Author's Preface
By midday, the clouds had thinned enough to let through a pale, watery light.
Jun walked the outer lanes of the village with no particular destination. The snow had stopped falling sometime before noon, leaving the rooftops softened and the pathways half-buried. His boots left deep prints in the fresh powder, and he did not look back to see if anything followed.
The square was not empty, but it was quiet.
An old man sat on an upturned crate near the well, repairing a fishing net with hands that moved from memory. The twine was frayed, the net full of holes that would never hold fish, but he worked at it anyway, looping and knotting with the patience of someone who had been doing this long before the rules existed.
Jun paused a few steps away. The old man did not look up.
“Morning,” Jun said.
“Afternoon,” the old man corrected.
A beat of silence.
“The fish are long gone, you know,” Jun said.
“I know.” The old man tugged a knot tight. “Net still needs mending.”
Jun did not ask why. He stood there for another minute, watching the old man's hands move through the familiar motions, then continued on.
Near the far end of the square, a woman was hanging laundry on a line stretched between two houses. The clothes were faded—patched trousers, a child's tunic too small for any living child Jun had seen. She pinned each garment with care, smoothing the wrinkles with her palms. When she noticed Jun watching, she nodded once and returned to her work.
The tally post stood in the center of the square, half-buried in snow. No one had cleared it. The carved rules were barely visible now, softened into illegibility beneath layers of frost. Jun walked past it without stopping.
At the edge of his vision, something flickered.
Children. Three of them, perhaps four. Pale figures with softened edges, chasing one another through the snow near the abandoned house at the end of the lane. Their laughter reached him faintly, as though carried from very far away. One of them—a girl in a winter coat several sizes too large—paused mid-stride and turned toward him.
Jun looked away.
Not because he was afraid. Because he did not want them to vanish.
When he glanced back a few seconds later, they were gone. Only disturbed snow remained where their feet had been, the impressions already filling with fresh drift.
Madam Wu's house stood at the bend of the lane. The curtains were drawn, but smoke curled steadily from the chimney. A pair of tiny cloth shoes sat beside the entrance, dusted with snow but carefully placed side by side. Jun did not knock. He simply noted the shoes, the smoke, the silence, and walked on.
By the time he circled back to the Liu house, the afternoon light had begun its slow retreat. His uncle was sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette he must have been saving for weeks. He offered one to Jun. Jun took it.
They smoked in silence while the shadows lengthened across the snow.