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English
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Why...(°ロ°) ! (pages and pages of google docs links)░(°◡°)░
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Published:
2024-07-24
Words:
797
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
10
Kudos:
93
Bookmarks:
16
Hits:
593

Radio

Summary:

“I built the radio as a… way to hold on to my old connections,” Jing Yuan admitted.
“Who are the other people I hear on it?” Dan Heng asked.

Perhaps if the mercenary cried the first time Dan Heng stabbed him, he might have recognized his voice.

Notes:

Hi everyone! I felt the itch to write gothic horror and... well, it's not horror, but I like the piecemeal vibe this came out with eventually.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Two insurmountable things set the music (rhythm) for Dan Heng’s life - the train with indeterminate destinations, and the radio with no dials. They hummed static. The passenger cabin was alight with ever-shifting accented chatter; the radio warbled monologues to no-one. (Dan Heng had broken three, off the shelf, searching for his station.) There were four voices, which he did not know but recognized, and they never spoke together. Dan Heng didn’t think they knew about each other.

 

I.

The first voice belonged to a man who seemed most at ease with hosting, Dan Heng wondered if he knew that he was airing his private thoughts to an eavesdropper. He spoke often about a life Dan Heng wished he could lead: a house, a son, a cat. Dan Heng wrote about him; to him - dear Stranger, today you shared about - as the view sped past his window. 

 

II.

She spoke only at night in stilted whispers. Her voice was so faint that Dan Heng strained his ears to hear it. It was cold where she walked, and (like him) she had no home to go to. “At the end of my journey,” she said, and then her words would be taken away by a rush of wind.

 

III.

He was always angry. His voice came in distorted, like the speakers struggled to contain his rage. Dan Heng did not like to listen to this man scream. Sometimes he cried, and once he spoke (Dan Heng heaved a sigh of relief, and took out a new page, to rewrite the two men apart). Despite that he stayed for it all, as if he held an obligation to play witness to a stranger’s mourning. But he was here, and listening. 

 

IV.

Dan Heng mistook her for the other woman on a good day. She told the same old stories and stuttered over her words. She spoke of the most places and things and names. Dan Heng wondered if they would ever run into each other in their travels. 

 

I.

It took a while for Dan Heng to connect the image of the simple working man with a radio as a diary, to the illustrious General that spearheaded his warship’s victory . He laughed at Dan Heng and took his hands, and pressed it to his own palms. Dan Heng said, “you have a pet lion ,” exasperatedly, “You - both - take afternoon naps.”

“I built the radio as a… way to hold on to my old connections,” Jing Yuan admitted.

“Who are the other people I hear on it?” Dan Heng asked.

 

IV.

Baiheng the explorer had written many books in her lifetime. Jing Yuan kept all her recordings.

 

III.

Perhaps if the mercenary cried the first time Dan Heng stabbed him, he might have recognized his voice. When he gasped with his throat under the tip of Jingliu’s blade, Dan Heng shut his eyes and pictured the rushing of the stars beneath his eyelids: a gleaming sword, a vicious smile, his sweat-drenched blankets on the floor of a cold day. 

 

II.

Jing Yuan’s Master walked an enviable path - cutting forward in her resolution. Dan Heng did not possess the same sort of conviction. Her voice trembled in the way of a ripple in the fabric of the universe that demanded gravity itself to bend to her will.

Dan Heng smashed the radio onto the floor.

 

I.

Jing Yuan’s offering of Jade Abacus transmitted only a warm pulse when pressed to the flat of Dan Heng’s palm.

“If it’s important,” He pleaded, “You’ll text, right?”

Dan Heng promised, “I’ll call.”

 

II.

In a dream he once dreamed, there was no beginning or end - just the endless chase towards an unlit sky. Dan Heng hoped the woman’s voice found what she wanted.

 

III.

If they could meet again at the end of the world, Dan Heng would like to hear his voice, without pain. A part of him wanted to apologize for leaving, as if Dan Heng hadn’t pressed his ear to the radio every night since he’d gotten it. We’ll part ways at the end of eternity. Ren wanted to die; Dan Heng wanted to live.

 

IV.

The trailblaze sang with the histories of its predecessors’ valor.

Dan Heng transcribed each tape into the archives.

 

V.

Laughter rouse him from his sleep. They were sprawled over the passenger cabin in deep philosophical discussion over the ephemeral. They beckoned him to sit among them, in his pyjamas, and the Navigator offered him a cup of her terrible coffee. Dan Heng declined - he would have been wide awake regardless with the elbows digging into his ribs - and told a bedtime story.

There was once a man, and a radio, and the glimpses into strangers’ lives; like lifeboats caught on different currents, passing under the searchlight.

Notes:

Thanks for reading!