THE SADDEST GIRL SINCE THE SONG DYNASTY

BATTLE OF THE LEVEL NINE CORRIDOR - PART III

Lady Zhao had only managed to further inflame the situation, and now she faced four expectant faces, each waiting for her explanation. Bracing herself for how ridiculous she feared she would likely sound, Lady Zhao, who rarely spoke aloud and to other humans outside the superstitious world about her beliefs, who knew on a meta-level of abstraction how nonsensical and contradictory and incompatible with the rest of her life it all was anyway, prepared to scale her tone and volume down. She wanted to convey calm and clarity of thought.

"I ran into my fortuneteller the other day. She could sense there were issues surrounding the friends I am associating with at the moment. She knew of your love problems," offering an open-palm gesture to Bingbing, "and your career problems," offering a gesture towards Ander. "She is very wise and very old. She knows we have been considering going to Dar-For Mountain, and she advised that by going there, Buddha will remedy these away."

The man in his boxer shorts looked at Ander, shook his head, said, "This woman is trouble." Ander himself began to look more like he was about to pass out than offer a scalding denunciation, which in healthier times, he would have done. And Bingbing, unsure of whether to take her jacket off or not (how soon would they be leaving?) threw in a weak anecdote about the authority of mystically-endowed elders. The mother of a friend of Bingbing's mother had once miraculously predicted the right time of year to buy a new washer-dryer, resulting in a fifteen per-cent greater saving.

What Lady Zhao had not mentioned, however, what she felt was not necessary to bring up since, moral and rational high-ground or not, she would have her way and they would go to Dar-For Mountain that morning if she had to drag Ander by his cheap and soiled shoes, was that she felt she was the most in need of spiritual salvation. As was usually the case, the fortuneteller had merely acted as a catalyst to Lady Zhao's subconscious concerns, bringing them to the forefront of her mind, reinforcing them by framing them in easier-to-comprehend ways. Like assisting others. Like making arduous and inconvenient trips for some greater good.

Her concern was that while Bingbing was a social failure and hard-to-sell piece of romantic real estate, and while Ander had great potential for success in life, but, by his own admission, had faults that looked likely to thwart his ambitions just as he was about to transition from scholar and trainee to productive member of the capitalist workforce, they both had reasons to be miserable, good reasons.