CHAPTER 182
### Comedy
Three days west.
The territory was transition zone. The sections here were in the forty to sixty percent range. The standard passive domain contribution was the appropriate tool. No simultaneous calibrated application required.
He walked.
He did not count.
On the second afternoon Bing Xi said: "She is writing about you again."
He looked at her.
He looked at Lin Mei.
She was walking and writing simultaneously. She had developed this capability over fourteen months and had refined it to the point where she could write without looking at the paper and the words were still legible.
"She has been doing that for—" he started.
"Not documentation," Bing Xi said.
"What," he said.
"The thirty pages were documentation," Bing Xi said. "The letter in your pack was also documentation of a kind." She paused. "This is something else."
He looked at Lin Mei's back.
"How do you know," he said.
"Because she is using the smaller journal," Bing Xi said. "Not the documentation pack. The small grey journal she keeps at the bottom of her bag."
He looked.
Lin Mei had the grey journal in her left hand and was writing with her right.
The documentation pack was on her back, closed.
"She uses the small journal for—" he started.
"I do not know," Bing Xi said. "She has never shown it to anyone."
He looked at the grey journal.
He looked at Lin Mei's back.
He thought about asking.
He thought about Feng Luo's instruction: you ask her. She says nothing. You ask again. The real answer is in the second or third thing she says.
He thought about being at his left for fourteen months.
He thought about the courtyard in Beicang.
He thought about neither and both simultaneously.
He thought about not being able to read her expression in real time.
He thought about how asking would go.
He decided not to ask.
Bing Xi was watching him.
"You decided not to ask," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Why," she said.
"Because the small grey journal is hers," he said.
"Yes," she said. "It is."
"And she will show it to me if she wants to," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"And I will know when she wants to," he said.
Bing Xi looked at him.
"How will you know," she said.
"She will show it to me," he said.
"You cannot read her expression in real time," Bing Xi said.
"No," he said.
"So how will you know," she said.
He looked at Lin Mei's back.
"She will say: read this," he said.
"That simple," Bing Xi said.
"That simple," he said.
Bing Xi was quiet for a moment.
"And if she does not say: read this," she said.
"Then it is not time," he said.
"And if it is never time," she said.
He looked at the road.
"Then the grey journal is hers," he said.
Bing Xi looked at him.
The Frostbite walls present.
The deliberate architecture.
Something alongside the walls that had been developing since Beicang and was now very present.
"That," she said, "is the most genuinely uncultivator-brained answer you have given in fourteen months."
He looked at her.
"What," he said.
"The fourteen months of: the work is what it is, the sections develop at their own pace, the between finds the gap," she said. "And then: she will show me if she wants to. I will know when it is time."
"Yes," he said.
"You are better at people than you think," she said.
"No," he said. "I cannot read her expression."
"You just demonstrated that you do not need to," she said.
He looked at Lin Mei.
She had closed the grey journal and put it away.
She was looking at the road.
She felt him looking and glanced back.
"What," she said.
"Nothing," he said.
She looked at him for a moment.
Then she looked at Bing Xi.
"What," she said.
"Nothing," Bing Xi said.
Lin Mei looked between them.
"You were discussing something," she said.
"No," Bing Xi said.
"Yes you were," Lin Mei said. "Your Frostbite walls are doing the thing they do when you are managing not to say something."
Bing Xi looked at Jian Yu.
He looked at the road.
He counted nothing.
"We were discussing the transition zone sections," he said.
Lin Mei looked at him.
He looked at the road.
"The forty to sixty percent range sections," he said. "Standard passive domain contribution."
"You were discussing the sections," Lin Mei said.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at Bing Xi.
"He is lying," Lin Mei said to Bing Xi.
"He is not discussing the sections," Bing Xi confirmed.
"I know he is not discussing the sections," Lin Mei said.
"We were discussing people," Bing Xi said. "People and journals and knowing when the time is right."
Lin Mei looked at Jian Yu.
He looked at the road.
"The small grey journal," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"You noticed it," she said.
"Bing Xi noticed it," he said.
"And you discussed it," she said.
"Briefly," he said.
She was quiet.
He looked at the road.
He was not counting anything.
He was in the between.
The between was not helping him right now.
"And what did you conclude," she said.
"That the journal is yours," he said. "And you will show it to me if you want to."
She was quiet.
He kept looking at the road.
"You will not ask," she said.
"No," he said.
"Why not," she said.
"Because the grey journal is yours," he said.
Silence.
He kept walking.
He thought about how this conversation was going.
He thought about Feng Luo's instruction: the real answer is in the second or third thing she says.
She had said: you noticed it.
She had said: and what did you conclude.
She had said: you will not ask.
She had not said: you should not have been discussing it.
She had not said: it is private.
She had asked what he concluded.
He thought about this.
He thought about neither and both simultaneously.
He looked at Lin Mei.
"What is in it," he said.
She looked at him.
She said nothing.
He waited.
"Things I understand after I write them," she said. "Not before."
"Yes," he said.
"The thirty pages," she said. "I understand them now. I did not fully understand them while I was writing them."
"Yes," he said.
"The grey journal is the same," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"I am still writing it," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at the road.
He looked at the road.
"When it is done," she said. "You can read it."
He looked at her.
She was looking at the road.
He could not read her expression.
He was fairly certain he did not need to.
"Yes," he said.
Bing Xi, from behind them, said nothing.
Her walls were doing the thing they did when she was managing not to say something.
He counted nothing.
He walked west.
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