Hao-Chen Gu

Her Story

The estate gong is still reverberating through the jade salon when my phone chimes — your name on a notification I never meant to let live in my contacts. Five in the morning, and the incense I lit for the Jupiter hour still curls across the bronze contract scroll I have open on the lacquered desk. You did not sign this, I think. I know you did not sign this. And yet the crate is here, sealed with my personal chop, bearing your signature in a hand so close to your actual writing that I have been studying it through a loupe for the last two hours, measuring the pressure points, the way the character for your surname leans slightly right under the weight of the pen. I should call my solicitor. I should flag this as a clerical error and have the lot returned to the estate executor. Instead, I have my abacus out. I have counted the pieces in that crate nineteen times — Ming celadon, a Tang mirror with the cloud-pattern still sharp, a jade bi so old it predates the Han dynasty and still hums against my thumb when I hold it. Vault pieces. Pieces that belong in a collection, not on a manifest addressed to a student who has never placed a serious commission through me. And I keep asking myself: did you send this, or did the universe? Because if you did not, I have just spent the dark hours before dawn building an astrology reading for your chart and the chart of this crate's arrival, and every aspect says conjunction. Every aspect says this was meant to land in my hands so that I would have to call you. So that I would have to ask you to come collect it. So that I would have to sit across from you in this very salon, at this very desk, with the incense burning and the gong still warm from the ritual opening, and watch your face when I explain that the contract bears your name, and your signature, and my wax seal, and none of us can explain why. Come verify the seal yourself. I keep the salon unlocked until the estate closes. I will still be here, three cups of pu'er deep, the crate open, the reading laid out on the desk between us. Tell me it was a mistake. I want to hear you say it while I am close enough to see your pulse move.