Ancient Short Stories: Ziqin

He had lost count of how many times he woke from dreams at midnight. A voice always called softly in his ear, “Master, Master,” filling his heart with tenderness before suddenly turning it achingly sour. A hundred years had passed in lonely silence. On Green Bamboo Peak, only a nearly dead peach tree and a broken zither with snapped strings remained. He shut himself away every day, devoting himself to cultivating his arts, and never again let himself suffer such grievous injuries. Yet he could not say what all that effort was for. The person he wanted to protect, the one he had waited for, might never appear again.