Work Text:
January 19, 2022.
In truth, Xi Ta had no intention of ever taking a student again. How could she?
All memories deteriorated over time. Hers, after so many years and lives, were no exception. But repeatedly revisiting a moment would inevitably wear down grooves in the mind, and in just a few days, that memory had already carved into her a new scar.
Two minutes. It was the emotion that lingered most clearly, the sickening horror that had pushed its way up through the fog in her head as she awoke. At that time the sun had already set, leaving the weakly glowing fireplace the only source of light in the living room. She remembered the scene too well—the coffee table, the pitch-maker upon it, and every scrap of strength it’d taken to force her sluggish body to stretch forward and hit the switch to call him back.
What have you done, she’d rasped, still dazed from the drug in her system. And Vespa had snapped awake in the present with a mouthful of apologies, but Xi Ta would never forget the look in his eyes. Remorseless.
Vespa hadn’t regretted what he’d done. Only that it hadn’t worked. And it hadn’t worked, she’d checked the obituaries afterward, but she knew him—Vespa, who’d always been so diligent, who’d never lost faith in a dive, who’d found a way to resolve every single case they’d taken together, even if it took multiple tries to get just right. He was friendly, and handsome, and clever; clients loved him.
And he had inflicted upon her the worst betrayal that a time-diver ever could.
Vespa was not her first student, but he was the first student she’d ever taught alone. Where had she gone wrong? She hadn’t noticed when he’d changed. Or had he harbored these intentions from the very beginning, and she, blinded by her own hopes, had failed to pay heed. Back then, she’d thought she understood him, and that giving him a way to help others would help him move past his own grief. Had that been too naive? It haunted her that even now, she did not know.
So Xi Ta thought, she could not take a student again. She was not fit. If this world ended because of her wayward student, it was her fault as the failed teacher. She thought her first partner would surely understand.
February 2, 2022.
But the days ticked by, and the world kept turning, and one day, she met Lu Guang.
Xi Ta knew him immediately. It was true that identifying fellow time-divers was an imprecise art, but she was too familiar with the magnetic field of Haibula not to notice any new deviations. This was home now, after all.
They were atop a hill overlooking the town. The sky above was overcast, shadowing the afternoon glow. Xi Ta passed this spot regularly, as it was one of the few paved pathways that was easily accessible from her home. Haibula, with its numerous slopes and stairwells, wasn’t the most navigable in her chair, but she had learned her ways. Today she came here to get some air, and it was here that she saw the young painter for the first time.
He stood with his back to her. His easel and paints were set up before him on a tripod, and he was painting the scenery before him—no, not the scenery, but the skyscape. The clouds flowed upon his canvas in all variants of gray.
Xi Ta herself had only one dive’s worth of painting experience, but she found this a little curious. Artists often came to Haibula to capture its beauty—the red-roofed homes, the grassy hills, the azure mountains, or, on those special evenings, the shimmering wisps of aurora. But it wasn’t so often that she saw such plein air artists working in monochrome. Perhaps this was a value study of the subtle interplays of the sunlight. It was beautiful, in the way it could only be when elevated by a lover of commonplace beauty.
She observed him in silence for a while, and if the tall young man noticed her presence, he made no acknowledgement of it. She knew that time-divers would naturally find themselves drawn to these abnormal magnetic regions, so such an encounter was surely inevitable, despite the rarity of their powers. The question was, what to do. The safe answer was to do nothing. Instead, when he at last began packing away his supplies, she approached him.
“Please don’t mind my saying this, but I enjoyed your painting,” she said to him. “May I ask your name?”
He wasn’t smiling when he turned to her, but he greeted her politely in a quiet voice, and answered her small-talk pleasantries. He currently lived here, and often painted outdoors, and no, he would not mind if she ever accompanied him in the future.
Lu Guang. The name sounded familiar. That evening, Xi Ta went home and researched. She looked at his artist biography and remembered a gallery a year ago, and another first meeting. Was this so-called fate?
She thought of her mailbox of unopened inquiries, would-be clients, people who could be helped…but no, she couldn’t think of them. She had to take a hard look at herself. And what was she now? Little more than a broken, scared, lonely old woman. That young man didn’t deserve to be dragged into this.
And what if he finds him first?
The thought gave her a chill. Vespa was gone, now, she had felt him leave Haibula. But he didn’t know the secret. He wouldn’t be able to find another time-diver. And so if he came back, when he came back…
She would befriend this Lu Guang, she decided. She could do that, at least.
March 9, 2022.
There was no such thing as a life without regret. This was something that Xi Ta understood better than most. Past or future, let it be—this was the only way forward.
She watched Lu Guang. Watched him paint his gray-white clouds, watched him share sweets and rare smiles with the children who ran over to gasp at his artwork. And a soft voice whispered in the back of her mind, what would it hurt, to try again?
Dangerous thought. But perhaps it was no more dangerous than the alternative. If she could help, more than she hurt, then would it not be worth it?
That day, at the end of the hours-long painting session, Lu Guang surprised her with a package of cookies, carefully wrapped in decorative paper. “For you,” he said, quiet as ever as he looked away, and Xi Ta recognized the gratitude for what it was. He, too, was alone. They had spoken only a little about his family background, but she understood enough. Someone who was rich in every way except what mattered most.
She accepted it. It would be rude not to, even as her stomach turned at the thought of eating something prepared by other hands. Two months later, the anxiety yet lingered.
“Thank you,” she said simply, the paper crinkling under her worn fingers. She turned the words over and over in her mind, and at last—she let it be.
“Lu Guang,” she said, “I have something to share with you. Would you come with me?”
July 18, 2022.
In their partnership, Xi Ta gave Lu Guang one rule to follow.
Unlike her previous student, Lu Guang liked rules, liked precise instructions. He preferred it when Xi Ta could feed him the exact lines to act. In this sense Lu Guang was extremely reliable, and although it would serve him better to develop some improvisational ability, for now this was fine. He had time to grow. In the meantime, she led him on simple dives, replying to some of the commissions that had come in.
Some, not all. This time, Xi Ta was too aware that she was partnering with someone new to this all. Her student did not have the decades of understanding of where they had to draw the line with their work. Her last student had never understood, but had been cunning enough to pretend. She could not risk that again.
And so she chose their cases carefully. One day, several months in, she handed Lu Guang a photograph and told him, “This one is a little different.”
Lu Guang listened to her as she described what he would need to do—or more accurately, to witness. After she finished, she expected doubt or hesitation, but instead Lu Guang asked, simply, “Is this a test?”
Xi Ta paused, and then said, “If it helps you to consider it as such.”
Lu Guang nodded, serious as ever. He was honest to a fault, and sometimes he stumbled in dives as a result. He was fundamentally a good kid, she thought, but then again hadn’t she believed the same about—
She quashed the thought. This work relied so heavily upon carefully honed intuition and quick judgment calls. She could not allow herself to question herself any more, else she risked this delicate balance. Especially not when she was giving him this photo.
With the photo before them, they clapped. The dive itself was, on its face, extremely simple. Five years ago, on a rainy day in a certain city in China, a car swerved to avoid a stray pedestrian who had distractedly wandered into the street. The resulting domino effect of collisions had claimed three lives and severely injured several others.
Right before the accident, the distracted pedestrian had brushed past someone taking a photo. That was the photo that Lu Guang now entered. Here stood an ordinary person who, by virtue of being in the right place at the right time, would be able to pull the pedestrian back and thereby prevent this disaster.
Able to, but forbidden to.
Xi Ta presented an unshakeable image of strength to her students. She had to. But as she sat in the present time, rewatching the trigger for this untouchable node, this memory scar—her heart trembled.
The moment passed. The photographer stood still, and people died.
Lu Guang returned to the present wild-eyed and shaken, coughing with the memory of smoke and blood and anguish. Xi Ta held his hands, and for a long while said nothing.
“I’m sorry, laoshi,” was the first thing that Lu Guang managed. “I’m okay. I was—it was just…” The words dissolved back into unsteady breaths.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Xi Ta said. “You did well to uphold our principles.” It hurt, she knew. But her own apology, balanced upon her tongue, never made it past her lips. He must go through this. He must understand.
July 22, 2022.
Lu Guang came back.
Xi Ta, in truth, had been prepared for the possibility of his departure. What a harsh, even cruel approach she had chosen this time. Even if the failure of her past student proved the necessity of this lesson, she recognized the pain of doing it this way.
But Lu Guang returned to meet her as he always had, and he put on a brave face for her. Still, it was too clear that the experience had affected him deeply. Beneath that reticence of his, he was fundamentally kind-hearted—that was, after all, what had motivated him to join her work in the first place.
“Come with me,” Xi Ta told him, a few days later, and she led him into her study. It was not the first time Lu Guang had been in here, but she now directed his attention toward the back wall. There, dozens of framed portraits decorated the low shelves, interspersed with fresh flowers.
She took a breath. “Do you know who these people are?” she said, wheeling herself closer until she was right before the lowest shelves.
Lu Guang shook his head, unable to tear his eyes away.
“These people have their own memorials,” Xi Ta began. She felt Lu Guang turn a startled gaze toward her, but she kept her gaze forward as she reached for the closest photo, the newest one. “But I cannot visit them all, and so I have erected this in their honor. Of all the immutable nodes, death remains, too often, the most painful. It is a boundary that no amount of regret can cross.
“These are the people I could not save,” said Xi Ta. She brushed her hand along the edge of the photo. Within the gold frame, a young schoolteacher turned her smiling eyes toward the camera.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” asked Lu Guang.
“Of course,” she said quietly. “We cannot rewrite time’s nodes. But we can give them this, the remembrance of love. Lu Guang, you must always remember what it is that we do with these powers.”
Lu Guang was looking at another photo on the memorial. Placed in the center, its simple wooden frame stood out compared to the more decorative ones that surrounded it. “I understand, laoshi,” he finally said.
Xi Ta held her hand toward him, and, after a moment, Lu Guang took it. She gave his hand a squeeze, and simply said, “Good.”
September 9, 2022.
The more time that passed in their partnership, the more Xi Ta knew that she needed to tell Lu Guang. But even if she could send a brief message to her connections, warning them of the one she’d called Vespa—with Lu Guang, it was different. Lu Guang looked at her like she could do no wrong. So many times had she readied herself to explain, but at the prospect of reliving her deepest failure, the words never made it past her lips.
As close as their relationship was, how many things yet went unspoken between them?
Lu Guang, by the time you watch this video, you will have taken up the mantle of this work. She recorded the video, and sequestered it away. It was the coward’s way, she knew. She could only hope that he would not repeat her mistakes. She could only hope that he would never need to watch this, and if he did, that he would forgive her.
January 16, 2023.
Xi Ta knew the moment when Vespa returned to Haibula.
It was true that the proximity of multiple time-divers muddied the sense. And yet, she knew. How so like him, to return exactly one year later.
But Vespa did not seek her out immediately. This she did not understand. His presence hovered at the edge of her consciousness, a demon in her view, and in the meantime Xi Ta understood that she had to make her decision now.
“Lu Guang,” she called, in an echo of the past, “I have something to share with you.”
Ever attentive, Lu Guang recognized the weight of her words, and of the photograph she now handed to him. “This photo is from your memorial,” Lu Guang realized aloud. He looked from the picture back up at her. “This is…”
“Yes,” she said. “My first partner.” And then, after a beat: “My twin.”
“Your twin?”
The man in the photo, twenty years younger, grinned at them unabashedly. Though it appeared ordinary enough, this photo was the result of a stroke of midnight inspiration and several subsequent days of planning. Isn’t this smart? No safer way of sharing this secret. Aren’t you proud? He’d been so pleased with himself. Xi Ta had rolled her eyes at the time, but his cleverness was something that she would never refute.
“We saved in this photo everything we understood of our powers,” Xi Ta said now to Lu Guang. “When you dive, you will become me. My brother will explain the secret of how to find the magnetic field locations where our powers will work, and how to find other time-divers. Please ask him any questions you have.”
Lu Guang stared at the photo for a while longer, and then he said, with the barest trace of apprehension, “Why are you telling me this now?”
Did he guess at her fears? After so long diving together, it was inevitable that they would gain that silent mutual understanding.
“I’ve told you before,” said Xi Ta, “the day will inevitably come where we must part ways. You must know how to partner with others.” She offered him a comforting smile. “Do not worry. I will be here.”
Lu Guang looked like he wanted to say more, but finally he nodded and pulled on the headphones. A moment later, he was back in the past. He repeated the words that Xi Ta directed him to say, confirming his identity, and then it began.
Seeing her first partner again, like this—Xi Ta had expected the swell of emotion that arose, but that did not at all lessen its impact. The two of them together had discovered their powers on accident as children. Decades later, this had grown into a mission far beyond either of them. She’d carried on their legacy as best she could, but the weight of this sky had never been meant to be borne alone.
Aren’t you proud? That was his line, not hers, but it crossed her mind now. Had she done enough to be worthy of pride?
Laoshi, said Lu Guang, when the dive was almost complete. Is there…anything you want me to say to him?
Xi Ta considered it.
Thank you, she eventually said, but that’s alright. Anything I could say, he already knows.
Upon Lu Guang’s return, he handed the photograph back to Xi Ta. The photo appeared unchanged, but the spark within it—the spark that allowed a dive—had burned out. There would be no more reliving that moment.
That was okay.
“When did he pass?” Lu Guang asked, after a while.
Xi Ta let out a sigh. “Five years ago,” she said. “The same accident that took my legs.”
And, again, ever attentive, Lu Guang made the connection. His eyes widened. “You don’t mean—that dive you had me do, back then…”
“Yes.”
He stared at her, stricken. “My condolences,” he finally said, lowering his eyes.
“Thank you,” said Xi Ta. “But please listen to me—what I have told you before does not change. It is the sum of our life experiences, good and bad, that shape us into who we are today. To trade them away would be to lose ourselves. Do you understand?”
There was a long, long pause, and then at last, Lu Guang nodded. “Past or future,” he said, and this time the phrase was weighted with new knowledge.
“Let it be.”
January 18, 2023.
That morning, Lu Guang showed up in the morning with a grocery bag of ingredients. Xi Ta watched him get to work in her small kitchen, and she cocked her head when she recognized the balls of dough that he hand-rolled and carefully filled with black sesame. “The new year isn’t for a few weeks,” she noted.
Lu Guang half-shrugged, rinsing his hands of flour. “Need to practice,” he said.
This was modesty. Lu Guang regularly cooked for himself, and Xi Ta understood enough to know he had some skill. Into the boiling pot went the sesame balls, and a few minutes later the tang yuan were ready. He spooned a few into a bowl and presented the soup to his teacher.
“Laoshi, would you have some?”
Lu Guang offered as matter of courtesy. Xi Ta had always politely declined food. But today, to his visible surprise, she took the bowl from him with both hands.
The warm tang yuan burst between her teeth, the sweetness of the black sesame spreading across her tongue. Lu Guang watched her reaction, not quite managing to hide his nervousness. “Is it good?”
“It is,” she said. How long had it been since she’d tasted food made with such love. When she finished, she rested the ceramic spoon in the bowl with a clink. “Lu Guang?” she said.
“Yes, laoshi?"
”I know I was never a perfect teacher,” Xi Ta said softly. She lifted her head to meet his eyes. “But I taught you to the best of my ability. To have you as my student was my honor.”
In answer, Lu Guang took her hand and squeezed.