Chapter 7
The night passed quietly and the morning came in cold.
Winter was making itself known — not arrived yet, not fully, but announcing itself in the way seasons do before they commit. The air that slipped through the gaps in the window frame carried a bite to it, and the light that fell across the floor was thinner than it had been a week ago, pale and without much warmth behind it.
Chen Guowei was still deep in sleep when the knock came.
"Brother." Xiaomei's voice through the door, unhurried. "Time to eat. Come eat together."
"I'll be there."
He lay still for another moment, blinking at the ceiling while the last traces of sleep fell away. Then the day's purpose settled over him, clear and simple, and he sat up and found his footing.
He felt the money in his pocket before he was fully standing — habit now, the automatic check. Still there. Still useless. He stared at nothing for a second and then let out a short laugh at himself, quiet enough that no one would hear it.
What am I even thinking.
He shook his head and went to join his family.
The living room held its usual morning arrangement — his mother and sisters already seated, the bowls out, the thin warmth of the stove doing its best against the cold seeping in from outside. Guowei took his seat and noticed immediately that Lihua was not in her usual spot beside him. She had planted herself firmly between her mother and Xiaomei, arms folded, gaze directed pointedly at the middle distance. The pout was architectural in its construction — elaborate, load-bearing, clearly designed to be noticed.
Lin Yue caught her son's eye across the table and pressed her lips together against a smile.
"Let's eat." She began serving, easy and unhurried. "After breakfast me and your sisters will dry the vegetables from the mountain. What about you?"
"I'm going to the river," Guowei said, wrapping both hands around his bowl for the warmth. "Going to try fishing. Up near the mountain bend."
His mother nodded, the same quiet way she had of accepting things without making them bigger than they needed to be. "Be safe."
"Yes, mom."
He ate for a moment, then looked sideways down the table toward his youngest sister, who was maintaining her posture of magnificent indifference with considerable effort.
"Lihua," he said, keeping his voice soft and genuinely mournful. "You don't like big brother anymore?"
Nothing. She kept her eyes forward. But the tips of her ears went pink.
"That makes me sad," he continued, in the same tone. "I'll just be sad then. That's okay."
A long pause.
Lihua's resolve cracked along a very visible fault line. She climbed down from her chair — with the careful dignity of someone who has not yet admitted defeat — walked to her brother, and stopped in front of him with an expression of extreme internal conflict written plainly across her small face.
Then she held out her hand.
In her palm was a piece of hard candy, slightly worn at the edges from handling, wrapped in a twist of paper that had been carefully smoothed and re-smoothed many times over. Pale yellow. The kind that had been distributed at a village wedding three months ago — he knew this from the memories he carried, knew it the way he knew her face, knew that she had been rationing it in the most disciplined way imaginable, one small lick at a time, making it last the way only a child who understands scarcity truly can.
It was her most prized possession.
She was holding it out to him with the expression of someone making an enormous sacrifice and trying very hard not to show how enormous it was.
Chen Guowei looked at the candy. Looked at her face. Felt something move through his chest that he had no immediate word for.
"Lihua." He kept his voice gentle. "Brother doesn't need that."
She pushed her hand closer.
"Say ah," he said instead.
She blinked, confused — and opened her mouth out of pure reflex. He moved quickly, tipping his portion of egg from his bowl straight in. She bit down before she understood what had happened, and the moment she did her eyes went wide, darting from the egg to her brother to the egg again, caught somewhere between wanting to protest and the undeniable fact that it was already done.
"Chew," he told her pleasantly. "And keep the candy. Give big brother a hug instead — that's worth more."
She chewed. She swallowed. She looked at him with an expression that was trying very hard to hold onto the pout and failing completely. Then she stepped forward and wrapped both arms around him with the uncomplicated totality that only small children manage, her face pressed against his arm.
Across the table Xiaomei had turned away, shoulders shaking silently.
Lin Yue said nothing, just kept her smile aimed at her bowl, the same one she'd been wearing since Lihua climbed down from her chair. The kind of smile that doesn't need an audience.
Breakfast finished in the easy way that good mornings do — not with anything remarkable, just with the accumulated small warmth of people who are comfortable with each other, conversation drifting between whatever came naturally, Lihua's magnificent pout entirely dissolved and apparently forgotten.
Afterward, Guowei helped clear the bowls and then went to the shed to find something suitable for a fishing rod.
He remembered seeing it a few days ago when he'd been clearing the place out — a length of bamboo, leaned against the back wall, old but still flexible, the kind that would do the job well enough. Bamboo was forgiving. It had give to it. He moved through the shed with the easy familiarity of someone who'd organized the space himself, checking along the wall, stepping deeper toward the back.
He didn't notice the stone until he was already on it.
The shed vanished.
The cave air hit him first — cool and damp, carrying that particular smell of wet rock and moss and something faintly green underneath it all. He stood completely still in the dimness, his heart having performed a very sudden and dramatic maneuver inside his chest, and stared at the pale light coming from the entrance ahead of him.
A single second passed.
Then something switched over in him — clean and decisive, like a mechanism clicking into place.
He didn't know why it had worked today when it hadn't yesterday. He didn't know if it would work again tomorrow or in an hour or ever after this. He had no answers and no guarantees and no way of knowing how much time he had on this side before it closed again.
What he knew was that he was here.
And he was not going to waste a single second of it.
He was already moving toward the entrance before the thought had finished forming, pushing the vines aside, stepping out into the light, his mind running fast and clear and purposeful ahead of him.