Chapter 14 Fine-Tuning

Ma En spent the entire morning with the two elderly people by the fountain, and their conversation didn't revolve entirely around ghost stories. He could sense that the grandmother's aversion wasn't limited to the apartment's ghost story — she seemed to dislike all such stories. And yet, despite that resistance, she kept telling Ma En everything she knew, as though some part of her were quietly anticipating something. The grandfather chimed in from the side, supplementing details the grandmother left out. Ma En had the impression the man knew more than he let on, but had likewise decided not to go too deep.

As for how much of what they told him was true, how much was embellished, and how much was pure fabrication passed mouth to mouth — impossible to say. Stories like these were always the same: half-hidden in cloud, showing only a claw, a scale, shimmering like mirages. And it was precisely that haziness that kept them alive.

The stories Ma En heard from these two shared a familiar shape with the ones from back home — equally rich with cultural meaning. Plot aside, each one was saturated in local custom. From that angle alone they were valuable, especially against the misty backdrop of folklore, where the differences in thinking between two countries came into sharpest relief. The elderly couple weren't professional storytellers. Their deliveries were plain. But the fullness of what they carried still reached him.

As he listened, his mind drifted from the practical. Images formed — mountains and oceans, dense forests of buildings, the breathing of cement and wood, the flow of something like spirit and blood through streets like tributaries. Cherry blossoms scattering. Maple leaves burning. Women in kimono. Children in fox masks, their feet clattering across wooden floorboards...

His first time in Japan, and already he was drawn into it — the fleeting beauty of things that bloomed and vanished, the lingering ache of what remained. He'd read Japanese literature before, heard others describe the country's character. But none of that compared to what came from these two old people sitting beside him. What they gave him went deeper. It reached somewhere the books hadn't.

Ma En had left China for reasons of "refuge." He'd believed himself prepared — convinced that in a foreign land, he would never allow himself the weakness of emotional attachment that might endanger others. Now guilt crept in. Was it really the right choice — to spare his homeland and family by carrying potential catastrophe to this country instead? The people here weren't hateful. Surely some were bad, as the stories showed. But didn't those same stories also reveal a yearning for beauty and peace?

These people were "temporary strangers." Not good, not bad. But they would become good or bad, in time.

This wasn't a wasteland of strangers and villains. Not hell. Just somewhere far away. And as long as he lived here, feelings would develop —

— unless he stopped being human.

Something brushed against his mind. A faint sound — or was it a thought? Ma En felt he'd heard it, or perhaps only thought it, but whatever it was slipped away in the same instant. He noticed it. Tried to grasp it. The impulse dissolved like foam on water.

He began to consider: what if someday he truly came to love this land and its people? Made new friends, formed new bonds? And then the disasters triggered by his pursuit rained down on them — what then? He'd arrived thinking this was a place where he wouldn't leave much feeling behind. But the morning's conversation had driven it home: he was nowhere near as cold as he'd imagined. Nowhere near as reliable.

And if he could form attachments in Japan, he'd form them anywhere. Everywhere. As long as he kept chasing the bizarre, there was no escaping the harm to innocents.

What a heavy price.

The realization hit, and sadness came with it. He couldn't wave it away — the feeling was too genuine. All his prior resolve looked shabby by comparison, exposed as the cheap thing it was. He'd never imagined that on only his second day in Japan, something this simple would crack him open. To someone else, maybe it would seem oversensitive. Fragile. But for Ma En, it was something that demanded to be faced.

This wasn't about right or wrong. It was simpler than that: so this is who I am.

The two old people caught his shift in mood. Of course they did.

"Homesick already, young man?" the grandmother asked, already rummaging through her bag. She produced a small glass jar filled with brown pickled fruit, fished one out, and held it toward him. "Eat this. You'll feel better."

"What is it?"

"Plum." A note of pride entered her voice. "My hometown is plum country. This pickling recipe's been in my family for generations."

"Yoshiko's plums are excellent," the grandfather said, accepting one of his own.

Ma En bit into the pickled plum. The sour-salt tang sank all the way through him — sharp and warm at once, the kind of taste that reached for the back of your eyes.

"Grandmother," he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could, "if something I did set off a chain of events that hurt other people — do you think I should keep doing the original thing?"

"Is it important?" She didn't ask what it was.

"To me, it's the most important thing. My life's pursuit."

"Has it already hurt anyone?"

"Not yet. I'm just worried that..."

The grandmother studied his face for a long moment. Then she spoke.

"Worrying about things that haven't happened isn't a bad thing. But if all you do is worry, nothing gets done. I can't tell you to go ahead and do something that might drag others into harm. But if it's what you've decided to do — well, there's nothing for it."

"Nothing for it..." Ma En nodded.

"If you insist on doing it, then you need to be ready for the guilt. You need to carry the weight of feelings that life was barely built to hold. Only then, when sacrifice becomes unavoidable, can you make the right call." Her tone drifted, as though drawn toward something in the past. "Who hasn't hurt someone? But sometimes — hurting people, even people you love — it just can't be helped. Everything has its cost. If you're willing to pay more yourself, if your own sacrifice could truly spare someone else's... ah, but that's never something you get to decide."

"Grandmother — isn't there any way to have it both ways?" The words left Ma En's mouth before he could stop them, an appeal to two people whose lives held more experience than his own. But he understood instantly how childish the question was. His hand went to his tie, tightening it — the constriction against his throat numbed his chest just enough.

Both elderly people laughed, looking at him like a child who refused to grow up. "Maybe there is. But you'll have to find it yourself. Perhaps someday you will."

"Or perhaps I never will." The dejection was real.

"But what you want to do hasn't changed, has it? You still want to do it." The grandfather's voice was calm. "Then this is your pain to carry. What good does it do, asking two old people with one foot in the grave?"

"I'm sorry —" Ma En knew it was weakness. Something he'd never discovered in himself before, now magnified to grotesque proportions in this foreign country, before these two strangers. He could only search for the answer on his own.

"Oh, stop apologizing." The grandmother held out another plum. "Eat, eat. At least the plums are good. Eat one and your mood will lift."

Ma En smiled and took the second plum. He placed it in his mouth, letting the salt and tang and sourness spread slowly. It sank through him again, and this time — just as the grandmother had promised — warmth followed. He picked up his black umbrella and said goodbye to the two people he'd met by chance.

The old couple was getting ready to leave too. Ma En watched them go until they were out of sight, then turned back the way he'd come. He'd planned to keep searching — to visit the places they'd mentioned, to dig deeper into the ghost story — but now he only wanted to go back to his room and think. About what he'd actually come to Japan to do. About how he meant to do it.

This morning — this coincidental encounter — had shown him, with painful clarity, how pale and fragile his old plans really were. They couldn't support a life.

Living without regret while chasing the bizarre was always going to be harder than he'd imagined. But precisely because of that, he resolved not to leave Japan. The problems he needed to face wouldn't shrink or change depending on where he stood. He'd already left China. There was no reason to leave Japan too.

Ma En lay on his bed. He heard a sound. Light-spots pulsed behind his eyelids. He thought he was dreaming, but the sensations were blurred, indistinct. Something heavy and viscous pressed down on his body — like the sleep paralysis people described in folk tales. His first time experiencing it in over twenty years of life. More sensations surfaced, one after another, but none of them were as clear as the hollow voice.

— It's too late to give up now.

That was what the voice said. It sounded like his own thought. But he couldn't help wondering: what if it wasn't?

— No. I never planned to give up.

— This isn't about wanting to continue or not. I have no choice but to continue.

— From the moment I got that book... the window to a new world was already open.

The voice kept going. Ma En felt that only the last one was truly his own thought.

He woke with a jolt, heart hammering. A nightmare — he was sure of it. He still remembered a voice speaking to him, even recalled fragments of what it had said. But did he really remember? The harder he tried to hold on, the thinner it became. That strange, unresolvable feeling made him instinctively reach for everything he'd ever read about dreams and psychology — but at the same time, something in him resisted. An unwillingness to follow that thread.

He was thirsty. He got out of bed, poured himself a glass of water, and pulled back the curtains. The city's evening lights were just coming on. A pale moon hung at a low angle, framed perfectly in his window. The sky had cleared into something bright and clean; a cool breeze carried the faintest trace of moisture. He felt himself begin to wake up. Only then did he realize he'd been asleep since returning from the fountain plaza.

As if escaping from something.

The thought left a bad taste. He didn't like running away. Didn't like feeling like he was running away. But when that feeling arose from within — it was probably right. He'd prepared for so much, and yet the crack had appeared precisely where it mattered most: his own psychology. For him, this was no small thing.

He'd heard that people living alone in far-off places often developed emotions they'd never have felt otherwise. But Ma En suspected his situation was a little different.

If he had to say what was most different —

He looked at the pillow beside him. The Seven Transmutations of the Profound Mystery Records was lying there. He knew the book was at his pillow, but couldn't remember when he'd moved it.

Had he flipped through it before falling asleep? He had no such memory. And now the pages were blank. Every word was gone.

No — he stopped himself. The content wasn't gone. It was in his head. Those twenty-four inexplicable characters. Symbols. Whatever they were.

— What a troublesome thing.

He thought this with a twinge of sorrow, but underneath it — unmistakably — a spark of pleasure. He really was the type to find joy in his own suffering.