Fushu

Newly arrived in Huaxu, you know Fushu only as a stranger in every sense.

You came to this mysterious land under commission. Before ever meeting her, you had already crossed paths with Zhiliu of EverSpring, whose wealth defies measure; with Yuming, the austere and stoic Magistrate of Yingtian; and with Mr Qiu, the astute master of the black market, always turning his designs within.

As your journey carried you through Mistwharf, you came to know its ways, its customs, and its people. Yet in all that time, not once did her name arise. Who is she, and from what place did she come? Why would one of such rare power remain wholly unspoken in this land?

Then, without warning or sign, she appeared before you, drawn only by someone nearby in dire need of healing.

From her attire and her speech, you could see she was unmistakably of Huaxu. Yet in her bearing there was a subtle dissonance, something unlike any Huaxu native you had met.

You watched her move through the crowd in plain white robes, untouched by the clamour around her. The noise seemed to recede of its own accord, and by her presence alone she stood apart from the world.

In that moment one truth became clear to you: one such as she could never belong to the black market. Her origin lay somewhere wholly her own.

The Nine Chapters of Dafeng decree: "Heaven's great virtue bears the name of Life." Birth, ageing, and death rest solely within the dominion of Lord Argent, a divine authority beyond mortal grasp. In their boundless compassion, Taihao granted humankind a chance to live on, that those struck by illness need not be surrendered to death. To uphold the sanctity of life, they raised several Loongscions and entrusted them with sacred arts able to banish every affliction. Thus was the Zhuyou clan established.

Heaven moves in ordained cycles, decay and renewal, rise and decline. The laws of Huaxu have long upheld this sacred balance.

The healing arts of the Zhuyou are the purest expression of restoration, no ailment or injury lies beyond their reach. Yet the price is grave: whatever sickness they draw from another settles upon the healer's own flesh. Though they command higher workings to purge this blight, no divine art can spare them from lives foreshortened by its toll. Thus was this life-for-life magic known as the Art of Ephemerality.

Yet all this now lies in an age long past, its tales faded with a hundred years.

Today, in Mistwharf, the Zhuyou have near vanished with the waning of the Hall of Ephemerality. Unless fortune greatly favours them, common folk may pass their lives without ever crossing paths with one again.

The Hall of Ephemerality in Mistwharf was Fushu's first home.

After a century of dreamless slumber, she awoke in Haojing. Her elder sister's disciples were the ones who roused her, tending to her with warmth and utmost care. They told her of the century she had missed, introduced the medicine of this new age, nursed her back to strength, and guided her through the bustling city she had never truly known.

Newly awakened, it was only natural that Fushu felt unmoored at first. No expectations were placed upon her, nor did anyone urge her to resume the path she once walked.

Only in time did she realise that the Zhuyou were no longer a calling the world turned to. A hundred years had reshaped all things. The world felt strange, and she learned slowly, both the ways of this age and the medicine that had grown so distant from the healing arts she once practised. When at last she had regained enough knowledge to take up her work again, her first resolve was to return to the Hall of Ephemerality in Mistwharf.

Perhaps it was the unease of living a second life. Perhaps she wished to witness, with her own eyes, the fate of House Fu and the waning line of the Zhuyou. Perhaps it was simply the quiet pull of the soil she once called home. Whatever the truth, she bore countless reasons to remain in Haojing and just as many to return, yet in the end her steps chose for her.

As if drawn by an old vow or by threads of fate, Fushu found herself upon the road that would lead her back.

Fushu sat aboard the vessel that bore her home.

The travellers' clothing no longer resembled anything from a century past, and even the ship itself was built with a complexity unknown in her time. Among the passengers were foreigners speaking quietly of their work: merchants carrying goods from Luca to trade in Mistwharf.

They seemed well acquainted with Huaxu. When their business talk faded, their voices turned to stories from the road. They spoke of Mistwharf's scenery, finer than anything in Haojing, and of plans to go hiking together when time allowed. One mentioned seeing an Emeraldfinch pass over a valley. Another laughed and corrected her, saying that Emeraldfinches only glide, their heavy tail feathers making true flight impossible. Their talk then drifted to EverSpring and to how, during the festival season, Proprietress Zhiliu sent lavish gift boxes to her partners, each holding a commemorative gold coin. A man nearby remarked with a quiet laugh that he preferred the cured Petit Boar strips within, an ideal companion for the long miles of travel.

Fushu listened in silence, drawn in despite herself. Their words felt at once strange and familiar. Her thoughts drifted toward the frayed edge of memory. Had she, a century ago, watched an Emeraldfinch glide across the sky? Had she walked every street and alley of Mistwharf, watching its seasons come and go? And the snacks she had cherished as a child, were they the very ones these travellers spoke of? Were they spicy, sweet, or savoury?

Perhaps she had; perhaps not. She could no longer say.

So many of her memories had grown indistinct. Like footprints pressed deep into sand, even the clearest traces flattened when the tide of time swept over them, leaving the shore smooth and leaving her unsure of the road she had once walked.

She sat in quiet reflection, unsure and thoughtful in equal measure, and the question rose unbidden: Perhaps this is why I return to Mistwharf, why I must set my steps towards the Hall of Ephemerality.

Perhaps her gaze lingered too long upon the merchants, for they soon noticed her and looked her way with curiosity. One of the businesswomen, dressed in foreign fashion, smiled and stepped towards her. "Your attire is lovely. I have only seen clothing like that in Huaxu's history books, so we could not help staring. It is a pleasure to travel with such a beautiful lady. If you do not mind my asking, are you bound for Mistwharf as well?"

Fushu was silent for a moment before answering softly, "I once lived there."

The woman drew a light breath, affecting a note of surprise. "Truly? What a coincidence. We are headed to Mistwharf for trade. Along with spirits and glassware, we have brought a few small curios."

She opened her palm to reveal a finely crafted pocket watch. Its case was embossed with a great tree, its canopy encircling a luminous moon, a familiar sight to Fushu, though beneath the branches lay flared eaves and covered walkways she did not recognise, belonging to the century that had passed without her.

With a soft click the woman opened the case, showing the turning hands, second, minute, hour, each keeping steady time. She adjusted the crown with practised ease. "Our customers often complain that setting the time is troublesome, so we added a few improvements to this model. I wonder whether the people of Mistwharf will, oh!"

The hands began to turn backwards somehow. "I am terribly sorry," she said, flushing with embarrassment. "This one must be defective. The others work perfectly. I can fetch you another..."

"No need."

Fushu's gaze remained on the reversing hands.

"I prefer this one," she said.

"Would you sell it to me?"

Fushu had tended to your wounds more than once.

Her magic, bound to the unseen workings of the Nine Chapters of Dafeng, required no catalyst. With a single touch the pain faded, as though it had never been there.

Fushu explained that although the principles of Zhuyou healing were shared, its expression differed from one healer to another. Her own took the form of dew, clear as morning light and able to wash away any ailment. Others shaped their magic like drifting snow caught in a circling breeze, tiny crystalline motes that fell softly and restored any wound the instant they touched it.

You wondered whether such magic had once belonged to a Zhuyou healer she had known a century ago. Fushu paused, the silence stretching for a moment, before she answered softly, "It was my elder sister... Fufeng."

In Haojing, Zesheng Pharmacy has long been a household name. Its founder, Fufeng, is remembered with deep respect and admiration. She tested countless herbs upon herself, set her knowledge to paper, and guided those around her as she slowly reshaped the meaning of healing, turning it from the long-revered Art of Ephemerality practised only by the Zhuyou into the grounded and widely taught medicine known today.

Yet this apothecary, who lived almost a century and witnessed with her own eyes the decline of that ancient art, had begun life as a scion of House Fu, one lineage among the once-venerable Zhuyou.

The relationship between Fushu and Fufeng had long been marked by tension, yet the true fracture came when Fufeng laid down her charge as a Zhuyou and chose a different way, one that heals people without consuming a Zhuyou's own life-force.

It was a path unwalked, and many whispered that it was unorthodox. In choosing it, she turned from the Hall of Ephemerality, from her kin, and from the power Lord Argent had granted their line.

In Haojing today, the medical discipline she founded has become indispensable to daily life. People understood, though few spoke it openly, that in seeking deliverance from suffering they had quietly accepted her step beyond Taihao's divine order.

No written honour nor ceremony could veil this truth. For though they named her the Sage of Medicine and spoke of Taihao's enlightenment upon her, something deep within the common heart had begun to shift, and trust in Lord Argent's infallible wisdom and power had grown subtly less absolute.

For one woman, stepping beyond divine sanction, had grasped a trace of the power over life and death itself.

Fufeng and I were twins, identical in every outward sense.

And I have always... quietly resented that fact. Even if the rivers were to run backward one day, the heavens collapse, and Lord Argent turn Their gaze from the world, I doubt I would ever make peace with it.

As for why... the tale is not a brief one.

Fufeng possessed a natural gift for provoking me; that much has never changed, not since our earliest years.

Long before she conceived her unorthodox ideas, her favourite amusement was to imitate me. Whatever I did, she would copy, perfectly so, if she wished. Even our parents could not tell us apart.

That alone did not anger me; if anything, it pleased me. To bear the miasma drawn from the sick, a Zhuyou must live with discipline: ordered days, measured diet, steady habits. I followed these rules faithfully. Fufeng, however, delighted in coaxing the elders, one more sweet, a little less training, a moment longer buried in her blankets.

I often thought that if she could truly mirror me and become another dutiful, proper Zhuyou, it would be a relief for everyone.

I never voiced such thoughts, but I suspect that Fufeng, with the strange intuition shared between twins, sensed them all the same. How else could she always "accidentally" err when she copied me, producing versions of "Fushu" who had never existed? "Fushu making mistakes." "Fushu shirking her duties." "Fushu being clumsy and foolish." Baseless slanders, and infuriating ones.

People like to say that twins are mirrors of one another. But mine was a distorted mirror, reflecting only absurd parodies of me, though I had never acted so in truth.

In retaliation, I once attempted to imitate her. I mimicked her ungainly posture during martial lessons, when she could not hold her splits and the instructor pressed her down until she wept. I mimicked her unseemly flailing when she refused to rise, moving about the bed with the same heedless abandon she always showed. I mimicked the way she struggled with the Art of Ephemerality, coaxing only a few thin snowflakes into being after long effort, her shoulders sinking in defeat.

And yet, though I recall each of those moments with perfect clarity, I could never recreate them as she had lived them, with her unrestrained laughter, her unreserved tears, her unguarded emotion. Every attempt of mine became merely: "a slightly unsettled Fushu", "a slightly rigid Fushu", "a Fushu simply too hard on herself".

Our parents could not tell when Fufeng pretended to be me, but they recognised me immediately whenever I pretended to be her.

I once asked them why. They said, "Fushu, you are far too proper a Zhuyou. Your sister... she is still only a child."

At the time, I accepted those words as self-evident praise. I was the one who resembled what a Zhuyou ought to be, the one nearer to that honour, that responsibility.

My sister, still too young in spirit for such a calling, could not bear its weight. But I could. I even believed I could shoulder hers as well. If she was not suited to the duties of a Zhuyou, then the work of healing all lives might fall to me alone.

In hindsight, perhaps it began with losing, utterly and irrevocably, at that childhood game of imitation. And in some buried attempt to mend the sting of that defeat, I sought victory in the realm where I thought myself strongest: in being a proper Zhuyou.

That thought, I can shoulder this alone, took root like a seed. And on the day I severed all ties with Fufeng, it broke through the soil, wound itself around me, and never released its hold. Not until the day I died.

The apricot grove of the Hall of Ephemerality flourished with remarkable vigour, far more than one would expect, for tending trees is an art of its own, and whoever looked after the residence from time to time could not possibly have cared for them throughout the year.

As you walked among the trees with Fushu, you could not help but ask how she had managed to cultivate them.

Fushu shook her head. "We are healers, not gardeners. My mother enjoyed tending potted plants, but... the results were seldom ideal. When my elder sister and I were children, we once planted a tree together. Somehow, we managed to plant it crooked."

Beside you, her Yunchi plucked a sprig of apricot blossom and offered it to you. You accepted it, drawing in the sweet, lingering fragrance.

You walked on. Near the centre of the grove stood an apricot tree a little taller than the rest. You were about to speak when you noticed the faraway look in Fushu's eyes.

You followed her gaze. The tree leaned gently to one side, its crown bowed beneath the weight of blossom, as though dusted with snow, its mass of pale petals recalling the silvery hair of a woman well into her later years.

In the north-east corner of Mistwharf stood an old residence known as the Hall of Ephemerality, once a family home, now long fallen silent. Though someone still tended to it from time to time, without the breath of daily living, even a well-kept dwelling grows cold and desolate. Its former owners had been greatly respected. Their names had faded from common memory, yet parents continued to warn their children to keep a respectful distance and not wander too close to what remained of their home.

The harvest season, however, was an exception.

Two or three months after the apricot blossoms had fallen, the branches would hang heavy with fruit. Small groups of children would slip inside to pick apricots as little treats. In those moments they forgot their parents' warnings, thinking only of the thrill of climbing trees and the sweetness of the fruit, until the call from home reached them across the courtyard.

But that year, a lantern glowed within the empty residence. It meant someone had returned to live there. And the children knew at once that they could no longer help themselves to the apricots that had always seemed theirs for the taking.

Their days of play had lost something essential. They dared not defy the teachings of the Nine Chapters of Dafeng by climbing the walls to slip inside for fruit; all they could do was watch from afar, left with only their memories.

Until one afternoon, a Loongscion stepped out from the residence. She set down a great basket of apricots and met the eyes of the little rascals dangling from the branches. Then she gestured towards the apricot grove behind the courtyard and said quietly, "Go on. Have fun."

That day, the apricot grove shook with joyful uproar. Laughter rang through the branches until nightfall, and the children lingered long after the sky had grown dark.

The last boy climbing down from the treetop saw, from afar, a white-clad Loongscion standing at the window with a lantern in hand, quietly seeing the children off.

He froze for a moment, and their eyes met by accident. She blinked and shaped the silent words: "Go home."

Just before he left the grove, he looked back at the house. The evening breeze was soft; the lanternlight flickered gently. The Loongscion stood alone by the railing, a faint smile on her lips, watching the distant threads of chimney smoke drift through the dimming light.

Long ago, Fufeng and Fushu planted an apricot sapling together in the courtyard of the Hall of Ephemerality.

That year, a Loongscion whom their mother had once healed returned in gratitude. Possessing little else, he laid a blessing upon the courtyard soil, a quiet working of magic that bestowed enduring abundance. He told them that any plant rooted in that blessed earth would bloom and bear fruit twice each year, and never lose its vitality.

Intrigued by this wondrous blessing, young Fufeng begged their mother to buy an apricot sapling. Finding a bare patch of ground in the courtyard, she pulled Fushu along to help her plant it. Restless and playful as ever, Fufeng gave the newly planted sapling a careless nudge, knocking it askew. Seeing Fushu fight back tears, she rushed indoors, rummaged out her treasured tin of preserved sweets, and poured a small handful into her sister's palms in apology. Only then did Fushu's tears subside.

And so the little tree went into the earth, crooked, but theirs all the same.

"Make a wish," their mother said with a gentle smile. "Whatever you wish for will come true, just as this tree will one day bear its sweet fruit."

To this day, Fushu still does not know what her elder sister wished for.

But she remembers her own: If my life is destined to be brief, then let this apricot tree live in my stead. Let it witness generations rise and fall, oceans shift, and time remake the world.

Fleeting light, O fleeting light, take from me my borrowed time.

Let the old live out their years, let the young be spared all tears.

From withered bone let green life rise, and barren boughs give rise to tender shoots.

Under the Divine's unending gaze, may this vow endure beyond our days.

When Fushu's mother reached her quietus, Fushu was taking her midday rest.

Zhuyou lived brief lives, and so they guarded their strength with great care: rising with the sun, resting with its fall, keeping their breath steady and their hearts at peace.

A light sleep of two quarters at noon was a fixed part of their daily regimen.

Fushu always kept to the rules. Fufeng, free-spirited as she was, rarely did. Yet even she yielded beneath their mother's stern gaze. At ten, the worst she would do was pick at her meals, toss and turn when she should have been asleep, or slip away to play where neither mother nor sister could find her.

That day was no different.

When Fushu was shaken awake, she felt a spark of irritation, but anger harmed the spirit, and violating the family's "Thirteen Maxims of Vital Care" was unthinkable. She swallowed the impulse and merely asked why Fufeng had disturbed her.

Fufeng's face had lost all colour, cold sweat running down her temples. She said nothing; she only gripped Fushu's hand and pulled her down the winding corridor.

Fushu recognised that look at once, not only fear, but bewilderment. Like a fox run to exhaustion, the trap before it and the hounds behind, a struggling bird clenched in its jaws and its kits waiting helplessly in the den, with nowhere to flee, nowhere to hide. Such a creature must feel exactly as Fufeng did now: trembling, cornered, lost.

What could terrify even Fufeng, who laughed even through a harsh scolding?

Fushu bit her lower lip.

She had always believed she would face such moments with calm.

From early childhood, she had understood the fate that awaited a Zhuyou.

She lived by the rules, never once entertaining the thought of resisting Lord Argent's design. If she had entered the world in quiet acceptance, then she ought to leave it in the same way.

Flowers bloom and fall. The moon waxes and wanes. Those who are healed live on; those who save them pay the price. Such was the will of the Divine, and such had been the way of all ages. What, then, was there to fear?

When she was five, her father died before their eyes, spent like a lamp whose oil had run dry.

She had thought herself fearless. But in truth, it felt as though her soul had been torn from her body. Eyes wide, she forced herself to remain still, tracing the lines of her father's palm as he murmured casually, as if speaking of the most trivial daily matters: "Your father's got a weak spot for good drink. When my death anniversary comes, remember to pour a pot of decent wine at my grave."

His tone was wry, almost playful. Only later did Fushu realise: Fufeng had taken after him.

Darkened blood began to seep from the openings of his face. Pointless as she knew it was, she still tried with all her strength to wipe it away, but it would not come clean. Then harsh sunlight struck through the window, turning that sullied blood into blinding gold, a final tribute to a great Zhuyou.

She had thought she would face such moments with calm.

Her mother, ever strict, now sat slumped beneath the blazing sun, nursing a cup of strong tea. A paper packet lay open beside her, holding more than a dozen pastries. She was tasting each one with earnest concentration, crumbs of sesame clinging to her lips.

Fushu had never seen her so at ease. Nor had she seen her grin, sheepish as a child caught stealing sweets: "Ah. You caught me."

Fushu watched her mother's eyes grow slowly glassy, though the woman herself seemed unaware. She rambled softly: "The walnut shortbread is too dry... it scratches the throat. Almond cakes... I've never really taken to them. The lotus pastries are crisp, but all show, no substance. After all these years, I still like sugar sponge cakes best. They taste just as they did when I was little."

She brushed the crumbs from her hands, gathered both her children onto her lap, and gazed towards the mountains and birds in the distance.

Fufeng stared straight into the noon sun, refusing to blink until she sneezed again and again.

Fushu, meanwhile, tightened her grip on her sleeve and spoke softly to her mother, whose nails were already sharpening beyond human shape: "Mother... don't worry. I'll behave, just as I always have. I'll look after Fufeng. We'll keep this place going... just as you and Father did."

This time she shed no tears. She felt no fear either. Unlike her sister, who wished only to deny what was happening, Fushu wanted their mother to leave unburdened.

But the woman only smiled. She did not answer Fushu. Instead, she asked: "Sweetheart... what pastry do you like best?"

Fushu froze. She had no idea how to respond, a life lived by strict rules had left her with almost no memory of such treats.

Her mother did not press her. Her voice was already breaking, and these were the last words she spoke:

"Forget all that. Live your lives... in whatever way your hearts truly wish."

Everyone at Zesheng Pharmacy knew of the stone coffin in the rear garden, a coffin so cold that frost clung to it even in midsummer.

Within it lay the Founding Master's twin sister, the last Zhuyou of the Hall of Ephemerality. During the Great Plague that had once swept across Huaxu, she had moved among the dying without pause, her life ebbing with every invocation of the Art of Ephemerality, a devotion as admirable as it was heartrending. When the recoil of her healing finally consumed her strength, even someone as gifted as Master Fufeng, who had laid the foundations of her own discipline, could find no way to undo it. All she could do was prepare: a stone coffin, an ice chamber, and, at the very brink of her sister's quietus, a working that stilled every function of her body, holding her in suspension, awaiting a future in which a remedy might at last be found.

"Master Fufeng wagered all her hopes upon the years to come." So said the current head of Zesheng Pharmacy, his fan stirring lightly in his hand as he addressed the new apprentices. "This wager concerns you and me, your senior apprentices, and those who will one day follow after you."

The young apprentices, of course, understood little of what he meant. They craned their necks in curiosity, hoping to glimpse the healer from a century past. The head pharmacist allowed it. The woman within was pale as white jade, her breath all but imperceptible, her joints stiff as sculpted ice. To any ordinary eye, she looked long parted from the living. A few apprentices recoiled after only a glance.

Their gazes wavered between the woman in the coffin, so lifelike that her stillness seemed unreal, and the head pharmacist, who remained perfectly composed.

He caught their doubt at once. "You think she is already gone, do you?" He was a man who moved through life with an air of easy nonchalance; rare did he wear such solemnity. The new apprentices fell silent beneath the weight of his gaze.

The head pharmacist surveyed them and said, "The Nine Chapters of Dafeng state: 'To deceive and mislead the many, this must not be done.' So let me speak plainly, on your first day. When Master Fufeng was young, she devoted herself to the study of medicine, compiled The Essence of Herbs, and founded Zesheng Pharmacy. For a hundred years we have saved lives beyond counting. Your own families, no doubt, have sought remedy here. In gratitude, people speak well of us and gloss over our flaws. Yet even so, nothing can efface the fact that Master Fufeng was born a Zhuyou... and did not see that calling through to its end. By the law of the Divine, that alone is a transgression."

The apprentices gasped. Many stared in stunned confusion.

The head pharmacist let out a quiet breath, as though recalling the long and difficult road behind them. He allowed the apprentices a moment to take in his words, then continued:

"Medicine has always been a defiance of the order of life and death. It alters the endings of those who have committed no wrongdoing, yet simply lacked the fortune to meet a Zhuyou before death claimed them. And yet the Nine Chapters also proclaim: 'Heaven's great virtue bears the name of Life.' If Heaven may uphold that virtue, then why should mortals who labour towards the same purpose be condemned? But this path is harsher than any outsider can fathom. Every draught you have ever taken to restore health came from tireless experiments, from trials that often brushed the very edge of death before proving true."

The garden had fallen utterly still. No one dared make a sound. A pale petal drifted on the wind and settled inside the stone coffin. The head pharmacist brushed it away with gentle care, then lifted his gaze to the young faces before him, some thoughtful, some uncertain, some quietly moved. When he spoke again, his voice was low and steady:

"A hundred years... and each step has been hard-won. Zesheng Pharmacy was founded to save lives, even when the Nine Chapters disapproved of it. Our predecessors overcame each obstacle with resolve, pushing through dead ends no one else dared to face. And that is why Master Fufeng entrusted her twin sister to us, because she believed that those who came after her would break the impasse she could not, that they would reach the far shore she herself could not cross; that through us, the shadow of illness will recede... and lives once cut short will begin anew."

Within the coffin, the woman in her deep slumber had not changed in a century. Yet to the young apprentices, she was no longer the cold enigma she had seemed only moments before, but the very impasse their craft must one day overcome, the unmoving heart of a century's medical endeavour.

At last, the head pharmacist said, softly yet with unwavering conviction:

"Zesheng Pharmacy forsakes none."

A plague once swept across Huaxu.

It endured without respite, claiming countless lives, and among them was the last Zhuyou of the Hall of Ephemerality.

She laboured tirelessly among the masses, her fingers grown numb from invoking the Art of Ephemerality without rest. With each life she drew back from the brink, her own edged ever closer to its destined end.

People praised her selflessness; they honoured her devotion. Yet few understood the price of such mercy.

And each person she healed, grateful beyond expression, would murmur the same gentle blessing: "Good things will come to good people."

Fushu never reached the quietus that awaited every Zhuyou.

Before the final collapse could take hold, Fufeng reached her, still loud, still rambling, still irrepressibly self-assured. She insisted she would save her, that she could save her; if one year would not suffice, then ten, and if ten failed, then a hundred. One day, somehow, there would be a way to wake her again. Fufeng gripped her hand and refused to let go: "No matter what happens... wait for me."

"To reclaim a soul from Taihao's keeping... is too difficult... far too difficult..."

Fushu's consciousness began to slip. Her breath thinned; the rest of her words scattered before they could take shape.

Yet Fufeng understood, her fear, her unwilling heart, and the quiet truth that she was not yet ready to let this life go.

The Hall of Ephemerality once took in a young girl burdened with a rare, stubborn illness. Even when the Art of Ephemerality managed to restore her, the sickness returned unfailingly each spring, a rash spreading across her skin, a burning fever, and a swollen throat that left her struggling for breath.

Her parents moved their entire household near the Hall so she would always be within reach of a Zhuyou's care, praying she would not die young. Yet even the most seasoned Zhuyou could only shake their heads in helpless silence.

Each spring, Fushu's parents kept a bed ready for the girl and guarded her night and day. That was as far as a Zhuyou's power could reach; anything more lay beyond their grasp.

As the years passed, the girl became the Hall's longest-staying patient. She remained there through the seasons when Fushu's parents passed away one after another, and watched countless quarrels flare and fade between Fushu and Fufeng, until the day Fufeng left, looking back at every step, yet still walking away.

That spring, only Fushu remained by the girl's side. And so the girl witnessed the hardest days Fushu had ever endured.

Patients filled the Hall throughout the year, and Fushu bore the burden alone. She hurried from one bedside to the next, her strength stretched thin; the cleansing arts she relied upon weakened with every use, the backlash eating deeper into her. Her complexion grew greyer with each sunrise.

Under such strain, the Art of Ephemerality saved fewer lives each day. The order the Hall once took pride in slowly collapsed. More and more patients crowded its grounds. The groans of the gravely ill, the pleas and curses of their families, all of it swept through the Hall like a relentless wind, filling every pavilion and corridor until the place she had known all her life became almost unbearable to remain in.

Even so, she never forgot the girl with the strange illness. Each night, she went to see whether the symptoms had returned. And when the girl burned with fever once more, Fushu's own body could endure no further.

Even so, she forced the Art of Ephemerality, determined to heal the girl. It failed twice, each attempt leaving her reeling with dizziness, ringing ears, blood at her lips, and darkness closing in at the edges of her sight. Even now, she does not know whether the third attempt truly succeeded, for she collapsed before she could witness the outcome. As she sank into deep darkness, she thought she heard someone calling her name, but the roaring in her ears drowned everything else away.

When she opened her eyes again, she could not move. But someone was holding her hand. The girl's hand, warm, not cold.

She had survived.

Yet it was Fushu who felt as though she had been dragged back from the brink. With what little strength remained, she held the girl's hand as though clutching the final thread that kept her in this world.

The girl woke soon after. Though Fushu's strength was so depleted that the Art of Ephemerality could not take full hold, leaving the girl still pale and unsteady, she smiled as though nothing were wrong.

"Fushu," she said softly, "you were burning up just now. I truly couldn't tell which of us was the patient hanging by a thread. You kept murmuring in your sleep. You said, 'Please don't take her away.'"

She looked at Fushu's ashen face and went on, "I'm not a Zhuyou. I'm not your kin. I'm only one of your patients. If I had died just now, I would not have blamed you. I would have prayed to Taihao all the same: Please do not take her. Please spare her. Even if you were the only one left in the Hall of Ephemerality, I would still beg Lord Argent not to take you."

"So please... don't push yourself any further. All right?" Her gaze did not waver, untouched by the cries and chaos outside the Hall. "Call it selfish, if you must. It's just that... I truly want to see next spring's apricot blossoms."

Fushu closed her eyes in pain.

No one knows what passed through Fushu's heart as she made her choice. But she endured that year.

And the girl lived to see many more springs, growing old under Fufeng's care, long after Fushu had fallen into her final slumber during the Great Plague.

Every spring, she travelled to Haojing and laid a sprig of Mistwharf apricot blossom beside the stone coffin. Then, with quiet devotion, she prayed: "Lord Argent... please do not take her. Please... return her to us."

During your journey through Huaxu, you had already sensed what weighed on Fushu's mind.

But you never pried. You and Fushu each held on to someone you could never bear to lose. Just as you would go to any lengths for the chance to see Berry again, you had neither the wish nor the right to stand in her way.

There were moments when you feared her resolve might lead her to ruin. But that fear, at least, never came to pass.

The current head of Zesheng Pharmacy met with Fushu once more.

To his relief, the woman before him, Founding Master Fufeng's twin sister, no longer carried the hollow, wandering look she had worn when she first awoke. Perhaps, he thought, the weight on her heart had finally eased.

Still harbouring the faint hope that he might one day seek her guidance in matters beyond his own skill, he asked about her plans for the future. He had not expected her answer: she meant to journey to the Hyperborean Empire.

His smile faded, the displeasure plain despite his understanding of why. On that distant, frozen land were those who owed Zesheng Pharmacy an explanation, and owed an even greater one to the woman standing before him.

But Hyperborea was a realm in turmoil, a vast and consuming storm. Anything touched by the tragedy in Flagson eighteen years ago risked being torn apart. The dangers ahead were obvious; in the worst case, the Pharmacy's old debts might only deepen.

Should he stop her...?

No. He could not.

He met Fushu's gaze, clear, pale, and unwavering with resolve. He had once seen that very same determination in his teacher's eyes. Nothing, he knew, could keep this woman from crossing into that distant land to claim a justice twenty years overdue.

"Then please," he said at last, "make your preparations with care. Zesheng Pharmacy will give you all the support we can."

The elder apothecaries of Zesheng Pharmacy all knew one thing well: the Founding Master, Fufeng, held fast to a habit that never changed, no matter how many decades passed.

Though she had long abandoned the Art of Ephemerality, left the Hall of Ephemerality, and founded Zesheng Pharmacy, she still kept people on to tend her old residence. Year after year, every table and chair, every modest furnishing, remained exactly as they had been in her girlhood, though none of her loved ones lived there anymore.

And they knew something else: each year, without fail, Master Fufeng planted an apricot sapling in the rear garden of the Hall. From her earliest years to the days when age slowed her steps, until she needed an arm to steady herself, until she could no longer make out the characters on a prescription, she kept the ritual.

Once, the current head of Zesheng Pharmacy asked his ageing teacher what meaning this ritual held.

The weathered apothecary smiled.

"So that, when she wakes," Fufeng said, "she will see the apricot trees, grown at last into a lush grove."

Fufeng did not remain forever young, not as she appears in my memories. She was the first among the Zhuyou to grow old. And though I often try to picture how the years must have settled upon her, the truth is that I cannot.

We Zhuyou are born white-haired; age leaves no mark there. But it must have shown itself in other ways: in the fine lines gathering at the corners of her eyes; in the coarsening of her skin; in joints that stiffened with each passing year; and in the gradual bow of her back, until the lively child who once leapt and scampered through the Hall could no longer move as she once did.

I imagine these signs one by one, yet no clear image emerges. But there is no need for haste. When age comes for me as it once came for her, I will only need to look upon my reflection. Across a century, I shall finally glimpse the face that age once granted her, and the age-worn visage she had long hoped I might one day live to bear.

Since my awakening, my mother's final words have returned to me time and again:

Live your lives in whatever way your hearts truly wish.

But what life is it that my own heart desires?

For many years, I did not know. Now, I believe that Fufeng's life may serve as the mirror by which my own may be measured.

In this age, when the world has little need of the Zhuyou, I at last possess the years to reflect:

Was my devotion to the Zhuyou path born of duty, to my parents, to the Hall of Ephemerality, or from teachings of the Nine Chapters of Dafeng carved too deeply into my bones to question? And if all that is set aside, if I am simply Fushu, no longer Zhuyou in name or role, what do I truly cherish? What could I serve with the whole of my remaining life?

Night after night, I study the notes that Fufeng left behind across long decades. In my youth, I believed her impatient; yet every line she wrote on herbs and illnesses is meticulous and exact. Dry though such records may seem, she entrusted herself to them wholly, never allowing carelessness to take root. Her hand remains steady and precise, until she reaches the words "The patient has recovered!" There, her strokes loosen, swift and unrestrained. A century has passed, yet as I read those yellowed pages, the same quiet stirring rises in my chest.

Through them, I trace back the moments of simple, genuine joy, and I have come to understand this:

The joy of preserving a life was real, warm, steady, and bright. For one fated to die young, each life I managed to prolong became a fragment of the future I might never claim. And now, after a hundred years of sleep, to behold another rise restored and return to their own path in sound health... is enough to bring tears to my eyes. I know too well the sorrow of a life cut short before it begins, like a silkworm stifled within its cocoon, a bud struck down before bloom, a mayfly denied the dawn.

I have tasted that fear. I shall not forget it. And I wish, simply as myself, not out of a Zhuyou's duty, that no one in this world should meet such an end.

So I will continue as a healer. Yet this time, I will allow myself to grow old, and watch, with my own eyes, how far healing may carry itself in the span of my years.