Why is he in my life if nothing happens between us?
Kata didn't know exactly how she would say it.
She had been carrying it for two years, and had been careful that no one could see it on her. She lives in a small village where everyone knows everyone, where the walls have ears, and where what she felt fit none of the patterns she had ever been given.
Hexa was sitting at the far end of the garden, his back to the gate, as if he weren't expecting anyone. But when Kata stepped in, he turned at once.
"It's been going on a long time, whatever brought you here," he said, before Kata could speak.
Kata stopped. "How do you know?"
"I can see it in how you walk. People walk differently when they've carried something alone for a long time."
They sat down. Autumn was already in the air. The leaves of the apple tree had turned golden, and a few had already fallen.
"Will you tell me?" Hexa asked.
Kata hesitated a little, but she had come for guidance, so she began.
She told him about the breakup two years ago, with another man, from another life. She told him how she had fallen in love with the village where she had already been living with her former partner, and stayed. How the flat had come about almost by accident: Gábor, the owner, called to say there was a small part of the house available, and she said yes. And Bence lived there, the reason she had come to Hexa today.
"Bence was there," Kata said. "Right next door. When I met him, I had a feeling I can't explain, and it hasn't gone away since."
"Why can't you explain it?"
Kata looked up. "Because he's twenty-one years younger than me. I'm fifty, he's twenty-nine. That's..." She trailed off.
"What does that mean to you?"
"That I shouldn't. It's not appropriate. Especially where we live. In a small village everyone sees everything, and if it ever came out..." She didn't finish.
Hexa nodded. He was in no hurry.
"What do you feel when you're together?"
Kata was quiet for a moment. Then she went on softly:
"I feel completely free. With him I feel a real emotional connection for the first time. I talk to him the way I've never talked to anyone. Once we were sitting out in the yard with candles burning, and we talked for hours. When I apologised for talking so much about myself, he said not to apologise, because it was the best conversation of his life."
"And what do you feel in your body when you're with him?" Hexa asked simply, without judgement.
Kata blushed. "Well, that... I long for him. Sometimes I just think, if only he would come over at night. Just to hold me." A silence. "I know it's strange to say it out loud."
"It isn't strange," said Hexa. "It's human."
"What is your question for me?" Hexa asked after a while.
"Why is he here? Why him, and why like this, when I can't live it? Can it be fulfilled at all?"
Hexa laid his paw on the flat stone. Six lines slowly appeared.
"Number 23. Splitting Apart." Hexa studied the lines. "The Mountain stands on top of the Earth. Solid, stable forces from outside press on the crumbling foundations below, the ground slips from under your feet. This is a time of collapse, of things coming apart and forms dissolving, so that what is essential can come to the surface."
Kata listened.
"This hexagram says: don't act. Wait for the turning." Hexa paused. "But this isn't passivity. It's observation. Because there's something here worth looking at."
"What?"
"You told me that with him you feel a real emotional connection for the first time. That you feel free when you're with him." Hexa pointed to the lines. "This isn't about Bence. It's about you. He is a mirror. He shows you what was already inside you, but that you haven't yet allowed yourself."
Kata was silent.
"There is one changing line in this reading," Hexa continued. "The second line. It says: the danger is already in your nearest surroundings, in the zone of your own safety. It isn't Bence who is dangerous. What may feel dangerous is that your foundations are beginning to crack. Holding on convulsively to what is already crumbling can feel dangerous."
"What is crumbling?"
"The frames. What is proper and what isn't. What you are allowed to feel at fifty. What others would say." Hexa spoke slowly. "These are the walls coming down now. The relationship isn't falling apart. It is the old rules that are changing."
A tear rose in Kata's eye. She didn't cry. It was the tear of someone who had held something back for a long time.
"And what does the second hexagram say?" she asked quietly.
"Number 4. Youthful Folly." Hexa's voice grew warmer. "That isn't an insult. It says the fog hasn't fully lifted yet. You can't see clearly what this really is, and that's all right. Inexperience isn't a flaw. Not knowing is also learning."
"Then what should I do?"
"Nothing today." Hexa looked into her eyes. "Just ask yourself one question: when you are completely free in Bence's company, which part of you is it that has stayed hidden until now?"
Kata looked at the lines for a long time. A faint golden glow lingered on the stone for a while.
"You're saying he's only a mirror?"
"I'm saying," Hexa replied, "that the most important question isn't whether it will be fulfilled. It's what it shows you about yourself. What it has shown you is already yours. No one can take that away."
Kata stood up. She didn't say goodbye right away. She stayed a while under the apple tree, looking up at the leaves.
Then she left. Something in her step had changed. She had understood something, and was already a little lighter.
Hexa opened his journal. Next to the 23 he drew a mark, with a small arrow pointing toward the 4. Then he paused and added something beside it, a tiny circle, then a line going down.
A mirror doesn't lie, he thought. It only shows what is already there.
Is there someone in your life who holds up a mirror to you, and what they show is really about you?