The first step was slick enough to nearly send her sprawling. Rain ran in sheets down the stone risers, each groove worn shallow by centuries of knees and heels. The staircase climbed into mist, flanked on both sides by ranks of Buddhas in peeling gold. They were all different: some smiling benign, some sneering, some with hands raised in frozen lectures. Their faces had warped in the typhoon, streaked with grime, and in the dim light they looked like a thousand drunks gossiping about her ascent.
Iris hooked her boot on the next step. The lacquered box pressed into her ribs, warm even through the canvas. The kitten wriggled, thrust his nose out, and sneezed again. Violet sparks pricked the drizzle. Three Buddhas caught the light and seemed to grin wider.
"Knock it off," Iris muttered. "If they start moving, I'm rolling you down the hill."
By fifty steps her thighs burned. By a hundred, her jacket clung with sweat under the drizzle. By two hundred, she swore some of the statues were leaning closer, their painted eyes slick as though tracking her.
A pair of aunties passed her coming down. Their ponchos flapped, their umbrellas dripped. One glanced at the cat head poking out of the backpack, hissed under her breath in Cantonese: "Animals don't belong here." Her friend tugged her elbow, hurried her along. Neither looked back.
Iris grinned around the violet stick clamped between her teeth. "Guess I'll leave him at the altar then."
The kitten purred louder, claws flexing in rhythm with her climb. Sparks tickled her hip through the canvas.
The air thickened with incense the higher she went. Even the storm hadn't drowned it. Sandalwood, mold, coppery ash.
At the top, the stair spat her into a courtyard ringed with gilt figures. The monastery loomed against the hill, its facade studded with niches, each one holding a Buddha barely the size of her hand. Ten thousand of them, glittering wet, endless. The effect was claustrophobic — repetition crushing her in gold.
The place was quieter than she'd expected. No crowds, just the storm's leftovers: wet banners sagging, tiles cracked, braziers drowned and relit. A few monks moved through the drizzle with brushes, repainting ward-lines along the walls. Vermilion bled into rain and ran down in streaks, fizzing faint where it touched the circuitry of the AR boards.
One caretaker noticed her. His robes clung dark, scalp shining with water. He didn't greet her, didn't ask who she was. Just held out both hands.
Iris unzipped her backpack just enough, slid the lacquered box into his palms. It thudded heavier than it should have. He bowed shallow, muttered thanks, and carried it into the shadows of the hall without another word.
Her AR blinked. Delivery complete.
"That's it?" Iris called after him. "No receipt? No well done, you didn't drop it?"
He didn't look back.
She spat the last of her smoke into a puddle, watched it hiss out. The courtyard was empty except for monks sweeping water off stone with straw brooms. The Buddhas stared from every direction, endless, smug. The backpack purred behind her back, kitten smugger still.
"Yeah, yeah," Iris muttered. "Job done. Let's get out before they decide to pay me in enlightenment."
She turned toward the stairs.
The job was done, money transferred, logic said leave. But the climb had its gravity, and the courtyard was thick with incense even after the storm. Iris found herself drawn sideways toward the line of brass bowls under the awning. They sat fat with stormwater, drowned ash slick against their rims. Bundles of joss sticks leaned in a crate beside them, warped but still dry at the tips.
She told herself it was muscle memory, not faith. Rituals were like smokes — you didn't need belief for the habit to stick.
She struck a match, lit three. They hissed, spat orange, then steadied. She jammed them into the wet ash. Smoke lifted sharp into the drizzle, cut sideways by the wind.
"For the drowned," she muttered. "They lowballed the number."
Another three. Flame licked fast, smoke clung. She planted them crooked. "For Cho. For a roof that shouldn't leak."
The last three she almost left. Then the backpack wriggled. A sharp mewl leaked out, impatient. Iris sighed, struck another match, lit them.
"For the kid," she said. "Not that you need it."
One ember spat violet. She saw it, no one else did.
She leaned against a post, violet stick between her teeth, watching the offerings gutter against drizzle. The courtyard smelled like sandalwood drowned in mold, like ash soaked through copper. Monks swept water from the stones with straw brooms that whispered against tile. Somewhere deeper a bell tolled, hollow as lungs.
She turned for the stair.
That was when she saw him.
A monk sat cross-legged under the awning by the gate. Still as stone. Robe patched, face scored deep as weathered wood. His eyes were filmed white, blind. He hadn't moved through monkeys or rain. But his head tilted now, angled toward Iris, like he was listening to something alive.
His hand rose, trembled in the air, fingers spread.
The backpack wriggled. The kitten nosed out again, saw the monk, and purred like a small engine shaking itself free.
The monk smiled faint, voice thin as drizzle.
"Blessed be Wuyǎlóng, the Crow Dragon."
The syllables drifted, not sermon, not chant. Just certainty, as though he'd known the name before she climbed the first stair.
The kitten sneezed a spark into his outstretched hand, then curled back in, purr deep as thunder in cloth.
Iris stood a moment, smoke glowing violet at her lip. "Wulong, huh?" she said finally, sharp through her teeth. "Yeah. Works well for a kid."
She nodded once, and passed him. He did not turn his head. His hand lowered, slow, as if the weight had left it.
The stairway yawned below, slick and endless. Buddhas lined both sides, wet eyes bright, grins sharp. She descended with smoke in her lungs and purring at her hip.
Every statue seemed wider-mouthed when she glanced.
At the base, the banyan loomed, roots tangled into stone. She swung onto the bike, throttled forward, drizzle needling her visor.
"Just wanted my smokes," she told the road.
The backpack purred like it didn't believe her.