The Yè ancestral home settled into another quiet dusk.
Beyond the courtyard walls, the city continued with its own life. Somewhere in the distance, a train rolled across old tracks. A dog barked once, then seemed to decide the night wasn't worth arguing with.
Inside the residence, silence returned to where it belonged.
If a stranger had wandered in that evening, they would have believed nothing unusual had ever happened there. Old houses had always been good at keeping secrets.
Violet sat beneath the open sky of the inner courtyard. The woven chair gave a faint creak as she leaned back. Her eyes were closed.
One foot rested flat against the stone floor, the other tucked beneath the chair. Her hands lay loosely at her sides.
She wasn't meditating. She wasn't trying to empty her mind. She simply existed without asking anything of the world around her.
Yè Yī stepped into the courtyard carrying a wooden tray. He had only taken two steps before stopping.
Something felt... different. At first he blamed the moonlight. The silver glow seemed to catch against the edge of her cardigan.
Then he realized the light wasn't moving with the breeze. It was coming from her.
His eyes narrowed. Where the cardigan had slipped slightly near her left side, something rested beneath the skin.
Not bright enough to illuminate the courtyard. Not faint enough to mistake for imagination.
A mark.
It curved outward from beneath her ribs in branching lines, almost like the beginning of a constellation.
Violet, blue, hints of green hidden beneath darker silver that caught the light like brushed metal.
It didn't resemble a birthmark. It resembled intention. As though someone had placed it there instead of nature creating it.
He found himself taking another step without realizing. His first instinct was suspicion. The second... was stranger, not recognition. Recognition implied memory.
This felt more like discovering that a missing piece had existed long before he knew there was a puzzle.
He stopped himself. Some questions, once spoken aloud, refused to return to silence.
Behind her closed eyelids, pressure gathered quietly. They were not images, not dreams but something aligning, like countless unseen gears slipping into place one tooth at a time. Whether anyone wished for it or not. She didn't react.
A moment later, her eyes opened, without turning completely, she said,
"Did you come to bring food?"
Yè Yī let out a slow breath.
"You could've started with 'hello.'"
She looked at him from the corner of her eye.
"Doesn't that count?"
"I suppose."
"Where's the late-night chicken?"
"Almost ready."
"Good."
She sounded genuinely pleased.
He didn't move. His gaze lingered longer than he intended. She noticed.
"You want to ask."
"I don't know if I should."
She nodded once.
"That's your answer."
Silence settled between them again.
Then she added,
"Ask when you're ready."
Not 'if'... 'When'.
Yè Yī turned toward the kitchen. A dry thought slipped through his mind before he could stop it.
'Talking about food hurts less when someone else is paying'.
Without opening her eyes again, Violet said,
"You're the one who offered."
He looked over his shoulder.
"I offered to cook."
A pause.
"I don't remember agreeing to finance a small army."
The corner of her mouth lifted.
"You're feeding history. That's worse."
He sighed.
"I knew you'd say something like that."
She looked up at the evening sky.
"You always think I'm speaking in riddles."
"You usually are."
"Only because people insist the future should explain itself."
He frowned.
"You talk like everything's already decided."
She considered the question for a moment.
"...Sometimes it is."
That made him stop.
This time, she looked directly at him.
No smile, no teasing, only quiet certainty.
"This house belongs to your family.. It answers your blood. I don't interfere with things that aren't mine."
He searched her face.
"Then why are you here?"
Her answer came without hesitation.
"Because blood isn't the only thing that makes people stay..."
She stood, smoothed the crease from her cardigan.
"Choice does."
He watched her walk past.
"You're not very reassuring."
"I wasn't trying to be."
She disappeared toward the kitchen. Just before reaching the doorway, she stopped.
Without turning around, she said,
"We'll talk after dinner."
"About what?"
Only then did she glance back. The fading light caught her eyes for a moment.
"About whether you intend to spend your whole life alone..."
A quiet pause.
"...or whether you're willing to swear yourself to something that refuses to let you disappear."
She continued inside.
Yè Yī remained where he was. The courtyard had returned to normal. The silver mark had vanished beneath her cardigan. Perhaps it had never been visible at all. Yet he couldn't shake the feeling it had been meant for him to see.
Not today. Not tomorrow. One day.
And somehow... that certainty unsettled him far more than the mark itself.