The cloak is a wretched thing, drenched red-dark at its frayed rims, breaking. It holds stubbornly, out of sheer stubbornness that coalesces now and then into the wispy, bent-backed form of an aged, oblivious scholar.

He takes his time to notice Xiao Xingchen, seemingly at wits' end over the anguishing matter of the dwindling life span of the arctic butterfly, once a titan with 100 full days before expiry, now lessened before the third sundown.

These things, they are tragic.

In the end, he acknowledges Xiao Xingchen enough to ask what help he can lend.