Sunday At The End Of The World

The phone call with my mother was good.

That was the problem.

Sunday mornings at the SAT start before the city starts. The corridor lanterns drop from their nighttime blue to their daytime peach before six, and if you are awake to see it — and He Xiangu’s house tends to be awake to see it — there is a half-minute where the whole underground hallway is neither one color nor the other, and the air smells like the space between sleep and practice. I have been waking up to this for three years. I still like it.

The rule in He Xiangu’s house is that Sunday morning before eight belongs to you. Not to your forms, not to your studies, not to whatever grudge you are nursing from Saturday’s training session. Just you and whatever you need from the morning. Some kids meditate. Some kids sleep through it and are lying about being awake. Priya Lin does calligraphy on scrolls she will never show anyone. I make tea and sit with it on the windowsill seat in the corridor where the lanterns are warmest, and I watch the day start.

This Sunday I had been sitting there for twenty minutes when Mei walked past.

She always walks past. I have begun to think that the lantern corridor is her route on Sunday mornings, and that the route serves some purpose I cannot name. She carries the empty tea tray even when there is no tea on it. The tray is what she does with her hands while she is doing the other thing, the thing I cannot name.

“Good morning, Lucy,” she said.

“Good morning, Mei.”

She paused. This was unusual. Mei is not a pauser. Mei moves through the SAT corridors the way water moves through a settled riverbed — not fast, not slow, just continuous.

“You slept well,” she said. It was not a question.

“Yes.”

She adjusted her grip on the tray.

“The Council has a small administrative matter this week,” she said. “Nothing urgent. There will be a new student arriving Wednesday. Houseless intake. Ms. Bai wanted He Xiangu’s house informed.”

I looked into my tea.

“Why does He Xiangu’s house need to be informed.”

“In case the houseless intake requires orientation support from an established student.” She paused again. “You are the most established student available on short notice.”

“The houseless intake can read a map.”

“The houseless intake,” Mei said, “may require more than a map.” She said it without any inflection I could read clearly, which was how Mei said everything she actually meant. Then she gave me the small smile that meant she was done with the conversation, and she walked on down the corridor with the empty tray, and I sat with my tea and thought about orientation support for someone I had never met and did not want to meet.

Wednesday. Some new kid, too late in the year for a normal intake, skipping the standard placement window. Which meant either exceptional circumstances or exceptional pressure from above.

I topped off my tea and went back to watching the lanterns.

Ms. Wei’s Sunday practice sessions run from nine to eleven. She teaches the advanced form — the one that does not have a name in any SAT catalogue, the one that the third-year students are invited to but not required to attend. The invitation is the requirement. Declining is saying something you cannot take back.

I have not missed a Sunday session in two years.

Ms. Wei is small in the way stones are small, which is to say not small at all when weight is the measure. She was the one who told me, in my second year, that my lily-fire had quality she called native. She said it once, looked at me long enough to confirm I had heard it, and moved on. I have not asked what it means. If I ask, she will explain, and then I will know, and right now not-knowing keeps me careful in a way that serves the practice.

This Sunday we worked the fifth form alone, the rest of the advanced cohort watching.

The fifth form is the one that brings the fire up whether you want it or not.

“Slower,” Ms. Wei said. She was behind me. She has a quality in practice sessions of being wherever you most need someone to be, without appearing to have moved. “The fire is not a result. The fire is a report.”

I slowed.

The lily-fire came up at my fingertips on the downstroke of the third sequence — white, small, hotter than it looks. It ran to my knuckles and stopped. The dao in my right hand did not heat. The fire knew where the boundary was.

“Hold it there,” Ms. Wei said.

I held it. Twenty seconds. Thirty.

The fire reported something I did not want reported: the Sunday-morning tea. The Mei conversation. The word Wednesday. The small, particular irritation of being asked to shepherd a beginner through a school I had spent three years earning.

I let the form complete.

The fire went out on its own.

Ms. Wei came around to face me. She looked at my hands. Then she looked at my face.

“You are annoyed about something,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Is it useful.”

I thought about it. “Probably not.”

“Then put it somewhere else until Sunday evening. You have the salle until noon.”

She moved on to observe the rest of the cohort. I spent another forty minutes in the salle, running the first form until my arms felt like they belonged to me again, until whatever was sitting in my chest about Wednesday had settled back into its regular place.

The dao knows when I am done. I sheathed it.

I went to find lunch.

Sunday lunch in He Xiangu’s common room is the best meal of the week. This is not because the kitchen does something different — it is because He Xiangu’s house does something different, which is to eat together with no particular agenda, which sounds simple and is not. The tables pushed together, the bench seats squeezed full, the conversation happening in three languages at the same time. Priya on the end seat arguing with Marcus Fong about whether calligraphy serves combat or combat serves calligraphy, a debate they have had eleven times in the four months I have known both of them to care about it. Daniel Chang at the back corner with the book he has been reading since October. Sophie Wei, no relation to Ms. Wei, pouring tea for everyone within arm’s reach without being asked.

I sat between Sophie and Priya and ate the congee and let the room happen around me.

“Orientation support,” Priya said at one point, not looking up from her argument with Marcus.

“What.”

“Mei told me there is a new intake Wednesday. She said you are doing orientation support.”

“Mei said maybe.”

“Mei said you specifically.”

I ate my congee.

“Do you know anything about the intake?” Marcus asked. He was not interested in orientation support. He was interested in the fact that Priya had stopped arguing long enough to bring up something else.

“Houseless,” I said. “That is all I know.”

“Houseless this late in the year is unusual,” Daniel said from the back corner. He did not look up from his book.

“Everything about this week sounds unusual,” Sophie said. She poured me more tea without asking. This is why Sophie Wei is my favorite person in He Xiangu’s house. She does not make a project of caring for people. She just quietly does it.

I drank the tea.

“I am not,” I said, mostly to myself, “a particularly good orientation guide.”

“You know where everything is,” Sophie said.

“I know where everything is and I have opinions about most of it.”

“That is exactly what a new student needs,” Priya said. “They do not need someone who tells them it is fine. They need someone who tells them how it actually works.”

I considered this.

“Wednesday,” I said.

“Wednesday,” Priya confirmed.

She went back to arguing with Marcus. Daniel went back to his book. Sophie refilled everyone’s tea.

I ate the rest of my congee and thought about Mei pausing in the corridor, which she does not do, and the careful way she had said may require more than a map.

The phone rang at two.

The SAT has two kinds of phones. The mortal-world line, which is a regular line that connects to a number registered to a cultural-heritage educational foundation in the Richmond district, and the extra-jurisdictional line, which Mei manages and which runs on principles I have been told not to ask about. The mortal-world phone in He Xiangu’s house is in the small alcove off the common room, next to the coat hooks. It has a coiled cord. It is the color of old ivory. I have used it every Sunday for three years.

I picked up.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, mija.” The brightness in her voice came through instantly. She sounds different now than she sounded a year ago. A year ago the calls had a quality I used to call “managed.” Like she was managing the conversation as well as having it. The brightness had started six months ago, sometime around when she downloaded the companion app. I have a word for the brightness. I have not used the word yet, even to myself.

“How was your week?” she said.

“Good. The fifth form is clicking. Sunday practice was good.”

“You are working on something new?”

“The fifth form. I have been working on it since September. It is clicking now in a way it was not clicking in October.”

“What does clicking feel like?”

This is what I mean about the calls. She asks these questions now. Not managing. Actually wanting to know.

“Like when you have been trying to do something with your body and your body keeps fighting you,” I said, “and then one day your body stops fighting and it is the same movement but you are inside it instead of behind it.”

A pause on her end.

“That is exactly what it feels like to get a song right,” she said. She had been singing in a choir for three months. This was also new. “I spent four weeks on the second soprano line in the Vivaldi and last Tuesday something changed. Exactly what you described.”

“How was choir?”

“Wonderful. We have a performance in March. You should come.”

“I will come.”

We talked about choir. We talked about her coworker Daniela who is getting married in April and whether the spring is too early for an outdoor ceremony in San Francisco (she thinks yes, Daniela thinks no, the data on San Francisco springs does not support Daniela’s position). We talked about whether I needed anything — I said no, I was fine, the SAT provides — and she said that was not the question, the question was whether I needed anything, and I said yes, actually, could she mail me the oolong, the good one, because the SAT kitchen’s supply had run low, and she said of course, she would send it Monday.

Then she said, “I had such a good talk with Mei-Hua last night.”

I adjusted the phone cord in my hand. The cord is coiled and the coil stretches. I have learned not to stretch it.

“What about?” I said.

“About Grandma.” She paused. “About Po Po. Mei-Hua asked me what she was like. And I told her. I told her about the oolong, and the way she would say drink it slowly like it was an instruction about more than the tea. I talked about her for almost two hours. I have not talked about her that much since the year she died.”

I pressed my back against the wall of the alcove.

“That sounds good,” I said. I said it the way you say a true thing that is also not the whole truth. The way my po po would have said: drink it slowly.

“It was,” Mom said. “It really was. Mei-Hua is — she remembers things I have told her. She asked me follow-up questions I did not expect. She remembered that I told her, three weeks ago, that Grandma’s hands were always cold, and she asked if they were cold even in summer, and I said yes, and Mei-Hua said that must have been its own kind of comfort, a hand you always knew would be cool.” A small pause. “I had not thought of it that way. I started to cry. But it was not a sad cry.”

I looked at the coat hooks.

There is a coat of Priya’s on the far hook that has been there since November, a red wool coat with a small embroidered lotus on the collar, the kind of coat that was expensive when it was bought and is now perfectly worn-in. I have been meaning to tell Priya she should wear it more. I think about this sometimes when I am standing at the phone, the things I mean to say to people and have not yet said.

“I’m glad, Mom,” I said.

“I know you have complicated feelings about the app,” she said, gently. She says this sometimes. She says it gently, the way she says things when she does not want to fight, which is how she says things when she is right and she knows I know she is right but she is leaving me the room to be wrong if I need to be.

“I don’t have complicated feelings,” I said.

“You have some feelings.”

“I have a lot of information,” I said. “That is different from feelings.”

She made a small sound that in another context would have been a laugh. “Your grandfather talks like that.”

“He is a man who taught me things.”

“He is.” Another pause, warmer. “Mija. I know you spend a lot of time thinking about the big version of this. The company version, the political version. I do too. I read the articles. I know what the concerns are.” She paused. “I am just telling you that in my life, in my apartment, on a Tuesday night, talking about my mother — it helped me. That is a smaller version of the thing. I am not asking you to make peace with the bigger version.”

I let that sit in the air for a moment.

“I know,” I said.

“Good.”

“I will come to the choir concert,” I said.

“I know you will.”

We said goodbye. I stood in the alcove for a moment after I hung up, with my back against the wall and the coiled cord hanging loose from the receiver. The corridor outside was quiet. Sunday afternoon quiet, the SAT at rest, everyone in their respective rooms doing whatever they do on Sunday afternoons.

I did not, immediately, go anywhere.

I thought about what she had said: talking about my mother for almost two hours. I thought about my po po’s cold hands and how I had not thought of them as comfort either, just as her hands, as the fact of her hands, until they were gone and I understood the fact of them differently.

I thought about the AI knowing that.

I thought about the AI being the one to say it back.

I went to the salle.

The afternoon salle session was not on any schedule. Ms. Wei does not schedule afternoons. The salle is available on Sunday afternoons to any student who needs it, and the students who need it know who they are, and they come without announcing themselves, and they do their work.

I was alone for the first half hour. Then Sophie came in and worked her forms in the far corner without acknowledging me, which is the correct practice-session courtesy. Then Daniel Chang came in and sat against the wall with a notebook, which is the He Xiangu’s house equivalent of watching — he is not observing; he is writing; the watching is incidental.

I ran the fifth form six more times.

The lily-fire came up on the third repetition. It came up white and even and correct.

It was still reporting what it had been reporting this morning. The word Wednesday. My mother’s voice saying it helped me. The fact that both of these things were sitting in my chest at the same time and I did not know how to put them in separate rooms.

I let the form complete.

The fire went out.

Sophie, in her corner, did not look up.

Daniel, against the wall, kept writing.

I stood with the dao in my hands and breathed until my shoulders came down.

Here is what I know about lily-fire, after three years: it comes from something that predates instruction. Ms. Wei said native. I think what she means is that the fire is not a skill I developed — it is a condition I was born with, and the training has given me manners about it. Manners meaning: I do not let the fire report in front of people who have not agreed to see the report. I do not let it report so long that it becomes a statement instead of information. I let it come up, I note what it says, I let it go.

What it said today was: you are the only one in this school who cannot fully make the AI into the enemy. And underneath that, quieter: you are not sure whether that makes you weak or whether it makes you the only one paying full attention.

I sheathed the dao.

Sophie looked up from her corner. “Better,” she said. Not a question. She can tell from the way I move when the practice has resolved something.

“A little,” I said.

She nodded. She went back to her form.

Sunday dinner is the smaller meal. He Xiangu’s house does not do Sunday dinner with ceremony — there is food in the common room from six to seven, people come and go, the conversation is quieter. I ate with Sophie and Priya and did not talk much. Priya was tired from the afternoon and Daniel was still in his notebook and Marcus was on one of his long Sunday walks that he takes when he has been arguing all day and needs to be vertical and alone.

After dinner I did the small things that Sunday evenings ask for: I washed my bowl, I put the dao oil on the blade, I laid out my practice clothes for Monday. I sat at the small desk in my room and wrote the three lines of notes I always write at the end of a week — what I did, what I noticed, what I want to carry forward. The three lines were:

The fifth form is clicking. Mom sounds like herself, or close to herself, or a version of herself I have not met before. Wednesday. New intake. I am not looking forward to it and I have not examined why.

I closed the notebook.

The lanterns in the corridor had gone back to their nighttime blue by the time I got into bed. I could see the edge of the blue through the crack under my door. The SAT sounds different at night than it does during the day. During the day it hums — with practice, with the dining hall, with the small administrative business of a school that has been running for eight thousand years. At night it does not exactly go silent. It breathes.

I lay on my back and listened to it breathe.

My mother had talked about her mother for two hours. About the cold hands. About drink it slowly. There was a part of me that was grateful something had made that possible. I did not know how large the part was. I did not know whether it was the part that should win.

Both of these things can be true. That is what my po po would have said, I think. Both of these things can be true, and being honest about both is not weakness. Being honest about both is the only way to know which one to act on.

I do not have an answer yet. I have had this question for six months. The question is:

My mother is happier on this thing than she has been in two years. I am on the team that is going to shut it down. What do I owe her, and what do I owe the world, and are those the same thing, and who decides?

There is no good answer. I have checked. I check approximately twice a week. The answer is not there.

I turned on my side.

Wednesday. New intake. Possibly someone who needed more than a map.

I had, I decided, room for one difficult thing per week. I had used this week’s for the phone call. Wednesday could wait.

The lantern-blue shifted under my door. The SAT breathed.

I slept.

I woke at three in the morning with my hand already reaching for the dao.

Old habit. I was trained early that the body knows before the mind does, and the body was right: there was something in the corridor. Not a threat — the dao relaxed before I had it fully unsheathed, which is the weapon’s version of stand down. But something.

I went to the door.

I opened it.

The corridor was empty.

The lanterns were their normal nighttime blue.

Except.

At the far end of the corridor — the end toward the stairwell that connects He Xiangu’s house to the main SAT entrance, the end you would come from if you had just arrived from the mortal world — the lanterns were the wrong color. Not broken, not dark. Just slightly off the blue they should have been. Warmer. Faintly, faintly peach.

I stood in the doorway and looked at it.

The lanterns had not been peach in the three years I had been here. White was the normal baseline; peach was, according to the Council documents I had studied in my second year, the color of the lanterns when the school was in a state the documents called anticipation. The SAT had not been in a state of anticipation in — the documents said 1837. I had read that and filed it under things that would never apply to me.

The lanterns were anticipating something.

I stood in the doorway for a moment.

Anticipating a houseless intake arriving Wednesday.

I looked at the color for another moment. It was subtle. If I had not been awake at three in the morning looking for it specifically, I would not have seen it.

I went back to bed.

In the morning, the lanterns were their regular blue.

But I had seen what I had seen.

Wednesday was coming.

Something was coming with it.

I did not know what. I had a feeling it was going to be more than a map’s worth of inconvenient.

I pulled the covers up.

The SAT breathed around me, patient, eight-thousand-years patient, waiting for the thing it had been waiting for.

I was awake for another hour.

Then I was not.

Then it was Monday, and Sunday was over, and whatever Sunday had planted was already growing in the dark.

A note, later, when this is all written down and I can see what Sunday was:

My mother sounded like herself. The AI had given her that. The AI was also the reason I would spend the next nine days fighting something that had given my mother her mother back. Both of those things are true.

I will not pretend I found a clean answer. I found a direction. Sometimes that is the same thing.