The fire in the brazier had burned down to its last glow, a faint red buried under ash. Smoke still lingered in the air, curling upward before fading into the beams. Qiyao set the bowl aside and unrolled the thin mat he had chosen for sleeping. The cloth was rough, but he smoothed it with the same care he had given to the rest of the shrine, as though every small act mattered.
When he lay down, the wood beneath him creaked softly. The thin cloth he had hung at the back of the room swayed in the night air, a quiet rhythm like a heartbeat. The shrine smelled of dampness, old earth, and faint steam from the rice he had cooked. Yet to Qiyao, the scent was not unpleasant. It was a reminder: this place was no longer empty.
He folded his arms across his chest and looked up at the rafters. The silence pressed in, but it was not the silence he had carried through his years of wandering — not the silence of exile, nor the silence of battlefields where no voices rose again. This silence was different. It listened. It waited.
Outside, the bamboo groaned as the wind moved through the grove. The sound bent and rose, as if testing itself against the night. His breath stilled. For an instant, he thought he heard it — not mere wind, but a note, low and distant. He sat up slightly, straining to catch it. But the sound faded, leaving only rustle and sway.
His hand went to the jade pendant on the table. In the lamplight, its pale surface glowed faintly, the dragon carved upon it throwing shadows across the blank sheets of paper he had laid beside it. The pressed petals looked darker now, their fragile forms almost blending with the wood. Together, they looked like offerings — not for the shrine's forgotten gods, but for the silence itself.
"Will you come here?" he wondered silently. "Now that I've chosen this place?"
He lowered himself back onto the mat. His heart beat slow, but not calm. Each beat carried a weight of waiting, as if the night itself might answer. He told himself it did not matter. If the flute never came, he would still remain. This place had claimed him, and leaving was no longer a thought that held shape.
Yet his mind wandered. He thought of the first night, the silver sound slipping through the grove like water. He remembered the way it had caught his chest, sharp and cold. Since then, the sound had followed him — through daylight markets, through restless dreams, even though silence. He had not been able to let it go.
His eyes closed. He imagined the figure he had never truly seen, only glimpsed — a white sleeve in mist, a shadow bent over a pond, a presence too faint to hold. Was it waiting still? Or had it already turned away?
The night answered with nothing.
He shifted onto his side, facing the low table. The lantern flame trembled and cast long shadows across the floor. For a moment, the shadows looked like a hand reaching, then broke apart with the flicker. Qiyao did not move. His gaze lingered on the pendant, the petals, the paper — small proofs of his life, gathered and placed as if they could anchor him.
A breath left him, long and quiet. He let the ache in his chest loosen, folding it into the darkness. If no sound came tonight, he told himself, it was enough that he could wait here. Enough that the shrine breathed again, and that he belonged somewhere, even if only in silence.
The wind rose once more. Bamboo bent and knocked together, hollow, like bones against stone. Then, softer — a thread of sound, so faint it could have been nothing. A single note, or a trick of the air.
Qiyao's eyes opened. He did not rise. He did not even breathe too deeply, afraid to break the moment. He only listened. The sound did not return.
Sleep pulled at him slowly, heavy as the dark. As his body eased, his last thought was not of the years he had lost or the world he had left behind, but of the flute's hidden voice, waiting in the night.
And when he drifted into dreams, it followed him there.