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...It's autumn.
The hawthorns have sweetened around this time. The children most loved eating hawthorn fruits.
......
...It's another day.
How much life do I still have left?
When I shut my eyes, I remember so many things of the past...
...and all night, I'm sleepless.
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...Dusk?
Why are you here...?
You don't seem shocked at all.
Living to this age, the things that shock you, dwindle fast... *cough*, *cough*. But talking to you about this... it all pales in comparison.
We haven't seen each other... for how many years?
I can't remember. Likely decades.
...You really are Dusk.
You still remember me.
How do you know you're not in one of my paintings, with the life you've lived?
I couldn't be.
Are you that sure?
Dusk, you saved me, and I lived in your paintings for such a long time... I can tell it apart.
*cough*, *cough*...
This is the bet we made. Whether there'd come a day I'd see through your paintings at a glance, through your worlds, and through you.
But ever since we parted that day, you never saw me again... I'd thought I'd never have another chance... to talk with you again.
...Those who can talk with me like this... are few in the first place.
...For such a long time, I've thought back again and again on those days. That pavilion... far from Catastrophes, famine, refuge. A normal pavilion.
It was just like a dream... *cough*, *cough*.
I believed you'd be quite a good painter. All your life, you never actually took up the brush. Wasn't that such a waste of my teaching?
Painter. A painter, a great painter. After meeting you, who could still call themselves a painter?
There've been a seldom few. All of them were... strange people.
...Then I really have disappointed you.
Who knows.
Just maybe... you surprised me more than anyone else.
......
......
Meeting again after so many years... it's like we don't have much to say. I'm so old and worn. I've finished this life of mine. And you... you're still the same you as ever.
Do you have anything you'd like to talk about?
No... I'm... very content.
You saved me. You gave me the chance to keep living... and even here on my deathbed, you've come.
I'm so gratified, Dusk, to see you... still looking like this.
Your eyes...
I'm very old, Dusk. Illness has tormented me for so many years...
I somehow want to ask you now... watching the people you know die one by one, do you ever feel lonely?
What kind of nonsense is that?
Then what goes through your mind?
Sometimes, I'll feel sorry. Sometimes, I'll feel rueful too.
Look at you... finally willing to speak the truth.
Do you still remember what I told you, about my hometown utterly ruined by Catastrophe?
It's already far, too far away to try and remember now... it's the reflection in my memories. It isn't behind me anymore. They're a distant place in front of me...
......
I... I never took up my own brush.
Because if I ever tried in my life to paint, I would only paint... *cough*, *cough*, my hometown.
You clearly can't remember anything of it.
That's right. Even if I cast my mind back... apart from the single name of 'P'o-shan Village,' I wouldn't remember a single thing.
It doesn't have much in the way of good memories, but I always end up dreaming of it. Dreaming of so many... homelands. Tell me. In all this lifetime, where is it I've wanted to return?
......
Dusk.
Hmm?
Could you help me... paint that P'o-shan Village?
I only remember... next to my house, was a pawn shop. Its bookkeeper... wore such beautiful clothes, so gentle and elegant. When I was young, I thought... I'd like to be a bookkeeper too.
The village didn't have any of those strange moving plates. It was farm fields and gathering places growing unrestrained, and wherever they were made, people would be. Just like oilseed flowers...
If you wandered a little too far, you'd see a distant mountain...
That mountain... I always got lost there in my dreams. There were terrible monsters there... Catastrophe clouds, floating around its peak... that's the landscape I can remember most clearly.
Without me saying much more, you have a sense of it too, don't you?
Of course. Not a single part missing.
How I wish the years could've stayed where I was young. Us, living on the mountains. Me, learning to paint from you, helping you sometimes to grind the ink...
......
Dusk.
Mm.
You've met so many oddities. Seen so many changes in the land...
Tell me your view, for me. Would you say... *cough*, *cough*.
Would you say I lived... a blessed life?
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......
Yo. You're up?
Rhodes Island.
I've come to understand... why you wanted to bring me here.
...There's all of these people.
Wanna go for mahjong? We're missing a fourth.
You... you get out of here. I'm not going.
Hey, you were all pumped to watch movies last night and now you've gone cold kiddo mode again?
It's no big deal to like movies. I've got a jumbo collection here.
What even are all those? Churned-out cut-and-paste covers, completely meaningless long names, and just watching makes you fed up. Get rid of them!
How could you say that!?
I've seen no shortage of operation archives. What kind of person is this Doctor?
Oh? You sneaked them out? Didn't set Closure off?
You mean that young devil? She didn't mind me. I went there directly.
Wha... why would... is she just aiming at me?
Rhodes Island.
What relationship does the Censor have with Rhodes Island?
That's another thing entirely. It's no problem, so don't get worked up. Leizi's a down-and-out exile, and she doesn't ever even come to Rhodes Island.
You mind her that much? Were officials out there hassling you?
Hmph. I don't pay mind to that little Censor, but I care about where her Lei Fa originates from... her master, and those elders always watching over us, are no end of trouble.
You say I was bound in my own circle? He burnt scrolls outright, set thorough fire to the mountains and rivers before my eyes, bent on teaching me a lesson. I'm not like you. You get someone constantly berating you and it never dawns on you that you're bugging them.
I annoyed him. Annoyed him to the point I could die. There's nothing I can do with him.
Ho ho, some pretty wild stuff went down, huh?
You still haven't told me. What kind of person is this Doctor, and that Kal'tsit? What does you staying here have to do with the two of them?
Also, where are they currently?
Alrighty. I'll tell you everything.
And this way you'll learn... why I like this place so much.
