The Sacred Cathedral stands at the town’s southwest corner. To reach it, you cross a bridge, a narrow spine stitching the banks.

It’s winter. The scene has shed its colors, a different beast than the photos.

Thick black clouds seal the sky without a seam. In the dim, sullen, icy light, leafless branches jab upward like weir stakes toward the vault.

The river is near-frozen, scattering its stiffened water-voice in every direction.

Read the clouds: there’s still another burst of rain on the way.

Hedi takes Selina’s warm little palm. They walk, listening to the soft patter on the umbrella’s skin.

“Such a soothing sound.” Selina glances at Hedi, like she’s tending her mood. “I remember you don’t like rain?”

“It depends on the moment.”

“When I’m sleeping... I don’t even dare turn over.”

For Hedi, sleep is always a hard-won task.

On her side, her arm aches to a dull burn, so she can only lie flat.

Selina teases her, says she lies like a model mummy in perfect form.

Any sound—even the faintest, a distant smudge of a car horn most would ignore—can tip her calm and seed agitation.

It’s like an instruction etched into her genes. Like a Stone Age alarm at a predator’s blurred cry, sleep breaks at once without quiet. Hedi needs silence to sleep.

“Maybe I drink too much coffee,” Hedi ventures. “Or maybe I’m just nervy and frayed.”

Selina goes quiet for a beat, then asks, “Do you feel unsafe sleeping beside me?”

“I’ve been like this since childhood... but maybe it’s unease too...”

“How could that be?” Selina looks hurt. “I actually make you feel unsafe!”

“Heh. Whatever you do while I’m asleep, I know.”

“So you knew.”

“First, no one fully drops their senses in sleep. Second, my body—”

Hedi shakes her head and goes quiet.

Selina can guess what she means, a sensitive topic hovering.

The Professor is the sensitive type, through and through.

If you drew circles by how hard people respond to pleasure, she’s in the ring that spikes the most.

The Professor knows it. She couldn’t not know. There’s no universe where she doesn’t.

So once, after, while cooling down, she admitted she’d tried things that deliver extra stimulus.

Selina asked for details. Hedi just mumbled, “I bumped a table corner by accident,” and let the topic die.

“What are you smiling at?” Hedi sees Selina sunk in memory. “Our destination is a cemetery.”

“Ah... just thinking of the old days.”

“What makes you so happy?”

“It’s not anything specific. I’m happy because you trust me, because you’ll tell me anything.”

Hedi doesn’t answer. She drinks in the scenery and walks toward the far bank.

Rain pools in the road’s pits, little mirrors. Vegetables in the fields tremble like timid soldiers. The river runs clear and murmuring, all glass and thread. Even the rain-soaked roofs catch her eye, dark tiles gleaming.

Everything seems to drink a brief warmth from the winter cascade, then send that soft heat into every limb.

The cloud lid doesn’t feel oppressive today. It feels intimate, like soft hands cupping the town’s heaven and earth.

Now and then, a couple of small birds dart for shelter. Pale yellow wings flash as they charge the rain curtain in vain. Or they stare, poor-eyed, at drops plunging like beads.

They walk on a bit and turn into a side path to the right.

The road is thin as a thread, easy to miss if you don’t look.

No fields here. Only tall, dense wild grass, like a deliberate screen between the Sacred Cathedral and the way.

The grass-lane yields to a gentle slope, then becomes a proper stone stair.

The grade dips; the cylindrical Sacred Cathedral stands there like a pillar in rain.

Beyond, a black forest heaves like an ocean toward the sky.

“Don’t worry,” Selina feels Hedi tense, “we’re only visiting the Priest and Sister Bertha who raised you.”

“What’s there to worry about? They won’t climb out of their coffins.”

“When you put it like that—”

“Come on.”

Hedi slips past the Sacred Cathedral without a glance, eyes fixed on the cemetery behind.

Through the brass gate, the rain-swept cemetery is bleak. A few figures stand scattered, all under black umbrellas, mourning souls gone back to heaven.

“You okay?” Selina looks at Hedi with worry and brushes a wet strand from her lip. “If you don’t want to walk, I can carry you.”

Hedi stands before the gate, unable to take a step for a long time. Images of the Priest and Sister Bertha surge in like tide after tide, pushing her thoughts someplace strange.

There, death isn’t a decisive clause welded to life. There, death is just one element among many that make life. There, death is only a parallel line that slips away from life.

“Professor...” Selina strokes Hedi’s head.

Hedi turns back suddenly, her steps feather-light, like soles on shredded newspaper.

“You’re not going in?”

“A look is enough. It isn’t important in itself.”

“Liar. You came back, which means—”

Hedi glares at Selina, and she swallows the rest. Then she softens her tone, trying to ease the air: “I haven’t been back in six years.” “This time I just happened to feel like it, really... nothing special...”

“I don’t buy it!”

“Are you truly that troublesome a woman?”

“Do you prefer someone obedient and docile?”

“Not exactly...”

Hedi can’t find a neat line. She tells Selina to buy the return tickets. It’s just past eleven. No need to rush checkout. We’ll eat, rest till two, then take the bus out.

Selina heads to the ticket office; Hedi waits on a platform bench.

The clerk looks helpless. “Heavy rain caused a landslide. The road’s blocked. No one can get out.”

“How long exactly?” Selina asks fast.

“Hard to say... But it won’t be today.”

“Alright.”

Selina returns to Hedi, repeats the exchange, then says, “We can’t leave today.”

“Mm.”

“You look so calm. Still thinking about the cemetery?”

“No. It’s just... you can’t vent on staff. It’s not their fault.”

“Maybe it’s a chance from the gods, nudging you to go again.”

“It’s just rows of headstones—fine, we’ll go once, so you stop nagging.”

Selina mutters, barely audible: “You’re the fussy troublesome one...”