“Have you considered that there is something broken inside you?”

  There was a broken Spirit sea inside him, but Rali knew the sage meant more than the literal kind of broken. And less than that, too.

  “I have, Great Sage,” he replied. His eyes were closed, his consciousness staring into the void of himself. But what did he see? “For years before I broke my Ten covenant, I considered the possibility that I was broken. It was a constant fight not to be swallowed by my pride and ambition. For my twin, ambition is the fuel that drives her to create greater and greater Spirit apparatuses. But for me, it has always been a fuel to burn my connections with others.”

  The sage hmmed. “Have you considered that there is something broken inside all of us?”

  Rali grinned. “Yes, Great Sage. But what easier conclusion can there be than that everyone is broken?”

  “Have you considered that easy and hard, conclusion and question, self and other, are illusions? That all is one. Others are self. Hard is easy. Questions are conclusion.”

  Now they were really getting to the good stuff. This was the treasure trove. If his Spirit sea were whole, Rali would be cultivating Warm Heart Spirit like crazy right then.

  And he would have just lost it, thinking like that. Like Spirit was something to be grasped and piled up and hoarded. A status symbol. A bragging point. A way to divide the worthies from the unworthies.

  Rali returned himself to the present moment, which could have been an illusion in itself. If there was no past, no present, and no future, then there were no moments.

  “What do you seek, my son?” the sage asked.

  “Bugs!” Sushi chirped.

  The little fish’s voice brought back the blare of vehicle horns, the stink of exhaust and garbage, the sweaty heat of the stone wall against Rali’s back and the concrete beneath him, the solidity of the walking stick across his legs. Scorching light battered the backs of his eyelids from Sarca’s single yellow sun.

  Rali fought it. He wasn’t ready to emerge from meditation yet.

  “I seek hakkeyoi, Great Sage.”

  “Hakkeyoi?” the sage mused. “The enlightenment at the end of all cultivation. The truth of Spirit and the spirit of Truth. But Truth is an illusion. Spirit is an illusion. So must hakkeyoi also be an illusion. What then do you truly seek, my son?”

  “Enlightenment.”

  A carapace crunched close to Rali’s ear. “Sushi eats bugs. Sushi is useful.”

  “There it is, enlightenment in a fish.” The sage cackled. “Hopping bugs. Crunchy bugs. Juicy bugs. Enlightenment. Is. Bugs.”

  Grinning, Rali let himself drift back to the trash-strewn alley. It was empty except for him, the little purple and white fish, and a smelly mountain of garbage bags. The emaciated beggar Rali had sat down with however long ago was gone now. Or maybe the old man had never been there to begin with. Maybe the alley wasn’t, either.

  Sushi swam into Rali’s loosely resting hand, wiggling until he started petting her. After meditating so deeply for so long, her variegated scales and flowing fins radiated against the grimy gray city backdrop. Her mismatched eyes were universes unto themselves, one primeval blue, the other infinite brown, as bright as if they could prove the existence of matter by sheer intensity of color.

  “All right.” Rali stood up and dusted off the seat of his shorts. “No more questioning whether all of life is just an illusion for today. Let’s go forward with the thinking that if this is real, we need to find something to eat, and if it’s not, we’ll at least enjoy the figment of something tasty and a fully belly in this dream we call reality.”

  “Rali hunts bugs with Sushi?” she asked, swimming up to his eye level. Her long fins waved gracefully along in a nonexistent current.

  “Rali hunts hakkeyoi and the Beggar Clan and food with less exoskeleton still attached, but he’ll accompany Sushi while she hunts bugs.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Content with that, the little fish wiggled her tail, and they set off into the city.

  Which city, Rali didn’t know. That beggar hadn’t known its name, either, even though he claimed to have lived there all his life. Maybe that was a sign the beggar hadn’t actually been a sage. If he had been one, Rali thought he would have mentioned that the city didn’t need a name because it wasn’t really there, and neither was he.

  Rali stopped at a fruit stand. “Excuse me, honored grandmother. Where am I?”

  The proprietor was a stooped, six-armed old woman in sweat-stained jinbei printed with flowers. She used the handle of her fly-whisk to scratch between the toes a gnarled brown foot.

  “Laitrong,” she spat.

  “I see.” Rali looked up, trying to judge the angle of the sun without knowing what that angle indicated. He’d never been good with directions. Kest used to deal with that. Metalheads always knew which way was which. “What part of Sarca does that make this?”

  “The top. Buy a fruit or go away.”

  “I don’t have a HUD or physical fiat currency, but I could barter with you, some fruit for some work. Do you need anything heavy carried somewhere? Or perhaps you’d like to do some guided meditation on your Spirit type?”

  She pointed her whisk to a hand-written sign. “No mooching gurus. Go away.”

  Rali bowed to her. “Thank you, honored grandmother.”

  Sushi stuck out her tongue at the old woman, then followed him down the street.

  It had been two months since Rali had left his twin and his friends. Well, one friend and one former friend. Still no luck finding hakkeyoi or the Beggar Clan, which was a little disheartening and a little funny. He was looking for two mythical things that couldn’t be found, and he was doing it by wandering from place to place. In theory, he would’ve been just as likely to find them in that field outside the dead Technol encampment.

  In practice, Rali had left that silenced grave behind as quickly as possible. He tried not to form attachments, but he couldn’t help it when it came to sentient life forms. Something inside him craved the connection of one consciousness to another, the sharing of warm emotions, the transfer of ideas. If this life truly existed, then that was the heart of it. So much possibility and connection had been destroyed at that Technol camp that it hurt to think about. It hurt worse knowing such finality had been wrought by his former best friend.

  He shoved the dark memories away.

  The top of Sarca… He and Sushi must still be in the northern half. They hadn’t crossed any of the planet’s freshwater seas, so obviously they hadn’t accidentally wandered onto another continent, either. The haze of smog stretched far beyond the skyscraper tops that he could see, which suggested that there was plenty of Laitrong left to search.

  His stomach rumbled.

  “Rali hungry?” Sushi asked.

  “Very.”

  “Rali not worry. Sushi brings Rali bugs.”

  The little fish zipped down to skim the concrete, her two-tone gaze scouring for prey.

  “Someone who believes in the barter system would also be a welcome discovery,” Rali told her.

  While they had trekked through the jungle, he and Sushi had survived on fresh caught fish and ripe fruit. Except for the lack of salt and spices, it was a gourmand’s paradise. Since arriving in the city a few days ago, they had mostly survived by picking through the garbage in alleyways behind restaurants.

  Down low, Sushi pounced on a fifteen-legged cricket.

  “Wait, don’t eat that one!”

  Rali snatched the eager little fish before she crunched through the insect’s exoskeleton. Gently, he pried Sushi’s mouth open. She growled, but a couple shakes forced her to drop the cricket.

  The many-legged insect hit the ground and scrabbled into a crack in the side of a building.

  Yelling angry fish sounds, Sushi wriggled out of Rali’s hand and darted after it. She was too big to fit in the crack.

  “Apologies, Sushi,” Rali said, “but in the sword legends, the fifteen-legged ones are lucky. By letting him go, we might have gained an unforeseen blessing.”

  “Sushi not eats blessing, Rali! Sushi eats bugs!”

  The wind shifted, bringing with it a sweet, familiar, fried scent. Rali’s mouth watered.

  “Let’s go this way.” He pointed his walking stick upwind. “I promise you’ll forgive me when you’ve tasted fried mochi.”

  Three hands touched Rali’s arm.

  “Excuse me.” It was a young man about Rali’s age garbed in fine silks. A ruby nose stud sparkled in his nostril, and he had dozens of rings and golden bangles sprinkled across his three pairs of hands. “Did I overhear that fruit vendor calling you a guru?”

  “If you were in earshot, you did.” Rali leaned his walking stick against his shoulder and bowed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, new friend. I’m not sure I deserve the title of guru, but I do have alternative ways of approaching kishotenketsu that have aided me more than the standard corporate idea of cultivating.”

  Sushi was entranced by all the sparkling jewelry. She swam from one glittery piece to the next, chasing after the flashing sunlight.

  The young master pushed her back when she floated too close to his nose ring.

  “And you’re a wandering ascetic?” he asked.

  Rali shrugged. “Wandering by choice, ascetic by current circumstance. I don’t put any value on worldly possessions and comforts, but I do prefer to stay well-fed when I can.”

  The young master’s face split into a grin. “You’re exactly the kind of teacher I’m looking for! I’ve reached something of a plateau in my Sho, and I’m willing to do anything to overcome it except sell everything I own and become a starving beggar. There’s as much fried mochi and anything else you can eat in it for you if you’ll spare an evening to talk me through this.”

  “See, Sushi?” Rali plucked the little fish back from biting at an emerald charm dangling from one of the young master’s bracelets. “Blessings from our cricket friend are already showing up. And as luck would have it, we can eat them.”