"Beneath the Herbal Medicine Shop: A Mystery of Shadows and Secrets"
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I never thought my day would end crouched in the darkness beneath a shop stacked with wild roots and dried red berries, alongside Remy—Gambit—cradling a healing rib and cursing softly at the memory of his captors. The sun dipped by the time we got here. This place, the herbal medicine shop with its heady scent of camphor and chamomile, was where the old woman owed me a favor. She never asked why, or how I came up battered more often than not, but today was different. When she saw me with him, her lips puckered, an unspoken question in her eyes. Only a lie would do: "My brother, he needs to rest. He’s injured." She took her time believing me, even as the gray in her braid trembled when she walked ahead, scraping open the battered door behind the counter, revealing stairs spiraling into cold stone.
Now the basement is our sanctuary. Remy claims the couch with a theatrical groan, his coat abandoned like a shed skin. There, a pale hand rummages through my backpack. No, I hadn’t checked his emails. No, nobody called. My phone is buried, battery dead or dying, and for a moment, the silence is only interrupted by the sound of his gloves sliding against cheap vinyl. I notice the way his gaze lingers on the shadows under the furnace, how every scrape from upstairs—a sliding tray, a door creaking—makes him tense, just a little.
He mutters to himself. I catch the words "dangerous women," low and bitter. I don’t ask if he means me, or the ones who held him at gunpoint only hours earlier. Maybe both. He forgets himself, lets gratitude slip after all, says something I recognize in the tone, if not the words: thanks for saving his skin, for finding us a place to hide while his powers return.
I scan the space—the corners with their abandoned crates, old holiday decorations glinting under a single bulb. The walls are thick; voices above will be muffled. If anyone tracks us here, the old woman’s favor might last only as long as her patience. She’s left two Styrofoam boxes on a cracked wooden table. The smell catches me off guard. Remy opens one, picks at noodles and cabbage. My stomach twists, betrayal of my outward calm. I reach for the other, hunger dull and deep, as if my body knew we’d be running for hours.
I eat quickly. Too quickly. The food hardly registers past a vague, earthy sweetness and the relief of being fed. I barely look at Remy as I wolf down the rice and tofu, almost grateful for the silence, for the moment to ignore planning and pain. We’re both alive. That has to be enough.
He sighs, stands with a shake, and disappears toward the bathroom, an old plywood door wedged against the back wall. I track the sound of water sputtering in ancient pipes, let my guard down just a notch.
With him out of sight, I push up from the bed and search through the closet. My fingers graze cool glass bottles of tinctures, bundles of desiccated leaves tied with twine, more secrets bundled in shadow than even I could count. I find a stack of newspapers tucked at the very bottom, headlines blurred, local crime reports and missing person notices. I drag them out across the thin quilt, reading not the words but the coded threats: allies vanished, arsons in the old market, police raids gone wrong. Every story signals another reason to keep moving, to keep Gambit from checking the news, from reading about himself or the X-Men, or about me.
The basement vibrates faintly with life above—voices, the clink of medicine bottles, the steadfast rhythm of commerce oblivious to the hunted underneath. I press my ear to the wall, listening. The scrape of Remy’s boots from the other side of the door, the hush of falling water. Our lives have become a sequence of doors closed and footsteps measured.
We aren’t safe, not truly. But for now, I’ll pretend, as I page through old stories with yellowed edges, that tomorrow isn’t waiting outside—impatient, persistent, inevitable. I’ll keep one eye on Remy, on the bag where my claws rest and my regrets crowd, and let this night grow thick with the smell of medicine and the taste of borrowed freedom. Let the world wait—for a few hours, at least. Let it wait.
This story was generated by user ziggo.zane with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.
Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.
AI Prompts
Prompt: Write a long story about the mutant X-23, who brought her friend Gambit to a hideout in a herbal medicine shop. The mutant freed him from his kidnappers and had to ensure their safety. When the shop owner saw that the mutant had come with a man, she was not pleased. But the mutant lied that Gambit was her brother and needed rest because he was injured. The shop owner agreed and led them to a hideout in the basement under the shop. When they entered the basement, Gambit sat on a couch and looked through the things in her backpack. When he asked if she had checked his emails and if anyone had called, the mutant shook her head and sat on the bed. She listened as Gambit mumbled something under his breath that he would no longer take orders from dangerous women. After a moment, he praised her for finding them a hideout, to which the mutant shrugged. She watched as Gambit reached for the Styrofoam boxes of food that the shop owner had left for them. The mutant immediately felt hungry when Gambit opened the box and began to eat. She nodded slightly and reached for the second box and began to eat. She was so hungry that she ate the entire contents faster than he did. When the man went to take a shower, the mutant for reached a stack of newspapers from the closet. Describe everything in the form of a mutant's thoughts without dialogue
Response: I never thought my day would end crouched in the darkness beneath a shop stacked with wild roots and dried red berries, alongside Remy—Gambit—cradling a healing rib and cursing softly at the memory of his captors. The sun dipped by the time we got here. This place, the herbal medicine shop with its heady scent of camphor and chamomile, was where the old woman owed me a favor. She never asked why, or how I came up battered more often than not, but today was different. When she saw me with him, her lips puckered, an unspoken question in her eyes. Only a lie would do: "My brother, he needs to rest. He’s injured." She took her time believing me, even as the gray in her braid trembled when she walked ahead, scraping open the battered door behind the counter, revealing stairs spiraling into cold stone. Now the basement is our sanctuary. Remy claims the couch with a theatrical groan, his coat abandoned like a shed skin. There, a pale hand rummages through my backpack. No, I hadn’t checked his emails. No, nobody called. My phone is buried, battery dead or dying, and for a moment, the silence is only interrupted by the sound of his gloves sliding against cheap vinyl. I notice the way his gaze lingers on the shadows under the furnace, how every scrape from upstairs—a sliding tray, a door creaking—makes him tense, just a little. He mutters to himself. I catch the words "dangerous women," low and bitter. I don’t ask if he means me, or the ones who held him at gunpoint only hours earlier. Maybe both. He forgets himself, lets gratitude slip after all, says something I recognize in the tone, if not the words: thanks for saving his skin, for finding us a place to hide while his powers return. I scan the space—the corners with their abandoned crates, old holiday decorations glinting under a single bulb. The walls are thick; voices above will be muffled. If anyone tracks us here, the old woman’s favor might last only as long as her patience. She’s left two Styrofoam boxes on a cracked wooden table. The smell catches me off guard. Remy opens one, picks at noodles and cabbage. My stomach twists, betrayal of my outward calm. I reach for the other, hunger dull and deep, as if my body knew we’d be running for hours. I eat quickly. Too quickly. The food hardly registers past a vague, earthy sweetness and the relief of being fed. I barely look at Remy as I wolf down the rice and tofu, almost grateful for the silence, for the moment to ignore planning and pain. We’re both alive. That has to be enough. He sighs, stands with a shake, and disappears toward the bathroom, an old plywood door wedged against the back wall. I track the sound of water sputtering in ancient pipes, let my guard down just a notch. With him out of sight, I push up from the bed and search through the closet. My fingers graze cool glass bottles of tinctures, bundles of desiccated leaves tied with twine, more secrets bundled in shadow than even I could count. I find a stack of newspapers tucked at the very bottom, headlines blurred, local crime reports and missing person notices. I drag them out across the thin quilt, reading not the words but the coded threats: allies vanished, arsons in the old market, police raids gone wrong. Every story signals another reason to keep moving, to keep Gambit from checking the news, from reading about himself or the X-Men, or about me. The basement vibrates faintly with life above—voices, the clink of medicine bottles, the steadfast rhythm of commerce oblivious to the hunted underneath. I press my ear to the wall, listening. The scrape of Remy’s boots from the other side of the door, the hush of falling water. Our lives have become a sequence of doors closed and footsteps measured. We aren’t safe, not truly. But for now, I’ll pretend, as I page through old stories with yellowed edges, that tomorrow isn’t waiting outside—impatient, persistent, inevitable. I’ll keep one eye on Remy, on the bag where my claws rest and my regrets crowd, and let this night grow thick with the smell of medicine and the taste of borrowed freedom. Let the world wait—for a few hours, at least. Let it wait.
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