Chapter 33 — Return
The road home felt shorter.
Not because the distance changed.
Because the weight did.
When we returned to our city, the academy children shouted at the gate when they saw Shen Yanci.
“Teacher!”
“Teacher passed!”
They swarmed him like sparrows.
Shen Yanci tried to scold them, but his ears were red and his eyes too warm to be stern.
Auntie Wang appeared at our courtyard gate like a general, hands on hips.
“I knew it!” she crowed. “I knew the boy had brains. Come in, come in!”
Neighbors drifted in with gifts: a jar of pickles, a bundle of dried mushrooms, a strip of pork that looked like it cost too much.
It wasn’t grand.
It wasn’t Lin wealth.
But it was real.
That night, Shen Yanci and I sat beneath the tree with a pot of hot wine, watching the rabbit lantern sway.
He looked at the courtyard, the red thread on my wrist, the candlelight in our window.
Then he said softly, “I used to think I only had to repay a debt.”
I lifted my brows. “And now?”
His gaze met mine, steady and quiet.
“Now I know I wanted a life,” he said.
My throat tightened.
“Me too,” I admitted.
He reached across the stone table and took my hand.
Warm. Firm.
No hesitation.
In that moment, I realized something simple and terrifying:
I was no longer surviving.
I was living.