Ling Yue stopped counting the days.
Morning came and went without meaning. Night followed, heavy and unkind. The village continued its rhythms — doors opening, fires lit, voices calling — but none of it asked for her.
She moved through it like a guest who had overstayed.
The lotus bud remained with her.
She did not know why she carried it everywhere. She only knew that setting it down felt like betrayal.
It no longer felt cool.
Sometimes — only sometimes — it felt warm enough to make her pause.
---
She returned to the river at dusk.
The water reflected the sky too clearly, like a mirror that refused distortion. Ling Yue knelt at its edge, fingers brushing the surface.
"You said staying mattered," she murmured. "So why does it feel like I don't belong anymore?"
The river offered no answer.
But the air shifted.
Not wind.
Not sound.
A pressure — gentle, persistent — like being noticed.
Ling Yue's breath caught.
She stood slowly, heart pounding, and turned in a slow circle.
Nothing was there.
And yet… she felt it.
A direction.
---
That night, she dreamed.
Not of Ye.
Not of the village.
She dreamed of height — endless steps rising into mist, light without warmth, silence that pressed rather than comforted.
When she woke, her chest ached with longing she couldn't explain.
Her hand tightened around the lotus bud.
"Is this what you meant?" she whispered.
The bud pulsed faintly.
Once.
---
By the third morning, she realized something had changed.
The village no longer felt hostile — it felt finished.
Like a story whose last line had already been written.
She passed the well where Ye used to wait and did not stop this time.
That frightened her more than tears.
---
Mei Qiao found her at the edge of the path leading out of the village.
"You're leaving," she said quietly.
Ling Yue nodded.
"I don't know where," she admitted. "I just know I can't stay."
Mei Qiao hesitated. "Are you running?"
Ling Yue looked down at the lotus bud — smooth, whole, patient.
"No," she said. "I think I'm being called."
Mei Qiao didn't ask by whom.
She simply reached out and squeezed Ling Yue's hand.
"Then go," she said. "Before the village forgets how to hold you."
---
At dawn, Ling Yue stood one last time beneath the willow tree.
The branches swayed gently, brushing the ground like a farewell that did not linger.
She did not speak.
She did not cry.
She simply bowed her head once — and turned away.
As her steps carried her beyond the village boundary, the air lightened.
The pressure she had felt tightened — not painfully — but decisively.
Far beyond sight, something ancient responded.
A thread shifted.
And for the first time since his disappearance, the space Ye had left behind did not feel empty.
It felt like a path.