The next mornings came quietly. Each day, when the mist still hung in the bamboo, Shen Qiyao rose and set his tasks in order. The shrine had waited long years without care; now it asked for patient hands.
He began with the roof. Standing on the beams, he hammered nails into loose planks, each strike echoing through the grove. The hammer rang louder than any birdsong, startling sparrows from the eaves. From below, children passing on the road gawked, pointing as if seeing a spirit mending the cursed shrine.
One afternoon, while buying rope from a shop, the owner eyed him warily.
"You patching that place for what? It'll fall again soon enough."
Qiyao only coiled the rope neatly in his hand. "Then I'll patch it again."
The man scoffed but said nothing more, and Qiyao left with his quiet persistence.
He cleared weeds from the courtyard next. The roots clung stubbornly, their grip deep as stone, but he pulled them out one by one. Sweat darkened his collar. By evening, his palms were raw, but the ground showed patches of earth again. He paused often, sitting back on his heels, gazing at the empty soil as though already seeing green.
On the third day, he planted the seedlings he had brought from the market. Radish, beans, mustard greens. Their stems were fragile, bending in his fingers as he set them into the soil. He watered them with a clay jar, watching the water sink dark into the ground.
"Strange," he murmured to himself, "how something so small can already change a place."
The days fell into rhythm. Repair in the mornings, tend the seedlings in the afternoons, sweep the floors before dusk. At night, he sat with a bowl of rice, sometimes adding wild greens gathered from the grove. He ate on the veranda, the breeze carrying smoke from the incense into the sky.
Little by little, the shrine changed.
A broken step was mended with new wood. A crack in the wall was filled with stones and mud. The courtyard, once covered in weeds, now held neat rows of green shoots. Even the air seemed lighter, touched with the faint fragrance of sandalwood smoke that clung to the beams.
Villagers noticed. Passing by, some muttered, "The stranger really means to stay." Others paused longer, whispering that the shrine no longer looked cursed but tended.
On the seventh day, an old woman carrying firewood stopped at the gate. She peered inside and said, "The place almost looks alive now. Almost."
Qiyao set down his broom and bowed his head slightly. "It should."
The woman frowned, but her gaze softened before she shuffled on.
By the eighth day, the seedlings had taken root. Tiny leaves lifted toward the sun, trembling with life. Qiyao knelt among them, brushing soil from his fingers. He had known little of planting before, but here he found a strange comfort. Each sprout seemed to whisper of patience, of waiting for unseen growth beneath the soil.
At night, as he rinsed his bowls and lit incense, he thought often of the flute. The smoke curled, soft and steady, but the air remained silent. Still, he kept lighting it, as though each stick was a thread he was tying to the unseen.
On the ninth day, he repaired the shrine's gate. The hinges creaked as he hammered them straight. When he stepped back, the wooden frame stood tall again, no longer sagging. He touched the gate lightly, as though greeting it.
The tenth day came with rain. A steady drizzle soaked the grove, running down the bamboo leaves in silver threads. The seedlings drank deeply, their leaves shining. Inside, Qiyao sat cross-legged, repairing a crack in one of the old tables. The sound of rain mixed with the scrape of his knife smoothing wood.
That evening, when the storm eased, he cooked rice with wild mushrooms he had gathered. The fire crackled in the brazier, warmth filling the small room. After eating, he placed a small portion into one of the new bowls as an offering, lighting another stick of incense beside it.
The smoke rose, curling into the damp air. The bowl sat quiet through the night, untouched.
Qiyao leaned back against the wall, arms resting loosely over his knees. His gaze lingered on the offering, then drifted to the grove outside. Rain dripped steadily from the eaves, each drop falling into the courtyard soil with a soft sound.
His expression was calm, but his thoughts restless. Perhaps the shrine is not enough yet. Perhaps I have not found the right way to reach you.
The flute did not come. But the shrine, in its quiet, now felt less empty.