The Cosplay Cultivator

"I uh," Tang Ze began. It was a bit of a sour topic for him to discuss those events, and again, in this world, he had wanted to leave that stuff behind. He had not told anyone this - but despite his attempts to bury the story deep inside him and the feelings associated with it, it had not gone away. The fact that he still had nightmares about it nearly every day, just like back on Earth was proof that ignoring it hadn't made the problem go away. Changing worlds had not changed things as much as he'd have hoped. He hadn't seen a reason to tell anyone else regardless because it would just lead to a hundred more questions like where he came from, which were questions he was hesitant about answering. But to Xian Yue, who already knew he came from another world - maybe this was a good chance to get things off his chest? He couldn't see it hurting at least. "Well, back on Earth, two years before I came here, I was in charge of babysitting my younger brother over the weekend. During that time - I used to be really into making costumes, you know, like the other ones I make here."

Xian Yue nodded. Even she had no idea why Tang Ze had this strange talent when he came to this world - she had never heard of anything like it before. She could only assume it had been a strong desire within him back on Earth which had somehow manifested when he transmigrated across worlds.

"And so that weekend, there was a convention, where well, a lot of people like me came to dress up and I guess just have fun," Tang Ze continued. "I wanted to go, and my parents basically told me to take him with me since I was supposed to be taking care of him. I agreed, and he complained throughout the way, but he still came along. Only…" His voice cracked for a moment. Talking about it was harder than he had anticipated. He had tried to shove his feelings away much like someone would try to clean their room by shoving everything underneath their bed - in other words, it hadn't worked very well.

The memory of the two of them walking down the street, while he suddenly saw the crowd in front of them part as he saw the glint of steel to which he reacted far too late…

He could remember it as if it had happened yesterday. His brother had looked quite annoyed at the time - he probably would've preferred to stay at home watching television or playing video games, but Tang Ze had been planning to attend this convention for quite some time. He had protested to his parents about this, and they had basically told him, "Take him along with you." Neither of them had been too happy about that - but though his younger brother grumbled about it, he still went along with Tang Ze.

'If only I'd stayed home that day,' - Tang Ze thought for what felt like the millionth time. Maybe then he wouldn't be here, in this place, and the two of them would still be playing video game back home.

"Well, some lunatic in the crowd decided that it was a good day to go on a killing spree. He had a knife with him, and ended up stabbing my brother. He uh, didn't make it." Tang Ze licked his lips. "I uh… have dreamt of that day a lot. Wondering why, you know, I didn't just push him aside or step in front of him. Or if I had just decided to not go to that convention that day…"

The vivid image of his brother's blood on his hands and clothes came once again, along with the feeling of helplessness and despair as he watched hid brother bleed out on the pavement returned in full force at that moment.

Tang Ze had to move away from the dress, otherwise his tears threatened to fall on the fabric, potentially ruining it. 'Damn it - I really am pathetic, breaking down like this,' - he thought to himself as he attempted to compose himself.

Xian Yue was silent. She could tell that this was not easy for Tang Ze to talk about, though she wasn't sure how to comfort him.

Xian Yue had spent the better part of her lifetimes isolating herself from human contact whenever possible, though never to the extent that she had right now.

Still, she had experienced and seen so much hardship, pain, and suffering, that what Tang Ze was describing did not move her heart in the slightest. If anything, life in this world was far more dangerous than back on Earth, and so stories more tragic than Tang Ze's were commonplace. She had seen entire villages wiped out in a breath's time, thousands of people being refined by demonic cultivators to make pills, and some of the most agonizing deaths imaginable. Tang Ze's story seemed tame by comparison.

She could not say such of course. Even if she wished to tell him that everyone had tragedies in their lives and that he needed to get over it - while that was her instinctual reaction to the story, she could not voice it aloud.

Every cultivator had to deal with grief and loss, even mortals had to deal with them as well. They were an inescapable reality of life.

In her multiple lifetimes, she had personally witnessed several bloodcurdling incidents. She was not a callous person, but a story like Tang Ze's, after all her experiences gathered over several lifetimes, could not move her heart in the slightest.

She could tell that Tang Ze was not ready to hear those kinds of words.

Not yet at least. He didn't have her millennia of experience to place such things into perspective.

'Is this-?' she thought as her eyes widened ever so slightly. Tang Ze's Qi was fluctuating wildly - in any other circumstance, she would think that he was either doing this on purpose, say, to deal with something like a mirror match; if he was breaking through a minor realm, or if he was dying.

Needless to say, none of those three things was going on. It could be one thing else though - the sign of a developing heart demon.

Xian Yue had not specialized in any field that would allow for detection of heart demons, nor was she someone like the sect janitor who had managed to acquire a talent that would help her do so.

Xian Yue's demeanor was usually like ice - it had become so after thousands of years of cultivation, yet, her frigid personality melted ever so slightly as she spoke.

Even as she wanted to chide Tang Ze, she couldn't deny that there were several incidents in her own lives that she felt still stung even after all this time. That was despite them, objectively, being less tragic than Tang Ze's story.

It was easy to minimize things when it came to someone else's sorrows, but not one's own.

"Don't blame yourself," Xian Yue said. "It wasn't your fault. You can't be blamed for walking down the street, ah, unless that's something dangerous and routine that happens back in your world."

Tang Ze actually laughed at that, despite himself. "I was going to say that no - it wasn't, but, thinking of everything that happened, I guess I'm wrong." His tears had stopped and he let out a wry smile. "No, walking down the street wasn't risky. At least, not as much as it is here." In this world, there were always stories of roadside bandits or monster attacks, at the very least Earth didn't have things like that. "But… I still always wonder why it was that I didn't do anything. If I… had acted in any way to save him, how things would've changed." He turned to Xian Yue. "There's no way to go back in time, is there?"

"I know of no such method," Xian Yue said. "Even if it could exist, it would take you back in time in this world, not yours. But if you ask me, you will get nowhere dwelling on what you cannot change. As painful as it might be to hear - time will wash away those wounds of the past."

Tang Ze could only nod. "I hope so."

Tang Ze then went ahead into describing other things from back on Earth, like planes, and computers, and the like.

"Your world is mildly interesting," Xian Yue said. "Perhaps one day I would love to see it."

"Really? Because I can think of many people from back on Earth who would love to escape to a realm like this," Tang Ze said. He said 'escape' because it was the truth - even he had wanted to come to a place like here where he could leave his worries behind. Only the ghosts of the past refused to die, and he was still as haunted by that day the same way that he had been back on Earth. "And the Qi there is so thin you can't really cultivate." That said, most of the people who would want to 'escape' from Earth would be quite disappointed if all they ended up as was cannon fodder for some rogue cultivator in a place like this. If it hadn't been for Tang Ze getting a unique talent, he too would not have gotten far in his journey.

The desire to cross realms was less about getting actual power, and more about the hope that maybe, somewhere out there, you would find something that might finally take the pain of modern life away.

"Maybe," Xian Yue said. "Or your people from there just haven't been trying hard enough?"

Tang Ze chuckled. "Yeah, there were people who tried to achieve immortality - though I don't think there was a method to succeed."

"Or, again, did your people just not look hard enough?"

"Maybe one day you'll travel to Earth and find out," Tang Ze said. He turned to her. "Maybe, if one day, we're both there, I could show you around."

"Then at the very least I'll have a guide," Xian Yue said.

All of this talk was pointless - the two of them knew it, as such a scenario was never going to happen. But they enjoyed it regardless. To be in a world away far away from their troubles, where they could imagine living entirely different lives…

…maybe in that scenario, both of them felt that they would be happier than they were right now.

It was easy enough to imagine yourself happier in whatever fantasy you created, after all.

Tang Ze did not end up making any great leaps of logic when it came to solving the problem of the dress, though Xian Yue did not chide him for the same.

"With time, I'm sure you'll solve it eventually," she said to him as he left to go back to the sect. He couldn't stay here for very long as there were always things that Initiates had to do, and he didn't want to take the dress with him back in case something happened to it. He wasn't always there in the common living quarters - even if someone didn't steal it, what if one of Yin Tiang's experiments went wrong and there was a fire? Given how important the dress was to Xian Yue, he felt that he could not take that risk.