A fable story for a change

[CHUNG Yoon-Ngan <chungyn@mozart.collective.com.au>]

    A  paranoic  friend.

  During the Jin4 Dynasty (265AD to 420AD) people living in the district
of Qi were well known to be a stingy lot. Not many people who would
invite their friends home for a drink or dinner and not many people would
get invitations. 
 
    One day a magistrate in the district, Le Guang, invited his best friend,
Du Xun, for a drink in his house. It was the occasion of the Moon Festival. 

    Le Guang and his friend were sitting next to a wall on which hung a
bow painted in red and shaped like a snake. Le Guang poured his friend a
cup of wine. A spray of sunlight hitting the wall cast a reflection into
his friend's cup. It looked like a little snake . When Du Xun held up his
cup to drink he saw what looked like a little snake in the cup. Gripped by
fear he was reluctant to drink, but when Le Guang asked him to drink a
toast to their friendship he could not refuse. 

   With trepidation Du Xun drank his cup of wine and immediately felt a pain 
in his stomach. He went home that evening feeling rather unwell. 

   Du Xun was apparently ill for a few months and no medicine seemed to be
able to cure him. Le Guang came to know of Du Xun's sicknes and at once
proceeded to see his friend. Asked about the cause of his long illness, Du
Xun told his friend that the last time they were drinking together he had
drunk the cup of wine with a little snake in it.  

  Le Guang arrived home still puzzled and tried to recall but to no avail,
how Du Xun could have drunk the cup of wine with a little snake in it. He
was pacing up and down when, suddenly, he saw the bow hanging on the wall
and the reflection caused by sunlight streaming onto the the wall. The image
had the likeness of a little snake. 

  Without hesitation Le Guang ordered a chariot and rushed to Du Xun's
house. Le Guang  returned home with his friend and told him to sit at the
table where he had sat a few months before. Le Guang poured some wine into 
a cup and placed it in front of Du Xun. Du Xun was terrified at what he
saw in the cup - a little snake! 

   Before Du Xun could begin to speak, Le Guang asked him if he could see 
a little snake in the wine. Du Xun quickly answered in the positive. Le 
Guang told him that what he believed he had swallowed was just the
reflection of the bow on the wall. Du Xun was instantly relieved and his
sickness disappeared just as quickly.

   Du Xun was just paranoid over the reflection that looked like a snake.

A Chinese fable story "Bei Gong She Ying".

CHUNG Yoon-Ngan.