Sammi found the “news” she was looking for in the way the Su Causeway hummed under her boots.
She wasn’t walking anywhere in particular—just along the familiar spine of stone, letting the morning crowds flow around her: porters with baskets, scholars with rolled scrolls, tourists squinting up at the stacked houses.
But her thoughts were back on the airship and at the opera.
On Xiangyun, moth-wing heart beating itself sore against the glass of Eriko’s lighthouse mind.
On Eriko in the little black dress, looking simultaneously astonished and dangerous.
On herself, and the way jealousy and protectiveness had twined together in her chest like two suspicious snakes who were trying to learn to dance.
News, Olds, and Brother Wei
She found Brother Wei exactly where she should have expected: striding slowly down the Causeway with his begging bowl in one hand and a folded sheet of philosophy in the other, halo ticking gently above his head.
“Good morning, half-enlightened one,” Sammi said, falling into step beside him.
“Good morning, fully-conflicted one,” he answered without missing a beat.
Sammi snorted. “That obvious?”
“You’re talking to the man whose halo has a feedback loop,” Wei said. “Your heart is loud today. What troubles it?”
She hesitated, then—because she liked how Wei never pretended that feelings were less complicated than theology—told him.
About Xiangyun’s crush and Aya’s spell. About the kabedon in the corridor. About the way Eriko had blushed, how Sammi had both wanted to wrap her in blankets and drag her back into the dress just to look at her again. About guilt: I put her in that dress, I set the beacon brighter.
Wei listened, bowl cradled in his palms like a portable shrine.
When she finished, he said, “You love Eriko. You also love stories. These two loyalties are currently rubbing together like unfiled gears.”
“Xiangyun is a story too,” Sammi admitted. “One I don’t want to crush.”
“Mm.” Wei’s halo spun once, thoughtfully. “There are vows that separate the world into what is permitted and what is forbidden. And then there are spaces made for… experiments. For truths that cannot breathe under ordinary roofs.”
He glanced up toward the green line of hills beyond the lake.
“At Lingyin Temple there is such a space,” he said. “A hidden shrine to Guanyin—Jizo to your Eriko. There, women can pledge themselves as hierodules for a day: attendants of the bodhisattva of mercy. Within that service, a little chamber is opened that sits… sideways to ordinary time.”
“Sideways,” Sammi repeated.
“Actions taken there do not erase consequences,” Wei said carefully, “but they are held gently. Karmic weight is… redistributed. Hearts may try on shapes they could not bear to wear forever.”
“And you’re suggesting,” Sammi said slowly, “that Eriko and Xiangyun—”
“I am suggesting nothing,” Wei said quickly, halo jittering. “I am merely describing an architectural feature of the spiritual landscape. What you do with topological possibilities is your department.”
But his eyes were kind.
Sammi walked on in silence for a while, the idea knocking around inside her like a loose marble.
“Could mercy look like…letting a different story happen, just once?” she asked finally.
Wei smiled. “Mercy has worn stranger costumes.”
Round Story, Round Window
Back at the Round Story apartment, the building let her in with a little questioning creak: Well?
Eriko stood at the round window, arms folded on the sill, chin resting on them. From here the lake was a sheet of light; the Opera House a ridiculous crown at the north end; Jin’s airship a little figure eight of shadow as it circled above the docks, testing some new whim of lift.
Sammi slipped her arms around Eriko’s waist from behind, pressing her cheek between Eriko’s shoulders.
“You look like a poem checking its rhymes,” she said.
Eriko made a soft, rueful sound. “I’ve been thinking about Xiangyun,” she admitted.
“Me too,” Sammi said. “Probably for slightly different reasons.”
Eriko turned in her arms, searching her face. “Are you angry with me?”
“For being magnetic?” Sammi snorted. “Never. For almost getting seduced in a corridor while under the influence of weaponized opera? Only mildly.”
Her expression softened.
“Mostly,” she said, “I’m thinking about…the part of you that lit up when she talked engines. How your eyes go all bright when someone meets you in that weird sky where maths and metaphysics live. I would be a terrible girlfriend if I wanted to lock that away.”
Eriko’s throat worked. “But you pulled me out of that corridor.”
“Yes,” Sammi said simply. “Because you looked cornered, not free. I will always do that.”
She hesitated, heart pounding.
“But what if there were a place,” she went on, “where you weren’t cornered? Where you could meet that side of Xiangyun with all your defenses down, and nobody got…broken.”
Eriko’s brows drew together. “You’ve been talking to Brother Wei.”
“I have,” Sammi conceded. “And he reminded me that some temples specialize in…sideways solutions.”
She told Eriko about the shrine at Lingyin as Wei had described it: a small cell behind a modest door, thick with offerings and incense, where time became soft like clay. Where women, pledging for a day as servants of Guanyin/Jizo, could ask for mercy not only for suffering but for desire itself.
Eriko listened, eyes widening, face going through several equations’ worth of expressions.
“You would…send me there?” she said at last. “With Xiangyun?”
“I would send you to yourself,” Sammi said, carefully. “To Guanyin, whose job description is literally ‘compassion,’ and to whatever configuration of you and Xiangyun feels true when no one is watching except a bodhisattva and some very nosy incense smoke.”
She cupped Eriko’s face.
“I love you,” she said. “I’m not afraid of there being more of you than I can personally occupy.”
Something hot and wet rose in Eriko’s eyes.
“You are absurd,” she whispered. “And terrifying. And I love you so much it hurts.”
“So that’s a ‘maybe’?” Sammi asked, trying for levity and almost managing it.
After a long moment, Eriko nodded. “If Xiangyun wishes it,” she said softly. “And if Guanyin is willing to host our…experiment.”
The building, listening with all its walls, shivered in sympathy. The Su Causeway sent up a faint pulse from below: Approved.
The Shrine Out of Time
Xiangyun arrived at Lingyin Temple with her heart hammering like a mis-tuned engine.
Wei had met her at Chef Wu’s the day before, offered her tea and an offhand comment: “There is a place where unrequited love can try on a different shape for an hour. No guarantees. But if anyone deserves such a laboratory, it is a metaphysical engineer.”
He had not told her who else might be involved. He didn’t need to. The mere combination of “unrequited” and “laboratory” had sent her mind straight to Eriko, and stayed there.
Now, barefoot on the cool stones, following a novice down side corridors and around quiet courtyards, she tried to convince herself she was simply curious.
The shrine to Guanyin was smaller than she’d imagined. No towering statues; just a modest alcove with a many-armed figure half-hidden in shadow, face serene and a little amused. Offerings crowded the low table: fruit, flowers, folded petitions, tiny toy boats, single earrings separated from their partners.
A nun with a smile that saw too much greeted her.
“You come as hierodule for a day?” she asked.
Xiangyun swallowed. “If Guanyin will have me.”
“The bodhisattva has room for everyone,” the nun said. “But for this particular rite, she has chosen someone to meet you. A reflection you have been… circling.”
She led Xiangyun to a door. The wood was old; the paper panels glowed with a soft, interior light.
“Within, you are outside ordinary time,” the nun said. “What you do there will still be true, but it will not chain any of you. Serve compassion, not fear, and you’ll emerge lighter.”
Xiangyun nodded, palms slick. The nun slid the door open and stepped aside.
Inside, the little cell was surprisingly warm. Tatami mats. A low altar with another, smaller Guanyin in traveling clothes. And beside it, kneeling in simple white robes, hands folded in her lap—
Eriko.
Her hair was loose, black waterfall over her shoulders. The little black dress had been replaced by temple linen, but the effect was only to sharpen the contrast between the familiar mind and this unfamiliar setting.
For a heartbeat, Xiangyun thought: Ah. A vision. The shrine is teasing me.
Then Eriko smiled, small and shy and very real.
“Hello,” she said. “I hear today we are hired by compassion.”
Xiangyun’s knees nearly gave out.
“You—know?” she managed. “About…everything?”
“I know I’m here because Sammi loves me,” Eriko said. “And because you do too, in your own way. And because Guanyin refuses to take sides when love is trying to grow.”
She laughed softly. “Also because Brother Wei is meddlesome.”
The tension in the cell loosened; Xiangyun could breathe again.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “About being here? With me?”
“I am curious,” Eriko said honestly. “And honored. And nervous.” Her gaze met Xiangyun’s steadily. “And yes. I am sure.”
The door slid shut behind them with a final, gentle click. The air shifted—less like something closing, more like a curtain being drawn around a stage.
Outside, bells rang somewhere in the temple. Inside, time loosened its belt and sat down to watch.
What Happens in the Cell
What happened between them in that small, ornate room was theirs.
Later, Xiangyun would remember it not as a sequence of acts but as a sequence of recognitions: the way Eriko’s laugh felt when it happened right up against her collarbone; the way hands that usually held pens and diagrams learned the weight of shoulders and hips; how an intellectual rhythm—question, answer, counter-example—transformed into a physical one of approach and retreat and deeper approach.
Eriko, for her part, discovered that being the focus of someone’s undivided attention—mind and body—could be less like interrogation and more like worship. That her own shyness could melt into trust when held carefully enough. That desire, when given permission, had its own clear, precise logic.
There were kisses that tasted of engine oil and temple incense; laughter when knees bumped and hair tangled; long, quiet stretches where simply holding each other felt like a theorem finally balanced.
At some point, Guanyin’s little altar lamp burned low and then mysteriously brightened again, as if the bodhisattva had leaned in, smiled, and decided to give them more time.
At another, Xiangyun’s breath hitched and the world narrowed to warmth, light, and the sense of falling upward. Eriko followed—not as echo but as co-discoverer—eyes squeezed shut, hand clutching Xiangyun’s as if anchoring a proof to the page.
The rhythm of them together rose and softened, rose again, finding variations neither had completely predicted but both recognized with a kind of astonished gratitude.
Outside, on the Su Causeway miles away, the stone felt it.
Not as scandal, but as a deep, pulsing wave of release: one vector of unrequited love re-routing itself into something gentler; one careful mathematician learning yet another way to inhabit her own body; one brave engineer finally letting herself claim joy instead of only maintaining engines for others.
The bridge hummed, pleased.
Returning
When Xiangyun finally stepped back out into the corridor, the light beyond the paper panels was not noticeably different. In ordinary time, perhaps an hour had passed. In the cell, there had been enough moments to fill a small lifetime.
She felt…relaxed in ways that had nothing to do with muscles. Not cured of anything—she still loved Eriko; she probably always would—but the ache was no longer sharp. It was more like a familiar, distant mountain: part of the landscape, not a weight on her chest.
Eriko emerged after her, robe straight, hair slightly disastrous, eyes luminous. They stood facing each other, unsure for a second what shape to take now.
“Thank you,” Xiangyun said, the words too small but all she had.
“Thank you,” Eriko echoed. “For seeing me. For sharing…all that…and still being you.”
They leaned in, foreheads touching for a moment in a simple, quiet benediction that felt as holy as anything in the shrine.
Then Eriko smiled—a little shy, a little wicked. “Sammi will want to know everything emotionally and absolutely nothing anatomically,” she said.
Xiangyun laughed. “Give her my love,” she said. “And my eternal gratitude for lending you to mercy for a day.”
Round Story, New Rhythm
Eriko trotted up the stairs to the Round Story apartment with an unusual lightness in her step. The staircase, sensing the difference, creaked in a higher key.
Sammi was waiting by the round window, leg bouncing, a half-written pamphlet abandoned on the table. The moment she heard the door, she whirled.
“Well?” she blurted. “How do you feel? Did Guanyin throw lightning at anyone? Did Wei’s halo fall off? Are you okay?”
Eriko stopped just inside the room, suddenly shy. Then she crossed the space in three quick steps and wrapped Sammi in a hug so encompassing it knocked the questions right out of her.
“I feel…” Eriko searched for a word. “More spacious,” she decided. “Like someone opened a window in a room I didn’t know was stuffy.”
Sammi exhaled, relief flooding her. “And Xiangyun?”
“Still very much Xiangyun,” Eriko said, smiling. “Still an engineer. Less…compressed by longing. She sends love and reports that Guanyin has excellent structural sense.”
Sammi laughed, then sobered, eyes searching Eriko’s face.
“Do you regret it?” she asked quietly.
Eriko shook her head. “No. It was… a holy experiment. One that let parts of me speak that rarely get a microphone. And now,” she added, stepping in even closer, “I want to bring that voice home to you.”
She kissed Sammi then—unhurried, confident, with a new, subtle rhythm humming under it. Not someone else’s pattern, not Xiangyun’s exactly, but something Eriko had learned about herself in that sideways room and was now weaving into their music.
Sammi felt it: the rise and fall, the patient swell, like waves remembering a shoreline. She shivered, not with jealousy but with awe.
“Guanyin did good work,” she murmured against Eriko’s mouth.
“So did you,” Eriko replied. “For trusting me enough to let me go.”
The building vibrated happily under their feet. Down below, the Su Causeway pulsed once, like a satisfied heartbeat.
Sometimes, it thought, you held the line. Sometimes you moved the boundary stone. And every now and then, when love was brave and foolish enough, you let a new world be created in a borrowed cell and then welcomed its echoes home.
Sammi and Eriko disappeared toward the bed, laughter and low voices trailing after them, carrying that new rhythm into familiar space.
The Round Story apartment, the bridge, and perhaps even Guanyin herself listened, and were content.
