There is a moment between falling and hitting the bottom when time no longer runs in a straight line.

Dao Ke Ming knew this because he had experienced it — not in a well, but in a kiln. At twenty-three, he had carelessly let his hand brush against the kiln wall before the fire had fully died. Less than a second of contact, but he remembered every part of that second as though it were as long as an entire morning — the red-orange color of the bricks, the smell of burning flesh, and a strange emptiness before the real pain arrived. As though the body needed a pause to process the information before deciding how to respond.

Falling into the well was the same.

He saw the stone wall slide past his eyes — dark green moss, grey wet stone, a streak of old water staining the rock like someone had poured ink there long ago and forgotten to wipe it away. His hand was still reaching toward where the vase had been — reflex, without thought — his fingers grasped at air. Then there was nothing left to reach for.

Darkness swallowed everything.

Not cold. Not painful. No sound of water below as he had heard people describe falling into wells. Only the sensation of falling, extended so long that he began to wonder whether this well had a bottom.

Then nothing more.

The first thing he felt when he came to was weight.

Not pain — weight. The sensation of a body lying against a surface and that surface bearing the body's weight, familiar and ordinary enough that people never noticed it until it disappeared and reappeared. He lay on something softer than a rush mat, softer than a straw mattress, soft in an unnatural way he had no words to describe.

He opened his eyes.

A white ceiling. Perfectly flat. No wooden beams, no roof tiles, no cracks or yellowing or any sign of time. Only a perfectly white flat surface emitting a light that spread evenly throughout the room without casting any shadow in any corner — light that was not from an oil lamp, not from candles, not from a window, not from any light source he had encountered in forty-one years of life.

He closed his eyes again.

Counted his breaths. One. Two. Three. Felt the weight of his body on the surface beneath him — softer than a mat, softer than a straw mattress, soft in a way that was strange. Felt the air entering his lungs — no smell of smoke, no smell of fired earth, no smell of parasol trees. This air had no smell at all, which was itself something unusual.

Opened his eyes a second time. Slower, more prepared.

The ceiling was still white. The light still had no clear source. From outside came sounds he had never heard — sharp and continuous whistles, a constant rumbling like a waterfall but not a waterfall, a murmur like a crowd but not a crowd — steady, monotonous, like the sound of some enormous machine running somewhere very near that he could not see.

He sat up.

Wrong move.

His head spun suddenly, his stomach contracted, he quickly lay back down and breathed slowly in the way he always did when the kiln was too hot and his body began to react. Count the breaths. One. Two. Three. Feel the weight of his body on the surface. Feel the air entering his lungs.

Open his eyes a third time. Slowly. In control.

The ceiling was still white. The light was still sourceless. Outside, the sounds he could not name continued.

He looked down at his hands.

He stared for a moment before understanding what was wrong: no callus at the base of the index finger and middle finger — the place where the tool handle rubbed against skin for twenty-two years. No cracks at the knuckle joints that would not heal in winter. No dried clay under the nails. No burn scar on the back of his right hand from age twenty-three — that small crescent-shaped scar he had seen every day since.

These were not his hands.

He sat up a second time — slowly, in control — and looked around the room.

Small room. White walls. No paintings, no writing, no decorative objects of any kind. A table, a chair, a light-brown wooden cabinet in a style he had never seen. On the floor, a pair of strange shoes — thick-soled, no straps, made of a shiny black material he did not recognize.

And on the table, a flat rectangular object, thin and black. Thinner than many layers of paper pressed together, but rigid. He looked at it for a moment not understanding what it was.

'A phone.' Cao Bao Nian's voice rose in his head — not from outside, from inside, like someone reading a book in the same library room as him. 'Don't touch it yet. There are many things to learn first.'

He did not touch it.

He continued looking around the room. On the wall, a thin rectangular box — much larger than the phone, its surface black like a mirror. Below it were small buttons. He looked at it and could not guess what it was for.

'A television.' Cao Bao Nian said. 'Also not needed yet.'

He stood up. His feet touched the floor — hard, slightly cool through the thin socks he was wearing, neither packed earth nor stone paving. He stood still a moment to adjust to the height of this body — slightly shorter than his own, narrower-shouldered, weight distributed differently.

Like wearing a set of clothes that did not fit. Not painful, not uncomfortable in a physical sense — just not him.

He walked to the window.

The window covering slid to one side somehow — he pulled and it moved, and he did not ask further. Daylight poured in.

He looked out and stood very still for a long time.

Below was a street.

Wider than any street he had ever seen — wide enough for thirty horse-drawn carriages to ride abreast with room to spare. But there were no horse-drawn carriages. In their place were metal objects moving at a speed he had no words to describe — faster than a galloping horse, quieter than he would have expected for their size, in enough colors and shapes to fill several pages, but all with four round wheels and transparent glass at the front.

'Cars.' Cao Bao Nian said. 'Vehicles. They run on petroleum, no horses needed.'

He watched the stream of cars passing below the window and tried to process that information.

Running along both sides of the street were buildings — tall, upright, with surfaces of glass and metal reflecting the sky. Taller than any structure he had ever seen in the Imperial Palace of Chang'an. So tall he had to tilt his head back to see the tops of the nearest ones.

People walking on the sidewalk below — he could see them small from above — wearing clothes of all colors, moving in different directions at the speed of people who knew where they were going. No one looked up.

'This is Beijing.' Cao Bao Nian's voice in his head. 'The capital. Not Chang'an — Chang'an is now called Xi'an, several hundred li to the west. The Gu clan established its headquarters in Beijing in my grandfather's generation.'

He looked down at the street a moment longer, then turned back into the room.

'Where are you?' he asked quietly, not certain the person inside his head could hear him.

'I am here.' Cao Bao Nian's voice responded immediately. 'Always here. You do not need to speak aloud — thinking is enough. But speaking aloud, I hear more clearly.'

'I am not accustomed to talking to someone I cannot see.'

'You will become accustomed.'

He sat down on the edge of the bed, looked at the empty space before him.

'What must I learn first?'

'Many things.' A pause. 'But first — you need to know who you are in the eyes of others. Because in a few hours someone will enter this room, and they will look at you and see me. You need enough to not make them suspicious.'

'Who are they?'

'Lin Jing Huo.' Cao Bao Nian's voice paused at that name a beat longer than normal. 'The clan's secretary. She is the one who found me — found my body — and called the emergency services. She has been at the hospital since last night.'

'Hospital.'

'A place for treating illness. You are there now. This room is a hospital room.'

He looked around the room again with that new information. White walls. Sourceless light. The soft surface he had been lying on. The smell of the air — now he noticed there was something very faint, sharp and strange, not the smell of anything natural.

'The smell of disinfectant.' Cao Bao Nian said, as if reading his thought. 'Hospitals always smell like that.'

'And this Lin Jing Huo — she knows what happened to you?'

'She knows I jumped from the third floor of the office. She is the one who found me.' A brief pause. 'She does not know you are inside this body. No one knows that. And no one can know.'

He nodded. He understood that — there were things that could not be said not out of fear, but because others had no frame to contain them.

'What must I say to her?'

'Little. You have just been through severe trauma — no one expects you to talk much. She will talk, you listen. If you must respond, respond briefly. If you do not know how to respond — close your eyes. They will think you are tired.'

'My voice — the voice of this body — will it be different?'

'No different. Voice follows the body, not you. But the way you use words may be different. Do not use archaic terms. Do not address others as "ngươi". Here people say "anh", "chị", "tôi".'

He tried it in his mouth: 'Anh. Chị. Tôi.'

'Good enough.'

He looked at his hands — the slender hands, long-fingered, no calluses, of this body. He turned them palm-up, looked at the lines. Different from his hands. Completely different.

'Is Lin Jing Huo close to you?' He asked. 'To Cao Bao Nian?'

This time Cao Bao Nian was silent longer than all the previous pauses in the morning.

'She cares about me.' The voice finally came, flat as still water. 'More than I deserved to be cared about.'

He did not ask further. He understood that type of answer — the answer of someone who knows they owe another person something they have no way to repay.

A knock at the door.

Light, two knocks, then silence.

'Vào.' He said, then remembered. 'Vào đi.'

The door opened.

The person who entered was a woman — he estimated around thirty years old, perhaps slightly older or slightly younger, he was not yet accustomed to reading ages from the faces of people in this era. Black hair tied neatly back, dark-colored clothes — not the clothes he knew, but neat and proper in the way of someone accustomed to working rather than accustomed to being looked at. In her hands, a small bag and a paper box.

Her eyes found him the moment she stepped in — looked straight, without detour — and in a single instant he saw something pass across those eyes before it was put away. Light, like someone releasing a grip they had been holding for a long time.

'You are awake.' Her voice was flat. Not a question, only a confirmation.

'Yes.' He tried. The word came out more naturally than he expected.

Lin Jing Huo set the bag and paper box on the table, not looking at him — or trying not to look, he was not certain. She opened the paper box; inside was food — something he did not recognize, a pleasant smell, contained in a transparent plastic container.

'Congee. The hospital cooking is not good but it is edible.' She pushed the box toward him, still not looking straight. 'You have not eaten since yesterday.'

He looked at the congee box. Looked at the plastic spoon stuck in the side — not the spoon he knew how to use, but the shape was not so different that he could not guess how.

He picked up the spoon. Scooped a mouthful. Ate.

Lin Jing Huo sat down in the chair beside the bed, placed her hands on her thighs, looked out the window. The silence of someone who had many things they wanted to say and was waiting for the right moment — or was deciding not to say anything at all.

He ate another mouthful. Two mouthfuls. The congee was blander than he would have liked but he had no basis for comparison with anything in this world.

'I am sorry.' Her voice was still flat, still looking out the window. 'I was late. I should have stayed in the office that night.'

'Do not say anything.' Cao Bao Nian said in his head. 'She does not need you to respond. She needs to say it.'

He continued eating.

'The doctor said you were lucky. The third floor was not high enough to...' She stopped. Looked down at her hands. 'They said you need to rest. At least two weeks without work. The clan will take care of things.'

He heard the phrase 'the clan will take care' and asked quietly in his head: 'The clan?'

'She speaks on behalf of the Gu clan.' Cao Bao Nian explained. 'She has been secretary since before I took over. She considers this clan hers in the sense of responsibility, not ownership.'

Lin Jing Huo turned to look at him — for the first time in this conversation looking straight into his eyes — and he saw in those eyes something being examined. Not suspicion. Closer to what people do when looking at a familiar object and trying to determine whether anything has changed.

He looked back. Did not blink. Did not look away.

'Do not look too long.' Cao Bao Nian reminded lightly. 'I was not one to hold eye contact like that.'

He looked down at the congee box.

Lin Jing Huo looked away.

'Is there anything you want to say?' She asked, voice careful in the way of someone asking a real question while prepared to receive a false answer.

He thought. There were many things he wanted to ask — wanted to know what state this clan was in, how much debt, to whom, what antiques remained in the warehouse. Wanted to know how much this woman knew, how much she trusted, how much could be relied upon.

But Cao Bao Nian had said: little.

'Not yet.' He said. 'Nothing yet.'

Lin Jing Huo nodded. Stood up. Straightened the chair so it was perfectly aligned with the table edge — a small, automatic gesture of someone accustomed to arranging things around them even when unnecessary.

'I will come back this afternoon.' She said. 'If you need anything, call me.'

She pointed to the thin black phone on the table — the phone, he remembered — then walked out, closing the door behind her so gently he barely heard the sound.

He sat still with the half-finished congee box on his lap.

Looked at the closed door.

'She saw something.' He said quietly.

'Saw what?'

'Saw that something was different.' He set the congee box down on the table. 'Does not know what. But saw something.'

'She is intelligent.' Cao Bao Nian said. 'She always was more intelligent than I gave her credit for.'

'You want me to protect her.'

'I want you not to hurt her further.' A pause. 'She has already been hurt enough by what I did.'

He looked at the closed door and thought about the small pause before she answered when she sat in the chair, looking at him with eyes that were testing something. The way she straightened the chair before leaving.

Small things. The kind of things a person accustomed to observing noticed.

'Teach me.' He said. 'Begin with the most important things.'

'Most important in which sense?'

'In the sense that: if I do not know that thing, I will ruin everything before I have even begun.'

Cao Bao Nian was silent a moment — the silence of someone arranging a sequence.

'Money.' The voice said finally. 'How much the Gu clan owes, to whom, and how much time remains before it is all over. That is what you need to know first.'

'Then tell me.'

And Cao Bao Nian began to speak.

Outside, Beijing in 2010 continued operating on its own schedule — unaware and unconcerned that in a hospital room on the fifth floor, a Tang Dynasty potter was learning how to exist in a borrowed body, beginning with the most basic thing in the new world: how much money, owed to whom, how much time remained.