Chapter 17:
The Empathy Curse: Hopefully My Understanding of Psychology Can Help Me in Another World
Two weeks passed in the blink of an eye, and on the day of the exam, Topaz gave Lyla the day off, leaving me alone in the shop. The silent and stale atmosphere was unbearable, even though I was normally comfortable with my thoughts. I could go up to Coyote’s room and drag her down, but she might rather run away if I pushed her too much. So, I went for a walk. To phrase it more elegantly, I was venturing out for market research.
Satisfied with my excuse, I set out to stroll the stagnant main streets. Each step gave me more confidence to take another. The guilt from playing hooky crumbled under my senses; a refreshed perspective emerged as I toured the city alone. The sunlight that brushed against my face and painted shadows from the architecture, the firm pavement I stood on; I was the only one around to claim them as my own. The occasional soldiers I came across and the figures lurking in the side streets were oblivious, swept away by the relentless rhythm of urban life. So was I.
Admiring the picturesque main street as a whole, at the assortment of buildings with slight variation in style lining up on both sides, it was foolish to say that the city was dying. Its life was owed to its creators, not the citizens that decorated the streets. The self-importance we placed on ourselves drowned out the sparkling vitality inherent in the cityscape; hollow numbers captured our attention, denouncing the value of an abandoned city.
Maybe the royal family and the other nobles should give up their pride and let the city choose its own path.
“You see it. I know you do. Someone else other than me sees it.” A subdued voice crept up from right behind me. I dived forward into a sprint, building distance from the voice. Strange sounds were most likely bad news, so it was better to escape first before checking their source.
The voice originated from a skimpily dressed woman. Her eyes were light blue, like diamonds. Azure lips pursed to emphasize her beauty; heavy eye shadow made her look insomniac. Her dark blue hair waved with her subtle head movements; its color brought to mind the deep ocean, possessing the same allure of the unknown. She presented a stereotypical image of a prostitute, but I stopped myself from labelling her as such, because first impressions could be misleading. Also, she was too clean, not a speck of dirt on her exposed skin.
“This place is wonderful,” she said. My evasive behavior didn’t alarm her, so I questioned whether she could see me at all. Her gaze swept through the manmade marvels. From her gratified face, I gathered that her vision must be intact.
“Yes, miss.” I put on my innocent face. Hopefully, that would stall her long enough for a soldier to pass by. The danger she would pose wasn’t certain, but extra caution towards suspicious strangers wouldn’t hurt.
“I found myself drifting through the main streets more often these days.” She reached into the back of her dress. My instincts urged me to take another step away, prepared for any weapon that she could wield.
The object she took out was… a fountain pen. It was so unexpected to me that I leaned closer to double-check. I didn’t have to do that, since the identity of the item was clarified when she wrote on her arm.
“What are you doing?” The shock broke through my pretense, and a genuine question spilled out.
She spared me only a glance before putting her focus back on her scribbling. “I’m writing down my feelings at the moment.”
“Can’t you memorize it?”
That query wasn’t responded to with words. Instead, she burst out in a cackle. One would assume that laughter would accentuate a person’s beauty, but her facial features warped under her straining muscles, as if she were deliberately exaggerating. Running away might be an option for me, but her peculiar response piqued my interest, and I had a feeling she was getting to her answer. Soon, she recovered to her normal state.
“Can you recite the exact words I used at the start of our conversation?” She said.
That was a question that she didn’t expect an answer to. One that left me frozen in place, not from the two extremes of illumination or confusion. Instead, a torrent of mixed emotions smashed against each other. A sense of familiarity, a tint of curiosity, a trace of unease, and a dose of caution. By the time I surfaced from my inner world, the woman was gone.
…
I returned to the store before Zeroc delivered lunch, so he didn’t catch me slacking. I didn’t tell him about the woman I met, because something else was squeezing my mind. Lyla’s exam was supposed to have ended in the morning, yet even long after lunch, there was no sign of her. She could be overjoyed at passing the exam and decide to spend the day outside celebrating. Desperate to maintain my optimism, the more likely scenario popped up in my head.
The wait for Lyla’s return stretched on as the day marched on; I felt my nerves twist into knots the more uncertainty built up. It took all of my rationality to keep out catastrophic predictions that threatened to take shape.
Night had reared its head, and Lyla finally came through the door. She had a blank, soulless expression that held back what was about to pour out of my lips. My eyes followed as she slouched across the shop to the stairs. I wasn’t sure if she even saw me.
Dinner came from Zeroc, and this time I could report both Lyla’s safety and my memorable encounter. Zeroc didn’t treat my encounter as seriously as I would like him to. He might simply chalk that woman up to be a wacko, but from talking to her, she clearly had some understanding of psychology, at least of the nature of memory. “Are you at that age already?” That was all he said to me. It wasn’t the right time to tell him anything about psychology yet, so I kept my mouth shut.
After Zeroc left, I locked the door to the shop and went up to Lyla’s room. My knocks weren’t answered. Despite that, I nudged the door open, careful not to startle Lyla. The candles in the room weren’t lit, so my foresight in bringing a handheld lantern turned out to be correct. Lyla lay on her bed like a corpse in a funeral viewing, eyes strained wider than I had ever seen them, breathing was steady but stale. I inhaled the grim atmosphere and stepped toward her. She seemed to have noticed me, but I couldn’t be sure because her eyeballs didn’t move.
“I’m sorry for coming back so late.” She muttered in a soft voice that I would imagine patches of mold would make if they could talk. Her gaze focused on the ceiling, though there was nothing there.
“Do you want to talk?” I asked.
“There is nothing to talk about,” she replied.
“Are you okay?”
“I told you, it’s nothing. Just tired.”
She opened her mouth only to respond to me. Other than that, her body was entirely still. With the lantern placed on the desk, I lay down in the same pose as Lyla on the floor, staring at the same nothing as she was.
“Do you want to listen to a story?” I asked.
“If it would help me fall asleep.”
I told her the story of the tortoise and the hare. She didn’t react much during the story, not when the hare stopped for a nap, not when the tortoise passed the hare, not when the tortoise won. From the floor, her facial expression and body language were inaccessible to me, but I imagined that there wasn’t much to see. The shadow cast by the lantern on the wall told me that much.
“What do you think about it?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Well, it is a children’s tale.”
“So, what if the tortoise won against the hare? It was a fluke; the hare is still faster.”
“Then, why do you think the tortoise raced against the hare?”
She finally sat up, albeit to glare at me. “The tortoise is stupid. She is so, so stupid. Her efforts didn’t matter. Not at all. It is all nothing.”
“What if the tortoise is racing against itself?”
“What does that even mean?”
“The tortoise wants to get faster, so it raced against the hare, not to win, but to see how it measures up against the hare.”
Lyla burst into extreme laughter, slapped the bedsheets, and squeezed a drop of tears from her eyes. “You were right; this must be a children’s tale.” She yanked her bow from her bag and hurled it across the room.
“Why am I here? Why…” She stared at her bow. “I’ve been learning archery for 40 years, and this is what I got for it? I failed in the first round. Me, an elf. I saw the looks others gave me. Contempt. Disbelief. Astonishment. I couldn’t stand it. I… couldn’t do this anymore.” Her finger traced along the bow and arrow necklaces in a jagged and harsh movement.
The star of the scene no doubt belonged to Lyla, who was fully breaking down, who was laying bare all her insecurities; meanwhile, her appeal fell flat to me, and I was glad she was too preoccupied with herself to notice the lack of any expression on my face. The silence was not intentional, and I wished for something useful to say, but my mind only locked down. Besides that one children’s tale, the standard words of comfort, and a detailed theory of emotion, I had nothing else in my arsenal.
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