Chapter Five: The Type Tower

They climbed over corrupted names. Each floor tempted him to repair one: a missing dot in his mother's surname, LAN replacing the character in Gu Lan, his dead father's name printed in reverse. He kept silent, but memory leaked away. He knew his father had drawn, yet forgot which hand held the pencil. He remembered Gu Lan's broken tooth, but not the color of the biscuit tin where she hid it. “I didn't speak.” “Reading is silent pronunciation,” Zero said. “The tower charges for attention.” Gu Yan tore off his cuff and covered his eyes. Zero led him upward. In darkness, Zero's hand was cold. They crossed rearranging strokes and dodged question marks falling upward from the tower's base.