Chapter Text
Maomao sat cross-legged on her cot, a thin book open in her lap but long since forgotten. The edges of the pages curled beneath her fingers. She hadn’t turned a leaf in nearly an hour.
They’d draped the hallway in crimson earlier that morning. Hung cutouts of fish, paper scrolls, red silk banners inked with blessings she hadn’t read. Lahan had helped string the decorations while Lakan supervised with tea in hand. When Maomao passed through on her way back from the apothecary, Lahan had offered her one of the gold-inked talismans.
She hadn’t taken it.
Now her room remained the only undecorated space in the estate. No red ribbons, no potted kumquats, no firecrackers on her sill. It was an island of quiet in a sea of celebration. Still, the color managed to bleed through—reflected in the lantern light, echoed in the voices outside, pressed into her mind.
Her jaw clenched. Her shoulders hurt from the way she curled inward.
New Year’s Eve was supposed to be for sweeping out the old. For cleaning the dust, making room, starting again.
But some dust clung too deep. Some things refused to be swept.
She leaned back against the wall, willing the air to still. Her eyes slid shut.
Nothing soothed the nausea curling around her stomach.
She sat in her window, low in layers to cool the sickening heat of her body, and despite the season it does little to soothe her.
It was warmer welcoming this spring than she could ever remember in years passed.
It was colder back then. The kind of cold that made her fingers sting when she forgot to wear her gloves. She remembered gripping the hem of Luomen’s robe tightly as they walked to the edge of the small field behind the apothecary on Spring Festival night. Dry grass crunched beneath their feet, rimmed in frost. Above them, the night had yawned open, black and endless.
He carried a quilt under one arm and a small clay lantern in the other. When they reached the little hill, he set the lantern down and shook the quilt open with a soft huff, spreading it over the hard ground like it was a luxury rug. Maomao had plopped down without hesitation, arms tucked into her sleeves, breath blooming in puffs before her face.
She couldn’t have been older than eight. Her hands were too small for gloves to fit properly, so Luomen had taken one of his own scarves and wrapped it around them like a cocoon. “Now you’re a dumpling,” he said with a grin.
She had wriggled in place, then stilled—because the first firework had gone up.
It burst in a pale white flower above the trees, followed by a slower red that dripped down like petals. Maomao had gasped, just a little, and turned to look at him.
But he hadn’t been watching the sky. He’d been watching her.
“You can only see it once a year,” she’d whispered, trying to shift his attention.
“I know,” he’d said softly, his eyes crinkled with warmth. “But I only get to see you see it once a year.”
She hadn’t understood then, not fully. But the words had stayed, like sediment in the belly of a teacup.
The stars were so bright and close, she felt as if she could reach out and pluck her choice straight from the sky.
The memory faded slowly now, like smoke, leaving a bitter sweetness behind. She was no longer eight. The hill was long gone. The field had turned to rot. The quilt had frayed and vanished.
But she could still feel the weight of that scarf around her hands. Still hear the way he said once a year—like it meant forever.
A sharp rap at the door broke her reverie.
She didn’t answer.
The knock came again, gentler this time. A pause. Then a voice—soft, uncertain. “Young Miss… the master says dinner is served.”
It was Suyin. The youngest of the three maids, always the most careful with her.
Maomao stared at the door, then down at the open book, its words now meaningless.
She didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to see the dishes shaped like blessings, didn’t want to listen to Lakan speak gently about a year she wished had never happened.
Still, she closed the book and set it aside.
The silence in her room was starting to sound too much like absence.
“…I’ll be there shortly,” she said, her voice low.
Footsteps padded away down the hall.
Maomao rose, slowly. Brushed the dust from her sleeves and put them back on. The red lantern light cut across the floor as she opened the door, slipping back into a house that wanted to believe in joy again.
Their New Year’s Eve dinner table was quieter than tradition called for.
No clamor of relatives packed elbow-to-elbow, no thundering laughter over wine, no children scrambling beneath the chairs for spilled chestnuts. Just the three of them, seated at a long lacquered table where the steam from the dishes rose in solemn curls.
Though Maomao supposes this is how it always is, since Lakan chased out the rest of their clan.
Lahan sat at the far end, half-hunched over a bowl of eight-treasure rice, poking through it with his chopsticks like he didn’t trust the raisins. Maomao sat across from Lakan, spine straight, eyes hooded. Her sleeves brushed the table each time she reached for a dish. Lakan, of course, was impeccable—pouring his own wine with one hand, folding his napkin neatly in the other, never quite looking at either of them too long.
The meal was lavish but delicate. Dishes Maomao had eaten since childhood, though made with more expensive ingredients now. Steamed fish slick with sesame oil. Lotus root. Dumplings shaped like crescent moons. Sweet rice cakes cut into squares, still warm.
Maomao picked at her food, chewing methodically, mechanically. The taste was fine, maybe better than fine, but it didn’t land. It never did on this night.
The air between them was thick with the kind of politeness that hurt more than arguments.
Finally, after several minutes of silence, Lakan cleared his throat softly. His chopsticks paused over a glistening slice of radish. “I had something made for you.”
Maomao looked up.
Lakan’s eyes met hers, steady but unreadable. “To wear tomorrow. For the Spring Festival.”
She set her bowl down without sound. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“I thought it might be,” he said. “You’ve outgrown most of what you came with. And you didn’t have anything red.”
“I don’t like red.”
“You don’t like being noticed,” Lakan corrected gently. “That’s not quite the same.”
Lahan glanced between them and noisily took a long sip from his teacup.
Maomao’s fingers tightened around her sleeves. “You didn’t need to commission anything. I would’ve worn what I had.”
“Yes,” Lakan said quietly. “But this year… I wanted you to wear something new. Something yours. Not something borrowed from a past that hurt you. I even got you the same in black, if you found a bright color too daunting.”
There it was again—that endless, treacherous kindness of his. It made her feel like she was being coddled. Or worse—raised.
“I didn’t ask for that,” she muttered.
“No,” Lakan said, taking a sip of wine. “You rarely do.”
For a moment, Maomao thought she’d snap—say something sharp or cruel just to cut through the tenderness. But then she glanced at Lahan, who was suddenly studying the rim of his bowl like it was a map of the empire, and the fight drained out of her.
She pressed her lips together and looked down at her plate.
The silence returned—this time thicker, edged with things unsaid.
Only the clink of porcelain and the faint whistle of pine logs in the brazier filled the room.
Eventually, Lahan muttered, “The dumplings are good.”
No one answered him.
She blinked and the dinner table was forgotten, all Maomao could see was the way to her door.
The scent of boiled orange peel and pine ash struck her first—sharp, clean, wrong.
Maomao stopped in the hallway outside her room, nose wrinkling. The door was cracked open. Sunlight pooled inside like a trap.
She pushed the door wider with her knuckles.
Lan froze mid-reach, arm stretched toward the lintel, cloth in one hand, a broom leaned against the far wall. A basin of fresh water sloshed faintly at her feet. The room smelled scrubbed raw.
Maomao’s voice was low and cold. “What are you doing?”
Lan whirled around, nearly dropping the cloth. “Lady- Lady Maomao—I was only—”
“I told you,” Maomao said, stepping inside, “not to touch my room for the New Year.”
Lan bowed quickly, fingers tight around the rag. “I know, but—Xiu said it was bad luck to leave a room unswept before the Spring Festival, and Master Lakan has us cleaning the whole house, and—Lady Su of the southern wing caught a chill last year from an open window, and—”
“I don’t care about Su’s weak lungs,” Maomao snapped.
The words came out harder than she meant them to. Lan flinched.
A long, quiet beat passed between them.
Maomao’s eyes flicked to the basin. Her sandals were wet now. She curled her toes against the damp.
“Do you even know what that broom means?” she asked, more softly this time. “Do you know what you’re sweeping out?”
Lan blinked at her. “It’s just dust, miss.”
Maomao let out a breath. “To you, maybe.”
But she knew better. It was memory. Loumen’s ghost still sat in the corners, silent and stubborn. The smell of her childhood home lingered in the drawer she wiped down. The ache in her chest had weight. Shape. She kept it folded between the floorboards and under her pillow and behind the faded lacquer box by the window. It lived here. She wasn’t ready to banish it.
“Take the basin,” Maomao said flatly, turning her back. “And the broom. Now.”
Lan hesitated, then scrambled to gather her things. She dipped a clumsy bow before hurrying out, head lowered, footsteps uneven.
Maomao waited until she was gone before she closed the door and stood in the center of the room.
The air smelled too clean.
She sat on the edge of her cot, fingers curled in her sleeves, jaw tight. The scrubbed floorboards stared back at her. One of Loumen’s old jars—long emptied—was gone from the windowsill. She didn’t know if the maid had moved it or broken it or thrown it out.
She didn’t want to ask.
Outside, bells began to ring across the estate, calling the household to prepare.
Maomao sat there a long time, in the ghost of her own grief, too bitter to cry, too tired to fix it.
Eventually, she rose.
Let them dress her like a stranger.
At least strangers couldn't feel like they were being erased.
Maomao sat on the low stool before the ornately carved mirror, hands clenched in her lap, the hem of her robe bunched between her fingers.
Her room was too small for all these people bustling around the few things she allowed Lakan to gift her.
Scented steam curled from a basin of jasmine water on the nearby table, but she hadn’t touched it. A silk screen shielded the door, though the occasional bustle of festival preparations leaked through—heels clicking across the hallway, laughter rising from the kitchen. Distant bells.
Her three maids moved around her like nervous ghosts.
Xiu, the eldest, adjusted the hanging lanterns with a practiced flick of her wrist, casting the light just so. Chun tugged at the color-stained wooden boxes until she found the comb case, while little Lan knelt to retrieve the ornate pins that had been chosen—though not by Maomao—for the occasion. Gold, shaped like peonies. Too fine.
None of the girls had been with her since the Verdigris House. They didn’t know how little she trusted people who entered from the side doors with folded hands and guarded smiles.
When Lakan first told her she'd be receiving a personal maid she outright refused, but he seemed to like proudly displaying her place in the family registry to get his way of things.
The only daughter of the La clan this, the precious family honor that.
Maomao flinched as a warm cloth touched her jaw.
“Apologies, miss,” Chun murmured, drawing back slightly. “I’ll be gentle.”
“You’re already being gentle,” Maomao said stiffly, voice neutral. “Just finish it.”
They were always this careful. Not out of fear—Maomao didn’t throw things or raise her voice—but out of uncertainty. She was quiet, unnerving. Hard to predict. She never asked for their company, never indulged in small talk. She’d memorized all three of their footsteps and still startled every time they entered the room.
Xiu swept her hair into a high knot, anchoring it with twin combs of pearl-inlaid wood. “Your hair’s growing long again, miss,” she offered mildly. “Would you like us to trim it after the festival?”
“No.”
A pause.
Lan approached with the cosmetics tray. Her hands trembled slightly.
“Just the powder,” Maomao said, before they could reach for the rouge. “Nothing else.”
“But... the color suits you, miss,” Lan tried, too earnest.
“I said no.”
Silence fell again, stretching taut. Chun began dusting her cheeks with rice powder—light, matte, understated. The kind of face you could wear without smiling.
She didn’t protest the dressing. The robes were already chosen: deep charcoal with embroidered plum blossoms, too heavy for her taste, too elegant for someone who used to sleep in apothecary rags. They fastened the sashes, straightened the collar, adjusted the inner folds.
“You look...” Lan began, but her voice faded off.
Like someone else, Maomao thought.
Like someone who belonged to a name.
“Thank you,” she said finally, because she’d been taught politeness. “You did fine.”
They bowed quickly, too relieved to meet her eyes.
When they were gone, Maomao stared at her reflection in the mirror—at the red cord in her hair, the smooth paint of powder over her cheekbones, the fine silk that didn’t match the calluses on her hands.
She looked like a stranger.
But still—she smoothed her palms down the sleeves. Gathered herself.
Then she stood.
She had a festival to survive.
The estate was unusually quiet for a festival day.
Servants moved with subdued efficiency, the scent of pine ash and powdered clove rising from the incense braziers lit near every doorframe. The household altar had already been dressed with offerings—sticky rice, candied lotus, longan tea—all laid out with the meticulous care Lakan always insisted on.
Maomao stood just outside the main hall, wrapping her outer robe around her shoulders, fingers twitching near the clasp. She had tied her hair up too quickly, and a strand kept falling into her face.
Behind her, footsteps approached—calmer than hurried, but with a kind of weight.
Lahan.
He was already dressed in deep grey robes with silver accents, more formal than she expected. His hair was tied back, and for once he wasn’t carrying a ledger or scroll. Only his gloves, which he kept folding and unfolding in one hand.
He stopped beside her and didn’t speak right away.
She adjusted her sleeves, already anticipating the silence.
“You could try,” he said eventually, low.
Maomao blinked. “Try what?”
“Being civil.”
She turned to look at him. “I’ve been civil.”
“No,” he said flatly, “you’ve been cold. And he's trying, which pisses me off already but then you go and act downright cruel.”
A beat passed. He may be a year older than her but they're the same height, he's not the least bit intimidating.
She looked away. “It’s a new year. I’m allowed to be reflective.”
“It’s not reflection when you’re treating him like air.”
Maomao bristled. “You think I should just pretend nothing happened?”
“No,” Lahan said, sharper now. “I think you should stop acting like he’s trying to erase or erase your grief just because he wants to include you in something.”
She flinched, just barely.
“You think I don’t see it?” he continued. “The way you won’t look at him when he’s setting the table. The way you bite your tongue when he asks how you’ve been sleeping. The way you leave the room like it’s on fire every time he brings up the word family.”
“Don’t,” she said, voice clipped.
Lahan ignored her. “He’s trying. He always has been. It's more than he's ever done for me, and I’m tired of watching you cut him down with silence like he deserves it.”
Maomao’s voice cracked then—quiet but furious. “You have no idea what it feels like.”
“I don’t,” Lahan said. “I hate my dad and I do miss my mom, but I know what it looks like when someone is trying to give you a place and you keep refusing to stand in it.”
She stared at him, stunned silent.
“I know you loved your father,” he said, not unkindly. “But you’re not the only one who lost him. And you’re not the only one who’s mourning him. Don't you think Dad sees him in you? You lived together for years— picking up the manners of his dear uncle but instead of calm and supportive you're quiet and cruel.”
He left her there, fists tight at his sides, walking toward the waiting carriage where Lakan was already seated, adjusting his sleeve cuffs with studied calm.
Maomao stood alone for a long moment.
The weight of the new year pressed down like snow.
Then, finally, she followed—silent, burning with the words she didn’t say.
The door of the carriage shut behind her with a quiet finality.
And they rode toward the Spring Festival, the silence between them heavy, full of unsaid things.
The carriage wheels rolled steadily over frozen ground, muffled by last week’s snowfall and the early thaw of spring. Inside, the darkly colored charcoal cabin was warm from the small brazier tucked beneath their feet, but the warmth did little to ease the chill in the air.
Lakan sat on the left bench, resplendent in a dark grey robe embroidered with stitch-work cranes. His outer cloak hung from one shoulder in a studied disarray, the kind he only wore when stepping into public spaces. Lahan sat beside him, half-buttoned, fussing with the ribbon on his outer sash.
Across from them, Maomao had folded herself small in the corner of the opposite bench. Her festival robe was deep black, heavy with weight, and new. Too new. She hadn't spoken since they stepped into the carriage. Her hair was pinned in a style she hadn’t chosen, and her sleeves felt too long as they cascaded from her lap to the floor.
It wasn’t quiet. The wooden frame creaked faintly with every turn. She could tell Lakan preferred to use his chariot to his carriage but there was truly no reason for her to ride in a structure for war. Outside, the echo of fireworks began early in distant bursts—children likely testing fuses before the proper show. The air held the distant scent of roasted chestnuts and river steam.
But no one spoke.
Lakan’s eyes slid to Maomao more than once, thoughtful. Not pressing, not yet. Lahan stared at the window, pretending he hadn’t noticed the way Maomao’s hands remained hidden beneath her sleeves, clenched. Pretended not to see his own tightly-wound fists.
Finally, Lakan broke the silence.
“You could at least pretend to enjoy the silk,” he said mildly, as if they were discussing the weather.
Maomao didn’t look up. “I didn’t ask for it.”
“It suits you.”
“It doesn’t.”
Lakan pointedly didn't sigh, but she could see his noes flare inwards from her periphery. "They're a finer quality than the other set. Useless fabric as it may be, the robes will remind everyone around you that you are not to be bothered."
Lahan winced and glanced toward the lantern swaying above them. “It’s just a festival. No one’s burning history.”
Maomao’s gaze snapped to him. “Shut it.”
Lakan held up a hand. “Let’s not turn this into an argument before we even arrive.”
“You turned it into a celebration,” she said quietly, voice clipped like glass. “You lit incense. You scrubbed the house clean. You hung new couplets at the threshold. You cooked fish for prosperity and folded dumplings with hidden coins. You said ‘out with the old.’”
Lahan’s mouth pressed into a thin line.
“I did those things,” Lakan said slowly, deliberately, “because they honor both the living and the dead. This is a celebration.”
Maomao looked away, out the small window, watching the silhouettes of villagers pass in the waning dusk. Red lanterns bobbed like drifting stars above their heads.
“Well I don't feel like celebrating.” she murmured in a hiss.
The carriage rocked slightly as they crossed a stone bridge. Beneath it, the river glittered with early reflections of fireworks, sparks trembling on the surface like burning petals.
None of them spoke again until the carriage came to a stop just outside the festival square.
Their footman opened the door. Lakan stepped out first, regal and unreadable. Lahan followed, adjusting his sleeves, glancing over his shoulder.
Maomao hesitated.
The lights, the people, the noise—it hit her all at once.
And in that fractured moment, when even memory felt too loud, she realized: she was already alone.
She stepped down last, trailing behind the two of them like a shadow trying to find its shape.
The square unfolded like a living tapestry: crimson banners fluttered from every awning, paper fish and tigers swayed overhead on silk strings, and fireworks hissed like serpents in the distance, their blooms spilling briefly over rooftops in red, gold, and green.
Maomao kept close at first.
Lakan paused now and then to greet passing officials or bow to elders offering New Year wishes. Lahan nodded along with polite detachment, his expression flickering between bored and dutiful. Maomao trailed them like a guest in someone else’s home.
The market began to swell.
Vendors called out from every direction—rice cakes, candied hawthorn, sesame buns steaming in bamboo trays. Incense drifted in thick coils past her nose, sweet and cloying. Somewhere, cymbals clashed and dancers shouted, drawing a small crowd toward the lion dance troupe weaving through the square.
They passed a booth offering red thread bracelets for longevity. Lakan turned to gesture toward it—perhaps to offer one to Maomao—but she had already moved a few paces ahead, eyes fixed on a wooden plaque carved with family blessings.
She didn’t mean to stray.
She only wanted to read it.
But then a man with a cart full of plum wine barrels lurched between them, barking for space. Then two children ran past with sparklers, trailing smoke and laughter. A woman waved a massive feather fan in front of Maomao’s face, chasing away embers.
By the time she turned back—
They were gone.
The crowd had shifted like a tide.
Red lanterns blurred above her, and faces she didn’t know pressed in from every side—laughing, shouting, bargaining. Maomao pivoted, scanning for Lahan’s stiff posture or the silver edge of Lakan’s hairpin.
Nothing.
“Lakan?” she tried, voice too small for the din. “Lahan?”
A gong sounded. Confetti rained from somewhere above. A puppet show began performing nearby, drawing dozens more into the already crammed street. She moved to the edge, half-shoved, and braced against the side of a sweets vendor’s cart.
She could feel her heart hammering in her throat—not panic, not fear, but something colder.
She hadn't been left behind, had she?
No—she had drifted.
Without noticing, without intending to.
And maybe that was worse.
The sound of laughter grated.
All this light, all this color, all this joy—like the past year hadn't left blood beneath her fingernails and smoke in her lungs. Like all grief could be swept away with a new robe and a poem on red paper.
A voice behind her shouted for longevity. Another toasted to fortune.
Maomao’s jaw clenched.
She turned away from the main avenue and ducked through a side alley lined with oil lamps. She didn’t look back. Didn’t want to. She didn’t know what she would do if she saw them trying to find her, or worse—not trying at all.
Eventually, the roar of the crowd dulled behind her.
She's fifteen years old—that's too old to be getting lost in crowds.
She emerged onto a quieter stretch of bridge where only a few people stood, some in couples, some alone, watching the black sky slowly fill with bursts of flame.
And there—leaning on the railing, half-shadowed, dressed in finery too fine for the common crowd—was a young man watching the sky as though daring it to impress him.
Maomao didn’t recognize him immediately.
He glanced sideways at her. “If you’re looking for the main fireworks, they haven’t started yet.”
She didn’t answer.
Not right away.
Not when she could place him as the man who had sat across from her in her——
Not when she could place him as the man who had sat across from her in Lankans study.
The sky cracked open in gold behind him, lighting the underside of his lashes.
For once, his beauty didn’t register.
She was just... tired.
And he looked like someone half an inch from tears.
She stepped to the railing beside him.
Neither of them said another word.
Above them, a firework bloomed into a thousand willow branches of blue flame. Something in her chest ached—not for noise, or for spectacle, but for how small and far away the stars suddenly looked looming far above her.
Neither of them spoke— which really was for the best as even on this quiet bridge the booming of her heart was only rivaled by the violent explosion in the sky.
The fireworks came in waves—first a dull thump, then the sudden flare of color above the rooftops, a few heartbeats apart. Each one painted the river below in fleeting, fractured light. Red. Gold. Silver.
Maomao watched them all without really seeing.
Then, quietly:
I'm so sick of feeling so alone.
Jinshi glanced at her, sharp eyes flicking across her profile. “What?”
She didn’t answer right away. Her hands had curled over the railing, knuckles pale. Beneath the bridge, the water shivered with each explosion.
"I don’t- I don't know.”
He nodded, slowly. A bit dumbly. “That’s.. that's okay.”
Maomao looked at him then, really looked. Pinned him with her eyes. The edges of his sleeves were damp, as if he had walked too close to a fountain or hadn’t cared where the night air clung to him. His hair, fastidiously arranged earlier that evening no doubt, had begun to fall from its pins.
“You ran off too,” she said.
“‘Ran’ is a strong word,” he replied. “I'm seventeen. I left. Quietly. With dignity.”
She raised a brow.
“…I leapt a fence and bribed a guard with candied plums,” he admitted.
Maomao gave a weak, surprised huff of laughter. Her breath clouded the cold air.
“I don’t like what the New Year asks of me,” she said at last. “Sweep the dust. Burn the old. Make way for spring. Like everything ugly can be erased with rituals and rice wine.”
Jinshi’s voice softened. “And what would you rather do with the ugly?”
She looked out at the sky.
“I want to live with it. Not celebrate it. Not cover it with ribbons and call it healed.”
Another firework exploded—green and white, cascading sparks like ivy curling down a wall.
Jinshi didn’t respond with platitudes. He didn’t tell her she should be grateful for new beginnings. He just leaned slightly against the railing beside her, enough that their sleeves nearly brushed.
“I lost someone this year,” she said finally. Her voice didn’t break, but it thinned like winter air.
“I know,” he said, almost too gently. He seemed to cringe before speaking hesitantly: “Lakan mentioned him. Your master. Your… father?”
“Both.”
“Ah.”
A pause.
“I lost someone too,” he said, and Maomao glanced sideways. "But I was very young. And I only recently found out." He didn’t elaborate.
Instead, they stood there, watching the festival from the edge of it—two silhouettes caught between celebration and sorrow, surrounded by a world that didn’t quite know what to do with either.
Another firework bloomed—bright and blinding.
Jinshi flinched.
Maomao didn’t.
“You get used to it,” she murmured.
He looked at her again. There was something different in his gaze now—not amusement, not curiosity, but something steadier. A shared understanding.
He let out a shaky breath and began to shake himself.
Maomao scoffed. “You’re dressed like a peacock. You’re clearly someone important. If you continue to display yourself so openly someone will notice.”
He laughed, softly. “You're a little cruel, has anyone ever told you that?”
A beat.
Yes.
“Do you want to go back?” he asked. “To your family?”
She hesitated.
Then nodded, once.
“I’ll walk you partway,” he said.
They stepped off the bridge together.
The crowd had thinned slightly. From a distance, the bells of midnight began to chime—ushering in a new year, loud and triumphant.
Maomao didn’t feel triumphant.
But she didn’t feel alone, either.
And for now, that was enough.
The firework smoke hung in the air like a veil, softening the edges of the lantern-lit stalls as Maomao and Jinshi made their way through a narrow side path of the Spring Festival market.
These alleys were older, quieter—where vendors sold fermented plum wine in clay bottles and bundles of garlic strung with red paper charms. The chaos of the main avenue was still ahead, just a rising hum behind the woven stalls and fabric screens.
Maomao walked a half-step ahead, her hands tucked into her sleeves, posture tense but no longer brittle. Jinshi kept pace beside her, his golden outer robe traded for a dark traveling cloak that made him less conspicuous but no less dignified.
“This is the part I prefer,” he said after a while. “The quiet. The in-between.”
Maomao glanced sideways. “Strange sentiment from someone who lives under spotlights.”
He smiled faintly. “Stranger still that the girl who hates people keeps running into crowds.”
She didn’t answer. The next corner opened into a broader street, where the crowd surged again like a tide—lanterns overhead, firecracker paper curling on the ground, the smell of ginger sugar and meat skewers sharp in the night air.
And then Maomao froze.
Halfway across the square, just beyond the shadow of a wine stall, she saw Lahan.
He was hemmed in.
Three men stood around him—older, bigger, dressed in merchant silks a decade out of style, the kind of gaudy cloth that disguised nothing. One had a hand on Lahan’s shoulder. Another gestured with exaggerated mockery. The third stepped closer, too close.
They weren’t shouting. It was quieter than that—low-voiced threats, the kind meant to keep onlookers from noticing.
Lahan’s jaw was locked. His ledger bag hung loose on one shoulder, half-slipping. His hands were at his sides. Tense. Still.
Maomao’s breath caught.
Then she moved.
“Maomao—” Jinshi reached for her, confused, but she was already gone.
She ducked past a woman carrying a tray of rice sweets, slipped between a group of children throwing firecracker strings, and crossed the square in a blur of red and white cloth.
One of the men turned just in time to see her coming.
He raised a hand—half alarm, half insult—but Maomao didn’t flinch. She stepped straight into his space, shoulder first, shoving him back with a jolt that knocked the wind out of him.
Her voice, when it came, was low and cold and unmistakable.
“Get away from him.”
Lahan blinked. “Maomao—?”
The other two men recovered quickly, squaring their bodies like wolves testing a stranger.
“And who’re you?” one sneered. “His nursemaid?”
Maomao didn’t reply. She only reached into her sleeve and drew out a bundle—linen-wrapped, knotted tight. The shape was unmistakable: a pouch of dried herbs, tightly packed. She snapped the cord open and let a sharp medicinal scent flood the space.
“Do you know what aconite smells like?” she said, calm and matter-of-fact.
The men hesitated.
She took one step closer.
“Because I do.”
There was something about the way she said it—clinical, unafraid—that made the bravado in their eyes falter. The first man, still coughing from where her shoulder had hit his ribs, nudged the others.
“Forget it. Not worth the fuss. Come on.”
They left with a few parting curses under their breath, swagger turning to scurry.
Maomao didn’t watch them go.
She turned immediately to Lahan.
“Are you hurt?” she demanded.
He blinked again. “No. Just—cornered. I didn’t want to make a scene.”
“Next time,” she muttered, checking his arm, “make a scene.”
“You're fine,” Maomao said after fully scanning his condition.
Lahan looked at her. There was something unreadable on his face.
“You came,” he said, like it hadn’t fully registered.
Maomao frowned. “Of course I did.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. His hand curled around the strap of his bag and he looked away.
"I was looking for you—idiot."
Maomao ignored him. Her hand hovered near Lahan’s shoulder, uncertain, before it dropped back to her side.
“No one asked you to,” she said quietly. “I won’t do it again.”
The fireworks had tapered to a low, distant crackle of one-offs—echoes of color against the clouded sky. The market crowd had thinned just enough to move through without being jostled, though it still pulsed with music and the scent of roasted chestnuts and smoke.
Maomao kept close to Lahan, her steps light but guarded. Neither had spoken much since the incident. There was a strange quiet between them—not strained, not quite—but something watchful. Mutual.
Lahan didn’t try to fill the silence. He only turned once to glance at her, a brief flicker of acknowledgment, then gestured for her to follow.
They weaved through a winding alley between lantern stalls and incense burners, through a shortcut behind a row of opera-mask vendors, and out again into the dimmer edge of the square.
And there—beneath a red cloth awning, beside a lacquered cart filled with steamed buns—stood Lakan.
He hadn’t changed clothes. His hair was tied with ceremonial ribbon, now half-loosened from the night wind, and the scarf around his neck had begun to fray at one end. But his posture was still impeccable, hands loosely clasped behind his back, as though he hadn’t just spent the last hour waiting.
He looked up when they approached.
Maomao slowed.
Lahan stopped first.
“There,” he said simply. “He’s been here awhile.”
Maomao stared. Lakan said nothing. His eyes—dark, unreadable—took in Lahan first, then settled on her.
Maomao’s throat felt dry. “You waited.”
Lakan nodded once. “I said I would.”
“You let me go.”
His expression didn’t shift. “I said I would do that too.”
She stood there, uncertain. All around them, festival-goers passed by in pairs, in clusters, children riding shoulders, couples wrapped in matching cloaks. Red ribbons fluttered like tiny banners in the firelight.
“Lahan came for me,” she said, almost a whisper.
“I know. He was against my open-natured perspective.”
She looked at Lahan. He didn’t meet her eyes, but she caught the faint curve of his mouth before he stepped aside—giving her space, letting the distance between her and Lakan close by choice, not obligation.
Maomao hesitated, then stepped forward.
“I’m still angry,” she said quietly.
“I know,” Lakan said again. But this time, softer. "And I'm sorry."
“I didn't want to sweep anything away. Not yet. I barely recognize where I am, and if we go and change everything—” her voice was beginning to crack as her eyes started to wet.
He inclined his head. “Then we’ll leave it. For now.”
She took a broken breath.
And then—awkwardly, without looking—she stepped beside him.
Lakan didn’t touch her. He didn’t reach or speak. But his presence was steady, warm against the cold creeping into her sleeves.
Lahan lingered a half-pace behind her, watching the crowd with a quiet alertness that didn’t press.
The three of them stood like that: not reconciled, not resolved, but together.
And for tonight, that was enough. Because all three of them were still alive, which meant she had time.
They re-entered the carriage in silence.
The ride back was quieter than the one before outside and in.
The lanterns strung through the capital faded one by one as the carriage wheels rolled over frost-slicked stone. Distant revelry still echoed faintly in the streets—the laughter of children chasing firecrackers, the slow lull of a string instrument drifting from an open doorway—but here, in the small world within the carriage, there was only silence.
Lahan sat across from her, his arms folded and eyes half-closed, feigning sleep. Maomao could tell by the tension in his jaw that he was still awake. He hadn’t truly looked at her since she’d run off in the crowd.
Lakan sat beside her, composed and unreadable. His robes still bore the faint scent of the incense from the war shrine, though the night had long swept its heat away. He didn’t speak either—not out of resentment, Maomao sensed, but restraint. He didn’t fidget. Didn’t sigh. Just… waited.
The silence was a thread, pulled taut.
Maomao leaned her head back against the carriage wall and closed her eyes. The motion rocked gently beneath her, and for a moment, she wished it would never stop. That they could keep riding through the night forever—no shrines, no festivals, no words waiting to be spoken like unlit firecrackers between them.
“I don’t hate you,” she murmured suddenly, eyes still closed.
Neither man responded.
"I'm not mad at you either."
“I just don’t know how to… not be angry.”
"And when I realize that I'm not angry I get mad about it."
"I want to be upset. I don't- I don't know how to feel anything else right now."
The words were flat, raw as old stone. They scraped her throat on the way out.
Still, no answer.
Then, softly, Lakan said, “Anger is allowed. So is grief.”
She turned her face toward the window, watching frost bloom at the edge of the glass. “It doesn’t feel allowed. It feels like everyone’s trying to scrub it away. Like all this—” she gestured vaguely toward the outside world, the decorations, the firecrackers, the smiling crowds, “—is just a performance to forget everything that hurts. And I hate how it hurts.”
Lahan finally stirred. He didn’t speak, but the stiffness in his shoulders loosened. A little.
“I’m not asking you to forget,” Lakan said quietly. “I’m only asking you to keep living.”
The words settled in the space between them. Heavy, but not mean in natrue.
The rest of the ride passed in silence, but a different kind. One with cracks in it. Breathing room.
When they reached the estate, the night had gone still. The servants had long since gone to bed, and only a few lanterns remained lit in the corridors. Frost glittered on the courtyard stones like tiny spilled stars.
Lahan climbed out first, offering Maomao a hand without looking at her directly. She took it anyway.
Lakan stepped out last, his cloak trailing behind him. He didn’t say goodnight. Didn’t need to.
They walked into the quiet house as three people with too much between them—but still walking in the same direction.
And for now, that was enough.
The estate had gone still again. Not the bright stillness of a celebration winding down, but the quiet of something passed.
Maomao did not go to bed.
She returned to her room, sat in the center of the floor, and waited.
The candle on her desk guttered, casting long shadows across the room. She hadn’t changed out of the ornate robes Lakan had gifted her—red silk embroidered with cranes and plum blossoms. Too fine for her, too loud. But she wore them still, the fabric gathered around her knees like the hem of someone else’s life.
Outside, the last of the firecrackers crackled like dry rice in a hot pan. The distant din of the capital was fading into embers.
She lit another candle.
Then another.
The room filled with the soft scent of wax and burnt wicks. Light flickered on the low shelf where the family altar now stood—Loumen’s altar. Her offering was simple: a bowl of hot congee, a pair of dried dates, a twist of tangerine peel. Beside it, incense coiled faintly into the air, twining like smoke from a dying star.
She didn’t pray.
She didn’t kneel.
She just sat.
Shou Sui, they called it. The vigil of longevity. One stays awake through the night to lengthen the years of one’s parents. But hers was already gone. And the man who claimed to stand in the place of family now—he sat in his own study, drinking his own tea, letting her alone as she wanted.
Still, she kept the vigil. Because something inside her refused to let go. Refused to sleep. If she slept, it would mean the year had changed. That Loumen had been dead for all of it. That everything before—the herbs, the field, the starlight meals—belonged to a year that no longer existed.
She rubbed her arms through the sleeves of silk that weren’t hers and curled her toes against the cold.
The candlelight blurred.
Her chest ached with a pressure that had no name.
There was no wailing. No keening.
Only the sound of her breath.
The hour turned. Somewhere in the courtyard, a bell chimed—soft, once, and then again.
Maomao raised her head.
“I’m still here,” she whispered, to no one in particular. Maybe to Loumen. Maybe to herself.
The incense burned lower.
The congee cooled.
And Maomao, wrapped in silence and red silk, kept vigil through the long night of the old year’s passing.
The incense had long since burned to ash.
The last candle sputtered low, its flame bowing like a tired dancer.
Maomao sat unmoving, limbs heavy, thoughts drifting between sleep and the stubborn ache of memory. Her head bowed over her knees, her breath shallow against the folds of her sleeve. Her vigil stretched past the hour of the ox, into that strange hollow between night and dawn where even silence feels thinner.
She didn't hear the door open.
Soft footsteps approached across the creaking floorboards, and then—
"You're still awake," said a quiet voice.
Maomao didn’t lift her head. She didn’t need to.
Lahan knelt beside her.
Not in front of the altar. Not beside the offerings. Just next to her—a careful, silent shape in the flickering dark. He didn’t speak again. He didn’t ask what she was doing or why she hadn't gone to bed.
Instead, he reached forward and adjusted the hem of her robe where it had slipped off her knees, tucking the silk around her like a blanket.
The motion was so gentle it hurt.
Maomao exhaled shakily. She stared at the altar in front of them, the quiet offering of congee and dates, the tablet that bore Loumen’s name, and something inside her softened just enough to crack.
“I wasn’t going to fall asleep,” she whispered.
“I know,” Lahan murmured.
But when her head dipped, he shifted his posture—just slightly, just enough—and she slumped sideways, too tired to fight the pull of gravity and grief. Her temple found his shoulder, her breath a ghost against his sleeve. She tensed at first, as if bracing for rejection, for the scolding of proximity she hadn’t meant to seek.
It didn’t come.
Lahan remained still.
Outside, the black horizon began to pale, the faintest thread of grey curling along the sky. Roosters stirred in distant coops. Somewhere in the estate, a maid began to stoke the morning fire.
But in that room—lit only by a dying candle—Maomao slept.
Lahan said nothing.
He only kept his shoulder steady beneath her, and stayed there, kneeling with her between what had passed and what could come next.
"Little sister," he whispered, and he wasn't sure if she could hear him or not.