A student stood at the gate of the Gilded Labyrinth, staring up at the high walls.
Above the gate hung a banner:
“Be useful now. Be safe later.”
He’d tried other doors—transfer doors, scholarship doors, doors that only opened if you had the right timing—and could wear the right wiring like a mask. Most were locked. Some demanded a price that felt like a lifetime.
Beyond the gate, velvet ropes split a marble lobby into orderly queues. Bright lights, quiet checkpoints—someone always watching as smiles, titles, and referrals were checked like passports before you were waved onward.
The Gilded Labyrinth glittered to attract the hungry—the velvet rope, the promise, the polished gate. Some doors opened, but each “yes” made the next “no” harder. The hall behind him didn’t close—his reasons did, one sunk cost at a time.
But the deeper he walked, the colder the air became.
At the center rose the Tower. The banner’s sentence was carved into it like law: be useful now, be safe later.
And wrapped around the Tower’s base stood the Iron Palace: the sword that kept the game from being questioned.
From within its walls came an offer—quiet, absolute:
“Join us, and you’ll be taken care of.”
It sounded like an Orchard grown overnight: a tribe, a floor, a purpose—safety without the slow work of roots.
It didn’t come as a chain. It came as paperwork and ritual: an oath, a badge, rules spoken like blessings. The kind you couldn’t un-say once you said them.
And beneath that promise, heat rose in his chest—ambition that didn’t feel like safety so much as fire.
A fantasy of being untouchable. A fantasy of the throne.
He went to his Sensei and confessed it.
He sought him out because the Sensei had once worn the Iron Palace’s badge and still walked with calm. If anyone could tell him what the offer really meant, it would be him. The Sensei rarely spoke of that time, but sometimes—when the room went quiet—his eyes would drift for a heartbeat, as if he had learned to live with a door he didn’t open.
The Sensei didn’t scold him. He set a bowl of cool water between them. In its still surface, the student could see his own eyes—bright, hungry, a little afraid.
The Sensei watched the student’s reflection for a moment, then the student’s face.
“Before we talk about missions,” he said, “tell me what you think that offer buys you.”
The student’s throat tightened. “Untouchable.”
The Sensei’s gaze didn’t waver. “I know how that feels,” he said. “I’ve stood where you’re standing.”
He nodded once. “So tell me this—do you want the mission… or do you want what the mission gives you permission to do?”
The student flinched.
“The mission is the permission.”
“It’s the story that makes force feel righteous. And I want what that buys—power no one can question.”
The Sensei didn’t raise his voice.
“In this world, everyone gets touched.”
“The question is whether you lose yourself when it happens.”
The student stared at the water. Something in him wanted to argue—then couldn’t find the words.
“And who are you,” he asked, “when nobody is below you?”
The student answered too fast: “Nobody.”
The Sensei watched him carefully. “Is that nobody spacious… or erasing?”
The student swallowed. “Both.”
The Sensei placed a hand near the bowl but didn’t touch it.
“Then you’re standing on a seam,” he said. “One side is no-self. The other side is no-worth.”
The student’s stomach tightened, as if “no-worth” had a weight. “But I need safety. Independence. I can’t rely on one person. Or one institution.”
The Sensei smiled.
“Good. Then stop calling dominance ‘independence.’”
He slid the bowl forward. “Here is the Orchard’s way of being touched without losing yourself: redundancy.”
He pointed to the water.
“Not above. Not below. Still here.”
The water held level.
Then the Sensei’s voice lowered, not in anger, but in precision.
“The leash is never shown first.”
“First they show you the sword.”
Then he reached out and lightly took the student’s wrist—no pain, no threat—just enough contact to guide. With a small turn and a half-step, he drew the student a fraction off his line, off his balance, like a door being opened an inch.
The student felt it immediately: not dramatic, not violent—just… off-center.
The Sensei released him, and the student found his One Point again without thinking—shoulders softening, breath dropping, weight settling as if it had always belonged there.
“And here is the Iron Palace’s kind of untouchable,” the Sensei said. “It feels like a sword. But it takes your One Point.”
The student stared into the bowl. For a moment the throne glittered in the surface—then dissolved.
The Sensei didn’t reach for another question. He simply sat with him long enough for the student’s breath to slow.
“You don’t have to solve this tonight,” the Sensei said at last. “When the fire comes back, don’t go looking for a throne. Come here. Let yourself be touched safely. We’ll find your center again.”
The student’s throat tightened—different this time. He nodded once, small and real.
And for the first time, “nobody” felt a little more like belonging than erasure.
Insight
The Labyrinth doesn’t trap you with locks—it traps you with sunk-cost “yeses” until turning back feels impossible.
The Iron Palace is the distorted shortcut: a synthetic Orchard that offers tribe, purpose, and a promised floor—fast—if you accept permission as your spine.
But the very pursuit of “untouchable” costs your One Point: your stance, your authorship.
The real Orchard builds safety slower—redundancy and chosen interdependence—so you don’t need a throne to exist.
⛩️🖥️
