The first morning back in the Li estate felt like waking in someone else's memory.
Li Yun stood in front of the mirror in his courtyard chamber, fingers running through his unruly dark hair. A servant had laid out a fresh robe, the crest of the Li family embroidered across the chest—a golden dragon curling through plum blossoms.
He hadn't worn the symbol in five years.
His fingers paused at the embroidery.
Who was he wearing this for now?
Certainly not his father, still shut away in "closed-door cultivation." A convenient absence.
And not for Lady Shen. She hadn't asked him to. But she'd watched closely when he wore his plain sect robes yesterday, as if measuring how far the boy had grown in her absence.
He pulled the robe on anyway.
The halls of the manor were too quiet.
As Yun walked toward the ancestral hall, old portraits lined the walls—past patriarchs of the Li family, all stern-eyed and distant. At the end of the corridor, a new painting had been hung.
He stopped cold.
It was his mother.
Painted in soft strokes—her lips curved faintly, eyes gentle, dressed in her ceremonial robes. But her eyes… they didn't shine like he remembered. Something in the painting was wrong. Too still. Too perfect. Like a version of her someone had tried to remember... but failed.
There was a small nameplate below:
Li Qinyue, First Wife of Lord Li. Beloved. Departed. Never Forgotten.
Never forgotten?
Then why had her rooms been sealed like a crime scene?
Why had her son been cast off to a backwater sect with no protection, no answers?
And why had no one told him… she was burned with no burial rites?
He stared at the painting for a long time, hands clenched. The portrait almost seemed to watch him back.
Then, soft footsteps.
Lady Shen stood at the end of the corridor, watching him.
She wore white today—white silk robes embroidered with quiet snowdrops. Her hair was tied with a single silver clasp. Understated. Controlled. As always.
"She was beautiful," she said softly, approaching.
Yun didn't respond.
"She used to stand in this hallway every morning," she continued, tone unreadable. "Watching your father train in the southern yard. She never liked portraits. Said they made people look like ghosts."
Yun's jaw tightened. "And yet here she is. Hung like a memory no one visits."
Lady Shen's expression didn't change. "I had it commissioned."
His head turned sharply. "You?"
She met his gaze without flinching. "No one else would."
Silence pressed between them.
"Why?" he asked finally.
Lady Shen looked at the painting, her voice barely audible. "Because I wronged her. Even if I didn't mean to."
He studied her carefully. For the first time… she didn't sound like the woman who had stolen his home.
"What happened to her?"
Lady Shen didn't answer at once. Her eyes drifted to the ceiling, then back to him.
"She died in her sleep. That's what the doctors said."
"That's what they told you," he corrected.
She didn't argue.
Instead, she asked, "Would you like to see her room?"
That made him freeze.
"I thought it was sealed."
Her expression flickered. "It was. Until last year."
He hesitated. A breath. A heartbeat.
"Yes."
Lady Shen led him through a winding corridor to a wing he hadn't visited in years. The heavy doors creaked open, revealing a room frozen in time.
Silken bedding. Books half-opened on a desk. A wooden comb still resting by the mirror. And the faint scent of jasmine… as if it had waited for him.
He stepped inside, almost afraid to breathe.
The dust had been cleared.
"She used to write," Yun whispered, picking up a half-finished poem on the table. Her handwriting curved like flowing water.
"She loved words," Shen said, her voice distant. "She was always humming lines of poetry."
Yun set the paper down, throat tight.
"She didn't want me to leave," he murmured. "But after she died... no one said anything. I just woke up one morning and the servants told me to pack."
Lady Shen turned away, walking slowly to the window. "Your father was... grieving. He made mistakes."
"Mistakes?" Yun's voice was low. "I was sent away without a single goodbye. And you—" He stopped himself.
Lady Shen turned then, her gaze sharp. "And I what, Yun'er?"
Her tone wasn't cruel. But it wasn't soft either.
He looked at her, really looked.
She was still young. Too young, perhaps, to be a widow. Barely older than thirty. Her beauty hadn't dulled with time—it had sharpened. Matured.
"I don't know," he muttered. "I haven't figured that out yet."
There was a pause.
And then she said something he didn't expect.
"Then take your time. But don't assume you know everything just because you remember nothing."
With that, she stepped out of the room, leaving him surrounded by shadows and memory.
Yun turned back to the poem.
It ended on a single line:
"Even plum blossoms fade… but not the longing beneath their petals."