The year pretended nothing was wrong.
Spring fattened into summer. The fields around the village thickened with green. Children shouted at the river. Men cursed at tools that broke and prices that didn't. Women traded gossip, favours, recipes, grudges.
From the outside, the Li house looked like any other: smoke from the chimney, tools by the wall, a worn path to the door.
Inside, someone counted how many times Li Mei had to stop to catch her breath when she crossed the room.
No one wrote that number down. It went up anyway.
---
On good days, it was almost possible to forget.
She would wake with colour in her cheeks, the cough soft and brief. The bitter reek of medicine didn't hang as heavily in the air. She would sit on her stool by the stove and snap beans, calling instructions to Li Shen and Li Heng as if she were still the one doing everything.
"Not like that," she told Li Shen, watching him knead dough. "You're folding it like you're hiding secrets in there. Stretch it. It's bread, not a conspiracy."
He snorted. "I'm doing what you showed me."
"And now I'm showing you better," she said. "That's how learning works."
On those days, she argued with Old Wu, laughed at Old He's insults, and tore apart the neighbours' logic at the well with a few sharp sentences.
"She looks much better," one woman said in a stage whisper, as if Li Mei were deaf instead of sick. "I told you it was just the cold."
"Of course," another agreed. "Once the frost left her bones…"
"You two should take your wisdom to the city," Li Mei cut in, voice smooth. "The doctors there could save a fortune in training."
They laughed, a little uneasily. Compliments, half-sincere, hung in the air.
Li Shen clung to those days like someone hanging from a cliff by his fingertips. If he squeezed his eyes shut around them, if he pretended hard enough, he could almost believe Old He had been wrong. The rope might not be as short as she'd said. Maybe the numbers lied.
Then the good days started to cost more.
---
It began with small things.
She dropped a bowl once. Just slipped from her fingers and hit the floor, cracking into three uneven pieces.
"Ah," she said, staring at it. "Guess we needed a new one."
Her hand was still trembling when she bent to pick up the shards.
Another time, she sat outside with a basket of peas and, halfway through, simply stopped. The bowl tilted in her lap; peas rolled out and scattered.
"What is it?" Li Shen asked, catching the bowl before it slid off entirely.
"Nothing," she said. "My hands forgot what they were doing."
"Rest," he said.
"I am resting," she replied. "The peas are resting. The basket is resting. We're a very restful family."
But she let him take the peas.
She still walked to the well sometimes, leaning on his shoulder when the path dipped, greeting people with thin humour. But more often she sent him instead.
"Go," she said. "If I go every time, people will get used to seeing me. I prefer to stay mysterious."
"You mean tired," he muttered.
"Mystery is just tiredness with a better story," she said. "Don't argue. Take the buckets."
He took them.
The villagers adjusted. That's what people did. They got used to the sight of Li Shen carrying two buckets instead of one, used to seeing Li Heng leave earlier and come back later, used to Li Mei's voice coming from inside the house instead of from the well.
Routine swallowed change until it felt normal.
Inside the Li house, the air never quite lost the smell of boiled herbs.
---
The last good day was so ordinary that, at first, it didn't register as anything at all.
The sun was warm but not harsh. A lazy breeze moved through the yard, stirring dust and the last of the spring flowers clinging to the fence. Somewhere a dog barked until someone yelled at it.
Li Mei sat just outside the door on a low stool, a basket of laundry by her side. Not the heavy scrubbing—Li Heng had taken that over months ago—but the lighter work. Folding. Mending.
"If you're going to stuff your legs into these," she said, holding up a pair of his trousers, "at least learn to patch them without creating new holes."
"You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to," she said. "That's why I'm choosing to. Bring me the needle."
He fetched it.
She threaded it on the first try. The needle flashed in and out, turning fraying cloth into slightly better cloth.
"See?" she said. "Even useless things can be made less useless with enough stabbing."
He snorted. "Is that how you see me?"
"Don't be stupid," she said. "You're much harder to repair than trousers."
They bickered lightly. She made him redo one of his own clumsy patches. He complained. She insulted his taste in stitches.
Old He passed by, paused, eyed Li Mei working in the sun, and grunted.
"Still here," she said. "Annoying. Good."
"Your affection overwhelms me," Li Mei replied.
Old He's gaze lingered for a heartbeat too long on the slight rise and fall of her chest, then she turned away.
"I'll come tomorrow," she said. "You're due for more of my terrible tea."
"Can't wait," Li Mei said.
That night, she ate a little more than usual. She corrected Li Shen's sums by the fire, smacked his hand lightly when he skipped a line in his mental calculations, and told his father he was cutting the wood unevenly.
"Some pieces burn too fast," she said, watching the flames. "The house doesn't need more things that vanish in a hurry."
"We'll be careful," Li Heng said.
She went to sleep with a soft cough and a hand briefly resting on her son's hair as he passed.
"Don't stay up," she murmured. "You'll be useless in the morning."
He rolled his eyes. "Yes, mother."
He didn't stay up.
He wished, later, that he had.
---
Her breath turned in the middle of the night.
There was no storm this time. No blizzard howling at the walls. The wind outside was a low, even murmur, as if the world had finally grown tired of drama.
Inside, the air shifted.
Li Shen woke to silence. Not full—houses were never truly silent—but wrong.
No soft cough from behind the wall. No rustle of blankets. No faint creak of the mat when she turned.
Just the fire's low crackle and the slow, steady rasp of his father's breath.
He lay there, staring into the dark.
For a moment, he thought: She's sleeping deeply. That's good. She needs rest.
Then something under his ribs tightened.
He pushed the blanket away and padded to the doorway of his parents' space.
In the dim glow from the embers, he could make out their shapes.
His father sat with his back against the wall, legs drawn up, one arm resting on his knees. His face was turned toward the mat.
Li Mei lay on her side, facing him.
At first glance, she looked like she was sleeping.
"Father?" Li Shen whispered.
Li Heng didn't answer.
His eyes were open.
That was wrong.
"Father," Li Shen said, louder.
His father blinked, as if pulling himself up from very far down.
"Go back to bed," he said. His voice sounded worn down to the grain.
"What's wrong?" Li Shen asked.
"Nothing you can fix," Li Heng said.
The words fell like stones.
Li Shen stepped closer.
Up close, the details came into focus. The way his father's hand rested on the mat near Li Mei's, not quite touching. The way Li Mei's hair had come loose around her face. The odd peace in the angle of her mouth.
Her chest was not rising.
"Mother?" he said.
The room did not answer.
He reached out with a hand that shook and touched her shoulder.
The flesh under the fabric was warm.
It wasn't moving.
"Mother," he said again, louder, as if volume could grab her attention from wherever she'd gone.
Nothing.
His father closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.
"She stopped breathing," he said.
The sentence was simple. It didn't belong in this house.
"When?" Li Shen asked, because his mind could not find anything else to grab.
"A little before dawn," Li Heng said. "The breath just… got shallower. Then it didn't come back."
"Why didn't you—" Li Shen's voice broke. "Why didn't you wake me?"
His father looked at him, and for the first time since the illness had started, Li Shen saw something close to anger in his eyes. Not at him. Just there, raw.
"To do what?" Li Heng asked, voice low. "To watch? You've watched enough."
"I should have—" Li Shen couldn't finish.
You should have what? Held her hand while the air left? Counted the last breaths like beads? Told her you'd become a cultivator and fix everything too late for her to see it?
His father's face crumpled for a heartbeat, then smoothed by force.
"She wasn't afraid," he said. "She was… tired. She talked until her voice faded. Then she listened. Then she slept. That's all."
Li Shen's throat closed.
"What did she say?" he demanded, stupidly jealous of words he hadn't heard.
"That you'd pick fights with Heaven if it wore the wrong expression," his father said. "That Old He's medicine tasted worse than death. That I should let you go when the road comes, not hold you here because I'm afraid of eating alone."
He laughed once, without humour.
"She had a lot of opinions for someone who was supposed to be resting."
Li Shen sank to his knees by the mat.
Up close, the illusion of sleep broke.
Her eyes were closed, but too still. Her lashes didn't flutter. Her lips, always ready to curl around a joke or a scolding, were gently parted without sound.
He realized what else was missing.
The house didn't feel like it was breathing anymore.
For months, the rhythm of her coughs, the sound of her stirring, even the clink of bowls and the muttered curses at medicine had been part of the air. Even when she slept, some awareness of her filled the space, like warmth that lingered after a hand left your shoulder.
Now there was only the fire, the wind outside, and his father's hollow voice.
Life hadn't just left her body.
It had pulled a thread out of the house itself.
He didn't cry at first.
He put his hand on the mat near hers, the way his father's hand lay on the other side. He stared at her face and waited for his mind to catch up.
Somewhere, under the numbness, something ripped.
---
Old He came as if she'd been standing outside the door, waiting.
Maybe she had.
She walked in without knocking, took one look, and exhaled through her nose.
"Stubborn woman," she said softly. "Couldn't you have waited until after my next lecture?"
She closed Li Mei's mouth gently, then adjusted her hair, smoothing it back from her forehead. Her hands were rough and careful.
"She didn't suffer?" Old He asked, without looking up.
"No," Li Heng said. "Not at the end."
"Good," Old He said. "For once, the world remembered not to be completely useless."
Neighbours arrived in clumps. News travelled fast when it was bad.
They brought the usual things: cloth, words, overlapping noises. Some cried loudly. Some didn't cry at all and spoke too much, as if conversation could fill the gap where a person had been.
"She was so strong," one woman said.
"She fought hard," another added.
"As if there was a choice," Old He muttered.
They washed the body, changed her clothes, laid her out straight. They moved with the practised efficiency of people who had done this too many times in too small a place.
Li Shen watched hands move his mother as if she were a heavy thing that needed arranging.
He wanted to shout at them to stop touching her. He wanted to tell them they were doing it wrong. He wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her awake.
He did none of those things.
He stood pressed against the wall by the door, fingers digging into the wood, and listened to the sounds of his own house betraying him:
The splash of water in the basin.
The rustle of cloth over cooling skin.
The low murmur of Old He's voice.
The scrape of a stool being moved to make room for the mat.
The room that had smelled of herbs and smoke and cabbage now smelled of washed cloth and something thinner underneath that he didn't want to name.
At some point, someone tried to pull him away.
"Come outside," a neighbour said softly. "Give them space. It's not good for a boy to watch everything."
He yanked his arm back.
"This is my house," he said, more calmly than he felt. "I'm not in the way."
They left him there.
His father moved like someone who hadn't yet remembered gravity wasn't optional. He did what needed to be done because there was no one else to do it: agreed to arrangements, nodded at words he probably didn't hear, thanked people for things that didn't matter.
The house, usually full of small sounds—Li Mei humming under her breath, commenting on people's stupidity, arguing with Old He or Old Wu—was crowded with strangers' voices and emptier than it had ever been.
When they finally carried her out, the space she'd occupied seemed to push inward.
The room looked larger without the mat, the stool, the bowls she used most often.
It felt smaller.
The fire popped in the hearth.
No one complained about the uneven wood.
---
The rituals blurred.
There was a cloth over her face. There were words about ancestors and rest. There was earth, and the sound it made hitting wood or stone, and the weight of people's hands on his shoulders as if pressing him into being "strong."
"Your mother wouldn't want to see you cry like that," someone murmured when the tears finally came, hours too late.
He turned his head, eyes burning.
"You didn't know what my mother wanted," he said.
They recoiled as if he'd hit them.
Old He barked a laugh that had no humour in it.
"He's right," she said. "You knew the version of her that borrowed salt and complained about chickens. You didn't know the rest. Let the boy cry if he wants. Heaven knows there's enough reason."
Afterwards, when the people thinned and the house emptied, the silence settled in properly.
No cauldron simmered on the stove. No coughing came from the mat. No dry voice cut through the air to call someone an idiot.
The tools by the wall were in the same place. The patched clothes she'd scolded him over still hung where they had earlier. The knife she'd guided in his hand lay on the table.
The house was exactly as it had been, and completely different.
Li Heng sat by the cold hearth, elbows on his knees, hands hanging. The lines in his face had deepened in a single day. He looked like someone had carved pieces out of him and forgotten to fill them back in.
Li Shen stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly.
Everywhere he looked, he saw the negative space of her:
The corner where her stool should have been.
The peg where her coat still hung, empty.
The shelf where her herbs sat, neatly wrapped, with no one left to measure their bitterness.
He realized then that it wasn't just his mother who had died.
The version of the house that had existed before her last breath—noisy, complaining, smelling of cabbage and smoke and bad tea and words—had died with her.
What was left was a shell.
Four walls, a roof, and two people who didn't yet know how to move inside it.
For the first time since the storm, he felt something like fear that had nothing to do with weather or sickness.
No cultivator was coming.
No doctor had a second, secret medicine.
No sect elder would suddenly appear with glowing hands and say, "You have suffered enough; we will return what was taken."
The world had taken a woman who laughed and scolded and argued about beans, and in exchange it had left them a quiet, echoing house and some advice carved into memory.
Days, medicine, storms, bargains—none of it had bought more than this.
He didn't think about Dao, or karma, or Heaven's will.
He thought about one simple, brutal thing:
No matter how hard you fought, sometimes the house still went quiet.
And if he ever had the strength people wrote about in stories, it wouldn't be to float above roofs or impress villagers.
It would be to stand in front of that kind of emptiness…
…and make the world answer for it.