An Empty Mirror

Jade pulls on the medical gauze roll with her bureaucratic rigor. She tightens the sticky fabric around my twisted index finger, trying to align frayed edges over a joint that now points east while the rest of my hand indicates north.

I look at the deviated bone like one examines a curiosity in a display case. An object resting at the end of my arm. A piece of dead wood. The cracking of the phalanx had triggered no alarms in the street, and reducing the fracture raw, a few minutes earlier, barely wrung a polite sigh out of me. The Grand Récit has hollowed me out from the root to the nerves.

She pauses.

— You should wince, at least.

Her fingers remain suspended above the wound. She awaits my reply. I search for a quip to bridge the chasm, a stupid joke about KARTIKEYA.X's doctors, a pirouette to dodge. The setup sketches itself in my throat. The script is there, the punchline too, but the warmth to deliver it is missing in action.

— That is the custom, yes.

The murmur falls flat. A tenacious silence settles in our hideout. The room is merely a rectangle of bare concrete crossed by a lukewarm draft. Jade stares at me. She scrutinizes the slit of my masque, hunting for the gleam of pain, the spark of terror of a kid who just shattered his own body to trip up machines.

There is nothing to find. Dry eyes. An empty mirror.

Notre Parade demands a monumental wager, and Uzume offers no credit. To sow Incohérence in the avenues under guardianship, so that people may regain the right to laugh, the bill must simply be paid.

Jade ties the bandage with a sharp gesture.

— Try to bend it.

I issue the command. The finger twitches under the cloth. The bone clicks.

She packs the rest of the roll into her satchel and turns away toward the gray wall.