The fan spun above me.
The white woman. Her face flashed in my mind—those empty white eyes that somehow held everything.
"You're entering a dream that you're not supposed to enter."
I blinked. The words echoed through my skull like ripples in still water.
The ceiling fan kept spinning, oblivious to the fact that my entire understanding of reality had been quietly dismantled while I slept.
Stared at the ceiling. The same ceiling I'd stared at every morning since arriving in Ilsa.
That was just a dream.
Just a—
"YOUNG MASTER!"
The door slammed open with enough force to make the hinges scream. The sound wasn't unexpected—it was, in fact, so completely expected that part of me had been counting down the seconds until it happened.
Angy launched herself onto the bed.
"I'M AWAKE."
"I'm awake. Stop."
She was already off the bed. The woman moved like lightning in human form.
"No time to sleep! WE NEED TO DO IMPORTANT THINGS! URGENT THINGS! LIFE OR DEATH THINGS!"
Life or death.
What this idiot has in mind?
My brain was still foggy—still stuck on white eyes and infinite sands and bubbles that contained entire realities.
"Your English assignment is due TODAY!"
I stared at her.
Blinked once. Twice.
...Right.
That.
Of course. Of course the universe—or universes had decided that my first morning after witnessing creation itself should be devoted to a five-paragraph essay about a poem. There was probably something poetic in that.
I sat up. The motion was slow. Rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms until stars burst across my vision.
I looked at the clock on my nightstand.
7:03 AM.
Shenhe stood in the doorway.
She hadn't been there a second ago. Or maybe she had. With Shenhe, it was impossible to tell.
Our eyes met for a second. Just a second. But I felt it—that look. The one that said she remembered this morning too.
"Young Master!" Angy's voice cut through the silence like a blade. She was still holding my arm. Still vibrating with the kind of energy that should have been illegal at this hour. "Are you even LISTENING?!"
"No."
"AT LEAST YOU'RE HONEST."
I swung my legs off the bed. My feet touched the cold floor.
Shenhe was still watching. I could feel her gaze on my back as I stood up, as I stretched, as I tried to remember how to exist in a body that had spent the night floating through infinite nothing.
°°°
I stumbled downstairs. I moved like someone who'd forgotten how legs worked and was relearning the concept in real time. .
The table was already set. Of course it was. Rice steaming in a ceramic bowl. Eggs cooked to whatever impossible standard Shenhe maintained. Tea at the perfect temperature—not too hot to drink, not too cold to enjoy.
The usual perfection that had become so consistent I'd almost stopped noticing it.
Almost.
Shenhe stood by the kitchen doorway. Arms crossed over her chest. Expressionless as always.
Always watching. Always seeing things I didn't know how to show her.
What did she see now? The dark circles under my eyes from a night spent traveling through realities?
"Sit. Eat. Then assignment."
Her voice was calm. Measured.
I sat. The chair was solid beneath me. And it was obvious.
Ate. Tried to push the white woman out of my head. Tried to focus on the ordinary miracle of breakfast in a house that had become home.
I failed. The images clung. The white woman's voice echoed.
Master.
She'd called me Master.
Why? The concept of this question was unknown to me.
°°°
Angy appeared with an armful of books.
Where she'd found them, I had no idea. I didn't own this many books.
She dropped them on the table with a THUMP! .
"Found them! All of them! Every English book you own!"
"I don't own that many English books."
"YOU DO NOW!"
I stared at the stack. Seven books. Maybe eight. It was hard to tell where one ended and the next began.
Mochi jumped onto the table. His timing was, as always, impeccable. He landed beside the tower of books with the quiet grace of a predator, surveyed his domain, and sat down directly on the assignment sheet I'd been looking for.
Stared at me. His yellow eyes were half-closed, his expression one of serene judgment.
Even the cat knows something.
I shook my head. Hard.
"By the way, where are your clothes?"
Angy blinked. Looked down at herself. Looked back at me. Her expression suggested this was a completely unreasonable question.
"I'm wearing them though."
"Angy." I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Lingerie does not qualify as clothes."
She looked genuinely offended. "It covers things!"
"It covers almost nothing."
"That's the POINT, Young Master. You're supposed to appreciate the aesthetic."
Shenhe's eyebrow twitched. The closest she ever came to laughing.
I was too tired for this conversation. Too tired for any conversation. But somewhere beneath the exhaustion—I felt something almost like normalcy settling back into place.
°°°
The remains of breakfast were pushed to one side of the table, forming a small mountain of empty dishes that someone—probably Shenhe—would deal with later.
Books covered every available surface. Papers scattered like leaves across the wood.
Angy sat to my left. She'd finally put on actual clothes—or at least a robe over the lingerie, which was progress.
A pen was clutched in her hand like a weapon. Her eyes were bright with the kind of focused intensity she usually reserved for cooking disasters and unauthorized pillow theft.
She was ready for battle. The enemy was poetry analysis. The stakes were unclear but apparently astronomical.
Shenhe sat to my right.
"The assignment," Shenhe said quietly,"is a literary analysis of a poem. Due by noon."
Noon.
That's mean I have four hours.
"I can do this."
"You haven't started."
"I can STILL do this."
Angy patted my shoulder with the kind of aggressive encouragement that felt more like a threat.
"That's the spirit, Young Master! Delusion! Confidence! Same thing! The line between them is basically imaginary!"
" Idiot "
A few moments passed.
The silence was filled with the sound of pages turning and Angy humming something off-key.
"The poem," I read from the book, "is about... a tree."
"A tree?" Angy leaned over so far she nearly knocked over the tower of books. Her hair brushed against my shoulder. "Just a tree? One tree? That's the whole poem?"
"A tree. And... a bird. I think."
"Does the bird do anything?"
"It... sings?"
"Does the tree respond?"
"I don't know. The poem doesn't say."
Angy stared at me. I stared at the book. The book, unhelpfully, continued to be a book.
The tree waits.
Like—
I was thinking about something but I heard Shenhe's voice, quiet as always.
"The poem is about loss. The tree remembers the bird that used to nest there. The bird is gone, probably migrated, died or simply never returned. The tree waits. Not because it expects the bird to come back, but because waiting is all it has left."
I looked at her.
"How do you know that?"
"I've read everything in this house."
Of course she has. Of course.
I wrote: The tree in the poem represents loneliness because it stands alone without the bird.
Angy read over my shoulder. Her breath was warm against my ear. "That's... short."
"It's a paragraph."
"It's ONE SENTENCE."
"Paragraphs can be one sentence."
"No they can't."
"Yes they can."
"No they CAN'T."
"They can. But this one shouldn't be."
Shenhe's voice, flat and final
I added another sentence. The pen scratched against paper.
The tree waits for something that will never return, showing how loss affects even nature.
Angy nodded with the gravitas of a literary critic who'd just witnessed a masterpiece.
"Better. Much better. Add more feelings."
"Feelings?"
"Yes! The tree has FEELINGS! It's SAD! It's LONELY! It MISSES its bird friend! That tree has been standing there for YEARS, Young Master, YEARS, just waiting for a bird that's never coming back! That's TRAGIC! That's POETRY! That's—"
"The tree is a tree."
"TREES HAVE FEELINGS, YOUNG MASTER. I read an article. Or maybe Shenhe read an article and told me about it. Same thing."
Shenhe's eyebrow twitched. The most expression she'd shown all morning.
°°°
Around 10 AM, something shifted.
I don't know what happened. One moment I was staring at the page, writing sentences that felt like pulling teeth, and the next—something clicked. Not a breakthrough, exactly. More like a door opening.
Words started flowing. Not the careful, constructed sentences I'd been forcing out all morning.
The poet uses the image of an empty nest to symbolize absence. Not just physical absence—the lack of twigs and feathers in a tree—but emotional absence.
The space where something used to be becomes its own character in the poem: a reminder of what was lost and what will never return. The nest isn't just empty. It's haunted.
Angy gasped. Actually gasped, like she'd just witnessed a magic trick. "That's GOOD! That's REALLY GOOD! Where did that come from?!"
I stared at the words on the page.
"Did I write that?"
"You did! Your hand was moving and everything!"
"I don't remember writing it."
"The MUSE visited you, Young Master! THE MUSE! She came down from the heavens of literature and she TOUCHED your brain and she WHISPERED the secrets of poetry analysis into your—"
"It's called focus. Keep going."
Shenhe's voice was dry. Completely dismissive of Angy's muse theory.
Mochi is judging, but slightly less intensely than before.
I shook my head again.
Stop. Write. Focus.
Angy, apparently unsatisfied with the pace of my progress, decided to "help" by reading the poem aloud.
Her voice rose and fell with theatrical intensity, each line delivered like she was performing for an audience of thousands rather than one exhausted student, one stoic maid, and one judgmental cat.
"Oh tree, oh tree, where is your bird?
The branches sway but no song is heard.
The nest remains, empty and cold,
A story of waiting, a story untold."
She pressed her hand against her chest. Sighed with the kind of dramatic flourish that belonged on a stage.
"Beautiful. Tragic. Heartbreaking. I'm crying. Actual tears are falling from my eyes right now."
"You're not crying."
"I'm CRYING INSIDE, Young Master. Which is where tears matter most."
Shenhe, from her position by the window, "The poem doesn't rhyme like that."
Angy, indignant: "It SHOULD. The original poet was a COWARD who was AFRAID of rhyming. I've IMPROVED it. I've ELEVATED the art form."
"You've added rhymes that don't exist."
"Rhymes that SHOULD exist. There's a difference. It's called creative interpretation."
I looked down at my paper. The words I'd written were still there—still good , still better than anything I'd produced in the previous hour.
Angy's ridiculous performance had, somehow, shaken something loose.
I almost smiled.
Almost.
°°°
Around 11:30 AM, I wrote the conclusion.
The words came easier now.
The tree's waiting is universal. Everyone waits for something or someone. A bird that migrated south and never returned. A person who promised to come back and didn't. A moment that passed and will never come again.
The poem isn't about a tree—not really. The tree is just the shape the poet gave to something we all understand. It's about us. Our loneliness. Our hope. Our endless, impossible capacity to wait for things that may never arrive.
I set down the pen. The sound was small—a click of plastic against wood—but it felt significant. Final. Like closing a door I hadn't realized I'd opened.
Read it over. Once, twice, three times. Looking for errors.
They were... good. Actually good. Better than good.
Waiting. The tree was waiting. I was waiting. Everyone was waiting for something.
Like I'm waiting...
For what? For the white woman to call me Master again? For the being of light to notice my existence? For Arcueid in the field, for answers I wasn't sure I wanted?
For who? Father? My mother, trapped in somewhere unknown?
I didn't know. But the waiting itself—the act of staying still—felt important. Like the tree, I was learning that waiting wasn't passive. Waiting was a choice. Waiting was its own kind of action.
Angy hugged me. Her arms wrapped around my shoulders with the kind of fierce, unapologetic affection she'd been offering since I was three years old and too small to refuse.
"I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT! I NEVER DOUBTED YOU! NOT EVEN FOR A SECOND!"
"You definitely doubted me. Several times. Out loud."
"Those weren't doubts! Those were... motivational concerns!"
Shenhe nodded.
Mochi yawned. His work here was done.
The assignment was complete.
°°°
Near noon, I gathered the papers. The process was methodical—aligning corners, smoothing creases, making sure every page was in the right order.
I stacked them neatly. Put them in my bag. The bag that Shenhe had packed with spare pens and emergency snacks and a water bottle I probably wouldn't drink but would carry anyway because she'd put it there.
Ready. For submission.
°°°
Later.
Angy bounced on her heels with the kind of energy that defied the laws of physics.
She'd been sitting still for hours—or as still as Angy ever sat, which meant intermittent bouncing and commentary and unauthorized rhyming—and now the stillness was over.
"Are you going now?! Now now?! Right this minute?!"
"Soon."
"SOON WHEN?! Soon is VAGUE! Soon is MEANINGLESS! Soon is what people say when they're NEVER GOING TO DO THE THING!"
"After I breathe for five minutes."
"BREATHING IS OVERRATED! SUBMISSION IS ETERNAL! BREATHING IS TEMPORARY BUT DEADLINES ARE FOREVER!"
Shenhe's eyebrow twitched. For the third time that morning. A new record.
Mochi judged from the table.
I slung the bag over my shoulder. The weight was familiar—the same bag I'd carried to school, to exams, to all the ordinary moments that had slowly, become my life.
I looked at the door. The sunlight was golden and warm and completely unlike the light from my dream.
Ready. The assignment was done. The words were written.
The waiting—my waiting, the tree's waiting, everyone's waiting—was still in progress.
But not yet. Not quite.
Just... ready.
°°°
I stood at the entrance. The door was open.
Angy hovered behind me. Her robe had come slightly undone, and she was clutching it closed with one hand while gesturing wildly with the other.
"Go! go! go! submit! victory! glory! Make sure the teacher knows it was almost late but not actually late because that's important for the narrative!"
Shenhe stood by the kitchen doorway. Arms crossed. Expressionless. But her eyes—those blue eyes that had watched me since I was three years old—were softer than usual.
I took a step forward. The threshold was right there—the boundary between inside and outside, between home and world.
Then paused. One foot still inside, one foot touching sunlight.
Looked back.
At them. At Angy, still gesturing, still talking. At Shenhe, still watching. At Mochi, still judging.
At the chaos. The books still scattered across the table. The breakfast dishes still waiting to be cleared. The lingering scent of tea and rice and something sweet that Angy had probably burned.
This is my life now.
I smiled. Just a little. Just enough to feel the corners of my mouth lift.
I took my cycle and stepped outside.
The sunlight was warm. The air was fresh. The village was waiting.
And I was ready.
---