The Red Threads of Fortune

“Four years have gone by,” he said, putting words down like a man walking across a rotting bridge. “You have to stop running at some point. You have to return.” “To stop running doesn’t mean to return.” “I don’t mean to me, or to the Grand Monastery, or even to Chengbee. I meant to life, Nao. You have to come back. I see you, I hear about what you’re doing, and I know you’re walking around with this sheet of glass between you and the world. You have to break it sometime.”

Raja Choonghey had a voice like vinegar: colorless, but with the ability to eat through metal.

In another version of the world, where the threads of fortune had woven a different braid, they could have sat down together and fileted out a sensible truth, exposing the spine of reality that had to be buried within the slippery flesh of lies and narratives.