The thaw didn't arrive like warmth.
It arrived like mud.
Snow softened at the edges of stone and turned into slush that clung to soles and made every step sound stupid. Water ran in thin lines down the dorm wall where it had been frozen in place for weeks. The yard smelled like wet wood and old lime and the sour breath of too many men sleeping too close together.
Bai Ren liked it anyway.
Not because it was pleasant. Because it was movement. Because mud meant the world was changing again, even if it was only from "frozen" to "wet."
He had a bundle of boards on his shoulder, tied with rope that bit into cloth. The boards weren't clean, and the rope wasn't kind, and the work wasn't glamorous.
That was the point.
A man with glamorous work became interesting.
Interesting men got assigned. Or tested. Or blamed.
Bai Ren walked into the brace line and grinned like he'd forgotten how to be serious.
"Careful," someone muttered as he passed. "Those boards are warped."
Bai Ren tilted his head and inspected the bundle like he was appraising a rare treasure. "Warped boards are cheaper. Cheaper boards mean the sect is investing in us."
A couple of men snorted. One of them, a thick-armed yard hand with a crooked nose, didn't bother hiding his irritation.
"The sect doesn't invest," the man said. "The sect subtracts."
Bai Ren nodded brightly. "Yes. But if they subtract us, who carries the buckets? Who hauls the dead? Who holds the wall up when it decides to become a floor?"
He said it loud enough that it sounded like a joke. He made it sound light on purpose.
Light was safe.
The crooked-nosed man rolled his eyes and turned back to his hammer. The sound of nails biting wet wood started up again—steady, dull, comforting in the way repeated impact could be.
A foreman—yard-side, not forge—stood over a sketch scratched into dirt with the toe of his boot. It wasn't a drawing. It was instruction. Angles. Spacing. Which posts needed double-bracing before the next rain turned the ground into soup.
Bai Ren dropped his bundle by the wall and wiped his hands on his robe.
A younger worker beside him tugged his sleeve. "You volunteered again?"
Bai Ren looked shocked. "Me? Volunteer? I was kidnapped."
The younger worker stared.
Bai Ren leaned closer and whispered, "They offered me extra hot water."
The younger worker's face cracked into a grin despite himself. "Liar."
Bai Ren shrugged. "I'm a professional."
He picked up a board, tested the grain with his thumb, and slid it into place along the brace point where the dorm wall met a support post. The wood was damp and rough. Splinters lived in it like hidden teeth.
He didn't mind.
Pain in the hands was honest pain.
It didn't come with paperwork.
They worked in a rhythm that made time feel manageable: measure, align, hold, nail. Bodies moving in cooperation without speeches. The cold sat on the yard like an unpaid bill, but the exertion kept it from settling into bone.
Bai Ren liked the exertion too.
Exertion didn't ask him who he was.
It just asked him to keep going.
After an hour, the crooked-nosed man shoved a bucket of nails toward Bai Ren with his foot. "Stop smiling," he said. "It makes me angry."
Bai Ren beamed wider. "If I stop, you'll have nothing to blame for your personality."
A couple of men laughed. Not because Bai Ren was funny. Because laughter was cheaper than anger. Anger always found a clerk eventually.
Bai Ren kept his smile on and watched their hands.
He watched who missed nails. Who hit thumbs. Who paused too long before standing up straight. Who scanned the yard the way a man scanned a line at a window.
And he saw it.
A runner from the processing side walked past the brace line, slowed, and spoke to one of the yard men like it was casual.
"Your friend," the runner said, chin angled toward the dorms. "The tidy one."
The yard man made a sound that could have been a laugh if it had less envy in it. "Which tidy one."
"The one who refuses free mistakes," the runner said. "The one who keeps writing the right thing on the right tag."
Bai Ren didn't turn his head.
He didn't have to.
He felt the shape of the conversation the way you felt a draft before a door opened.
The yard man said, quieter, "He's not even important."
The runner replied, "Not yet."
That word had weight.
Not yet meant someone had started thinking in timelines.
Bai Ren shifted his grip on the board he was holding and stepped half a pace into the runner's path like it was accidental.
He lifted the board and frowned hard at it, face scrunched in intense concentration.
"Hey!" Bai Ren called out, loud and cheerful. "You! Runner!"
The runner stopped, annoyed already.
Bai Ren waved the board like it was evidence. "Is this supposed to be straight? Or do we angle it so the wall looks more… confident?"
A couple of yard men snorted. The runner blinked.
"What," the runner said flatly.
Bai Ren pointed at the brace line. "We're reinforcing the dorm wall. You know. So it doesn't collapse and crush all of us into a single administrative problem."
The runner stared at him as if he couldn't decide whether Bai Ren was brave or stupid.
Bai Ren smiled like the answer was obvious.
The runner finally jerked his chin. "Angle it," he said. "And stop wasting my time."
Bai Ren saluted with the board. "Yes, honored expert in wood."
The runner walked away, conversation killed, irritation redirected into the safest possible direction—Bai Ren's harmless stupidity.
Bai Ren waited until the runner was out of earshot, then bent his head and spoke to the crooked-nosed man without moving his lips.
"They're talking again," Bai Ren murmured.
The man didn't look at him. "They always talk."
"Different talk," Bai Ren said. "The kind where they don't say names because names make it real."
The crooked-nosed man's hammer slowed for half a breath. "About who."
Bai Ren slid the board into place and held it steady. "About hands. About seals. About someone being too tidy."
The crooked-nosed man snorted softly. "Tidy gets you killed."
Bai Ren smiled. "Good thing I'm disgusting."
He drove the first nail in with two hard strikes and let the rhythm continue, because rhythm was camouflage too.
—
At midday, when the foreman called for a water break, Bai Ren slipped behind the storeroom corner where the wall blocked the wind and the yard noise turned into a dull hum.
He didn't do it like a ritual. He did it like a man stealing two minutes of privacy in a place designed to remove it.
He sat on a low stone. Rolled his shoulders once. Closed his eyes.
He tried to remember Li Shen's breathing.
Not the words—Li Shen didn't give words. The shape. The timing. The way Li Shen could stand in cold air and make his breath come out quieter, steadier, as if his lungs had stopped arguing with the world.
Bai Ren inhaled.
Slow. Controlled.
He held it.
For a moment, it felt like nothing happened. Like he'd done it right.
Then the pressure arrived behind his eyes—sharp and wrong. His ears filled with a thin ringing. The breath he was holding turned heavy, not dense like strength, heavy like sinking.
His stomach rolled.
He opened his mouth to exhale and the air came out in a messy rush. His throat caught and he coughed once, hard enough to make his ribs complain.
Spots danced in his vision.
Bai Ren blinked and stared at the ground until the world stopped tilting.
"Okay," he whispered to himself. "So that's a scam."
He waited, breathing normally now, letting the nausea drain off. The cold air hit his lungs like punishment and he accepted it.
He wasn't angry.
Anger was a luxury emotion.
Anger assumed the world owed you a door.
Bai Ren simply adjusted his expectations the way he adjusted a board: you worked with what you had, or you snapped it and looked stupid.
He stood up, dusted his hands off, and went back to the brace line like nothing had happened.
His smile returned before he even reached the wall.
Not because he felt happy.
Because he understood the value of looking like he wasn't dangerous.
—
The foreman assigned him the heavier brace points in the afternoon.
Not as a compliment. Because Bai Ren didn't stop moving. Because he didn't make noise about it. Because his hands did what they were told.
Bai Ren carried two boards at once on the next run.
He noticed the difference the way you noticed a change in weather: last month his shoulders would have burned and his grip would have started shaking by the time he reached the wall.
Today the burn came later.
The shake came later too.
Not absent. Just delayed.
He didn't label it. He didn't call it anything.
He just stored it as proof that work was doing something besides taking from him.
A board slipped once as he shifted it into position.
The edge scraped his palm and a splinter lodged in deep enough to sting sharply.
Bai Ren hissed, then laughed immediately, loud and stupid.
"Oh," he announced to nobody in particular, "excellent. Free wood inside my hand. I'm becoming furniture."
A couple of men chuckled. One of them tossed him a dirty cloth strip without looking.
Bai Ren wrapped it and kept working.
He didn't stop to treat it properly. Not because he was tough. Because stopping drew attention. Because a man who stopped became a man who could be asked why.
The foreman walked the brace line at dusk, tested the new supports with his boot, and nodded once.
"Good," the foreman said.
It wasn't praise.
It was permission.
Bai Ren felt that nod settle into his chest in a way porridge never did.
A small, stupid victory.
The wall would hold better in the next rain.
Men would sleep without listening to the wood creak as much.
It mattered.
Because it was real.
—
When the yard finally released them, Bai Ren washed his hands at the basin until the mud stopped turning the water black. He dug the splinter out with a nail tip and hissed softly, then wrapped the spot tighter.
He moved toward the dorms with the slow fatigue of a full day's work, the kind that made sleep heavy and deep.
He saw Li Shen on the path near the points corridor—walking alone, wrapped hand gone, posture steady, eyes forward.
Not looking for trouble.
Trouble had a way of finding him anyway.
Bai Ren jogged the last few steps to match pace and dropped into Li Shen's peripheral vision like it was accidental.
"Good news," Bai Ren said cheerfully. "The wall will not collapse and crush you in your sleep."
Li Shen's eyes flicked to him. "You volunteered."
"I was kidnapped," Bai Ren said solemnly. "By civic duty."
Li Shen made a sound that might have been an exhale with humor in it.
Bai Ren kept his tone light. "Bad news."
Li Shen didn't ask "what." He asked the useful question. "Where."
Bai Ren smiled wider. "Everywhere."
Li Shen waited.
Bai Ren lowered his voice without lowering his grin. "People are watching hands," he said. "Not yours specifically. Just… hands. The kind that keep things too clean."
Li Shen didn't change expression. He didn't even blink more.
Bai Ren continued, as if discussing mud. "It's annoying. Which means you're doing something right."
Li Shen's gaze stayed forward. "Who."
Bai Ren shrugged with practiced carelessness. "Not a name problem. A habit problem. Runners. Yard mouths. Men who like it when other men make mistakes."
Li Shen nodded once.
Bai Ren bumped him lightly with his shoulder—soft, friendly, stupid. A physical punctuation.
"And before you say it," Bai Ren added, "yes, I'm still happy."
Li Shen glanced at him again.
Bai Ren grinned. "Happiness is free. Anger is a stamp."
Li Shen walked on.
Bai Ren walked beside him until the dorm doorway came into view, then peeled off like his path had always been different.
At the threshold, he turned back and called, loud enough for anyone listening to hear only the surface of it.
"Also," Bai Ren said brightly, "I tried your breathing again."
Li Shen paused half a step.
Bai Ren made a face and patted his stomach. "My body rejected enlightenment."
Li Shen didn't respond with words.
He just looked at Bai Ren for a beat—long enough for Bai Ren to feel something warm in the middle of the cold.
Then Li Shen went inside.
Bai Ren went to his own plank, sat down, and let fatigue settle over him like a blanket.
His hand hurt where the splinter had been.
His shoulders ached in a clean way.
His appetite was sharp enough to feel like a separate creature.
He smiled anyway, small and private this time.
Not because he was winning.
Because he was moving.
And because he had managed, for one more day, to make himself look tired instead of dangerous.
In this place, that was its own kind of protection.