Morning arrived like steam agreeing to be seen.
The mark beneath Yinlei's collarbone kept its steady warmth.
Stay, it said again, the way tables say eat before anyone decides to argue.
Lin Yunyao set two cups on the root of the Seventh Pine and unwrapped a cloth. Three flat breads waited, browned where the pan had disagreed and then made peace. She left space for a third cup and did not fill it. The empty place had become a habit the mountain approved of.
"The box stays in the corridor," she said.
"It does," Yinlei answered. "Unopened. Unexplained."
Elder Shi Tianjing climbed the last steps with weather in his knees and patience in his breath. He greeted the cups before the people, as always.
"Today you will be asked at the wrong time," he said mildly. "Say yes if the house is watching. Say no if the audience is."
"Which is it?" Yunyao asked.
"Yes," Shi said, and almost smiled.
They went to the kitchens first. Warmth breathed from clay pots. The cook thrust a basket of scallions at Yinlei and pointed at a board that had known sharper knives and survived them. He sliced into thin coins. He salted once and stopped before the pot decided it was a river.
By the window, Li Wei stood with a plain fan and a loaf wrapped in clean cloth. He bowed without apology. His wrist asked the air to consider him instead of admire him. It trembled, then learned.
"Slower," Yunyao said, tapping the spine of the fan with a knuckle. "Breath first, hand after."
He tried again. The fan steadied. The house kept watching.
The first bowls went out. Steam wrote brief characters over the yard and erased them before anyone could pretend breakfast needed witnesses.
By the inner path, Elder Wu waited with a ledger under one arm and a bundle of three-legged stools under the other. He looked like a man who had slept behind a door he trusted.
"Chairs in the corridor," he said. "Second hour."
"Leave one empty," Yinlei said.
"We will," Wu replied. "For the guest who chooses to be a person."
They carried the stools to the council corridor. Servants tried a narrow rug; Yunyao sent it back with a look. Stools were placed not as thrones but as places: one by the wide sill for soup and tea, two along the wall for knees that had earned courtesy, one turned toward the hatch that opened to the kitchen. Yinlei moved the stool by the door a hand's breadth so the threshold and the seat agreed about where the room began.
He set a chipped cup on the sill so the room could see what cups are for.
The box already sat in the center of the long table—black lacquer worn at the edges, cedar remembering a small fire along a hairline crack. It had slept there through the night and woken with the house.
He did not open it.
He did not explain it.
He laid both palms on its lid until his breath matched the corridor's.
"Carry with me," he said to the room. "Together, if you know how."
The ward thread over the eastern terrace plucked, polite and testing. The kind of pressure that turns welcome into etiquette and etiquette into trembling arrived and tried to make the corridor forget its legs.
"Walk slower," Yunyao told the hallway, the servants, the skin of the house. "If you arrive late, the house will still be here."
The pressure thinned like smoke when rain decides to do its work.
At second hour the elders came without pageantry. Elder Meng scowled at a stool and sat anyway, sighing like a man who refuses to thank wood aloud. Shi Tianjing stood near the sill where soup could correct policy. Elder Wu took the seat turned toward the door. The empty stool by the hatch stayed empty on purpose.
The Speaker stepped into the far arch alone. Grey robe. Gold eyes. The bell in his hand looked like silence pretending to be a tool.
He paused as if expecting the house to kneel.
It didn't.
His gaze found the empty stool by the hatch.
"For me?" he said.
"For the guest who chooses to be a person," Elder Wu replied.
The bell lifted a fraction. It did not ring. The corridor's breath tightened anyway, as if old rules had peeked in and asked to be remembered.
Yinlei took one step, set his palm on the empty stool, and moved it a hand's breadth—neither closer nor farther—until the door and the seat agreed on where the room began.
"Lift while you turn," he said, as if to a stubborn hinge.
"I know hinges," the Speaker said.
"I believe you," Yinlei answered, and left the stool empty.
A junior messenger appeared in the far arch with a folded slip and panic on his face. He saw the grey robe, the bell that did not ring, the elders who did not bow, and forgot to be a body in a room. He tilted.
"Give him the seat," Yunyao said.
Yinlei guided the boy to the empty stool and lowered him with the grin of a person who had not planned to be kind and was glad his body decided for him.
"For the guest who chooses to be a person," he said.
The room laughed—small, honest, relief-shaped. The pressure missed its cue and found less air than it had hoped.
"Read," Elder Wu told the boy.
The messenger straightened, tried again, and handed the slip to Wu like a man applying for a future. "Northern sluice. Chalk hairline. Not widening."
"Thank the chalk for being cheap," Wu said, and passed the note to Yinlei.
He skimmed it and looked toward the window where the river spoke against the mountain's ribs. "We'll look after lunch," he said. "We are not late. The house is still here."
The Speaker's bell lifted again, polite and dangerous.
"We came for an answer," he said. "When the ear you keep feeding decides to open, will your house stay neutral?"
"We do not worship an ear," Wu said evenly. "We host a house."
"Then answer as a house," the Speaker said. "Do you kneel to anyone's emergency?"
Elder Meng was ready to say something sharp about emergencies breeding in hesitation. Shi Tianjing only breathed. He did not have to give permission. He had already taught the room where to put its weight.
Yinlei lifted his right hand and shaped the smallest seal of agreement he knew—the one that asks air to be a room. He set it at the corridor's center like a mat.
"We will bow when we mean it," he said. "We will stand when we mean it more. We will sit to listen. We will leave a seat. We will name gently. And we will keep our names inside the room."
The bell pressed, not a strike but a weight. Knees considered the floor, then reconsidered. Yunyao tapped the spine of her fan against her palm once. One beat. Not a command. A memory. Li Wei matched her with his fan, imperfect and brave. The corridor found their meter.
"Eat," Elder Wu said abruptly. He surprised himself with the correct order. He gestured toward the sill. "Or watch us do it."
A servant ladled soup. The smell caught the room by the wrist and set it down where it could think better. The Speaker did not take the stool by the hatch. He took the stool turned toward the kitchen and set the bell on his knee as if it were only metal.
He accepted a bowl. He tasted. He did not pretend to admire.
He ate like a person.
The box sat in the middle of the table and did its job by continuing to exist. Hands rested on it without claiming, without proving. Together is heavier, together is lighter lived as posture and not proverb.
Halfway through the bowls, the ward thread over the river plucked again, not polite this time. The bell did not move. The mountain did.
Water makes its own announcements.
Shi's head turned first. "Sluice," he said. "Now."
They stood without panic. Stools scraped with the useful sound of furniture remembering its job. The Speaker rose with the bowl in one hand and the bell in the other. He hesitated, then placed the bell on the sill beside the chipped cup as if returning a borrowed thing.
"Walk slower," Yunyao reminded the hallway that had begun to want to run. "We are not late. The house is still here."
They crossed to the bridge where the river speaks in a voice it cannot deny. Spray lifted like a rumor that wanted to be true. The northern sluice showed a thin white line along the chalk seal, the kind a mason frowns at and a storm courts.
Yinlei stepped onto the wet stone and set his hand to the wooden handle that lifted the small spill gate. It resisted with the honesty of a hinge that had remembered a worse winter.
"Lift while you turn," Shi called, because carpentry is a language the world always understands.
He did. The handle rose a finger-width. Water changed its mind about where it wanted to be difficult.
"Buckets," Yunyao said. "Not for heroics. For rhythm."
Disciples formed a line without drama. Buckets went down, came up, emptied where a field below could say thank you. The line learned its own beat. Li Wei kept time with his fan, not to command water but to teach wrists not to panic.
The Speaker stood at the end of the line holding a bowl and the habit of command. He looked at the gap where a person should be. He stepped into it. He took a bucket.
The house noticed.
He lifted and passed, lifted and passed, the way a person remembers being made out of hands. The bell sat on the sill he had left behind, a black punctuation mark that had forgotten its sentence.
The white hairline along the chalk did not widen. It did not vanish. It behaved.
"More chalk," Elder Wu said.
"Cheap chalk," Yinlei added, and a boy ran for the storeroom with the good posture of someone who intends to come back.
They dusted the seam with powder and pressed it with wrists that had learned to ask the air to consider them. The line held. Water argued and then agreed.
"Soup," Yunyao said, which sounded foolish at a river and was not. A pot arrived because kitchens like to be right. She ladled into bowls with the solemnity the mountain deserves and handed them to wet hands one by one, last to the man in the grey robe who had chosen a bucket.
He did not ring while holding soup.
He ate standing on wet stone like every other person present.
The river lowered its voice by a word.
"Good," Shi said, as if complimenting a hinge. "Now let gravity have its dignity."
They walked back along the bridge, slower because the house was still here. The bell remained on the sill, where the chipped cup had made it feel less important. The Speaker picked it up with the mindfulness of someone returning from a funeral changed but not performative.
In the corridor, the box waited the way patient truths wait. People touched it as they passed. No one asked what was inside. The question had become rude.
Elder Wu looked at the bell in the Speaker's hand and at the wet sleeves of his robe. "When the ear opens, we will be in our house," he said. "Sitting if we need to listen. Standing if we need to refuse. Serving if we need to remember who we are."
The Speaker's mouth changed as a shore changes when a wave decides to stop showing off. "Your house has made a new kind of noise," he said.
"Breakfast," Yunyao said.
"And chairs," Shi added.
"And names that stay inside rooms," Yinlei finished.
The Speaker inclined his head to the corridor. He looked at the empty stool by the hatch, then at the box in the center of the table. He placed the bell on the sill beside the chipped cup again, not as a test but as a habit he was attempting.
"Leave it," he said quietly. "For today."
He sat on the empty stool.
No one applauded. That would have been vulgar. They made space without ceremony. Someone set down a bowl in front of him. He ate like a person again. The bell watched from the sill as if it had been given a day off and did not know what to do with it.
After, he stood and did not take the bell immediately. "When I arrive at the wrong time," he said, "will you keep a chair?"
"We will," Elder Wu said. "We will also keep our names."
The Speaker nodded and left without making a vanishing of it.
Afternoon chose useful work. Repairs on the eastern walkway. Practice in the lower ring where chairs were set at the edge so people could learn to sit before they bowed. Li Wei taught three juniors to breathe into their wrists. A girl in the infirmary told her friend the story about a path that remembered it was meant to be a road. Someone laughed in the kitchen when salt went where it wanted and made a lesson out of honesty.
At dusk, they went to the arch. The stone said nothing. It had learned to rest from telling people what they already knew. Yinlei set his left palm on the cool surface and his right over the mark and did not ask with his mouth.
What do you want?
Down, the ear answered by habit and kindness. And then—softly now, like a person trying a word they are not sure the room will welcome—together.
They did not descend. The house had done enough for one light. He thanked the door by not insisting and let the word find a place to sit inside him that would still be there in the morning.
They climbed back to the pine. The breads were cool and better for it. They tore and salted and ate without correcting the recipe.
"Tomorrow?" Yunyao asked.
"House in the morning," Yinlei said. "Boundary after breakfast."
"And the chair?" she asked.
"We leave it," he said. "Empty on purpose."
"And the bell?" Shi asked, because elders enjoy asking the question they already know the answer to.
"We feed the person holding it," Yunyao said.
They wrote on the slate and set it between the cups.
Keep a chair.
Serve first.
Name gently.
The mark beneath Yinlei's collarbone warmed like a lamp in a room that had decided to survive by being ordinary well. The mountain exhaled. The house held.
Far away, inside the crystal, Mu Qingxue laid her palm on the wall and did not ask it to become a door. She spoke four names in one breath—Mu Qingxue, Feng Yinlei, Lin Yunyao, Li Wei—and did not arrange them to flatter anyone. The water in the hidden trough listened for footsteps that would come together without rehearsal.
On the ridge beyond courtesy, the Speaker stood with empty hands and watched a corridor that kept a chair for him without surrendering its name. He did not lift the bell. He practiced breathing to the beat a house kept for itself and frowned like a man who recognizes a song he taught and cannot own.
Night cooled the root of the pine. Crickets practiced until they believed themselves. The Seventh Seal did not crack. It learned a small, workable instruction and filed it where plain things go when they intend to outlast applause.
Sit together. Serve. Keep.