CHAPTER 222
### The New Journal
The village was called Jing He.
Twenty-three families. A market that ran three days a week. A cultivation supply stall that stocked the basics.
The stall also sold notebooks.
He was at the stall buying supplies when she found the notebooks.
She picked up three.
She looked at them.
She put two back.
She held the third.
He watched this process.
"The color," he said.
"What," she said.
"Why that one," he said.
She looked at the notebook in her hand.
Dark blue cover. Medium thickness. The paper inside was slightly heavier than standard.
"The pages take ink well," she said. "The others smear slightly. This one holds the line."
He counted the notebooks on the stall shelf.
Twelve total.
He stopped at twelve.
He looked at the grey blade.
He looked at the notebook in Lin Mei's hand.
He thought about the child at the fence post.
It looks like it wants to be a different color.
Like finding a good stick.
He thought about Lin Mei standing in a market stall in Jing He choosing a journal because the pages held ink correctly.
He thought about neither and both simultaneously.
He said: "The stall keeper has the same notebook in green."
Lin Mei looked at him.
"Why are you telling me that," she said.
"I do not know," he said.
She looked at the dark blue notebook.
She looked at the stall.
She found the green one.
She held it beside the blue.
She put the green one back.
"The blue," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"The pages hold the line," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"The color does not matter," she said.
"No," he said.
She bought the blue notebook.
They walked out of the stall.
Bing Xi was waiting at the road.
She looked at the blue notebook.
She looked at Jian Yu.
"He recommended the green one," she said to Bing Xi.
Bing Xi looked at him.
"You recommended the green one," Bing Xi said.
"I mentioned it existed," he said.
"Why," Bing Xi said.
"I do not know," he said.
Bing Xi looked at the blue notebook.
She looked at the grey blade.
She looked at Jian Yu.
Something alongside the walls that had been present since Beicang intensified for approximately four seconds.
She said: "The blue was the correct choice."
"Yes," he said.
"The pages hold the line," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She walked north toward the camp.
Lin Mei looked at him.
He could not read her expression.
He looked at the road.
He committed.
He walked.
Lin Mei was beside him.
The blue notebook in her pack.
He thought about the color that did not matter and the pages that held the line.
He thought about twelve notebooks and stopping at twelve.
He thought about the counting becoming reading.
He was reading the present.
He was reading it without counting.
He read: a market in Jing He, a blue notebook with pages that held the line, Lin Mei at his left, the grey blade at his hip, the western sections in the domain, the hollow at the outer edge of twenty-three breaths, the road west, the work continuing.
He read all of it.
He was in it.
He committed.
He stayed in the between.
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