The cart made the road sound older.
Wood creaked. Rope sighed. Grain shifted inside the sacks with a low, steady rasp—like sand inside a jar, like time moving in a way you couldn't stop.
Li Heng pulled from the front, shoulders set, hands firm on the handle. He didn't talk. He saved breath the way he saved strength, like both were resources that had to last through winter.
Li Shen walked beside him, hands free.
His shoulders were still sore from two seasons of lifting. His palms were still split and rough. He didn't need to carry something right now to prove he had carried enough.
The sky stayed low and gray. The wind didn't howl, but it never fully stopped, scraping across the open land as if searching for weak seams.
Li Heng's pace didn't change.
Li Shen watched his father's back and tried to measure him the way he'd learned to measure sacks: by weight, by endurance, by what the body did when it was forced to keep going.
Li Heng looked like the same man who carried water and split wood and stood at a mat in the dark with open eyes.
But there were new lines in his face. Not deep enough to be called age—deep enough to be called absence.
Li Shen wanted to ask things.
How the village had been.
Whether Old He still came around.
Whether the roof had leaked again.
Whether his father had eaten properly.
He asked none of them.
Because he knew the answer to the only question that mattered.
His father was alive.
So the rest was logistics.
They walked.
The road forked the way it always did. A bare stand of trees. The river bend in the distance. The same stones poking through dirt like knuckles.
And then—late in the afternoon, when the light turned thin and winter-colored—the village appeared.
Smoke rose from chimneys. Dogs barked. Somewhere a child shouted near the river, chased by another child who was louder and less coordinated.
Life, stubborn and ordinary.
Li Shen's chest tightened anyway.
He hadn't realized how much he'd been holding himself apart from this place until the sight of it made him want to step forward and stop at the same time.
Li Heng didn't stop.
He pulled the cart down the path as if the village were not a memory, not a wound, not a symbol.
Just a destination.
Li Shen followed.
---
The village noticed the cart before it noticed the men.
A cart loaded with grain was not subtle. It announced itself the way a full pantry did—quietly, but with gravity.
Heads turned. Doors cracked open. Women paused with baskets in hand. Men slowed with tools on shoulders.
No one rushed them.
Not out of politeness.
Out of calculation.
A cart of grain meant someone had resources. Resources meant attention. Attention could turn into requests, or resentment, or both.
Li Heng nodded once at the first neighbor he passed—acknowledgment without invitation.
Li Shen kept his eyes forward.
Even so, people spoke.
Not loudly.
Just enough for the words to slip into the air and become everyone's information.
"Li Heng came back with grain."
"The boy really worked."
"Two seasons, they said."
"Han pays in grain? He always pays in grain."
"Good for them."
"Winter's hungry."
Li Shen felt each sentence land like a pebble.
Not because the villagers were cruel.
Because the village was a place where survival turned everything into inventory.
The path narrowed toward the Li house.
And then, just before the turn where the fence line hid the door, voices cut across the wind.
Children.
Da Niu's laugh was unmistakable—too loud, too confident, too big for his body.
Zhou Liang's voice ran alongside it, quick and restless, trying to steer the world with words.
They appeared from behind a low wall as if they had been circling the village waiting for the cart to arrive without admitting they were waiting.
Da Niu saw them first and froze, mouth half-open.
Zhou Liang slowed. His eyes flicked to the cart, then to Li Shen, then away again as if eye contact cost something.
Qian Mei stepped out last.
She didn't stare at the cart too long. She didn't stare at Li Heng at all. She looked at Li Shen's hands.
Split skin. Roughness. The quiet evidence of work.
"You came back," she said.
Li Shen nodded once. "I did."
Da Niu blurted, too loud, unable to hold it in. "Is that really grain? Like—real grain?"
Zhou Liang elbowed him hard.
Da Niu hissed and clamped his mouth shut, rubbing his side, offended by the concept of restraint.
Qian Mei's eyes stayed on Li Shen. She didn't smile. She didn't congratulate him. She asked the question that mattered.
"What did you learn?"
Li Shen felt the answer rise immediately, heavy and clear.
Han's ledger.
The way numbers became a kind of violence.
The district ink stamp—proof turned into power.
The rule under everything: the world did not care what you meant—only what you could prove, carry, and keep.
He opened his mouth.
Then he closed it again.
Not because he didn't trust her.
Because the words were heavier than they looked, and he wasn't ready to drop them into a group of children who still believed "hard work" was a complete sentence.
Li Shen looked at Qian Mei and said, quietly, "Tomorrow."
It wasn't a dodge.
It was a promise with a boundary.
Qian Mei held his gaze for a long beat.
Then she nodded once, accepting the delay like a contract.
"Tomorrow," she repeated.
Da Niu frowned, confused. "Tomorrow what?"
Zhou Liang stared at Li Shen as if trying to read his face the way people read rumor.
Li Heng spoke once, ending it. "Go home. It's cold."
The children hesitated.
Not because they wanted to argue.
Because they were children, and they felt the weight on the cart and in Li Heng's voice and didn't know where to put it.
Then they scattered, still glancing back.
Qian Mei lingered the longest.
Before she left, she said one last thing—quiet, precise:
"Don't turn what you learned into a cage."
Li Shen didn't answer.
Not yet.
He watched her go.
Then he followed his father the last few steps home, the cart creaking behind them, the village's eyes sliding off their backs like rain on stone.
---
They did what needed to be done first.
That was how Li Heng survived. That was how Li Shen had learned to survive.
Grain didn't store itself.
The sacks came off the cart in a controlled rhythm—lift, step, breathe, set down. Li Heng placed them where the floorboards held strongest. He checked for holes. Checked the cords. Checked the corners where moisture liked to hide.
Li Shen swept the corner with a bundled broom, pushing old dust into a line and then out of sight.
No ceremony. No speeches. No relief performed for an audience.
Just two people building a buffer against winter.
Only when the last sack was placed and covered did Li Heng finally sit down.
Not heavily.
Just… as if the motion had been waiting its turn.
Li Shen poured water.
His hands moved automatically, like muscle memory had become his second skeleton.
Li Heng drank, then set the cup down.
He looked at Li Shen and spoke in the same tone he used when discussing weather.
"You did well."
Li Shen's throat tightened.
Praise from Li Heng wasn't common. Not because his father didn't care—but because Li Heng didn't waste words.
Li Shen nodded once. "I did what I said."
Li Heng's gaze flicked to Li Shen's hands. "You're hurt."
"Only the skin."
Li Heng didn't argue. He got up, went to the shelf, and pulled out a small jar of rendered fat mixed with something bitter.
Old remedies. Mortals' tools.
He set it on the table and pushed it toward Li Shen.
Li Shen stared at it.
Not because he didn't believe it worked.
Because the smell of bitter herbs still carried his mother's shape.
Li Heng said nothing about that.
He didn't have to.
Li Shen opened the jar and rubbed the salve into his cracked hands.
It stung.
He welcomed the sting. It made him present.
When he finished, he closed the jar.
He stood.
Li Heng looked up. "Where are you going?"
Li Shen didn't need to think. "To see her."
Li Heng's eyes held his for a beat.
Then he nodded once.
"I'll come."
Li Shen's breath caught.
He hadn't asked.
He hadn't assumed.
But the words hit him anyway, clean and sharp.
He nodded. "Yes."
They put on their outer layers. Li Heng took a small spade from the wall. Li Shen took nothing except the sachet against his chest.
They stepped back out.
The sky was already darkening.
The hill waited.
---
The path to the grave wasn't long.
It felt long anyway.
The ground was harder than it had been in summer. The grass was thin, pale, close to dying. The wind ran along the slope and made the air taste like stone.
Li Heng walked beside Li Shen without speaking.
He carried the spade like it belonged in his hand.
Li Shen's mouth was dry.
He had imagined this moment too many times.
In some versions, he would feel nothing.
In others, he would fall apart.
In the real version, he felt something worse.
He felt like he was walking toward proof.
They reached the small mound at the top.
Simple earth. A few stones placed to mark it. A wooden tablet weathered by wind, letters carved by hands that had shaken the first time.
Li Mei's name.
Li Shen stopped.
Li Heng set the spade down beside the mound. He didn't kneel. He didn't bow. He stood with his hands at his sides, shoulders still. A man facing weather.
Li Shen stared at the grave.
His chest tightened.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
Like a fist closing around something soft.
He stepped forward and crouched.
The wind tugged at his hair.
A small twig had lodged near the stones. He picked it out and placed it aside carefully, like removing a flaw from a line of writing.
He brushed loose dirt back into place where rain had made a shallow groove.
Then he put his palm flat on the earth.
It was cold.
It was real.
His throat burned.
He didn't cry.
Not yet.
He spoke instead, because speaking was the only way to stop the silence from swallowing everything.
"I went," Li Shen said quietly.
The words came out smaller than he expected.
Li Heng didn't move. He listened.
Li Shen swallowed. "I worked. Two seasons."
He pulled the sachet out from under his shirt and held it in his hand.
The cloth was worn. The knot was tight. The scent was faint.
"I brought this," he said, voice rough. "I didn't… I didn't leave it in the house."
He hesitated.
A ten-year-old hesitating looked different than an adult hesitating. It wasn't diplomacy. It wasn't strategy. It was a child trying to decide how much truth could be said without breaking something that didn't heal.
Li Shen exhaled slowly.
"I wanted to come back with something," he admitted. "Not empty."
He lowered the sachet and pressed it lightly against the mound—one breath, two, three.
A gesture.
Not superstition.
A tether.
When he lifted it again, a small wetness clung to his lashes.
One tear.
It didn't fall immediately.
It trembled there like a coin held on the edge of a table.
Li Shen blinked once—slow—and the tear finally slipped free and dropped onto the earth.
He didn't wipe his face right away.
He let it happen.
That was the slip he allowed.
His voice stayed low. "It was hard."
Simple words.
No poetry.
No performance.
Just the truth.
He looked down at the mound and forced himself to keep speaking.
"I didn't do anything impressive," he said, and his mouth twisted faintly as if he could hear her scolding him for calling survival unimpressive. "I didn't become anything."
He swallowed. Another tear formed, smaller than the first.
"But I didn't stop," he said. "I didn't stop moving."
His fingers tightened around the sachet until the cloth creaked.
"I don't know what comes next," he said, voice thin. "I don't know… how to be more than this."
His throat worked.
Then he lowered his head slightly, not collapsing—just acknowledging weight.
"But I'm still here," he whispered. "And Father is still here."
Silence followed.
Not the wrong silence.
A silence that fit.
Li Heng finally moved.
He stepped forward and placed one hand on the wooden tablet—not gripping it, not clinging to it. Just touching, briefly, like checking the temperature of a tool.
His voice was quiet. "He worked."
He didn't say "our son."
He didn't say "he did well."
He said what Li Mei would have understood as a report.
Then Li Heng picked up the spade.
Without ceremony, he used it to adjust a corner of the mound where the earth had slumped. A small repair. A practical gesture. Love expressed as maintenance.
When he finished, he set the spade down again.
Li Heng looked at Li Shen. "Enough."
Li Shen's jaw clenched.
Not in refusal.
In restraint.
He nodded once.
He stood.
The wind pressed against them both.
Li Shen tucked the sachet back under his shirt.
He didn't feel better.
But he felt… aligned.
Like something inside him had clicked into a place it needed to be.
They started down the hill.