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Part 12
Page 15
Cao Meizhu saw them
coming up the road. She didn't go to greet them.
At the moment, it didn't feel like her role to say
anything. And she wasn't sure if now was the time to head after them.
She sat back on her motorbike, helmet in her lap
in the shadow of a hutong alleyway, right before the hill to hit the high
streets. She watched them approach, suitcases and bags between them. Traveling
light, overall. Not much to carry with them.
She knew, eventually, she might have to go to them.
The feeling was right. Even if she wasn't drawn in to them as tight as
they were to each other. Part of who she was was admiring what they looked
like from afar. Their hands linked without realizing it, dragging their
girl up the hill and threatening to carry her if she kept putting up a
fuss. Swinging hands and singing. An old labor man's song, lodged somewhere
at the base of street memory and rising up with the beat of their steps.
Walking north. Maybe east. Maybe west. Somewhere other than here.
They were gone as quickly as they'd come, disappeared
up into the crowd of the market streets. Her little brother and his family.
They were their own now, only belonging to themselves.
And if it stayed that way, she'd have no complaints. It always did come
back to the four of them, and she knew her own place. It would help if
the rest of the world could hurry up and figure out theirs.
She was sure she'd follow after someday. She knew
it'd come to that eventually. Didn't really know why. And of course she
couldn't say they'd even be there for her to find. Nothing was certain.
Tomorrow was a big unknown. The future might hold anything.
But it would be their future. And that was
something she'd like to see.
The end.
Except not really.
finished at: 06:24, 18 August 2005.
K.A. Rose
Craptor Productions
No youkai, reincarnates, or troubled teenage hearts were harmed in the making of this fanfic.
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