. All Tao Hua could do was tuck away that annoyance for another day.
"Yes, Elder Sir? What seems to be the issue today?" asked Tao Hua through the gritting of his teeth and a fake smile. He dared not approach the stall, and this action alone would make the merchant shake his head.
"He really can't hear!" he glanced over to the woman once before cupping his hands over his mouth. "I said: Get over here! Is it really that hard for you to understand directions?"
Of course—Tao Hua resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Well, it was more like he was used to these people. They were like clockwork; except, the clock couldn't fucking tell the time.
Tao Hua rocked to and fro, trying to keep up the act of tolerance. "Oh no, I like it here, Elder Sir. It's nice and warm."
"Eh, whatever. Answer me this, kid—did you just turn twenty?" The merchant momentarily turned to the son. "I'm sure of it. Right? He just turned twenty?"
His son, completely lost, just stared at his father with a face that screamed, "How should I know?!" But instead of replying, he just shrugged in response and turned back to the stall. Tao Hua liked that approach—therefore, he made the choice to cut this useless conversation short!
Gradually side-stepping, he answered, "Yup! Sure did! A few weeks ago!"
"Then it's time to start acting it. Do your father a favour and go make a name for yourself—instead of just sitting in his estate all day, reading those useless things." The merchant's hand flung into the air. "Go on—you're already taking up too much room."
This was enough to satiate the hungry stares, prompting each onlooker to whisper amongst themselves. Though Tao Hua was already used to this treatment, it didn't prevent him from reacting.
His shoulders would deflate at the state of his now weakened smile. Instead of facing the merchant, Tao Hua hesitated and filled the silence by tracing the grout of each brick, and only when he was ready, he'd quietly reply, "I…I guess we'll just have to wait and see."
The merchant didn't like that response, and thus, he flew off in a rampage of words better left unsaid. Tao Hua endured one berating insult after another, well accustomed to the personality of this merchant. It was better to entertain the masses with responses as simple as "mhm" or "oh yeah?"
What he would do during this time, however, was zone-out. Tao Hua twiddled his fingers around the book, travelling off to lands far away. It was a fortress built around his emotions, but it wasn't always a well-built one and often fractured.
Amid the yelling and dissociation, Tao Hua thought, How nice it must be to be there and not here.
This was all in reference to a book he'd recently read. It was a book that involved a princess cast into slumber by a witch. It was an unfortunate story, but the thing about well-constructed fairytales was that in order to reach the good, one must first scour the bad. The princess would be saved by a dashingly handsome prince and she'd live the rest of her life happy.
Tao Hua liked the idea of being a prince; therefore, he'd submerge himself deeper in this daydream. This would make his impatience ever more evident, and the excitement of leaving this pathetic conversation bubbled up and blurted all at once.
"It was nice talking to you, Elder sir! Good luck with your rolls…and stuff."
Those weren't even rolls. Silly Village Idiot.
With another twirl, Tao Hua was off once more! He didn't offer the merchant or gawkers a final reaction as he bolted down that busy street. In fact, he really didn't care! Kind of.
Tao Hua long accepted that maybe these villagers had a point. In every situation, there was always a common denominator. Which meant only one thing: Tao Hua was the common denominator, and thus deserved every snarky insult or complaint thrown his way.
It wasn't always that way, though. As a teenager, the berating actually peeved him, and he'd typically respond with indignation—the type that had one shove their fists to their side, and over-explain. The truth? No one wanted an explanation. Tao Hua quickly understood this as he matured, and stopped feeding into the insults, lest he wished to egg them on more.
In fact, he accepted that he was different. Stories often embraced different; celebrated, even. This was Tao Hua's saving grace and the first step in his survivalist's pamphlet of detachment.
To escape these harsh realities, he'd travel elsewhere in prose, and each night, he'd live out every story in his mind.
This made the nightmares tolerable, and living wasn't such an unpleasant experience. This acceptance was best said through Tao Hua's way of coping: If the people of this town didn't want him, then some book tossed aside did.
In this dream, Tao Hua could craft a reality of his greatest desires. A world where people actually cared about him—not one where a child stood in the middle of a room, crying, without a single adult to console him. And it certainly wasn't a world where the only family to show this princess an ounce of love left him behind.
In this world of make-believe, only Tao Hua had the key to enter. Therefore, giving up was unacceptable! All that was taught to him and his grandfather's legacy—that be tossed away and forsaken on the grounds of a town so ignorant. He couldn't do that.
It was a dreadfully comforting thought. But even that heartwarming thought would be cut short with the abrupt interruption of a "not paying attention."
"Oof!"
He nearly fell back midst the gasps. The book in his hand fell to the ground, bouncing as if playing hopscotch, and falling flat on a particular page with a half-decent drawing.
This illustration revealed a woman, elegantly dressed and more graceful than the birds that fluttered around her. Ahead of her was a man on a horse, but it only lasted a second longer before the wind rushed. It blew hundreds of pages in a matter of seconds, and only stopped when a hand reached down and picked up the book.
The page?
A man, presumably the prince, opened the door to a room where the woman, the princess, lay sound asleep, but that, too, was cut off as each page slowly flipped to the next.
After rubbing his face, Tao Hua froze. He was so disoriented by whatever thing he ran into; he hadn't realized the most important thing.
No one was speaking.
Why weren't they speaking? It was the first time in however long he could remember that nobody uttered a word about his mistakes.
Tao Hua peeked open an eye to find that what he ran into wasn't a thing, but a someone, and potentially the reason why it was so quiet.
He was dressed in a robe that faded from black to a dim gold—like night meeting daylight. Along the seams were shining patterns, crawling towards the base of the outfit and hugging the tall and slender frame. Around the broad shoulders draped a sheer outer robe. That too was like the main outfit, but instead of being tucked into a leather sash, it loosely dangled and almost hid the sword strapped to the side of someone's hip.
A strange man.
Whoever this man was, he clearly wasn't of the "Siyue brand". Like Tao Hua, he was also different. For starters, swords weren't a common commodity. Other than the guards who stood at the town's gate, no one in this village knew how to wield a sword, let alone look at one. The second key point to his assumption was glaringly obvious the moment he cranked his head up.
He didn't find the face of a serious warrior, but a man, handsome and amused, flipping through the pages of the book.
Tao Hua's book, to be exact.
As he skimmed each page, the corner of his mouth lifted more and more. The story entertained him, and for some reason, this entranced Tao Hua. He could read!
But that moment would pass. Tao Hua snapped out of the trance, and without thinking, gripped the man's arm. This had caught him off guard and such was obvious with how his ghostly white eyes gell on Tao Hua. But Tao Hua simply crept to the side as his widening eyes fell on what intrigued him more than this mysterious man.
"Land Lost in Time!" he whispered enthusiastically.
And thus! Tao Hua used the arm as he initially intended. He leveraged himself using this man's firm and unmoving posture, pushing his own body to the side with a small hop.
With his other hand, Tao Hua reached for the book and pried it out of the man's hand, cuddling it close to his chest, treating it better than a mother to her child. After that, he offered him a clumsy bow and pulled out the remedy to this odd situation.
A well-preserved flower, sealed against a fabric sheet. Attached to it was a red string with a coin at the end, carefully tied and swinging like a pendulum.
What made the item most odd wasn't its design, but what was written on that design. In neat calligraphy were the words: My Tale is Done.
But there wouldn't be any time to spare a reaction. Tao Hua had already long run past and towards the bookstore, nearly causing this man's tied-up hair to whip into his face.
Left behind were the muttering words of a deep voice, and all Tao Hua could make out were the remnants of the man's questioning words.
"Land Lost in Time…?"
Chapter end.