Morning arrived like steam that had decided not to be important.
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.
"Give the rope to someone you don't like," she said.
"And leave slack," 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 braided hemp they had taught yesterday, and a small wooden cleat to wind it on when hands forgot how not to pull.
"Tie it where people will be tempted," Shi said, placing the cleat on the root. "Temptation is the mother of practice."
"And if they tighten anyway?" Yunyao asked.
"Slack is stubborn," Shi said. "Teach it to outlast pride."
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 hurry with two fingers on his wrist.
"Breath first," Li Wei said. "Hand after. Slower is not late."
On the inner path, Elder Wu waited with a ledger and nothing else—confidence, perhaps, that chairs now arrived when summoned. A figure stood with him in the shade, straight-backed and polished in the way that keeps rooms tense: Overseer Qian of River Gate Office, famous for fines that taught fear quicker than grammar.
"Master Feng," Qian said, bowing just enough to be legal. "Your corridor's methods are… admired. My office requires them tamed."
"You don't like me," Yinlei said mildly.
"I don't like waiting," Qian replied.
"Fair," Yunyao said, and handed him the rope.
He blinked. "For me?"
"For your pocket," Yinlei said. "And for the hand that tightens when it should breathe."
"What if people push?" Qian asked, eyes slanting toward the corridor.
"Invite them to hold it with you," Yunyao said. "If they won't, offer them a chair."
He took the rope like a man taking a foreign language and suspecting jokes would be told about his accent.
At the corridor, the door had already inhaled the day. Chalk held its sentence along the threshold: Open for service; close for spectacle. The linen mouth waited. The low elm chair sat an arm to the left of center—patient, unwilling to tilt forward into piety. The chipped cup fogged and cleared. Mint breathed. The small black box lay where honest gravity had left it. Hands touched it in passing. No one asked it to be a story.
The first knock came in a key that had practiced obedience in others. Drums murmured beyond the lintel; silk creaked like well-fed opinion.
"Name," Li Wei said.
"Envoy Lin of Ridge Blossom," the voice answered. "With petitions and a famous friend."
"Close for spectacle," the door decided, and did not open.
"Sit," Elder Wu said from inside. "Our door hears better that way."
A bench scraped. The drums attempted modesty. The linen lifted a finger-width. Papers slid in like fish that had decided to be reasonable. The famous friend stayed outside with his pride.
A second knock followed too soon, sharp as a coin on a tabletop. "Inspector Jiao, Sluice Audit," a new voice announced. "With writs." He had the kind of righteousness that made ink brittle.
"What do you carry?" Yunyao asked through the linen.
"Violations," Jiao said.
"Try again," she said. "What has weight you can hand to a room?"
A breath he had not planned to take. "Two fines," he said finally. "And a threat."
"Convert the threat," Elder Wu said. "Then set them under the linen."
Silence. Paper rustled. A different slip arrived, the sentence shaved to a request. The door approved. It did not open.
Qian stood outside the chalk line with the rope in his hand and discovered that spectacle is a tide: if you do not tie yourself to something useful, it will steal your feet. He wound the rope once around the cleat by the lintel, breath careful, leaving slack on purpose. His fingers twitched to make a knot tight. He did not.
Inside, they seated the quarrels Envoy Lin had brought. Two barns competing for a carpenter; one grudge wrapped around a broom. They sat before they spoke. They touched the box and did not perform it. They passed the rope from hand to hand—over the chalk, under the linen—until it belonged to the room and not to a person.
Inspector Jiao's writs were built like cages. He had drawn lines where water should pretend not to be water. He wanted signatures to kneel to weather.
"Read twice," Shi said. "Slower."
They read. Then the listener repeated the bones. Yinlei wrote a counter-line in the margin: We sign to serve; not to kneel to emergencies renamed convenience.
Jiao's mouth sharpened. "This box," he said, peering through the slit as if accusation could be a lens. "If you intend to carry secrets in public, the audit requires inventory."
"Unopened," Yinlei said. "Unexplained."
"For whose honor?" Jiao pressed.
"For the house's grammar," Yunyao answered. "Close for spectacle."
The linen dropped the finger-width. The door felt handsome about it.
The ward thread over the eastern terrace plucked—polite, then less. The northern sluice spoke with the voice it uses when it tries to be dramatic. Old practice would have sent them running in all directions; rope in Qian's fist told his wrists what to do.
"Walk slower," he heard himself say, surprised by his own mouth. "Buckets after the door finishes its sentence."
Li Wei looked at him through the slit and nodded like a teacher who enjoys being out of a job.
They formed the copying table by the sill. Registrar Han read names from the lower bank rolls. Prefect Pan—wearing the rope as if it were a promise instead of an emblem—read them again. A listener repeated. Ren matched hands to letters. Chen hovered like a hawk, then sat like a decent person. Zhou poured tea in a way that made steam consent to be useful. Shu placed towels exactly where spills had historically preferred to rehearse.
"Slower," Yunyao reminded a junior who wanted to be proud of speed. "We aim to finish."
Qian stood outside the line, rope resting on the cleat, palms open. Inspector Jiao shifted from foot to foot like a drum that had not yet learned to sit. The famous friend tried to be patient in the shade. Envoy Lin began to resemble a person who had seen chairs before.
"Teach him," Shi said to Qian, chin tilting toward Jiao. "Give him the rope."
"I dislike him," Qian said, too honest to qualify.
"Good," Shi said. "Now see if you can dislike him while breathing."
Qian held out the free end. Jiao, startled, took it. His fingers set themselves like teeth.
"Leave slack," Yunyao said, voice clean as a blade you use only to cut food. "If fear pulls, lift while you turn."
Jiao pulled. The rope refused to agree. Slack held. His breath, confronted with stubborn gentleness, reorganized. He stared at his own hands like a man surprised to find them attached to him.
"Buckets," Elder Wu said at third bell, correct as ever. "Chalk after. No running."
They went to the bridge. The river announced its insistence. The bucket line formed along the stones like a braid returned to a longer rope. Lift, pass, step, inhale; lift, pass, step, exhale. Shu carried towels with the authority of a small general. Han kept eyes on both ends. Pan checked the seam with chalk. Ren underlined a wet patch with a finger and promised to underline it again later with ink. Envoy Lin's famous friend carried a bucket until his drums forgot what disappointment felt like. Inspector Jiao ended up next to Qian. The rope hung between them with the calm of an old dog in the sun.
"Lift while you turn," Shi said to a handle that had misremembered its job.
"Slower," Yunyao told the line when pride tried to run ahead of lungs. "We finish together."
The seam behaved. Cheap chalk accepted more chalk as compliment. The river decided to be persuaded. Urgency sulked. The bell, resting on the sill, tried once to be relevant and was given a towel instead. Mint in a sleeve made the bridge smell briefly like kitchens.
They returned damp and decent. The door was open because it wanted to be. The chalk line remained bright; a sentence you could read with your feet. Qian wound the rope once around the cleat and left slack on purpose. Jiao did not run from the feeling.
"Your writs," Elder Wu said, nodding toward the slips, "converted?"
Jiao exhaled. "Requests," he corrected himself, like a man admitting he prefers food to arguments. "And a note that buckets outrank stamps."
Zhou smiled into his cup. Chen looked at the low chair until his knees remembered honesty. Ren placed a dry sheet over the wet signature as if to shelter it from weather. Envoy Lin's famous friend sat his drums on the stools by the door and did not ask for applause. Shu wiped what did not require witness.
The small black box kept doing its work by continuing to exist. Jiao glanced at it again and then away, as if he had felt a room explain to him without speaking.
"Name gently," Yunyao said, turning toward Inspector Jiao as if she were adjusting furniture. "Without armor."
"Jiao," he said, doing it incorrectly and, therefore, correctly.
"Qian," Qian said back, with the strangest smile, like a man meeting his own rope.
Afternoon braided itself. They copied one ledger, then another. They seated a quarrel about a borrowed ladder that had become biography; slack taught both biographies to breathe. They rewrote a clause in Stone Orchard's draft until it preferred service to speed. They discovered the door could be shut half as punctuation, not punishment; open again for service. They watched the box sit in the middle of the table like a star that had forgiven fame.
Near late bell, the Speaker arrived alone, sleeves rolled, the posture of a man who had practiced being a person. He looked at the rope on the cleat, at Jiao's fingers, at Qian's mouth, at the way the door had learned to close without sulking.
"For me?" he asked, glancing at the rope.
"For anyone who pulls when frightened," Yunyao said.
He took the free end. He did not tug. He breathed. When his breath tried to run, he lifted while he turned and found himself still in the room.
"Stay," Yinlei said, fair to him as to children.
"I am learning," Liang answered, unembarrassed.
They did not go to the arch immediately. The boundary they served was the one between punishment and grammar. When the mountain's shadow changed its mind about supervising, they walked to the threshold and listened.
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 delight that smelled faintly of rope and mint—across.
They knocked. Two light beats and a pause. The door opened because it wanted to be a door.
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 again, and the ear was pleased to repeat itself.
Across.
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. The drum did not need to be touched for time to behave.
Yinlei laid the rope on the stone and tied a bend he could undo in one breath. He left it loose enough that a frightened room could learn to breathe without anyone explaining politics to it.
"Name gently," Qingxue said.
He named Qian, without office. He named Jiao, without armor. He named the famous friend, without drums; Envoy Lin, without ribbons. He named the rope. He named the cleat. He named the chalk line. He named the door's patience and the bucket line's lungs. He named the box's right to be carried in public and not performed.
The trough answered with a ring no bell could steal.
Pressure arrived, practical and petty. It tried to tighten the knot.
Yunyao slipped a finger under the bend. Lift while you turn. Slack returned like a neighbor. The pressure, robbed of its favorite accident, left to scold some other architecture.
"Across," Qingxue repeated, satisfied, and lowered her hand. "Tomorrow, carry a quarrel you dislike across the door without tightening anything."
"We will," Yinlei said.
"And teach someone you like less than yourself to hold the rope," she added, which is a riddle that houses solve by serving.
They climbed. Shadow became hallway. Elder Shi leaned where doors like to consult grandfathers. He looked at their hands, found rope fibers there, and nodded like a man who had decided to forgive his own training.
"How many?" he asked, which is how he asks who.
"A river," Yunyao said. "Two officials. One envoy and a friend who carried a bucket. One inspector converted to requests. A bell that learned a towel. A rope that stayed slack."
"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:
Give the rope to someone you don't like.
Leave slack.
Convert threats to requests.
Open for service; close for spectacle.
Seat before you speak.
Keep names.
Serve first.
Walk slower. The house will still be here.
Yinlei added one small line beneath, for tomorrow:
Carry a quarrel across the door without tightening anything.
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, Han's, Pan's, Ren's, Zhou's, Chen's, Lin's without ribbons, Jiao's without armor, 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 hand its rope to people it did not prefer and survive. He practiced breathing to the beat a house kept for itself and looked almost content—a man relieved to discover that rooms do not collapse when slack is shared.
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.
Across.