Days blurred. North. Always north. Hills became ridges became the foothills of mountains I hadn't intended to cross.

  Wei's ribs healed. His arm recovered. The bruises faded through their spectrum — black to purple to green to the pale nothing that remained when the body had moved on.

  He trained every morning. Stabilization exercises, performed with mechanical correctness.

  "Your left channel distribution is uneven."

  He adjusted. Without looking at me.

  "Better."

  No response.

  "Again."

  He repeated the exercise. The correction held.

  "Wei."

  "Hm."

  "The breathing pattern. You're leading with your chest instead of your diaphragm."

  "Does it matter?"

  "It determines where the pressure accumulates."

  He shifted. Immediate. Precise.

  "Like that?"

  "Yes."

  On the fourth day, we hit a river.

  Not wide — ten meters, maybe — but fast. Snowmelt from the upper ridges, carrying the kind of cold that discouraged skin contact. The trail ended at a mud bank.

  I found a crossing point. Three boulders, roughly spaced, each requiring a jump that was trivial for me and deliberate for a boy with recently healed ribs.

  "One at a time. Watch where I step."

  I crossed. Turned. He studied the gap, then jumped. Landed clean on the first boulder, wobbled on the second and I caught his collar on the third before momentum could carry him into the current.

  He pulled free. Wrung out his left boot on the far bank without looking at me.

  I hadn't gotten wet. He noticed, but didn't comment.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  We walked with one boot squelching for the next hour. He didn't complain. At the first dry stretch, he sat on a rock, pulled it off and set it in the sun. He retied the laces when it was still damp.

  The fifth day was uneventful. Walking. Ridgeline. A hawk circling something in the valley below. We ate cold rice at midday, sitting on opposite ends of a fallen log. The space between us was three meters, where it used to be one.

  On the sixth day, it rained.

  We sheltered under a rock overhang. Narrow — barely deep enough for two. Our shoulders almost touched. The rain was the committed kind, vertical and patient, the kind that settles in and doesn't negotiate.

  I built a fire from wood I'd collected the night before. The overhang funneled the smoke sideways along the rock face. Wei sat with his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. His breath made small clouds.

  He pulled out the carving knife. The bird from before was finished — he'd started something new. His hands trembled through the work. The tremor was worse than last week.

  He carved without speaking. Shavings accumulated on the stone between us. The shape emerging from the wood was unclear — lopsided, not yet committed to being anything.

  I watched his hands. The tremor. The precision despite it. The way he compensated — small adjustments, unconscious, the body solving problems the mind hadn't named yet.

  "Yun."

  "Hm."

  "How long are we going north?"

  "Until it's safe."

  "Is anywhere safe?"

  I didn't answer. He blew the shavings off the carving. Held it up. Turned it once in the firelight, studying the shape with the critical squint of a craftsman who knew the gap between intention and result. Then he wrapped it in cloth and put it back in his pack. Unfinished.

  The rain drummed. We sat. At some point he leaned back against the rock and closed his eyes — not sleeping, just waiting. His hands rested on his knees. The tremor was visible even at rest.

  I added wood to the fire. The overhang filled with warmth that smelled like pine resin and wet stone.

  When the rain stopped in the afternoon, we packed up. The trail was mud and we were slow.

  An hour before dark, I found a campsite. Flat ground between two fallen pines, sheltered from the wind that had followed the rain.

  Wei collected firewood without being asked. The branches were wet. He sorted them by the fire ring — driest to wettest — and stepped back.

  I had to use qi to start the fire. He went for water — a stream fifty meters east, cutting through moss-covered rock. He came back with the pot full and his sleeves dark to the elbows. Set the pot by the fire without explanation.

  I cooked. Rice, dried roots, the last of the salted meat from three towns ago. The routine had grown precise through repetition: water to boil, roots in first, meat last, rice separate. Wei knew the sequence. He'd started preparing the next step before I asked for it — handing me the salt pouch, moving the second pot closer to the heat.

  Coordination without conversation. The efficiency of two people who had learned each other's patterns.

  He ate without comment. Scraped the pot. Set it aside.

  Before, meals had included conversation. Not important conversation — the kind that filled space between bites. Observations. Complaints. The ordinary friction of a boy who experienced the world out loud.

  He didn't fill the space anymore.

  Night fell. He slept facing away from me.

  This was new. Always before, he'd slept facing the fire, or facing me, or in whatever position unconsciousness chose. Now he faced the trees.

  I sat with the fire burning down to coals. Listening to his breathing. Feeling the stream of qi — weaker at three meters than it had been, when we were closer, but still present. Always present.

  He knew I was watching. I knew he knew.

  The night went about its business.