Chinese Okra - An Anthology

I. The Man Who Lives in a Treehouse

This story is originally published on my Medium account, lol. Anyway, I present you... my first short story!

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In which an outsider intrudes on the life of a young man living in solitude in a treehouse.

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Somewhere in a forest not far from a city, a young man devotes himself to spending the rest of his days in a treehouse as he is too afraid to touch the ground. He survives through trapped birds and pinecone tea, but as he is realistic enough that the ground also provides food, he sometimes dares himself to climb down the treehouse and gather anything essential, like mushrooms, berries, and even bugs. But that is as far as he is letting himself feel the wet dirt underfoot.

The story of the young man who lives in a treehouse spreads like wildfire in the nearby small town. Tinette Springs. His seemingly pathetic life arouses empathy within the town community that people will sometime visit his treehouse and offer anything, from rare spices to game meat to the luxury of technology. But he always refuses their help as he believes that when a person has made their bed, they must lay on it.

One day, an old man visits him and offers something that the citizens of Tinette Springs have never offered before: a company.

As intriguing as it sounds for the man, the young man has vowed to live on his bed; to lay on the old and messy sheets; to indulge in the scent of mold spores. He believes a bed is sacred, a place of rest that only a certain man can lie on. And, right now, the old man remains only another stranger to him.

"I can understand if you don't want to climb down, young man. And to let me climb up there even when I still have a robust spine?" The old man laughs, and for a second, he expects a reaction from the man, but he soon realizes that he knows better: that he is as much as another stranger to the young man.

"What do you want?" The young man hisses as he peers from the paneless window, his gaze intent on discovering what the old man wants from him. The day the young man loses the most precious person on Earth, he learns that a company always comes at a price.

The old man mulls over his answer before answering. "You know what? I don't want to accompany you anymore. But I do need your company. Would you satisfy this old man?"

The young man is taken aback by the bizarre out-of-nowhere request. Never in his life has a person requested the young man to do them a favor. If anything, it is always the man who is offered.

"Why?"

"Because I'm simply an old man."

"Why does that matter?"

"Because I'm simply old, and I'm simply a man." The old man stretches out his arms.

"Why should I care that you are old and you are a man?"

"Because you are getting old, and you are a man."

"And why does that matter?"

"Because, young man, we live in a world where everything gets old."

"What do you mean?" But the young man knows what it means.

"Why don't you give me company, and I will tell you what I mean?"

As soon as he says that, the man begins to notice the price of the company. The price that he has to pay: to understand.

Sadly, the young man offers no time to let himself understand. "Then I refuse to give you company."

"What if I tell you that I'm a dying man? Will you let a little empathy to satisfy this withering, dying man for his own sake?"

The young man is conflicted. He knows what loss is. He knows what grief is. And for him to simply dismiss a grieving man in the process of dying is despicable.