Oh absolutely yes—back to the causeway. Back to the little apartment where the river wind always smells faintly of wet stone, incense drift, and somebody else’s dinner.
Eriko and Sammi had fallen into that delicious post-drama rhythm: not peace exactly, but focus.
Eriko sat cross-legged on a low cushion by the window with three books open like a tripod—one on late Byzantine statecraft, one on frontier polities, and one that was technically a pamphlet but had the attitude of a manifesto. She’d been staring at a line so hard it was starting to feel stared back at.
Sammi, on the other hand, was in her softest shirt with her knees pulled up, reading an Eclair volume like it was a sacred text. Every so often she made a tiny noise—half delighted, half scandalized—then looked up and smiled at Eriko like: See? Humanity can be saved. It’s right here.
“You’re doing it again,” Sammi said.
“Doing what?”
“That face.” Sammi held up her book as if it were evidence in court. “The one where you’re about to argue with a dead emperor.”
Eriko didn’t blink. “He started it.”
Sammi leaned over to squint at the page. “Okay. Sell it to me. What’s the thesis?”
Eriko tapped the margin once, precise. “Was the Empire of Nicaea—by necessity, by continuity, by administrative habit—the seed crystal of the Ottoman state? Or is that an illusion produced by geography and our desire for tidy genealogies?”
Sammi made a little circle in the air with her hand. “Mmm. You’re in your ‘continuities are seductive lies’ era.”
Eriko allowed herself a rare micro-smile. “Continuities are often clerical lies.”
Sammi laughed, and for a moment their apartment felt bright enough to be its own small republic.
Meanwhile, down on the stones of the Su Causeway, Brother Wei was making history the way certain kinds of men do: through ledgers, leverage, and a calm face that could be mistaken for holiness.
He had watched Xiangyun transform—not into a saint exactly, but into something the city could not stop talking about. The engineer had become a holy fool in the old sense: a public puzzle with an inward gravity. She walked the causeway as if it were a nave. She paused beneath lanterns like they were icons. She spoke too plainly for polite company and too reverently for the cynical.
Song Hangzhou loved her for it. Feared her a little. And in the logic of cities, what cannot be dismissed must be housed.
So Brother Wei went to the Thearch.
Some said the Thearch was his younger brother. Some said that was slander. Brother Wei neither confirmed nor denied; he simply arrived with a bow that was both humble and irritatingly confident, and with documents that smelled faintly of sealing wax and inevitability.
He did not ask for a temple. Temples were expensive and political.
He asked for a shrine.
“A small chapel,” he said gently, “like Saint Thomas above old London Bridge. A spiritual lantern over a river of commerce. The causeway already functions as a spine; let us give it a heart.”
The Thearch, whose palace contained entire rooms devoted to saying “no” elegantly, stared a long time at the proposed budget.
Brother Wei’s genius was that he did not flinch.
“You want wine,” the Thearch said at last, voice dry. “For a bodhisattva who vows against intoxication.”
“Not for the bodhisattva,” Brother Wei replied, serene as stone. “For the donors.”
The Thearch made a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been sharpened into strategy. “And an annual stipend?”
“A small one,” Brother Wei said, and slid the parchment forward as if it were a bowl being offered. “So the shrine never becomes desperate.”
The Thearch looked at him, eyes narrowing—measuring the hidden costs, the hidden benefits, and the hidden stories a funded shrine could tell about the ruler who funded it.
“A clerk,” the Thearch said.
“Two,” Brother Wei corrected, softly. “A spiritual clerk for the scrolls, prayers, and offerings—so the shrine remains pure in its purpose. And a secular clerk for accounts—so the shrine remains pure in its reputation.”
Thearch’s mouth twitched. “You are either holy or unbelievably practical.”
“In a city like this,” Brother Wei said, “those are the same vocation.”
In the end, the Thearch did what powerful men do when they cannot win a debate: he turned it into patronage.
He agreed.
And when Brother Wei bowed his thanks, the palace courtiers traded looks that said: Ah. He has a career at last. And the Thearch—who may or may not have been his younger brother—watched him go with an expression that said: He has a career at last… and so do I, because now his success is also mine.
Within weeks, the causeway throbbed with carpentry.
Pilings went in like punctuation marks. Beams rose. A narrow stairwell was framed, snug and vertical, like the beginning of a story.
Brother Wei took to the construction site as if it were a monastery and a dockyard both. He wore robes that managed to look both humble and alarmingly organized. He accepted deliveries with the gravity of receiving relics.
Food, wine, candles, robes, wood chips.
The wood chips, notably, became a minor civic scandal.
“What are the wood chips for?” a merchant demanded, nosy with the confidence of a man who had paid taxes once and never forgiven the world.
Brother Wei answered without missing a beat. “For cleanliness. For winter traction. For the humility of remembering that even grand projects begin as shavings.”
The merchant blinked, unsure whether he’d been instructed or insulted.
Brother Wei smiled like a door closing gently.
And the staffing—oh, the staffing became its own quiet ballet:
A spiritual clerk, who kept the scrolls dry and the ritual calendar exact, and who wrote prayer slips with handwriting so beautiful people began commissioning them for weddings.
A secular clerk, who could look at a donor’s smile and translate it into numbers.
Young Wu, brother of Old Wu, as cook—wide-eyed, proud, and deeply stressed by the idea of feeding holiness on schedule.
A laundress/charwoman, who treated incense ash as a personal enemy and declared war on dust like it was a demon.
A housekeeper/porter/butler, who could carry a crate of candles with one arm while shooing away curious tourists with the other.
Brother Wei, of course, sat in the center of this like the hub of a wheel—quiet, turning everything.
And Xiangyun?
Xiangyun began to linger at the edge of the site, watching. Not interfering. Not directing. Just… present, as if the shrine were being built around her gaze.
People noticed that too.
They began to say, fondly and nervously, that the causeway had acquired a new kind of weather: Xiangyun’s attention.
That evening, back in the apartment, Sammi read the day’s gossip aloud like it was serialized fiction.
“‘A chapel is rising above the water,’” she quoted, doing a dramatic voice. “‘Dedicated to Jizo-Eriko, avatar of Guanyin.’”
Eriko’s head lifted so fast you could practically hear the page-turn of destiny.
“…Dedicated to what.”
Sammi’s grin was wickedly affectionate. “Baby. Congratulations. You’ve been canonized by municipal infrastructure.”
Eriko stared at her books as if one of them had betrayed her personally. “I did not consent to becoming a bridge-saint.”
Sammi scooted closer and kissed Eriko’s cheek—soft, quick, grounding. “You don’t have to ‘consent’ to symbolism. Symbolism consents to you.”
Eriko exhaled, half laugh, half dread. “Brother Wei has built a shrine to me.”
Sammi’s eyes gleamed. “Not to you.”
Eriko looked at her.
Sammi lowered her voice into something gentler. “To what you mean on that causeway. To the way you make people feel like they can be held without being owned.”
Eriko went quiet then, because Sammi had a way of saying something simple that landed like a bell.
Outside, the river moved under moonlight like silk being pulled through rings.
And somewhere down the causeway, Brother Wei’s ledgers clicked shut for the night—another day of building a future that looked, from a distance, suspiciously like a miracle.
The shrine opened the way new things open in Song Hangzhou: not with a single “grand unveiling,” but with a rumor that became a crowd.
For three mornings in a row the causeway smelled like fresh-cut wood and hot wax. The carpenters’ mallets had gone quiet, replaced by softer sounds: cloth shifting, sandals on stone, the subtle clink of coins touching a donation bowl as if the donors were trying not to wake something sleeping.
On the fourth morning, Brother Wei declared it “ready enough to be real.”
And that was, for him, the highest form of readiness.
The first ceremony
The shrine sat above the river like a lantern someone had decided to anchor. It wasn’t huge—more a chapel than a temple—narrow and upright, with a steep little stairwell that made you feel you were climbing into a different kind of air. The causeway below kept being itself (fishmongers, poets, flirtations, deliveries) but the shrine’s door created a seam in the world.
At dawn, the spiritual clerk unrolled the first scroll with hands that didn’t tremble, because trembling would have been disrespectful to both the text and the audience. The secular clerk stood off to the side with a ledger that looked innocent until you realized it was the spine of the entire project.
Young Wu—poor, brave Young Wu—had produced a tray of buns that were meant to be “symbolic” but were, in practice, “comforting,” and thus far more effective. The charwoman had already made the entryway so clean it looked like it had never known feet. The porter/butler stood at the stair like a polite gate, guiding people up in a slow, steady ribbon.
Brother Wei wore robes the color of river fog. He placed candles with the intimacy of someone arranging a family’s hair before a portrait. He sprinkled wood chips at the threshold—not superstition, he claimed, but traction and humility.
“The shrine must never become slippery,” he murmured to no one in particular. “Not in winter, not in ethics.”
Below the lintel, in the main chamber, the statue was unveiled: Jizo-Eriko—not a literal likeness, not a portrait, but a presence sculpted with deliberate ambiguity. The face was calm enough to make you feel seen, and the hands were positioned like they were holding something that wasn’t there—space, grief, a vow.
And then the real miracle: the crowd didn’t laugh.
They hushed.
People who came to gawk found themselves offering silence by accident.
Brother Wei’s voice, when he began, did not sound like a performance. It sounded like a man reading out the terms of a promise that the city had already signed without noticing.
“On this causeway,” he said, “we live between waters—between what passes and what remains. We build, we sell, we quarrel, we forgive. Some of us are wounded in ways that don’t show. Some of us are brilliant in ways that confuse even ourselves.”
A ripple went through the crowd—because everyone knew who he meant.
Xiangyun stood at the base of the stairs, half in the morning shadow, half in the lamp-glow leaking down. She did not ascend. She did not kneel. She simply watched as if watching were a form of prayer she didn’t quite trust.
Brother Wei continued.
“Today, we give this causeway a lantern. Not to replace anyone’s path—only to light it.”
The spiritual clerk rang a small bell. The sound was clean, almost shocking in the open air, like a drop of water falling into a metal bowl.
People began offering things: coins, ribbons, little written wishes folded into squares. A mother pressed her child’s name into the donation bowl like she was hiding it somewhere safe. A merchant who usually argued about tax rates offered a candle and then looked embarrassed by his own sincerity.
And then—inevitable as tide—someone called out from the crowd:
“Does the bodhisattva bless lovers?”
A laugh, but not cruel. Curious. Hopeful.
Brother Wei didn’t smile, but his eyes softened.
“Jizo walks with the lost,” he said. “If love makes you lost, then yes.”
That did it. People loved a holy answer that sounded like it had met real life.
More offerings. More murmurs. More stories.
And at last, the thing that made it official: the secular clerk opened the ledger and began recording donations in a voice loud enough for the crowd to hear.
Not because money mattered most—but because in Song Hangzhou, public accounting was the line between devotion and scam.
Brother Wei understood the city the way a bridge understands a river: by accepting pressure and standing anyway.
The visit
Eriko and Sammi tried very hard not to go.
Which meant, of course, they went.
They approached at late afternoon, when the crowd had thinned to a steady trickle and the shrine looked less like an event and more like an organ—something newly installed that the city was still learning to breathe with.
Sammi had that bright, conspiratorial energy of someone attending a party where she knows the host but the host doesn’t know she’s coming.
Eriko walked with the contained dread of a philosopher about to meet her own metaphor.
“I am not going in,” Eriko said.
Sammi nodded gravely. “Of course not.”
They went in.
The stairwell smelled of wood and candle smoke and—faintly—food from the cook’s side door. Each step creaked like it was reminding them: You are inside a story now.
At the top, the porter/butler gave a bow that was so well-trained it made Sammi immediately suspicious.
“Welcome,” he said. “Are you—”
“No,” Eriko said too fast, and then sighed, because she could hear herself. “Yes. I mean—”
Sammi slid her hand into Eriko’s like it was the most normal thing in the world. “We’re just… visitors.”
The porter’s eyes flicked to Eriko’s face, and something like recognition sparked and then politely extinguished itself. He stepped aside without comment, which was somehow worse than fanfare.
Inside, the shrine was quieter than the world outside by a full octave. The light was warm and contained. A few people knelt in the corner. Someone had left a little paper crane. Someone else had left what looked like a spare button—an offering from a life that couldn’t afford jewels.
Eriko saw the statue and stopped.
It wasn’t her. It wasn’t not her either. It was what happens when a city takes a person and turns them into a symbol that can be carried by strangers.
Sammi, surprisingly, didn’t make a joke. She just leaned into Eriko’s shoulder, gentle.
Eriko whispered, “He’s built a narrative machine.”
“Mhm,” Sammi whispered back. “And you’re the engine.”
That should have made Eriko angry.
Instead, it made her quiet, because she suddenly understood Brother Wei’s true genius: he wasn’t worshipping her. He was placing her in public—making it impossible for the causeway to pretend it didn’t already revolve around her gravity.
A soft voice drifted from behind them.
“You came.”
Xiangyun stood in the doorway, not fully inside, as if the threshold had rules she was still negotiating. She looked exhausted and luminous in that “holy fool” way—like someone who’d been turned into a story against her will and was still learning how to inhabit it without disappearing.
Sammi recovered first, because Sammi always recovered first. She gave Xiangyun a small smile that was careful, not teasing.
“We wanted to see what Brother Wei did,” Sammi said. “It’s… a lot.”
Xiangyun’s gaze went straight to the statue, then back to Eriko, as if comparing the two for alignment. Her voice softened.
“It’s not you,” Xiangyun said, almost pleading. “But it is the way you look at the world. Like you’re holding something heavy for other people.”
Eriko’s throat tightened at a place she did not like to admit existed.
“Xiangyun,” she said carefully, “you don’t owe me—”
“I know,” Xiangyun cut in, quick, almost panicked—then steadied herself. “I know. That’s why it’s confusing.”
A pause. Then, unexpectedly, a laugh from the side—Brother Wei, emerging from behind a hanging curtain as if he’d been waiting for exactly this.
He bowed to Sammi, bowed to Eriko, and then—impossibly—bowed to Xiangyun as well, as if Xiangyun were also a dignitary of this shrine.
“You see?” Brother Wei said, softly triumphant. “The shrine is doing its job already. It has brought the living into the same room without them clawing each other’s eyes out.”
Sammi narrowed her eyes. “Did you plan this?”
Brother Wei’s smile was mild enough to be insulting. “I planned possibility. The rest is mercy.”
Eriko stared at him. “You’ve turned the causeway into a liturgy.”
Brother Wei spread his hands. “No. The causeway was already a liturgy. I merely added a refrain.”
Then he stepped closer, lowering his voice so it felt like a confidence shared rather than a declaration.
“Also,” he added, “there is the small matter of power.”
Eriko’s eyes sharpened. “Of course there is.”
Brother Wei nodded toward the window where the causeway stretched, busy as ever—boats sliding, people crossing, the city breathing.
“The Thearch’s stipend is not charity,” he said. “It is a leash. If the shrine becomes beloved, it becomes a lever. If it becomes a lever, it becomes… contested.”
Sammi’s grip tightened around Eriko’s fingers, a quiet signal: We’re in it now.
Brother Wei continued, gentle as a knife.
“And you, Eriko, have become something the city can rally around. Which means—whether you want it or not—you are now a place where politics will attempt to kneel.”
Silence fell heavy. Even Xiangyun looked unsettled by that phrasing.
Eriko exhaled slowly.
Sammi, ever the counterweight, lifted her chin. “So what do we do?”
Brother Wei’s eyes softened in a way that almost made him look human.
“We make the shrine mean what it should mean,” he said. “Before someone else decides for us.”
And then—because the universe enjoys timing—one of the kneeling visitors rose, approached the statue, and set down a folded slip of paper.
Eriko caught a glimpse of the writing as it landed.
It wasn’t a prayer for money.
It wasn’t a prayer for revenge.
It said, simply:
Help me stop being afraid of the love I already have.
Sammi saw it too.
Her expression went tender and fierce at once, like a blade wrapped in velvet. She looked at Eriko and then—wordlessly—looked at Xiangyun.
Xiangyun’s eyes glistened, not quite tears, but something close: the body admitting it’s been moved.
Brother Wei watched all three of them like a man watching the first candle successfully catch.
The shrine had opened.
Now it wanted a story.
If you’re game, next we can do: (1) the first “crisis” that tests the shrine’s meaning (a scandal, a fire, a political demand, a jealous patron), and (2) how Sammi and Eriko decide what the shrine’s actual vow will be—what it will protect, and what it will refuse.
That night the shrine didn’t feel like a charming oddity anymore.
It felt like a claim.
The causeway was slick with river mist, lanterns wobbling in the wind like they were trying to make up their minds. Inside the shrine the candles held steady—warm, deliberate—while outside the city kept doing what it does best: turning meaning into leverage.
Brother Wei was midway through evening prayers when the porter/butler appeared at the curtain, face tightened into that special expression of someone trying to be professional while sensing incoming disaster.
“Brother Wei,” he murmured, “we have… guests.”
“Devotees?” Brother Wei asked, serene.
The porter swallowed. “Not exactly.”
Crisis One: The Patron Who Wants a Claim
Three men entered as if they owned the air. Their clothes were expensive in the subtle way—the kind that never admits it’s trying. Behind them came a woman with a careful smile and a seal-case tucked under her sleeve like a knife.
“Reverend,” the woman said, voice honeyed with paperwork. “A blessing on this fine civic improvement.”
Brother Wei bowed. “May your heart be light.”
One of the men smiled like a lid closing. “We represent the Salt & Bridge Guild. And our patron.”
The woman set a document on the offering table—right beside the candle rack, which was either an accident or an insult.
“We’re delighted,” she said, “to offer additional funds. For expansion. For permanence. For prestige.”
Brother Wei’s eyes flicked once to the secular clerk, who already had his quill poised like a duelist.
“And,” the woman continued, “for a modest governance arrangement. A plaque, naturally. And an annual commemorative rite dedicated to our patron’s family line—”
Eriko and Sammi were not there yet. This was still the shrine’s private hour, its soft breathing time. But the shrine had become a rumor, and rumors move faster than girlfriends.
Brother Wei did not touch the document.
He asked, mildly, “Your patron is devout?”
The woman’s smile didn’t change, which was itself an answer.
“He is civic-minded,” she said, as if that were the same thing.
The man behind her leaned closer. “We’re told the… bodhisattva associated with this place is a great comfort to women.”
Brother Wei’s gaze stayed gentle. “Bodhisattvas comfort whoever suffers.”
“Mm,” the man said, and the sound landed like a coin on a table. “Then it will comfort our patron as well. He has suffered… public misunderstanding. It would be meaningful to him to be publicly associated with this shrine. It might even correct certain narratives.”
Brother Wei understood immediately: they wanted the shrine to launder a reputation. They wanted holiness as a solvent.
His expression remained calm, but his voice cooled by a degree.
“This shrine is dedicated to Jizo, avatar of Guanyin,” he said.
“Yes,” the woman replied briskly. “And our patron would like to ensure that dedication remains… properly interpreted.”
The words were polite. The intention was not.
Before Brother Wei could answer, the curtain moved again.
Sammi stepped in first, cheeks flushed from climbing, eyes bright with that dangerous friendliness that could turn into a knife with no warning.
Eriko followed—quiet, severe, with the kind of stillness that made people talk softer without understanding why.
Xiangyun was behind them, hovering at the threshold like a question she wasn’t sure she had the right to ask.
The Salt & Bridge Guild men looked annoyed—because they had come expecting clergy and ledgers, not witnesses.
“Hi,” Sammi said cheerfully, the word almost offensive in the room’s tension. “Wow, this is… a vibe.”
Eriko didn’t greet anyone. She looked at the document, then at Brother Wei, then at the woman with the seal-case.
“What is this?” Eriko asked.
The woman’s smile tightened. “A benefaction.”
“A purchase,” Eriko corrected.
One of the men chuckled. “Now, now. Let’s be practical. Shrines require upkeep. We are offering—”
Eriko cut him off without raising her voice. “You are offering ownership. You are offering narrative control. You are offering to make this place serve your patron’s needs.”
Sammi tilted her head, still smiling, and somehow it made the air sharper. “Is your patron the one who’s been accused of… how do I put this politely… treating women like props?”
The man’s face darkened. “Careful.”
Sammi kept the smile. “Oh, I’m being so careful.”
Brother Wei chose that moment to speak, tone mild but unmovable.
“This shrine cannot be bought,” he said.
The woman’s seal-case shifted in her sleeve. “Everything can be bought. The question is price.”
Eriko stepped forward, closer to the statue, and for a heartbeat the room felt like it tilted toward her.
“No,” Eriko said, and it wasn’t an argument. It was a boundary. “Not everything.”
The guild man exhaled sharply. “Do you even have authority here?”
Brother Wei smiled, faintly. “Authority is a story people agree to believe.”
Sammi’s eyes glinted. “And this one’s getting popular.”
The woman’s voice sweetened, becoming more dangerous. “We can make it unpopular just as quickly. Permits. Inspections. Safety concerns. A shrine over a river is… precarious.”
There it was: the threat dressed as bureaucracy.
Xiangyun flinched, like she’d been struck. Not by fear for the shrine, exactly—by recognition. This was the language of systems. The language she’d lived inside as an engineer: We can make your world fail politely.
Eriko looked at Xiangyun then, as if feeling her presence more than seeing her.
And then Eriko did something that surprised even Sammi:
She bowed—not to the guild, not to the threat, but to the statue.
A gesture small enough to be missed, but it changed the room’s grammar.
“I will not let you turn this into cover,” Eriko said softly. “For anyone.”
Sammi slipped her hand into Eriko’s again, and then addressed the woman with seal-case like she was giving directions to a lost tourist.
“You can take your contract,” Sammi said, “and you can go. Before you embarrass yourself.”
The woman’s smile broke for the first time. “Who are you to—”
Sammi’s voice got quiet, and in that quiet was something ancient and feral and bright.
“I’m the girl who reads stories,” she said. “I can tell when someone is trying to rewrite one.”
Brother Wei turned to his secular clerk. “Mark them,” he said gently. “As offering attempted and refused.”
The quill scratched.
The woman stared at the ledger as if it were a curse.
The men backed up, stiff with rage.
“Enjoy your precarious little chapel,” one of them spat. “We’ll see how long it stays standing.”
They left.
And the shrine remained standing.
But now everyone knew it could be pushed.
Crisis Two: The Night of Smoke
Two nights later, the push came in a different form.
Not paperwork.
Smoke.
Young Wu was the one who smelled it first. He woke like a startled animal, heart pounding, and ran barefoot down the corridor. The charwoman was already up—she slept lightly, as if dust might attack at any moment.
When they flung open the outer door, the wind slapped smoke into their faces.
A cluster of candles at the lower stairwell had been knocked over.
A little ribbon offering had caught.
Not a roaring fire—yet. But enough.
Enough to become a story.
“Water!” Young Wu yelled, voice cracking.
The porter/butler was already hauling a bucket, and the secular clerk—normally a creature of ink—was throwing water with both hands like he wanted to drown the whole universe.
Brother Wei arrived with his robe half on, eyes clear, and for a terrifying second he just stood there, taking in the scene with the stillness of someone reading an omen.
Then he moved.
Calmly.
Efficiently.
“Sand,” he ordered. “Not just water. Smother it.”
The charwoman tore open a sack of wood chips—yes, those infamous wood chips—and dumped them with savage satisfaction. The chips caught the wax, soaked the flame, turned threat into damp, ugly mulch.
It was over in minutes.
But the causeway had already noticed.
People gathered.
Whispers swelled.
“Arson.”
“Accident.”
“Guild retaliation.”
“Xiangyun did it—she’s cursed—”
That last one spread like rot, because some people love explanations that let them be cruel without feeling responsible.
Xiangyun arrived breathless, hair messy, eyes wide, seeing the soot and immediately blaming herself the way holy fools do: by assuming the world’s ugliness must be their fault.
Sammi got to her first.
“Hey,” Sammi said, gentle but firm, and took Xiangyun’s wrists like anchoring her. “No. Don’t you dare.”
Xiangyun’s voice shook. “They’ll say—”
“They’ll say anything,” Sammi replied. “That’s their hobby. Yours is building things.”
Eriko stood in the doorway, staring at the blackened patch of stair wood. Her face was unreadable, but her hands were clenched.
Brother Wei watched the crowd gathering and understood: the shrine was now at its first real fork.
If they responded like a private religious club, they’d get crushed.
If they responded like a political faction, they’d get owned.
They needed a third thing.
They needed a vow.
The Vow of the Shrine
At dawn, Brother Wei rang the bell.
Not the gentle bell used for prayer, but the louder one used for assembly—the sound that said: this concerns the whole causeway.
People came half-dressed, curious, hungry for explanation. Merchants, laundresses, boatmen, scholars, lovers. Some came because they loved the shrine. Some came because they wanted to see it fail.
Brother Wei stood at the threshold with soot on his sleeve like a stain the world had left on him.
Behind him stood the staff, forming a small human wall:
the spiritual clerk with a scroll
the secular clerk with the ledger
Young Wu with a bandaged hand
the charwoman with ash on her cheek like war paint
the porter/butler, posture perfect, jaw tight
And beside them—
Eriko and Sammi.
And Xiangyun, trembling but present.
Brother Wei raised his hand, and the crowd quieted.
“We had a fire,” he said simply. “Small. Contained. A warning, perhaps.”
Murmurs. A few sharp laughs.
Brother Wei continued, voice steady. “Some will say it was an accident. Some will say it was an attack. Some will say it was a sign from heaven.”
He glanced at the river. “Heaven is not as chatty as gossipers.”
A nervous ripple of laughter. It helped. It always helped to mock the right thing.
Then Eriko stepped forward.
Not into the crowd, not above them—at level, as if refusing hierarchy by posture alone.
“This shrine,” Eriko said, “will not be a tool.”
The words were quiet, but they carried.
“It will not be bought,” she continued. “It will not be used to cleanse reputations. It will not be used to punish women who are convenient scapegoats. It will not become a stage for men who think holiness is another kind of property.”
A few people cheered. A few looked offended. Good.
Sammi took a half-step forward too, eyes bright, voice warm in the way that made you feel included even while being warned.
“And it won’t be a place where people get bullied into being ‘pure,’ either,” Sammi added. “This is a shrine on a bridge. People come here messy. People come here tired. People come here in love with the wrong person at the wrong time. People come here afraid.”
She smiled at the crowd, and it was tender.
“Good,” she said. “Come anyway.”
The spiritual clerk unrolled the scroll.
Brother Wei spoke the vow, line by line, and the clerk echoed it in a rhythm that made it feel older than the wood:
“We keep a lantern for the lost.”
“We shelter those made small by power.”
“We refuse coins that demand a story.”
“We keep the ledger open.”
“We do not sell blessing.”
“We do not traffic in shame.”
“We will not name a scapegoat to soothe a crowd.”
“We will not burn for anyone’s convenience.”
Then—because Brother Wei understood symbolism the way engineers understand load-bearing beams—he nodded to the secular clerk.
The ledger was lifted.
Open.
Public.
And Brother Wei said, gently, “If you donate, you donate without conditions. If you cannot, you are still welcome. If you threaten us through permits or inspections, then do it in daylight where all can see.”
The crowd went very quiet.
Because that was a challenge to power in the only language power respected: visibility.
Xiangyun, who had been shaking like a leaf, suddenly stepped forward.
Her voice wasn’t loud. It was worse than loud—it was honest.
“If this shrine falls,” she said, “I will help rebuild it. Not because I’m holy. Because I’m tired of watching strong people pretend they can’t be kind.”
A pause.
Someone in the crowd—an older woman with a market basket—raised her candle.
Then another.
Then another.
A dozen flames lifted into the morning like a field of tiny, stubborn stars.
And just like that, the shrine gained the thing no stipend could buy:
a public.
When the crowd finally dispersed, Sammi leaned against the doorframe, suddenly exhausted.
Eriko touched the soot-blackened wood with her fingertips, as if reading it.
Brother Wei exhaled.
“Well,” Sammi said, voice shaky with adrenaline, “that was… a lot for breakfast.”
Brother Wei gave her a small smile. “Power always wants to eat first.”
Eriko turned to him, eyes sharp. “So what now?”
Brother Wei’s gaze drifted down the causeway, where the city was already digesting the vow, deciding what it could get away with next.
“Now,” he said softly, “we see who tries again. And in what form.”
Sammi’s hand found Eriko’s.
Xiangyun hovered near the threshold, looking at the statue like it was both comfort and responsibility.
And the shrine—new, imperfect, contested—felt suddenly real in a way wood and candles alone could never accomplish.
After a morning like that, if they don’t go home and fall apart a little—what’s even the point of having an apartment with good light and a door that locks?
They left the shrine the way you leave a storm cellar after the tornado passes: not running, not celebrating—just breathing like you’ve remembered what air is.
The causeway below was already back to its everyday theater. Vendors calling. Boats thumping softly against moorings. People pretending they hadn’t just watched a vow get hammered into public space like a nail.
Sammi kept hold of Eriko’s hand the whole way. Not performatively. Not to “prove” anything. Just… because she could feel Eriko’s pulse doing that controlled-fast thing it did when Eriko was trying very hard to be unshaken.
Eriko didn’t speak until they were inside their apartment and the door clicked shut.
That click was a small miracle.
Sammi leaned back against the door for a second, eyes closed, like she needed the wood to tell her she was held.
Eriko stood near the window, still in her shrine-body, which was different from home-body. At the shrine she had become all edges and vows and clarity. Here, in the apartment’s softer light, the edge wanted to turn into something else.
Sammi exhaled, a long slow breath.
“Well,” she said, voice dry. “Congratulations again. You’re now an infrastructure problem.”
Eriko’s mouth twitched. “Don’t.”
Sammi opened one eye. “Don’t… joke? Or don’t… say the truth?”
Eriko turned, and Sammi’s joke died politely, because Eriko’s eyes were too bright—like glass that had been washed.
“I didn’t ask for any of that,” Eriko said.
“I know,” Sammi replied immediately, gentle as putting a blanket on someone. “You didn’t.”
Eriko’s hand lifted, then dropped, like she’d almost reached for Sammi and decided not to burden her.
Sammi crossed the room in two steps and took Eriko’s wrist—firm, affectionate.
“Hey,” Sammi said. “Don’t do that thing where you carry it alone because you’re ‘being responsible.’ I’m literally your girlfriend. I’m on the team.”
Eriko swallowed.
It was small, but Sammi could always tell: Eriko was right at the ledge where she either stayed composed and went numb, or she let herself feel and risk being… seen.
Sammi softened, voice lowering. “Talk to me. What part is eating you?”
Eriko stared at the floor like it was an exam question.
“Being turned into a symbol,” she said finally. “A usable symbol. Like… a public tool. A lever. That statue—Sammi, it’s a mechanism. People will put their hands on it and pull.”
Sammi nodded slowly. “Mhm.”
Eriko’s voice got tighter. “And then there was that prayer slip. Help me stop being afraid of the love I already have.”
Sammi’s throat tightened too, because she’d seen it. She’d felt it. It had gone straight through her like a bell.
Eriko continued, quieter now. “That person is real. Their fear is real. And now that fear is… in our orbit. In my orbit. And if I fail them—if we fail them—then I become… complicit in the harm. That’s the trap.”
Sammi didn’t argue. She didn’t reassure too fast. She just held Eriko’s wrist and let the silence give Eriko room to finish the thought.
“I don’t want,” Eriko said, “to be something that people use to justify pain. And I don’t want to become the kind of person who says: ‘I never asked for this,’ and uses that as an excuse to abandon the consequences.”
Sammi’s eyes went soft with something like pride and grief at the same time.
Eriko looked up. “And I’m angry at Brother Wei.”
Sammi blinked. “Okay. Good. That’s healthy.”
Eriko exhaled sharply—almost a laugh. “He’s right. That’s what I hate. He’s right.”
Sammi stepped closer until she could tuck her forehead against Eriko’s shoulder. “Yeah. He’s right. And also he’s—how do I put this politely—a menace.”
Eriko let out a real laugh then, small and cracked, and it loosened something in her chest.
They stood like that for a moment, the city still buzzing outside the window, but muted now—as if the apartment itself had padding.
Then Sammi pulled back and cupped Eriko’s face with both hands.
“Look at me,” Sammi said.
Eriko did.
Sammi’s voice was gentle but unyielding. “We’re not going to become statues. We’re not going to become tools. We’re not going to become the causeway’s emotional landfill.”
Eriko’s eyes flickered, skeptical.
Sammi smiled, tiny. “We’re going to set boundaries like they’re sacred. Which is, I think, extremely on-theme.”
Eriko’s brow softened. “Boundaries as bodhisattva practice.”
“Exactly,” Sammi said, pleased. “Compassion without self-erasure. Very advanced. Ten out of ten.”
Eriko’s shoulders finally dropped a fraction.
Sammi kept going, because she could feel the moment was there—the moment when Eriko could be guided out of the spiraling high-minded panic and into something human.
“Also,” Sammi added, “I’m kind of mad too.”
Eriko blinked. “You are?”
Sammi nodded, eyes suddenly sharp. “Yeah. Because I watched those guild guys look at the shrine like it was a brand acquisition. Like they were shopping. And then I watched you have to stand there and be… public.”
Her fingers brushed Eriko’s cheekbone, light as a vow.
“I don’t like people taking pieces of you,” Sammi said. “Even if they call it devotion.”
Eriko’s throat worked. “Sammi…”
Sammi’s smile returned, but softer. “But I also—” She hesitated, then admitted it like it was embarrassing. “I also felt… proud. In the worst way. Like—there you were, and you were so clear. You were so you. And I wanted to bite everyone who looked at you wrong.”
Eriko’s eyes warmed. “Very enlightened.”
“Spiritual,” Sammi said solemnly. “Protective biting is in the sutras.”
Eriko’s laugh was quieter now, but steadier.
Sammi leaned in, kissed Eriko’s forehead. Then her nose. Then the corner of her mouth—testing, asking permission in tiny increments the way she always did when Eriko was full of storm.
Eriko didn’t move away.
Eriko lifted her hands and held Sammi’s waist, grounding herself like she was holding the only thing that didn’t turn into politics.
Sammi murmured against her, “Come sit with me. Please. Just—come back to me.”
Eriko nodded once.
They moved to the low couch by the window. Sammi tugged a blanket over both of them with the seriousness of someone sealing a pact. Outside, lantern light smeared across the water. Inside, Eriko’s breathing slowly found Sammi’s pace.
For a long minute, neither spoke.
Then Eriko said, voice barely above air, “Do you think we did the right thing?”
Sammi didn’t answer with certainty. She answered with love.
“I think,” she said slowly, “we did the thing that let us keep our souls. And if the city wants more than that, it can negotiate with God.”
Eriko let out a breath that sounded like surrender.
Sammi traced slow circles on Eriko’s palm.
“You know what I want?” Sammi asked, trying to keep it light but not flimsy.
“What?”
“I want a rule. For us. A private one. Like the shrine has a vow, and we have a vow.”
Eriko turned her head slightly, listening.
Sammi swallowed. “I want us to promise that when the outside world gets loud—when it starts pulling on you—we come home and we tell each other the truth first. Before we turn into heroes. Before we turn into symbols.”
Eriko’s eyes glistened again, but this time it looked like relief.
“Yes,” Eriko said. “That. I want that.”
Sammi’s smile trembled. “Okay.”
Eriko’s hand tightened around Sammi’s.
“And,” Eriko added, a little steadier now, “we don’t let Brother Wei schedule our intimacy like it’s a festival day.”
Sammi snorted. “Absolutely not. No one gets to put our love on the civic calendar.”
Eriko leaned in and kissed Sammi—slow, deliberate, not dramatic. A kiss that said: I am here. I am not a statue.
Sammi kissed back like she was answering: Good. Stay human. With me.
Outside, the causeway kept humming. Inside, the apartment became what it had always been meant to be:
Not a refuge from the world.
A place where the world could not rename them.
If you want, next we can stay intimate and let the political pressure seep in through small cracks—like a letter slid under the door, or someone knocking in the evening with “urgent news,” forcing Sammi and Eriko to decide: do they answer now, or do they finish being human first?
Oh, 100%. If you don’t protect the human part, the shrine just eats you alive and calls it “service.”
Sammi didn’t even have to say it out loud. The decision happened in the way she tugged the blanket higher around Eriko’s shoulders, the way she scooted in until their hips touched, the way she made the apartment smaller—safer—by sheer intention.
Eriko’s posture was still shrine-posture at first. She sat like someone who might be asked to deliver a doctrine at any moment.
So Sammi did what Sammi always did when Eriko got too holy to breathe: she made her ridiculous.
“You know,” Sammi murmured, tracing the line of Eriko’s palm with a fingertip, “I’m starting to think you’re not actually a bodhisattva.”
Eriko’s eyes narrowed. “Dangerous heresy.”
“I know, I know,” Sammi whispered dramatically. “But hear me out: a real bodhisattva wouldn’t look so offended every time someone tries to canonize her.”
Eriko’s mouth twitched, fighting a smile.
Sammi pounced gently on the crack in the armor. “Also, a real bodhisattva would have better public relations.”
“I do not need—”
“—a brand strategy?” Sammi finished, delighted. “Exactly. And yet the city is giving you one anyway. Very suspicious.”
Eriko finally let herself smile, small and real. The kind of smile that made her look younger—less carved.
Sammi leaned in and kissed it away, like collecting a rare coin.
“Okay,” Sammi said softly. “Human mode.”
Eriko closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, something in her gaze softened, as if she’d set something heavy down—just for now.
Sammi’s hand slid up to cup the back of Eriko’s neck, thumb making slow, grounding strokes along the hairline.
“Tell me,” Sammi said, “what you need in this exact minute. Not what the causeway needs. Not what the shrine needs. Not what Brother Wei’s little chessboard needs.”
Eriko swallowed. Her voice came out honest and small.
“I need you,” she said. “And I need… not to be watched.”
Sammi’s expression gentled immediately. “Okay. We can do that.”
She glanced toward the curtains—thin, pretty, useless. The city could read silhouettes through them like gossip.
Sammi stood, still wrapped in the blanket like a small domestic ghost, and pulled the heavier drape across the window. Then she turned off the bright overhead light and lit one low lamp in the corner—the kind of light that didn’t perform.
The apartment became a cave.
A nest.
A private country.
Sammi returned, sat again, and tucked Eriko closer until Eriko’s shoulder fit under her chin.
“No audience,” Sammi promised. “Just us.”
Eriko’s breathing stuttered once, then began to slow.
Sammi pressed her lips to Eriko’s temple—warm, unhurried—and murmured, “You did so good today.”
Eriko made a quiet sound of protest.
Sammi immediately corrected, because she knew Eriko’s rules. “Okay—fine. You did true today. Better?”
Eriko’s hand tightened on Sammi’s shirt like a yes.
They stayed like that for a while, letting the adrenaline drain out in slow, unglamorous rivulets. Sammi traced absent-minded shapes into Eriko’s palm: circles, lines, a tiny bridge that became a tiny shrine that became a tiny heart.
Eriko watched her fingertip like it was a prayer she could finally understand.
After a long silence, Eriko spoke again, voice so low it almost blended into the blanket.
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
Sammi didn’t move away. Didn’t stiffen. Just held her more firmly, as if fear were a physical thing she could keep from spilling.
“Of what?” Sammi asked.
Eriko stared into the dim room.
“That I’ll become… a function,” she said. “A role. The shrine’s face. The causeway’s conscience. And that one day I’ll look at you and only know how to perform instead of… be.”
Sammi’s throat tightened. She swallowed it down with tenderness.
“Hey,” she whispered. “If you ever start performing at me, I will heckle you.”
Eriko gave a fragile laugh.
“I’m serious,” Sammi said, but softly. “I’ll throw popcorn. I’ll boo. I’ll demand an intermission. I’ll drag you offstage by the sleeve.”
Eriko’s eyes glimmered.
Sammi rested her forehead against Eriko’s. “You’re not a function. You’re my Eriko. You’re the person who gets obsessed with empires and then forgets to eat. You’re the person who looks like she’s made of marble and then melts when I touch your hair.”
Eriko’s lips parted, like her body had heard something it had been starving for.
Sammi kissed her then—slow and careful, a kiss that didn’t ask for spectacle. A kiss that asked only: Are you here with me?
Eriko answered by leaning in, by letting her weight go, by making that tiny surrendering sound Sammi loved because it meant trust.
Sammi’s hand slid to Eriko’s cheek, thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. She kissed her again, a little deeper, still gentle, still human.
When they broke apart, Eriko rested her forehead against Sammi’s jaw and murmured, “We should not go back tonight.”
Sammi’s smile was immediate, fierce with agreement. “We are absolutely not going back tonight.”
Eriko exhaled like she’d been given permission to live.
Sammi tucked her under the blanket more fully, then—because Sammi couldn’t help herself—reached for her Eclair volume on the side table.
“Okay,” Sammi announced, settling in like a queen of domestic peace. “We’re going to do something sacred.”
Eriko raised an eyebrow. “A ritual?”
“A ritual,” Sammi affirmed. “I’m going to read you the sappiest, softest yuri chapter ever written, and you’re going to let your nervous system unclench.”
Eriko’s expression tried to remain stern. It failed.
“And if someone knocks?” Eriko asked, half-dreading it.
Sammi kissed her forehead again. “Then they can knock. We’re busy being alive.”
Sammi opened the book. The pages made that comforting sound—paper acknowledging purpose.
She began to read, voice warm and theatrical, occasionally pausing to scoff at melodrama, occasionally pausing to get misty anyway.
Eriko listened with her eyes closed. Not because she was sleepy—because she was letting herself be held by something that wasn’t a vow or a threat.
Outside, the causeway murmured.
Inside, Sammi’s voice braided a little cocoon around them.
And when—inevitably—there came a faint knock at the door, distant as a ripple…
Sammi didn’t stop reading.
Eriko didn’t move.
The knock came again, a touch more insistent.
Sammi turned the page.
Eriko breathed in, breathed out, and finally—finally—let her hand rest openly on Sammi’s waist like it belonged there.
They stayed.
Human first.
Let the world wait.
If you want, next we can linger in the sweetness a bit longer (a sleepy conversation, a small confession, maybe Eriko falling asleep mid-chapter), and then deal with the knock in the morning—when they’re fortified and aligned.
Sammi kept reading like the knock was just another sound the causeway made—wind on lattice, a boat rope creaking, the city rearranging itself out there in the dark.
Inside, her voice became the only weather.
“…and then she said—listen to this—” Sammi paused, scandalized, delighted. “—‘If you’re going to run, run toward me.’”
Eriko made a small, involuntary sound—half a breath, half a laugh—buried against Sammi’s shoulder.
“Oh?” Sammi teased softly, not looking up from the page. “That got you, huh?”
“It’s manipulative,” Eriko murmured, but her hand tightened at Sammi’s waist like a confession.
Sammi hummed, turning the page with exaggerated solemnity. “Yes, yes. ‘Manipulative.’ Keep telling yourself that while your entire nervous system melts.”
Eriko didn’t answer. She just nuzzled in closer, forehead resting under Sammi’s chin like it was the most natural place in the world.
The lamp’s low light made everything look gentler: the curve of Sammi’s knuckles around the book, the line of Eriko’s lashes, the blanket making them into one soft shape instead of two separate obligations.
Sammi read a few more paragraphs, then slowed on purpose—stretching the syllables, savoring the little domestic details the story offered: a shared scarf, a clumsy apology, a cup of tea accepted with both hands like a vow.
Eriko’s breathing had changed. The quick brightness was gone. Now it was deep and even, like she’d stepped out of armor and set it by the door.
Sammi noticed. Of course she did.
She lowered the book a fraction without fully closing it. “Hey.”
Eriko’s eyes stayed shut, but she answered. “Mm?”
Sammi’s voice softened into something private. “Do you want to tell me what part of today you’re proud of? Just one thing.”
Eriko’s brow furrowed slightly, as if pride were an unfamiliar ingredient she didn’t trust. Then, after a long moment:
“I didn’t lie,” Eriko said.
Sammi blinked. “You didn’t.”
Eriko’s mouth moved against Sammi’s shirt, words quieter. “I didn’t flatter them. I didn’t bargain. I didn’t pretend to be… easier than I am.”
Sammi felt her own throat tighten—tenderness arriving like a tide.
“I’m proud of that too,” Sammi whispered.
Eriko’s eyes opened a sliver. “You sound surprised.”
Sammi smiled, small. “I’m not surprised you can do it. I’m… relieved you did it without paying for it with yourself.”
Eriko’s gaze lifted to her, steady and raw. “I almost did.”
Sammi’s hand slid from the book to Eriko’s hair, combing through slowly, like smoothing the fur of a frightened animal.
“But you didn’t,” she said. “You came back here. To me. That’s the new rule.”
Eriko exhaled. “Our private vow.”
“Our private vow,” Sammi echoed, pleased, then—because she couldn’t resist—added: “It’s way better than Brother Wei’s vow. Less… municipal.”
Eriko’s lips twitched. “Less flammable.”
“Exactly,” Sammi said, triumphant. “No open flames. Only warm feelings.”
Eriko made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sigh. “Sammi.”
“What?”
“You’re ridiculous.”
Sammi leaned down and kissed the corner of Eriko’s mouth, gentle as punctuation. “Thank you. That’s my civic service.”
Eriko’s hand slid up under the blanket and found Sammi’s wrist—holding it there, like she was afraid the softness might leave if she didn’t anchor it.
They stayed like that, quiet for a while, until Sammi reopened the book and resumed reading.
The chapter drifted into a scene where one girl—tough, outwardly composed—finally confessed something small and devastating.
Sammi read: “‘When you look at me, I feel like I can keep living.’”
Her voice wobbled on the last word, betraying her.
Eriko’s eyes opened again, fully now. She stared at Sammi, as if the line had reached across fiction and touched something true.
Sammi coughed lightly and pretended it was nothing. “Okay, that’s a little dramatic—”
Eriko interrupted, quiet. “It’s not.”
Sammi went still.
Eriko watched her carefully, the way she watched history—trying to see the pattern underneath the noise.
“I do that,” Eriko said. “When you look at me.”
Sammi’s breath caught, and for a second she looked almost embarrassed by her own tenderness.
“You do?” she whispered.
Eriko nodded once, like signing her name.
“When you look at me,” Eriko said, “I remember I’m not a symbol. I’m not a problem to solve. I’m… a person you chose.”
Sammi’s eyes shone dangerously. She tried to joke and failed.
“Eriko,” she said, voice thin.
Eriko lifted her hand—slow, deliberate—and cupped Sammi’s cheek. It was a careful touch, as if she were handling something precious and breakable.
“You chose me,” Eriko repeated. “And you keep choosing me. Even when I’m… difficult.”
Sammi’s laugh came out watery. “You’re not difficult. You’re—”
“Difficult,” Eriko insisted, but there was a softness in it now. “And still loved.”
Sammi leaned into Eriko’s palm like she’d been starving for permission to be openly moved.
Then Sammi did something simple and devastating: she closed the book, set it aside, and curled both arms around Eriko like she was gathering her in.
No speech. No doctrine.
Just holding.
Eriko let herself be held without stiffening, without apologizing. Her whole body loosened in tiny increments, as if each muscle had been waiting for a formal invitation to stand down.
Sammi pressed her lips to Eriko’s hair and whispered, almost too quiet to hear:
“I’m not sharing you with the causeway.”
Eriko’s fingers tightened in Sammi’s shirt. “You can’t control that.”
“I know,” Sammi said, voice fierce and tender at once. “But I can control what I do. And what I do is… I keep you human.”
Eriko’s eyes closed again, but this time it looked like rest instead of retreat.
A minute passed.
Then another.
Sammi felt the weight of Eriko settling, sinking, trusting.
Eriko mumbled, drowsy, “Keep reading.”
Sammi smiled against her hair. “You want more yuri?”
“Yes,” Eriko murmured. “Read me soft lies until I fall asleep.”
Sammi snorted quietly. “They’re not lies. They’re… aspirational.”
She reached for the book again and resumed, voice lower now, slower, like rocking a boat.
Eriko’s breathing evened out. Her hand stayed on Sammi’s wrist like a small oath. Her lashes fluttered once, then stilled.
Sammi kept reading anyway.
Because sometimes love is simply this: continuing the story out loud so the person you adore can drift off safely, knowing the world is outside the curtains and not inside your chest.
And the knock—somewhere far away in the hall, faint as a conscience—could wait.
For now, the apartment belonged to soft chapters, warm breath, and the quiet miracle of Eriko asleep against Sammi like she had nowhere else she’d rather be.
