Morning arrived like steam remembering why it rises.
The mark beneath Yinlei's collarbone kept its small, steady warmth.
Stay, it said again—the way a table says eat before anyone decides to argue.
Lin Yunyao set two cups on the root of the Seventh Pine and unwrapped a square of 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. Some habits are doors; you keep them open to remember you live in a house.
"Today we leave absence," she said.
"On the table," Yinlei answered.
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. In his hand: the small oiled dowel from yesterday, now tied with a short cord.
"For your pocket," he said to Yinlei. "If something tips, lift while you turn."
"And if nothing tips?" Yunyao asked.
"Then let the day keep its posture," Shi said. "Absence is also a tool. Do not confuse it with neglect."
They went to the kitchens first. Warmth breathed from clay pots. The cook shoved a basket of scallions at Yinlei and pointed at a board that had known sharper knives and forgiven them. He sliced into thin coins, 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, then looked past them to the corridor, to the table, to the small black box that rooms had begun to orbit.
"You're leaving it to us?" he asked, equal parts dread and invitation.
"We are leaving you the room," Yunyao said. "The box is work. The chair knows how. The cup and mint are a window. Keep breath moving. If the Speaker arrives—"
"Give him a bucket," Li Wei said, almost smiling.
"And a chair," Yinlei added. "Empty on purpose, until someone needs it."
A junior wandered in with a slate, asking—by the handle, not the blade—if he could write. Yunyao nodded. He wrote in careful script:
Back after a breath.
Leave absence on the table.
Elder Wu waited in the inner path with a ledger and nothing else—confidence, perhaps, that chairs now arrived when summoned. He looked at their hands and then at their faces.
"You'll be gone when Stone Orchard returns with tea," he said, more statement than question.
"We will," Yinlei said. "You have bowls and a door."
"And a chair," Yunyao said.
"Empty on purpose," Wu answered, and liked how the sentence sat in his mouth.
They passed the corridor. The box lay in the center. Hands rested on it in passing; no one asked what lived inside. The chipped cup kept its post; the mint breathed. The low elm seat sat an arm to the left of center—difficult to tip into piety, easy to forgive backs. The empty stool by the hatch waited like a polite secret.
Yinlei set his palm on the table's edge. Not to claim, not to bless. To remember the feel of wood that had decided to be a room. He took his hand away.
They left.
At the arch, the stone had written nothing. It had learned to rest from telling people what they already knew. Yinlei set his left palm on the cool and his right over the mark. He did not ask with his mouth.
What do you want?
Down, the ear answered. And—softer, like a word that had been practicing in kitchens—without you.
Yunyao drew breath to argue and then smiled, very slightly, at being corrected by a room. "Together includes away," she said.
They stepped through with a loaf folded in cloth, the small drum under Yunyao's arm, the oiled dowel in Yinlei's sleeve, and no new tools. The world inside had shifted the way patience shifts a field—incrementally and with good reasons. The moss sprawled like something that had won an argument and didn't need to boast. Light fell from nowhere and everywhere and did not apologize for choosing a color. Orbs of water hung lower, eager to be helpful.
The obelisk stood in the middle of enough. The crystal held Mu Qingxue standing the way water holds reflections it intends to keep.
"Ask first," she said.
Yinlei did.
What do you want?
Down. Then a word the house could use without ceremony.
Borrow.
At the base of the obelisk, stone remembered stairs. The room beneath waited without impatience. The pale trough held water to purpose. The low chair sat where they had left it, patient as a good refusal.
They descended. Yinlei set the bread on the stone, pinched salt, poured a little water into the chipped cup in his memory. The cup was in the corridor; he felt its absence like a window left open in the right room.
"Borrow our breath," he said to the walls. "We left it elsewhere to be useful."
The bell arrived as rule. Not metal. Intention. It pressed from the edges in, the way old orders try to fill a room left to its own competence. It probed for their hands where they were not, seeking to make absence into fault.
Yunyao set the drum on her thigh and tapped once, not louder, correct. The air held the beat without needing permission. The trough's surface barely wrinkled.
"Bring me the day without you," Qingxue said, eyes on the space beside them that should have held their shadows.
"We left a box," Yinlei said. "And a chair. And a cup. And mint."
"And you left habits," Yunyao added. "Chairs that sit. Buckets that know the order of hands. A sentence or two where a quarrel might have wanted to be."
"Good," Qingxue said. "Then step out."
"We are out," Yinlei said, confusing accuracy with stubbornness.
"Out of here," she said. "Stand at the arch. Let the room ask you to return."
They looked at each other. He nodded once.
They climbed. At the line where shadow becomes hallway, they stopped. The world of the Boundary went on humming under them like a stove; the corridor's pulse came back faintly through stone and habit. They could not see the table. They could feel it—the way soup feels a spoon three rooms away if the house is honest.
"Now what?" Yunyao asked.
"Walk slower," Yinlei said, because sometimes a proverb keeps hands from inventing occupations.
They waited.
The day, elsewhere, did not.
Stone Orchard's negotiators arrived cleaner than the morning. They found Elder Wu at the sill, pouring tea. They found the box on the table and the low chair at its slightly obstinate angle. They found the empty stool by the hatch and a junior kneeling beside a dropped spoon to rescue dignity without applause.
"Masters Wu, Shi," said the taller of the two, then blinked to notice that Shi was absent and did not scold the room for impertinence. "We've returned with tea and a revised protocol."
"Sit," Elder Wu said. "Our corridor hears better that way."
They sat. The low chair made the taller negotiator's knees remember honesty. He read, and the plaque sounded less like a prison this time and more like a tired road trying to be a map.
Li Wei stood where Yinlei would have stood. He did not pretend to be taller. He did not speak first. He let soup set the meter. He waited for the room to take a breath. He placed his palm on the table's edge—the same place Yinlei had—and kept his hand there just long enough that the wood understood continuity.
"We sign for service," he said, voice steady enough to pour. "We sign to keep rooms open. We sign to seat arguments before they kneel us. We sign to keep names inside the room. We don't sign to kneel to an emergency someone renamed convenience."
The shorter negotiator glanced at the box. "And that?" he asked, meaning and not meaning to ask.
"Carried in public," Li Wei said. "Unopened. Unexplained."
"I see," the man said, who did not, yet. He breathed the mint and took tea. He became more useful.
The ward thread over the eastern terrace plucked—less polite. Pressure leaned in from the doors. It tried to find Yinlei's habit under Li Wei's hands and steal it by mispronouncing it. The empty stool trembled, hungry for drama.
Li Wei set the stool back with two fingers. Lift while you turn. He did not say the words. His wrist remembered them.
"Walk slower," he said to the hallway itself. "If you arrive late, the house will still be here."
Yunyao, at the arch, smiled at nothing the way a person smiles when a sentence arrives from another room carrying the right groceries.
The bell pressed. The chipped cup fogged. Mint grew louder without shouting. The box did not budge. Together is heavier, together is lighter wrote itself in moisture and then behaved as water.
Elder Wu put two fingers on the table the way doctors feel for life and nodded to himself. "Eat," he said, correct order as ever. "If the bell wants to be useful, it can carry a bucket."
As if summoned by being predicted, the river announced itself. A thin silver insistence at the northern sluice. Buckets arrived. Hands arranged themselves. The line found its meter without being told, because absence had left an outline everyone knew how to fill.
The taller negotiator hesitated with his plaque, then put it down and took a bucket. He lifted and passed, lifted and passed, knees honest because the chair had reminded them earlier. The shorter one fetched chalk without being asked. Li Wei kept time with his fan. A boy who had once panicked became the runner whose posture made paths open for him on their own.
The Speaker stepped into the far arch, alone, grey robe, gold eyes, empty hands. He saw the buckets, the chairs, the mint, the cup, the box, the absence where names used to take up more room than they should have. He saw Li Wei in the center of usefulness, not pretending to be anyone but himself.
"For me?" he asked, looking at the empty stool.
"For anyone who sits like a person," Elder Wu said.
The Speaker did not sit. He took a bucket.
Water decided to be persuaded. The chalk line accepted cheap powder as a compliment. The bell sulked from the sill where it was resting instead of working. The river lowered its voice by a word.
At the arch, Yunyao listened to two rooms at once—the Boundary's breath and the corridor's meter—and shook her head softly at how neatly they had begun to rhyme.
"Now?" she asked.
"Now," Yinlei said, not because he was required, but because returning is also a habit and a courtesy.
They stepped back down the stairs. The under-room felt like a kitchen between rushes. The chair held its place. The trough kept its purpose. The ear hummed a word that had sharpened while they were away.
Borrow returned.
Qingxue looked at their hands. She did not ask if they had done work; the room had told her.
"Good," she said. "Leave the absence here."
Yinlei frowned, then laughed at himself. He took the oiled dowel from his sleeve and set it on the stone. He set nothing else. He set the habit—the sense that the room would continue even if he stepped out. He recognized that feeling the way a carpenter recognizes square.
"Tomorrow," Qingxue said, "ask the house for time you don't own."
"What does that look like?" Yunyao asked.
"Let someone knock and do not open," Qingxue said. "Not to be cruel. To teach the door it is allowed to choose when to be a door."
They climbed. Shadow became hallway. Elder Shi leaned where doors like to consult grandfathers. He had not moved and had somehow been everywhere.
"How many?" he asked, which is how he asks who.
"A room," Yunyao said. "Two negotiators. A boy. A river. And a bell that carried a bucket."
"Enough," Shi replied, which is how he says good.
They crossed the yard. The corridor had held itself upright without rehearsal. The low chair anchored. The box carried and was carried. The empty stool had been used by three kinds of need and none of them prestige. The cup kept breath. The mint kept window.
Stone Orchard left their plaque and their tea and, strangely, a small bag of chalk without being asked. The taller one pressed his palms to the table and looked at the box and did not ask again.
"We'll return with someone who knows how to sit," he said, which meant he would return having learned.
The Speaker set his bucket down, rolled his sleeves without making a performance of it, and stood for a moment with his hand on the low chair's back rail like a man who has discovered he misses furniture he never owned.
"When you leave a room," he said to no one, to everyone, "it finds out whether it remembers you or itself."
"When we leave a room," Yunyao said, "we find out whether we taught it well."
He did not ring. He did not sit. He left without making a vanishing of it.
At the pine, evening chose a color that forgave everything it touched. They tore the breads and salted them and ate without correcting the recipe. The mark beneath Yinlei's collarbone warmed like a lamp in a room that had decided to survive by being ordinary well.
Li Wei brought the slate and asked—by the handle, not the blade—"May I write?"
"Write," Yunyao said.
He wrote in the careful script of someone becoming honest with letters:
Leave absence on the table.
Borrow breath; return it.
Seat arguments.
Serve first.
Keep names.
Walk slower. The house will still be here.
Yinlei added a small line beneath, for tomorrow.
Teach the door to choose.
Far away, inside the crystal, Mu Qingxue pressed her palm to the wall and did not ask it to become a door. She repeated the corridor's true name, the lower ring's small one, the junior's name that fit a chair, and two negotiators who had learned to sit. The water in the trough listened, pleased to be borrowed by work.
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 practiced breathing to the beat a house kept for itself and thought, not unkindly, that this weather might yet become a decent season.
Night cooled the root of the pine. Crickets practiced until they believed themselves. The Seventh Seal did not crack. It learned a modest instruction and filed it where plain things go when they intend to outlast applause.
Borrow, and return.