Most voids were black. Or so he thought. In literature. in movies and television. When there was a void, one saw a large blackness that stretched into infinity, broken up only by the colors of whatever object the story placed in the middle of said void, in order to enhance its enormity.
But he stood now in a white void. Had it shone brightly he may have concluded he was dead, or dying. But it was just a whiteness without a brightness. A dull white, if such a thing were possible.
The woman had not walked into the space. Rather...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
A voice calls out urgently. She rises, summoned.
"Yu-Jing, laundry!" It is harsh and altogether unkind. She glides into the hall, gown flowing behind askance. Her eyes rest on the floor.
She is addressed without being seen. "Have them cleaned. Collect them tomorrow." The girl gathers, bundles, wraps, more delicately than they deserve. The red gown flows behind her over the floor, across the doorway, into the streets. Yu-Jing takes her master's bundle to the laundromat, the red splashing colors into the muddy pools of the...