I’VE OFTEN WONDERED at the purpose of nightmares. Again, the normal kind, not the stalking kind. Why do we have them? Is there a point?
Maybe it’s a brutal way of making us more resilient.
Humans are incredibly malleable. Despite my breadth of experience, I’ve never stopped being surprised at how durable human beings can be. They can survive in almost any environment.
They can recover from debilitating loss. They can be crushed physically, mentally, emotionally—and still ask you how your day is going.
Perhaps nightmares are Cultivation’s method of giving us a way of surviving trauma in a strangely safe environment. (At least safe physically.) A way to put it behind us, forget the details, but retain the growth. Nightmares are vicarious living done in our own minds.
In that way, nightmares serve much the same function as storytellers. Evolution doing a favor for those who, unlucky and unfortunate, never encountered me.
Painter finished his meal and barely managed to keep himself from wiping his mouth—his attendants had to do that for him.
Yumi paced behind him, invisible to everyone else. She’d barely spoken to him since they’d awoken. He kept trying to catch her eye, but she ignored him like one would a bad scent made by someone too important to stink.
Eventually the two attendants retreated—and were replaced by Liyun, in her strict formal outfit, her hairstyle impeccably symmetrical.
There was a certain art to the way she loomed over him. He wondered if she practiced. How else would one explain her perfect posture, looking down at him without tipping her head, which made even the act of studying him seem like a huge inconvenience. The way she folded her arms to make her shadow expand across him, isolating him in darkness. The way she lingered just a tad longer than was comfortable… It was impressive. Like a beautiful gourmet dish. Made from mud.
She settled down on her knees. “The people of the town,” she said, “are concerned about you, following your…episode yesterday.”
“I’m…sorry?” Painter said.
“I doubt I need to explain,” Liyun continued, “the indignity it would bring upon them to be refused the blessings of the spirits. They would see it as a terrible omen. They would be the town that caused the yoki-hijo to collapse. The shame would run deep, Chosen.”
“Look,” Painter said, “it’s not like I fainted on purpose just to—”
“No,” Yumi said stepping up to him.
He turned, frowning. She was finally acknowledging him? He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off.
“You will repeat only the words I say,” she told him. “You are not to interact with Liyun without my explicit guidance.”
“But—”
“You,” she said, “will repeat only the words I say.”
He had admired Liyun’s ability to loom. But in one moment, Yumi eclipsed her master. She stepped up to him, eyes wide, daring, hands in tense fists. Threatening.
Painter felt a sudden jolt of disconnect. He was…elevated, you might say, to a higher realm of understanding. Like a child painter who at long last gained enough skill to see the true artistry of a
master, Painter was confronted by looming that was somehow more grandiose. While Liyun had loomed with exactness, it had felt performative.
Yumi was passionate. The timid girl who had bowed before the foreman had now been completely consumed by…this creature. He’d faced nightmares, but in that moment he would have chosen to defy
any of them before he did Yumi.
He nodded.
“Honored attendant,” Yumi said, nodding for him to repeat the words—which he did. “The failing is entirely mine. My flesh has been made weak by my foolishness two days ago, when I overextended myself. My soul, however, trusts in the spirits. It is my deepest wish to continue my duties today. I will give all effort to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s failing.”
Painter finished the recitation. Which he admitted was likely a better way of handling Liyun. He’d never been particularly good at apologizing for things that weren’t his fault. To be honest, he’d never been that good at apologizing for things that were his fault… He gave a bow as Yumi indicated he should. When he looked up, he was surprised to see Liyun considering. She actually seemed to need to deliberate whether or not Yumi deserved forgiveness. For fainting. After pushing herself to serve while obviously unwell.
What kind of twisted society produced people who thought this was reasonable?
Liyun finally nodded. “You are wise, as always, elevated one. We will pretend that yesterday is unworthy of attention. Come, let us proceed with a proper day’s summoning.”
She led the way out, and Yumi glared at Painter until he wordlessly followed. As they trekked through the town, obscured by the fans, he was again left wondering how these people lived in this sweltering heat. Even with the clogs lifting his feet from the ground, he felt it radiating, making his bell-shaped skirt ripple with thermals. Perhaps that was why they used such thick cloth—to prevent accidents.
He kept his composure despite the heat, until they reached the base of the rise leading to the cold spring. Then a sudden noise like an explosion from near the center of the town made Painter spin, gaping as a jet of superheated water erupted and sprayed some thirty
or forty feet into the air. The entire procession stopped to let him watch.
It was like the ground was so inhospitable that the very laws of nature were corrupted. Instead of falling from the sky, water came up from below. It dispersed, part becoming steam, releasing a rumble and even a faint whine—as if tortured.
“What (lowly) is wrong with this place?” he whispered.
Yumi stepped between him and the sight. “Continue,” she said
firmly.
“But—”
“A yoki-hijo does not break composure,” she said. “A yoki-hijo remains controlled, calm, and deliberate. If something startles you, look down or away. Do not stare. Do not gawk. You are not here to
indulge. You are here to serve.”
“I,” he hissed, “am not a yoki-hijo.”
“No,” she said in the lowest form of speech, reserved for speaking of things like the slime between your toes. “You are a liar.”
She held his gaze until he turned away and continued the procession. Painter found himself simmering, a little like the superheated water. Yes, he’d…overstated some things. But he didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. He’d offered to help. Were those the actions of a liar? Of someone who deserved the lowest form of speech?
They reached the cold spring. He stood and thrust his hands to the sides until his attendants removed his clothing. Then he shut his eyes —without even glancing at Yumi—and strode into the bath. There he suffered the ministrations of the attendants while stewing in the broth of the not-so-cool spring.
Was it too much to want acknowledgment of how tough this was for him? Some thankfulness for his willingness to help? Though he might not have recognized it at the time, these were familiar thoughts.
Characteristic, even. They weren’t wrong—though a thought can be correct but still unhealthy.
The several scrub-downs with various soaps and scents, anointing and preparing him, took longer than he remembered. Followed by that long dunk according to Yumi’s order. Finally the attendants
withdrew. He lingered—half floating, half standing. Enjoying the water, trying to let it wash away his bad attitude.
And eventually…well, he ended up peeking.
He found Yumi standing right in front of him, eye to eye, so close that if she’d been corporeal he would have felt her breath. He jumped despite himself, splashing away.
Had…had she been doing that the entire time? Staring at him?
Glaring? Just waiting to see if he peeked? (The answer is yes. Yumi was, as you might have noticed, a special kind of stubborn.) Painter’s first inclination was to take in the sights. She stood there completely unashamed, in direct—or shall we say stark—contrast to how she’d been acting while wearing his pajamas. Despite not striking the most intimidating of postures—standing waist-deep in a pool of water, her wet hair plastered to her skin—there was confidence in her eyes.
So, deliberately not ogling, Painter met her gaze. He stepped toward her, leaning forward until he feared touching noses and experiencing that surreal warmth again.
She could glare, yes. Even loom with aplomb, despite being shorter than him. But Painter was an artist, and one thing artists learned to do was look. There’s something unnerving about the stare of someone trained in shadows, shapes, and anatomy. An artist has a gaze like a knife, separating the layers of skin, fat, and muscle. His were the eyes of a person who could rip out your soul and recreate it on the page in ink or graphite.
After a minute of this, Yumi’s eyes narrowed and her lips cocked slightly to the side. While there are many ways to interpret that kind of expression, Painter picked the right one. This time it was a mark of surprise that he’d held the stare—accompanied by the very faintest measure of respect.
“So,” he said, “is this what we’re going to do all day?”
“The spirits picked you,” she said. “And then they sent you to me. I have to believe that they were correct to do so. To accept otherwise is to accept that I was chosen for no purpose—and that is lunacy.”
“All right,” he said. “But that doesn’t tell us what we’re supposed to do.”
“We have to commune with them,” she said. “Which means you have to summon them. I can’t—not without being able to touch the things around me. We bring them to us, and maybe that will be enough to prove ourselves. Perhaps that alone will end this… association the two of us have been forced into.”
“And if it isn’t enough?”
“Then the first step is still to summon them,” she said. “So we can get some answers. Spirits who have been formed and dedicated to a service can no longer speak—or perhaps they choose not to. But newly summoned ones can; they respond when I make requests of them. Our best hope is to learn from them what they want of us.”
“Fine,” he said, leaning a little closer.
“Fine,” she said, leaning even closer.
A contest of pride, then. He leaned in a titch. She responded. Then he got just a hair’s distance from her, smiling, as there was no space remaining.
So she inched forward and stubbornly touched her nose to his.
Enveloping warmth.
Understanding.
A sharing of frustration, anger, confusion.
Connection.
Passion.
They both splashed backward, and Painter gasped. It was completely unfair how— “Aargh!” Yumi shouted at the sky. “It is ridiculously unfair how… distracting that feels!” Then she looked at him, glaring still, and sullenly sank into the water down to her chin, covering herself as best as one could under the circumstances. She didn’t blink once as she
did it.
“Don’t stare,” she muttered.
“Stare?” he said, turning away, feigning indifference. “At what?
There’d need to be something worth looking at before I’d be tempted to stare, Yumi.”
Then, because he wasn’t actually a heel despite what saying those words implied, he felt guilty. He walked out of the pool, telling himself —and his blush—that he didn’t care if she watched him. Chaeyung and Hwanji approached, bringing him towels and clothing.
“Just don’t faint this time!” Yumi called from behind. “We have work to do today, liar.”
