CHAPTER 185
### The Grey Journal
She showed it to him on the ninth day.
Not at the camp. Not at the fire.
On the road.
She pulled it from her bag while walking and held it out.
He took it.
It was small. Grey cover. Fifty pages. The handwriting was different from her documentation — smaller, less organized, the specific handwriting of someone writing for themselves.
"Read the last page first," she said.
He looked at her.
"The thirty pages," she said. "You read the last page first because I asked."
"Yes," he said.
"The grey journal," she said. "The last page first."
He turned to the last page.
She had written:
*He cannot read my expression in real time.*
*He has known this for fourteen months and he has not tried to fix it.*
*Most people try to fix the things they cannot do. He catalogs them and works around them and uses the catalog to understand what he missed after the fact.*
*I used to think this was a limitation.*
*I now understand it is the mechanism.*
*Someone who read my expression in real time would have responded to what they read. He cannot read my expression so he responds to what I say. To what I do. To what I write.*
*He responds to what is actually there rather than what he thinks is there.*
*This is more accurate than reading the expression.*
*The sword chose someone who cannot read emotions in real time because someone who reads emotions in real time would have been trying to manage the emotion instead of receiving what it was.*
*The emotion being: the other half of what the sword waited for has been at his left for fourteen months and is still there and intends to remain there.*
*He cannot read that in my expression.*
*He can read it in the grey journal.*
*That is why I wrote it.*
He held the journal.
He read the last page twice.
He looked at the road ahead.
He thought about fourteen months of being unable to read Lin Mei's expression in real time and reviewing the archive of her expressions after the fact.
He thought about the grey journal.
He thought about intends to remain there.
He committed.
He did not count anything.
He looked at Lin Mei.
She was looking at the road.
She felt him looking.
She looked back.
He held out the journal.
She took it.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him.
He could not read her expression.
He did not need to.
"Yes," she said.
They walked west.
The road continued.
The domain extended.
Eighteen breaths.
Still the between.
Always the between.
The neither and both simultaneously.
Don't waste it.
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