Ch. 008| She Hears It Too

Lan Yingchen woke on his own.

No alarm. No one in the room had set one — Ge Zhiheng hadn't, either. But Lan Yingchen opened his eyes at around 06:30, just as the light outside had grown enough to see by. The drumming had stopped. Amara had probably finished her morning prayers.

Ge Zhiheng was already up, seated at the desk, writing with a brush.

Lan Yingchen lay there, looking at the eight rings carved into the beam above.

He remembered the task Acharya Devraj had given him.

Every morning, before anything else — don't look, don't listen, don't think. Stop for five minutes.

He pulled himself up and sat at the foot of the bed. Crossing his legs didn't quite work — a high-schooler had never trained for it. So he set his feet on the floor instead, hands on his knees, sitting the way he'd watched Nahid sit in class.

He closed his eyes.

---

The first minute.

Lan Yingchen could hear his own breathing. He could hear Ge Zhiheng's brush moving across the paper — very faint, like someone scratching at the finest cloth. Outside there was a little wind, and the leaves were stirring.

"Don't listen," Devraj had said.

Lan Yingchen tried not to listen. But "trying not to listen" was itself a kind of listening.

The second minute.

The breathing was still there. The brush was still there. But Lan Yingchen began to notice — inside his own heartbeat there was another, much fainter rhythm.

One beat, a pause of three seconds, then another.

Amara's drumming from last night.

Not coming from anywhere now. Amara's morning prayers were over. It was the rhythm his own heartbeat had memorized. Amara's drum hadn't left; it had followed him from last night until now.

The third minute.

Lan Yingchen tried to set down the drum inside his heartbeat.

He couldn't. But he kept sitting.

And then — he heard that voice.

The same one from last night's dream. Very faint, as though it came through a layer of water. Someone was calling his name.

Not calling it now. It was an ongoing thing — as if, somewhere in time, someone had been calling him without stop, and the act of calling never ended; it was only that most of the time Lan Yingchen wasn't listening.

The fourth minute.

Lan Yingchen kept his eyes shut, but a ring rose up in his mind.

The ring had a gap, and the gap fell between the three- and four-o'clock marks. It was the angle he'd grown used to over these eight days.

But this ring didn't appear in his "sight" — it appeared in some deeper sense of position. His eyes were closed, yet he knew where the ring was. The larger it grew, the more he felt himself being "aligned" into its center.

Like the way the bronze bell's ringing had shaken his ribs, except now there was no bell. The ringing was inside his own body.

The fifth minute.

At the desk, Ge Zhiheng shifted and set down his brush.

The motion was very slight, but enough to pull Lan Yingchen back.

He opened his eyes.

"...That's five minutes," Ge Zhiheng said.

---

Lan Yingchen didn't move at once. He sat at the foot of the bed, feeling that the ring was still there, somewhere in his mind.

"How was it?" Ge Zhiheng asked.

"...I heard that voice again."

"...I've done the Void for three years and never heard it," Ge Zhiheng said. "Tell the Acharya — he already knows you'll hear it. That's why he asked."

Lan Yingchen changed his clothes and went downstairs for breakfast.

---

08:00. The classroom in the Main Court.

The five of them sat back in yesterday's places. Devraj came in from the other side, pressed his palms together, and bowed his head. The five returned the gesture.

"Aarav," Devraj said. "Yesterday's question. Answer it again."

Aarav nodded. His posture didn't change; he closed his eyes, thought for about five seconds, then spoke.

"...This morning, what I saw was of two kinds," Aarav said. "One was this room. The other was — my grandmother."

"Your grandmother?"

"When I was washing my face, in the mirror. I saw my grandmother. She's no longer living. But her reflection was in the same mirror as me."

Aarav paused, as if working out how to add the rest in Chinese.

"My grandmother — passed away about twelve years ago. She Saw all her life. The Seeing that runs in the family, passed down to my generation. But my grandmother is still in the mirror."

Devraj didn't answer right away. He looked at Aarav for a few seconds, then nodded. "What you said today is an answer."

Lan Yingchen was startled for a moment. Yesterday Aarav had said "I've Seen since the day I was born" — a hereditary bloodline, every generation able to See — so the "grandmother in the mirror" was an extension of that inheritance. Aarav could see the reflections of his own family.

Aaliya tilted her head slightly too — as if she had a reaction to that answer. Lan Yingchen remembered what Aaliya had said yesterday: "there's a second reflection in the mirror, and the way it raises its hand doesn't match mine." The Western line used mirrors as well — but that reflection of Aaliya's, its posture didn't match hers, and it didn't seem to be a family member.

Lan Yingchen made a note of it: the mirror appears in both lines, and what each one sees is different.

---

Devraj turned to Lan Yingchen.

"Lan."

"I did the Void," Lan Yingchen said. "I heard that voice again."

Devraj didn't answer right away.

He stepped down from the stone dais and walked to Lan Yingchen's desk — the same movement as yesterday. But this time he didn't crouch. He stood, and looked at Lan Yingchen.

"What did the voice say?"

"...Just my name."

"Could you make out the timbre?"

Lan Yingchen thought about it. "...No. Like it came through a layer of water."

Devraj was silent for five seconds. He didn't explain why he'd asked about the timbre, and he didn't ask anything more.

He went back to the stone dais in the center.

"Today's task," he said to the five of them. "Tomorrow morning, the moment you finish the Void, write down what you saw, heard, felt, sensed. Don't polish it, don't rearrange it. However much there is, write that much."

He paused for half a second.

"Bring it to class tomorrow and hand it to me."

The five of them bowed their heads slightly.

"Class is over for today. Tomorrow at 08:00."

He pressed his palms together and bowed; the five returned the gesture.

---

Lan Yingchen walked out of the classroom with Ge Zhiheng.

The moment he stepped through the doorway, Lan Yingchen saw Aaliya standing on the stone steps to the left of the door, facing him.

Her senior was a little further off, as if waiting for Aaliya — but Aaliya hadn't gone. She was plainly waiting for Lan Yingchen to come out.

Lan Yingchen stopped.

Ge Zhiheng stopped too, took a small step back, and didn't interrupt. Lan Yingchen glanced at him — Ge Zhiheng's expression hadn't changed, but Lan Yingchen sensed that he, too, was surprised Aaliya would make the first move.

Aarav passed by as well, gave Lan Yingchen and Aaliya a glance, then made a very slight one-handed gesture toward Lan Yingchen — not a greeting, more like "good luck" or something of the sort. Then Aarav left with his own senior.

When Nahid passed with her senior, Nahid didn't look at Lan Yingchen, but her step slowed half a beat, as if she were "listening" to the scene.

Amara came out last, with her senior. As she passed she gave Aaliya and Lan Yingchen each a glance, nodded slightly, and kept walking.

All four pairs had gone. Only Lan Yingchen, Ge Zhiheng, Aaliya, and Aaliya's senior were left.

Aaliya spoke. She used his full name.

"Lan Yingchen."

It was the first time Aaliya had spoken to him directly. Her Chinese was better than he'd expected — no European accent, the speech of someone raised with a proper family education.

"...Mm," Lan Yingchen said.

Aaliya paused for about two seconds, as if choosing her question.

She asked:

"Last night — did you dream of a voice?"

---

Lan Yingchen was startled for a moment.

"...How did you know?"

Aaliya didn't answer. She looked at him for about three seconds, then asked again:

"It doesn't stop, does it?"

Lan Yingchen went still.

That "it doesn't stop" — he'd felt it in the Void just now, but he hadn't said it in class. Devraj hadn't asked, and he hadn't volunteered it. He'd only said "it's calling my name," and "like it came through a layer of water."

"It doesn't stop" was a detail he'd grasped only within the Void itself.

"...How did you know?" Lan Yingchen asked again, his voice softer.

Aaliya didn't answer that. She asked a different thing instead:

"Can you tell which direction it comes from?"

Lan Yingchen thought. He shut his eyes for a moment and reached back for that feeling from the Void — the voice calling his name, not from the front, not from behind, but from...

"...The left, behind me," he said.

"A fixed direction?"

"...Yes."

Aaliya didn't react at once. She looked at him for about three seconds, then bowed her head slightly — not the palms-together kind, the nod of Western manners.

"...The people of my family can hear it too," she said. "For a very long time now."

"...How long?"

Aaliya paused half a second. "...Not just my generation."

Lan Yingchen wanted to ask more, but Aaliya had already drawn the words back. She stepped half a pace away, her bearing returning to that restraint of a Western noble house.

"...Another time," she said.

"...When is another time?" Lan Yingchen asked.

Aaliya paused half a second. "...When you're ready."

"...What counts as ready?"

Aaliya didn't answer. She looked at him for about two seconds, as if recalculating something.

She said, "...When you can make out the timbre."

Lan Yingchen was startled again.

She turned and walked toward her senior. The senior nodded slightly too, and the two of them set off together toward the Western College.

---

Lan Yingchen stood where he was, not moving yet. Ge Zhiheng came up beside him.

"...She hears it too?" Lan Yingchen asked.

Ge Zhiheng watched the backs of Aaliya and her senior receding.

"...That family of Aaliya's — they hear," Ge Zhiheng said. "What she just admitted is already more than I've ever heard from any Westerner."

"...She didn't tell you, so I shouldn't either," Ge Zhiheng said. "She'll wait until you're ready."

"...Ready for what?"

Ge Zhiheng didn't answer. He started off toward the Eastern College. Lan Yingchen followed.

---

On the way back to the room, Lan Yingchen asked no questions. Ge Zhiheng didn't speak either. But when they reached the College cloister, Lan Yingchen noticed — one of the three upperclassmen in the courtyard (the one who wrote in archaic script) looked up and glanced at him.

Just a glance. No greeting, no expression. But Lan Yingchen felt that the senior knew Aaliya had just stopped him at the door.

News traveled fast in the Academy. Or maybe it wasn't "travel" at all — maybe the Academy itself simply "knew."

Back in the room, Lan Yingchen sat down at the desk and took out his paper notebook.

Devraj's assignment was "tomorrow morning, the moment you finish the Void, write it down" — tomorrow's page would be written tomorrow.

But Lan Yingchen wanted to set down first, for himself, what had happened in the Void today. Not to hand in — just to remember.

In the Void, the third minute, I heard a voice. Very faint, like through a layer of water. The voice was calling my name.

He thought for a moment, then added a line:

Aaliya hears it too.

Ge Zhiheng glanced at what Lan Yingchen had written and said nothing.

---

Lan Yingchen kept writing. When he'd finished, he put the notebook back in the pen-case slot, sat down on the bed, and turned over what Aaliya had said.

"Last night — did you dream of a voice?"

Aaliya hadn't asked at random. Her waiting for him at the door was itself a signal — she'd worked something out, and decided to ask.

Lan Yingchen thought of his grandmother's last words: don't be afraid, but don't speak of it either. Had his grandmother heard it too? He didn't know. His mother couldn't hear it — his mother didn't even remember the four characters that spelled "the Myriad Academy." In his whole family, perhaps only his grandmother and he had ever heard it. Or perhaps only him.

---

Five new students, five first mornings, each of them seeing something different. At first Lan Yingchen thought: what the four of them described all traced back to things he himself had been through.

But he thought it over again. He laid the four of them out once more: Aarav's mirror, Nahid's sand, Amara's drum, Aaliya's question. He'd taken all four as threads aimed at him. By the third time through, the feeling turned inside out — these four had been turning before he ever arrived, turning for a long time, and he'd merely walked into the middle of them.

Aaliya had been waiting at the door for the next person who could hear the voice. He was the one who happened to walk out. Nahid had heaped that sand for herself to look at; Lan Yingchen had passed by and run into it. Amara beat her drum every night, and last night she hadn't struck it one extra time for anyone. Aarav kept his record because the Indian line kept it every generation, and this generation it had reached him.

The circle had been there long before. He'd stepped in, and only then had the circle closed around him.

Lan Yingchen opened his eyes and looked at the eight rings on the beam overhead.

No one is here by chance.

---

Lan Yingchen got up, went to the wardrobe, and hung his robe properly.

If Devraj wanted him to make out the timbre clearly, and if Aaliya was waiting too — then the Void wasn't a meditation exercise. It was training to "hear" the voice that called his name. Make out the timbre, and he'd make out who.

Lan Yingchen took out the sheet he was to hand Devraj tomorrow, spread it on the desk, and wrote with a mechanical pencil:

The voice is very faint, like through a layer of water. Can't make out the timbre yet. But it's truly calling me.
Direction: the left, behind me. Fixed.
It doesn't stop.

When he'd finished, Lan Yingchen set the pencil down and looked up.

Outside, Amara's drumming had just begun — "one beat, a pause of three seconds, then another," the same rhythm as last night.

Lan Yingchen closed his eyes.

The voice that called his name was very faint, still at its original distance. But this time — the sound "Lan," together with the "one beat" of Amara's drum, overlapped once, very faintly.

Lan Yingchen opened his eyes, sat up, opened the sheet on the desk again, and added a line at the bottom:

Lined up with Amara's drum.

Ge Zhiheng's brush paused. He looked up at Lan Yingchen.

"...?"

"...The voice lined up with the drum," Lan Yingchen said. "Amara might be able to hear it too."

Ge Zhiheng thought for a moment. "...Hand it to the Acharya. Tomorrow."

【Ch. 008 End · Eastern College dormitory → the Main Court classroom → Eastern College dormitory】