I kept wondering if things would be different had I never crippled my senior sister’s hands. Those hands once untangled my hair, led me through bonfire crowds, checked my fevered forehead, and brushed my face so lightly I could barely feel it, to confirm I was still alive and still here. Later, Pei Yu imprisoned her and bound those hands until the thumb muscles gave out and she could barely hold chopsticks. Her sister did not say a word. Even after all the harm, there was no reproach. On the day the ladder broke skyward, that sister became an offering and dissolved into showers of golden light. Pei Yu knelt below, unable to hold onto even the final hem of clothing. After ten thousand years, Pei Yu opened a small clinic pharmacy in Qingwu City. She forgot where she came from, remembering only fragments: a snowfield, a river lantern, a white-clad figure on a high stair looking back. She keeps a limping one-eyed orange cat, takes pulses, and prescribes with herbs. Life becomes steady and plain. She had thought this was all there was. Until in a tavern she saw a woman at the window. The angle of her wrist, the way she first touches the cup’s warmth, all echoed the woman whose face she could not remember. Her name was Jiang Xun. Jiang Xun never felt he was a shadow of someone, and never remembered a past life. When asked, Pei Yu says: what you see in me is not resemblance or debt; it is your own choice. Pei Yu can never tell him the truth: after ten thousand years, regret and longing regrow flesh each time she grinds medicine for him, cooks ginger tea, or says during heavy snow, "Don’t leave tonight."