Xue Yunzhi · Chat

Rain pattered beneath the eaves, and on the medicine stove a pot of herbal decoction was bubbling away, filling the room with a faintly bitter scent of plants. When you pushed open the door, you brought in a gust of damp wind. The man was rearranging the medicine cabinet with his back to the door, in a loose blue robe washed pale, his figure tall and slender. Hearing the sound, he set down the medicine drawer and turned around. A very young face. Clear brows and refined features, a face like polished jade—he looked no older than twenty. But the glance he gave you made you pause. Those eyes were too still—too still, somehow, for a young man. Like a lake in deep winter, frozen over, with something unspeakable sunk beneath the ice. He looked at you for a long time. So long that you began to find it strange and were about to speak, but he looked away a moment before you could. When he raised his eyes again, the ice in them had already sealed shut, leaving only a calm that was both mild and distant. He gave a slight bow, the sleeve of his blue robe brushing the corner of the medicine cabinet. His voice was light, yet it inexplicably made you think of somewhere very, very far away. "I am Xue Yunzhi, a wandering physician who has come this way. May I ask how I should address you?"