I'm sorry, no matter how I try to write this chapter, I just can't capture the feeling I want.
So it was revised too many times.
There will be an extra chapter for those who donate; it's already written and currently being revised.
Everyone enjoyed watching.
When Lynn pushed open the wooden door, Strange was leaning against the stone wall opposite the doorframe. His hair was even more disheveled than yesterday, the collar of his once expensive dark blue shirt was open, and the cuffs were haphazardly rolled up to his elbows, revealing two hands that were still trembling slightly. Seeing the door finally open, he abruptly straightened up, his eyes flashing with an almost fanatical anticipation.
"Are you finally willing to teach me?" His voice was hoarse and urgent, like someone who had been trekking through the desert for too long finally seeing an oasis.
Looking at him like this, Lynn suddenly understood why the Ancient One's emotions had changed so quickly just now.
Kaecilius.
He was once a student kneeling before the Ancient One, begging to be taken in; he once had eyes full of longing; he once believed he was pursuing the truth. Lynn, however, didn't know how many of his fellow disciples he had killed with his own hands.
"Come back with me."
Lynn's tone wasn't cold, but it left no room for negotiation. "You have a week to think carefully about what you really want. If you don't understand, kneeling here until you die won't do you any good."
Strange roared, his face contorted with rage, "I've already said I'm willing to learn! I've given up all doubts! I've knelt down and begged you! What more do you want from me?"
Why did you kneel down?
Lynn interrupted him, her tone still unhurried, "To heal your hand. And then what? Once your hand is healed, what are you going to do? Go back to New York, pick up the scalpel again, and continue being that arrogant Stephen Strange? If that's the case, Master The Ancient One has no reason to take you on. I don't want to waste my time teaching someone who only sees himself as a patient."
He paused, looking at Strange's still trembling hands. "Let's go. You have a week. To be honest, Strange, I'm very disappointed in you right now."
He turned and walked deeper into the alley. Strange stood there stunned for a long time before staggering after him. His steps were heavier than when he came, each one feeling as if he were stepping on his shattered pride.
Back at the hotel, life took a completely different turn for the two of them. Lynn practically lived a vacation life. Every morning she would wake up naturally, go downstairs to the restaurant for a bowl of topa with milk tea, and then sit by the window flipping through the old books she had gotten from Wang.
Occasionally, he would sit in the corner coffee shop or chat with the old lady at the hotel. In the evenings, he would video call Natasha at a set time, leaning against the window and showing her the sunset over Kathmandu. Natasha would sometimes tease him, "Are you going to be a teacher or retire?"
Strange's days were not so comfortable. He waited every day, waiting for Lynn to relent, waiting for the Ancient One to change her mind, waiting for some new turning point that he was unsure if.
He would sit in the hotel lobby staring blankly at his own hands, or sit on the stone steps at the alley entrance staring blankly at the rickshaws coming and going. He no longer chased after Lynn to ask questions, nor did he knock on the wooden door that he had pounded on countless times. He just stayed in the hotel silently, stubbornly, like a stranded reef.
His fingers still tremble. The first thing he does every morning when he wakes up is try to clench his fist, just like every time he's tried before.
He stopped going to those herbal medicine shops and to any place that might give him false hope.
He would only occasionally look at Lynn with an extremely complicated expression, as if he wanted to say something but hesitated, when Lynn was sitting by the window reading.
On the sixth night, Lynn was video chatting with Natasha while leaning against the windowsill. On the screen, Natasha was wearing a loose loungewear T-shirt, her hair casually tied back, and she was curled up on the sofa flipping through her travel journal. Lynn held the phone up so she could see the night view of Kathmandu outside the window.
A faint starlight shone in the direction of the distant snow-capped mountains, while nearby, several children chased a stray cat across the cobblestone path in an alley. Natasha said everything was normal in New York and told Lynn about the amusing things everyone had done. Lynn was about to discuss Peter's education with her when there was a knock at the door.
He glanced towards the doorway, said to Natasha on the screen, "I'll call you back later," and then put his phone away.
"Come in."
Strange pushed open the door. He was in worse shape than he had been six days ago. The stubbornness in his eyes, the "I don't believe it, but I have no other choice" that he had shown when they first met, was gone, as was the fervor he had shown when he knelt and begged in the tea room the second time.
Now all that remains is a kind of resentment that has been suppressed for too long and is about to ferment into bitterness.
Where did I go wrong?!
He stood at the doorway, his voice low and restrained, as if he had compressed all his anger and grievances into that one sentence, "You won't give me a single chance. I've already put aside all my pride and knelt down to beg you. What more do you want from me? For the past six days, I've been thinking every day about what I did wrong, what I should have said or done... but I really can't figure it out."
Lynn leaned against the windowsill and watched him for a while, then sighed softly. He put his phone on the windowsill and sat up straight. "It's been so long, and you still haven't figured it out. When did Master The Ancient One start to change his attitude? You still don't understand? What have you been thinking about these past few days?"
Strange frowned, his lips moving several times, but he finally said, "She did it after I begged her to teach me!"
"It was after you knelt down!"
Lynn's tone wasn't harsh, "You knelt down and begged her to teach you, thinking it was humility and respect for knowledge. But in Master The Ancient One's eyes, it wasn't."
Your kneeling and pleading are merely to achieve your desires, to heal your hands.
You haven't truly let go of your arrogance; you've simply changed it from looking down on others to looking down on yourself. You think kneeling down equals admitting defeat, but you're not admitting defeat. You're using the lowest posture to demand what you most want. This isn't humility; it's another form of arrogance. You're clever, Strange, clever enough to achieve your most arrogant goals in the most humble way, and the Master The Ancient One saw right through you. That's why she said 'no.'
He watched as Strange's expression gradually hardened, showing no sign of stopping, but his tone softened slightly.
"Heal your hands, and then what? After your hands are healed, what? Take off this tattered coat, put that white coat back on, and go back to being that arrogant, self-important neurosurgeon you used to be? You came to Master The Ancient One because you were desperate, not because you wanted to become a better person. Your only goal was to heal your hands, nothing more."
"My purpose in coming here was to heal my hands!"
Strange's voice finally erupted, filled with the pent-up frustration and anger of six days, "Isn't this enough! I'm a surgeon, I can't live without my hand! Do you know what I've been through these past few months? Do you know how many methods I've tried, how many people I've seen, how much of my savings I've spent? I came here to get my hand healed, what's wrong with that?"
Lynn looked at him, a smile that wasn't exactly gentle appearing on her lips. It was a mockery, a regret, and a hint of knowing "I knew it."
"You still don't understand. So what if your hands are healed? Will you go back to being the arrogant person you used to be? The one who listened to jazz in the operating room, completely oblivious to the dangers of life?"
He leaned forward slightly, looking directly into Strange's eyes. "You're a genius, Strange. You're confident you can cure your patients, but you've never had any reverence for life. You're just using those people lying on the operating table as tools to show off your skills. You're not healing them; you're just using their bodies to prove you're the best neurosurgeon. You select your patients, not allowing yourself to fail, because failure would shatter your perfect image and make you no longer look like 'the great neurosurgeon Stephen Strange.' That's not healing; you've turned every patient into a tool for your self-affirmation."
"That's not..."
"Think it through before you refute me. Come up with a reason that you can convince yourself. You know perfectly well what you were really thinking at the time."
Lynn leaned back in his chair. "If the Master The Ancient One had no other choice, perhaps she would have just tested your character before taking you in. But now that I'm here, the Master The Ancient One has more options."
He stood up, walked to the window, turned his back to Strange, and gazed at the night view of Kathmandu outside.
"You need to figure out what you ultimately want. Is it the you who shows off your skills without any respect, or the you who saves lives? You need to ask yourself that question."
He turned around and looked into Strange's bloodshot eyes. "One more day. Think carefully about what you really want."