Morning arrived like steam that had chosen to be patient with itself.
The mark beneath Yinlei's collarbone kept its small, steady warmth.
Stay, it said—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.
"Teach someone else the rope," she said.
"Give it away before it looks like authority," 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. He tapped the braided hemp at Yinlei's belt with a forefinger that could sand a boast into usefulness.
"Tie a knot," he said, "and leave slack."
"And if someone pulls?" Yunyao asked.
"Let the knot teach their wrist to breathe," Shi replied. "Tight is for storms. Slack is for people."
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. Yunyao bruised mint and set it at the window so the room would remember to be kind. Li Wei—already there with a loaf wrapped in clean cloth—caught a junior's ambition with two fingers on his wrist.
"Breath first," Li Wei said. "Hand after. We are not late."
"Who gets the rope?" Yunyao asked.
"The person most likely to misuse it," Elder Shi said. "Kindness grows best in soil that used to be stone."
They found that person on the inner path: Prefect Pan, knees still honest from buckets, eyes still trained to be obeyed by rooms. He stood outside the corridor door, reading the chalk line as if it were a decree written in a friend's handwriting.
Yinlei held out the rope.
Pan flinched the way officials flinch when history hands them something too simple to hide behind. "For me?" he said.
"For your pocket," Yinlei replied. "When something begins to run, hold it while you breathe. Do not tighten. Do not perform. Let slack be a teacher."
"What if people push?" Pan asked.
"Invite them to hold it with you," Yunyao said. "If they won't, offer them a chair."
Pan took the rope and put it in the place on his belt where a seal used to live.
The door listened to itself. It had learned grammar. Knock like a person. Wait. Name. Carry. Open for service; close for spectacle.
It knocked back once—pleased with its job—and then an actual knock came from the shade beyond the lintel. Drums murmured under the sound, too polished for the hour.
"Name," Li Wei said from inside.
"Envoy Lin of Ridge Blossom," the voice answered, confident as silk. "With petitions, a gift, and an honor guard." Banners fluttered; ribbons trembled with their own importance.
"Close for spectacle," the door decided, and kept its linen mouth still.
"Sit," Elder Wu said from within, the word passing through cloth like steam through a proper lid. "Our door hears better that way."
A bench scraped. The drums looked embarrassed and tried to remember they were wood.
"What do you carry?" Yunyao asked through the linen.
"Petitions," Envoy Lin said, and then less certain, "and the visit of a famous friend."
"Try again," Yunyao said. "What has weight you can hand to a room?"
A hush. Then: "Three quarrels between houses. One flood-marker that moved in the night."
"Good," Elder Wu said. "Set them under the linen. Leave the famous friend outside with the drums."
Something like laughter shook the ribbons. Pan's hand found the rope on his belt and stayed there, not to show anyone, to remind himself how to be.
The petitions came in—shy fish under a pier. The famous friend stayed where spectacle eats its own tail. The door did not apologize for being correct.
Inside, they sat to the work the way people sit to soup. The low elm chair anchored argument before it could tilt into kneeling; the small black box did its job by continuing to exist; the chipped cup fogged and cleared; mint behaved like a window that knew when to be open; the chalk line kept its bright sentence on the floor you could read with your feet.
Two of the quarrels were old and easy—lines on a map that had mistaken themselves for relationships. The third had teeth: two households who had borrowed each other's sons to carry buckets the day before and had both found reasons to be proud enough to break.
"Sit before you speak," Elder Wu said, and the houses obeyed the furniture.
"Hold the rope," Yunyao told them, and offered Pan's slack. "Together. No tugging. If your hand wants to pull, lift while you turn."
They took the rope like people accepting a breath. Their fingers learned the difference between argument and posture. A boy—Shu, towel captain—stood between them with a basket of cups. He did not look impressed. He looked useful.
"Name what you carry," Yinlei said to each house in turn.
"Fear," one said, surprising himself with accuracy. "Pride," said the other, equally honest.
"Water," Shu added helpfully, "and towels."
The rope sagged between the hands. The knot—a simple bend Shi had taught with disdain for flourish—sat there like a neighbor. No one tightened it; no one let go. The quarrel sat down without being told it had.
Envoy Lin cleared his throat in a key that expected courtyards to lift their heads. The door lifted the linen a finger-width.
"Sit," Li Wei said to the envoy. "Leave the friend outside. Rooms first. Applause is a weather that arrives after we go home."
Envoy Lin sat. The famous friend's drums learned to say nothing useful.
They read the flood-marker letter twice. Registrar Han read it a third time, slower, until the characters gave up pretending they were in a hurry and arranged themselves in a sentence that could be acted on. Pan—hand on the rope, eyes on the floor—nodded when the room's plan matched the rope's lesson: buckets later, chalk sooner, no running.
The ward thread over the eastern terrace plucked—polite, testing—and then, as if jealous of attention, the northern sluice spoke with the voice it uses when it wants to be dramatic. The old script would have sent them running. The rope taught their wrists to breathe.
"Walk slower," Yunyao said. "We aim to finish, not to impress."
"Buckets after second bell," Elder Wu added, correct as bread. "Chalk now. Take the small bag Stone Orchard left."
Ren, the copyist, appeared with brushes tucked into her sleeve and the purposeful gait of someone who had chosen to be cousins with other people's letters. She took the chalk, gave back her breath, and looked at Pan's rope with professional interest.
"For me?" she asked.
"Teach someone else," Pan heard himself say, and handed her the free end. "Leave slack."
They went to the bridge. The river greeted them with its usual refusal to be simple, then remembered it liked being persuaded and agreed to be complicated instead. The cheap chalk accepted more chalk as a compliment. The bucket line formed at a pace that made lungs reasonable. The bell rested on the sill with the dignity of an old tool. Envoy Lin's famous friend stared at the buckets, forgot he had come to be admired, and took one.
"Lift while you turn," Shi said to the handle that had misremembered best practices.
"Serve first," Shu instructed the drums, putting a towel in their hands with the confidence of a general and the salaries of a child.
When the water had learned enough civility to be left alone for an hour, they returned to the corridor damp and decent. The door stood open because it wanted to. The chalk line remained bright. The rope hung on a peg by the lintel with the look of a thing that would not mind being borrowed by a good habit.
"What about the fourth thing?" Li Wei asked softly as they dried their hands. "Shi said time, names, buckets—and arguments. We taught three."
"Teach the envoy to sit an argument," Yunyao said.
Envoy Lin had the posture of a letter looking for a stamp. He watched Pan with the rope; he watched Han reading; he watched Ren's chalk; he watched Shu's towels; he watched his famous friend carry a bucket. He looked as if he had discovered a room that had not been built for him and felt relieved.
"Your friend," Yinlei said mildly, "has a quarrel with his drums."
The friend blinked. "They like to be loud," he admitted.
"Seat them," Yunyao said, and placed two stools by the door for the drums to sit on like old men who had learned modesty. The envoy laughed without meanness. The friend laughed too, and the drums were quiet because they had been offered retirement rather than correction.
The last of the petitions—the one about a barn roof that had become a neighborhood grievance purely from neglect—sat on the table like a cat daring someone to trip over it. The box, doing its honest job of not being dramatic, kept company with the paper.
"Teach the rope," Elder Shi said, "to someone who will not like it."
Chen, the taller negotiator from Stone Orchard, looked up as if he had been called by his family name. "I prefer speed," he confessed without preface. "It keeps me from feeling."
"Hold this," Pan said, rope in both hands. Chen obeyed. Pan did not tighten. He did not preach. He told a barn story from Riverside with too much weather and too little roof. He told it slower than he wanted, until his breath stopped hurrying to the end. Chen's hands found their own slack. When the story arrived, nobody clapped. They just had a plan that would not break knees or buckets.
"The knot," Chen said, puzzled and improved. "You don't pull it?"
"We pull together," Pan said. "And mostly we don't pull."
The ward thread plucked once, pleased. The room enjoyed being a room.
Near noon, the Speaker stepped into the outer shade—Liang today, no bell, sleeves rolled, the posture of a man who had designed a stage and decided to sit in the audience. He saw the rope on the peg, the pegs in people's hands, the couching of drums, the bucket line that had learned how not to show off, the box that had refused to star in anything.
"For me?" he asked, glance tilting at the rope.
"For anyone who needs to remember not to hurry," Yunyao said.
He took the free end and held it like you hold a small animal you are trying not to frighten. "Name what you carry," Yinlei told him, as fair to him as to children.
"Impatience disguised as purpose," Liang said without irony.
"Good," Elder Wu said. "Sit first."
He sat. Knees honest. Hands learning rope. Famous friend watched an old habit loosen in real time.
Afternoon braided itself. They copied two ledgers the way people shell peas—reading twice, repeating once, writing once, letting the ink dry with dignity. They seated a quarrel between two aunts who had turned a shared fence into a biography contest; slack taught them to breathe. Ren underlined walk slower on a margin and nobody corrected her. Shu placed towels where spills liked to rehearse.
When the mountain's shadow began to prefer the west, they went to 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, faithful as cheap chalk. Then, with a small pleasure the room could smell—mint and wet rope:
Knot.
They stepped through. The obelisk stood in the middle of enough. The crystal held Mu Qingxue standing the way water holds reflections it intends to keep. Her eyes went to their hands—not for seals. For slack.
"Ask first," she said.
"What do you want?" Yinlei asked the ear, and heard the same answer, pleased to repeat itself.
Knot.
At the base of the obelisk, stone remembered stairs. The room beneath waited without impatience. The low chair kept its angle. The trough held water to purpose. Yunyao set the drum on her thigh and did not touch it; the air kept time from memory. Yinlei laid the rope on the stone and tied a single bend, then loosened it until it could be untied with one thought and one breath.
"Name gently," Qingxue said.
They did not name famous people. They named the quiet things that had held the day together: the rope; the knot; the bench outside the door; the towel hooks; the smell of mint in rooms that were afraid and decided not to be; the awkward laughter of drums learning to sit; the slack between the hands of two houses that had borrowed each other's sons.
The trough answered with a ring no bell could steal.
Pressure arrived late, petty, and practical. It tried to tighten the knot. The rope lifted and sighed and refused to learn fear. Yunyao put a finger under the bend and—lift while you turn—gave it back its slack.
"Open for service," she told the knot. "Close for spectacle."
The ear hummed approval for grammar being used where wood and water could hear it.
"Tomorrow," Qingxue said, lowering her hand, "teach someone you don't like to hold the rope."
"Which is everyone on a bad day," Yunyao said, honest as bread.
"Leave the knot loose," Qingxue added. "Rooms tighten themselves when frightened. Your job is to remind them how to breathe."
They climbed. Shadow became hallway. Elder Shi leaned where doors like to consult grandfathers. He saw rope fibers on their palms and slack around their fingers and nodded like a man who has chosen not to pretend he invented patience.
"How many?" he asked, which is how he asks who.
"A river," Yinlei said. "Two houses. A bench of drums. An envoy. A friend. A registrar. A prefect with rope in the right place. One man with a bell who didn't bring it."
"Enough," Shi replied, which is how he says good.
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 mint made their fingers smell like useful promises. 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:
Teach the rope; leave slack.
Seat arguments; sit before you speak.
Open for service; close for spectacle.
Keep names.
Serve first.
Walk slower. The house will still be here.
Yinlei added one small line beneath, for tomorrow:
Give the rope to someone you don't like.
Far away, inside the crystal, Mu Qingxue placed her palm on the wall and did not ask it to become a door. She repeated the corridor's true name, the lower ring's small one, Shu's, Ren's, Han's, Pan's, Lin's without ribbons, and Liang's plain name without bell. 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 had learned to hold slack. He practiced breathing to the beat a house kept for itself and looked almost comfortable—a man relieved to discover that knots do not have to be tight to keep a room together.
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.
Knot—loosely.