Night entered through the slits of the low window in threads of moonlight, drawing pale stripes across the wooden floor.
Zhì Yuǎn remained lying on the mat, his chest rising and falling in a slow, regular rhythm, the wild maple mask still fastened to his face even in sleep.
The straw door made no sound at all.
Lī'ya appeared barefoot, floating over the floor, her breath held as if the air itself might give her away. She approached slowly, stopping beside the mat, emerald eyes fixed on the expressionless face of carved wood.
For a long moment, she only watched.
Then, slowly, she raised her hand.
Her fingers hovered in the air, trembling faintly, drawing closer, little by little, to the lower edge of the mask—the only point where the skin of his chin still showed, pale under the moonlight.
Just a little, she thought, breath caught. I only need to see a little.
The tips of her fingers almost touched the wood.
A strand of red hair slipped from her shoulder and brushed lightly against his cheek.
Lī'ya froze, her hand stopping in the air, trembling.
And then she pulled back, drawing her arm against her own chest as if she had been burned.
She shook her head hard, ears whipping the air.
She quickly raised both hands before her face and began to weave symbols in the air—fine lines of silver Qi that peeled from the tips of her fingers and floated until they settled on the surface of the mask, engraving themselves into the wood in strokes that glowed for an instant before vanishing, absorbed by the carving.
The symbols repeated, one by one, tracing the eye slits, the snout, the red marks on the cheeks—until the last line closed with a brief, silent gleam.
Lī'ya lowered her hands, watching her own work for a moment, her breathing still a little uneven.
She took one more step back, cast a last look—longer than she meant—toward the sleeping figure, and then turned, disappearing with the same silence with which she had entered.
------
Morning light entered stronger than on the previous days, cutting the dimness of the room into golden slices that highlighted the grain of the pale wood on the ceiling.
Zhì Yuǎn sat on the edge of the mat, his torso already raised without the tremor of the first days, slowly testing the rotation of his own shoulder. The remaining pain was almost nothing now—only a dull reminder, deep in the muscle, that this body still did not operate as it should.
The straw door slid, and it was not Lī'ya who entered first.
A young servant with short, rounded ears—features that vaguely recalled a rabbit, subtler than Lī'ya's own—crossed the threshold carrying a basin of warm water and a roll of clean cloth under her arm.
"Good morning," the servant said, bowing in a brief greeting before walking to the bench. "I came to change…"
The servant froze at the sight of the human with the mask covering his face, her eyes widening as she went suddenly mute.
"I'll handle it, Hāi'na."
Lī'ya's voice cut through the room before she had even crossed the door completely. She entered almost at a run, taking the basin from the servant's hands with a haste that spilled a little water over her own wrist.
Hāi'na blinked, her hands still half raised in the air, empty.
"Young Mistress, you have the…"
"I know."
"But you've never changed anyone's bandages in your life," the servant insisted, a trace of genuine confusion crossing her face. "You complain even about dirtying your own sleeves when…"
"I said I'll handle it!"
The final tone left no room for reply. Hāi'na closed her mouth, lowered her head in a polite gesture, but before withdrawing, she cast a quick look toward Zhì Yuǎn.
The door slid shut again, closing off the corridor.
Lī'ya drew a deep breath, setting the basin on the bench with exaggerated firmness, as if the gesture itself could erase the scene that had just happened.
"Is she always this nosy?" Zhì Yuǎn asked, his voice dry, watching her through the slit of the mask.
"Hāi'na is only doing her job," Lī'ya grumbled, wetting the cloth in the warm water without looking at him. "She just… doesn't need to do her job here. With you."
"Why?"
The question seemed to catch her off guard. Lī'ya froze for an instant, the cloth dripping water onto her own lap, before recovering her posture with an irritated huff.
"Because." She stepped closer to the mat, kneeling beside him with a studied care, almost formal, so different from the bouncing ease of every other moment. "I found you. I brought you. So I take care of you. It's not that complicated to understand."
Zhì Yuǎn remained silent while she unrolled the old bandage from his forearm, her small fingers working with a delicacy that clashed completely with the brusqueness with which she had expelled her own servant moments before.
She insists on doing it with her own hands, he thought. Was it my blood that made her like this? They almost killed each other that time too…
"Does this hurt?" Lī'ya asked, cleaning a remnant of dry paste with exaggerated care.
"No."
"Liar. Your arm went tense."
"It didn't."
"It did." She lifted her emerald eyes for an instant, a stubborn gleam in them. "I know how to tell when someone is lying to look strong."
Zhì Yuǎn did not answer, but neither did he relax his arm.
Lī'ya finished applying a shining paste and wrapped the new bandage with a tight, firm knot, satisfied with herself, and only then allowed herself to sit back on her heels, wiping her hands on her own skirt.
"Done," she declared, with the same pride of someone who had just completed a monumental work. "Better than any servant would do."
Lī'ya gathered the basin of dirty water and carried it to the corner of the room, but her steps back were slower than her approach.
"I skipped today's lesson," she murmured, without lifting her eyes, sitting back down beside the mat. "Again."
"Lesson in what?"
"Nothing." She struck the rim of the basin against the wooden floor harder than she needed to. "It's boring stuff. Doesn't even matter."
Zhì Yuǎn only watched her, the slit of the mask tilted in her direction, in silence.
Lī'ya held the look for two breaths before yielding.
"Fine, fine," she grumbled, puffing her chest with a pride that seemed larger than her own body. "You know, I'm very intelligent! I'm not only one of the most talented of my generation, I'm also one of the most knowledgeable! I even compete with the Elders in formation debates, which is exactly why I'm learning…" She stopped mid-sentence, her cheeks coloring suddenly, and waved her own hand in the air. "Forget it. Better not fill you with nonsense."
Zhì Yuǎn tilted his head slightly.
"I would like to know more," he said, his voice dry as always, but without a trace of mockery. "After all, it isn't every day I'm before the most beautiful and intelligent woman in the world."
Lī'ya froze completely.
The flush that had risen to her cheeks moments ago exploded at once, spreading all the way to the tips of her fluffy ears in a vivid red.
"Y-You…" She choked on her own words, her tail shooting into a quick, disconnected motion. "All right! Since you insist so much…"
"It was Elder Vhōl who said it, actually, that I master the principle of containment formations better than any disciple he has ever seen in… well, he said 'ever,' but I think he was exaggerating just a little…"
The afternoon unfolded at that rhythm for a good while—Lī'ya telling, exaggerating, correcting her own exaggeration and exaggerating again, looser each time, more satisfied with herself each time. Zhì Yuǎn heard almost everything in silence, intervening only with brief questions whenever she threatened to drift from the subject, enough to keep her talking.
It was in the middle of a sentence about theory disputes with another Elder that he asked, casually:
"And what does your father think of a daughter capable of beating her own masters in debate?"
The gleam in her eyes faltered.
It was quick—one blink too many before the answer, almost imperceptible.
"He thinks it's great," Lī'ya answered, her voice still light, but with a new texture underneath, like cloth stretched too tight over a crack. "He's very proud. Everyone is."
"Everyone?"
"Of course." She shrugged, her eyes drifting briefly to the window. "No one from the younger generations has been able to keep up with what I do for a long time. It's a little boring, sometimes, not having anyone who…" She stopped, shook her head as if discarding her own thought halfway, and forced a smile back onto her face. "But at least no one tells me 'no' to anything anymore. It's a good trade."
Zhì Yuǎn did not press.
He recognized that tone. Not by the sentence itself, but by the quick gesture with which she tried to wrap it back in pride before it hurt too much.
It was strange, he noted. In every negotiation with something worth fearing, he had invariably been the youngest in the room—the child among centenarians, the novice dealing with Immortals who counted their own lives in millions of years. Here, for the first time, he was the one carrying the weight of being the "experienced" side of the conversation, even though he was, objectively, a fraction of the age of the girl in front of him.
Solitude, he concluded, made anyone, regardless of age, incredibly easier to lead.
Lī'ya had already gone back to talking, pulling the thread of the conversation toward some other discussion with some other Elder, the lightness rebuilt on her face with an almost trained haste.
Zhì Yuǎn followed her.
The sun was already beginning to tilt toward the western side of the Sky-Tree when Hāi'na returned, this time with a wooden tray carrying two bowls of soup and a plate of roasted roots.
"Dinner, Young Mistress."
Lī'ya vanished, appearing in front of the servant and taking the tray from her hands in a brusque motion.
"Leave it. I'll serve."
Hāi'na did not insist this time—she seemed to have already learned not to waste breath arguing. But, as she took a step back, she cast a curious look toward Zhì Yuǎn, sitting in silence near the window, and could not resist the question.
"Will he be staying here long, Young Mistress? They asked if the guest room in the second courtyard should be prepared, in case he needs more space when…"
"He's mine."
The answer came out too fast, too sharp, before Lī'ya even seemed to have properly processed the question.
Hāi'na blinked.
"I… only asked about the room, Young Mistress."
"I know what you asked." Lī'ya's ears were already bristling, the tray pressed against her chest hard enough to make the bowls clink. "And the answer is no. He stays here. With me. I found him, I saved him, and no one is going to steal him from me."
The silence that followed lasted a moment too long.
Hāi'na's eyes widened, her mouth half open with no sound coming out, clearly unsure whether she should laugh, ask more questions, or simply flee the room before the situation got worse.
Lī'ya seemed to hear the echo of her own words only then.
Her entire face colored at once, from the tips of her ears to her neck.
"I mean…" She choked, trying to pull her own tone back with desperate haste. "I mean he's under my protection. It's different. It's responsibility. I'm responsible for him, so obviously I decide where he stays, and…"
"Understood, Young Mistress," Hāi'na interrupted, a poorly disguised little laugh escaping despite the obvious effort to contain it. "I'll let them know the guest room won't be necessary. Fu fu."
The servant bowed quickly and left, closing the straw door behind her in a hurry.
Lī'ya remained standing in the middle of the room, the tray still pressed against her chest, staring at the closed door as if she could, by pure force of will, undo the last few moments.
"She wasn't really going to put you in a guest room," she murmured at last, without turning. "It was just… a stupid question."
Zhì Yuǎn said nothing.
He only watched the way she set the tray on the bench with care, her back still rigid, clearly avoiding turning and facing him.
Interesting, he thought.
Lī'ya finally turned, appearing kneeling beside the mat and extending one of the soup bowls toward him with a gesture a little too brusque, as if the force of the motion could erase the flush that still had not left her face.
"Eat," she grumbled. "Before it gets cold."