Chapter 3 Whispers Beneath the Plum Tree
Morning sunlight spilled gently across Willow Moon Town, warming the rooftops and scattering gold across the dusty paths. Lian Hua stepped outside her clinic, stretching her arms as dew clung to her sleeves. Birds chirped in the plum orchard behind the building, the blossoms trembling in the cool breeze.
A soft cough sounded from inside.
Shen Wei,she turned back quickly, her heartbeat picking up in a way she didn’t want to admit. He was sitting up now, propped against a wooden beam, the blanket pooled around his waist. His fever was gone but a faint pallor still lingered on his face.
“You should lie down,” Lian Hua said instinctively.
He looked up, eyes calm but warm. “If I lie down any longer, you’ll start charging me rent.”
Her lips twitched. “You couldn’t pay it.”
A soft chuckle escaped him the first she'd heard. And something about the sound loosened a knot inside her chest.
“I can work,” he offered quietly. “Chop wood, sweep the paths. Whatever you need.”
“You’re a guest, not a laborer.”
His expression flickered, almost pained. “I’m not used to being… taken care of.”
There it was again that shadow in his eyes. That weight he carried quietly, like a secret he feared would spill if he breathed wrong.
Lian Hua looked away. “Your body needs rest. Everything else can wait.”
He nodded, accepting her words, but she sensed something deeper he was someone who had never truly rested. Not in this life, perhaps not in the last one either.
By midday, the clinic’s front bell chimed a soft, metallic ring.
Lian Hua wiped her hands and went to open the door.
An elderly woman stood there, clothes patched but clean, her hair braided neatly. “Healer Lian,” the woman said with a polite bow, “I’ve come for the willow salve you promised.”
“Of course, Grandma Su.” Lian Hua smiled warmly and reached for the prepared jar.
But Grandma Su’s eyes drifted past her toward the shadowed corner where Shen Wei sat.
“My, my…” the old woman murmured. “Who’s this young man?”
Lian Hua stiffened. “A traveler. He collapsed by the moon gate.”
Grandma Su stepped closer, squinting. “Hmm… there’s something unusual about him.”
Shen Wei straightened subtly.
“What do you mean?” Lian Hua asked.
The old woman tapped her wooden cane against the floor. “His eyes. They’re the eyes of someone who’s lived twice.”
Lian Hua froze.
Shen Wei’s fingers tightened on the blanket.
“I...I don’t understand,” Lian Hua managed.
Grandma Su chuckled, waving her free hand. “Oh, don’t mind an old woman’s rambling. I’ve seen too many strange things in this town. The moon gate remembers more than people think.”
She accepted her jar and shuffled out, humming off-key.
But her words lingered in the air like incense smoke.
Lived twice,the exact phrase that haunted Lian Hua’s dreams.
The same truth hiding behind Shen Wei’s eyes.
Later that afternoon, Shen Wei insisted on stepping outside for fresh air. Lian Hua walked with him along the bamboo path behind the clinic, the sunlight filtering through the leaves in fractured, emerald patterns.
He walked slowly, each step careful.
“Does your head still hurt?” she asked.
“Not exactly.” His voice was hushed. “It’s more like… a feeling. Something tugging at me from behind the veil of memory.”
She hesitated. “What do you remember?”
Shen Wei stopped walking. A breeze lifted his hair as he looked toward the distant moon gate.
“Flashes,” he said softly.
“A courtyard filled with smoke. A woman running toward me, reaching, crying.”
His throat tightened. “And a promise I failed to keep.”
Lian Hua’s breath caught.
Her dreams mirrored that exactly.
A burning courtyard, a hand slipping away, a name she could never fully hear.
“You said you were searching for someone,” she whispered.
His eyes shifted to her slowly, carefully, painfully as though he feared the truth of his own words.
“Yes,” Shen Wei murmured.
“I am.”
“And… do you think you’ve found them?”
Silence fell, thick, heavy. Trembling between them.
Shen Wei stepped closer, close enough that she could see her reflection in his dark eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said, voice barely above a breath.
“But when I look at you… something inside me settles. As if my soul recognizes yours.”
Her heart thundered painfully.
A spark. A pull. A familiarity older than time.
“But that’s impossible,” she whispered.
“Is it?” he asked gently.
For a moment, neither moved.
The world around them blurred.
Only their breaths existed.
Then a sudden snap of bamboo.
A flicker of movement behind the trees.
Lian Hua turned sharply.
“Who’s there?” she called.
Silence.
But Shen Wei’s body tensed in a way that made the hairs on her neck rise.
“We’re being watched,” he said quietly.
Lian Hua swallowed. The air felt colder.
The bamboo leaves rustled as if stirred by something unseen.
Not wind, not animal.
Someone or something had been listening.
Watching,waiting.
Shen Wei stepped slightly in front of her, protective instincts rising unconsciously naturally like he had protected her before in another life.
“Let’s go back,” he murmured. “It’s not safe here.”
And though she didn’t fully understand why, she trusted him.
Because deep in her soul she remembered that stance.
That shield.
That warmth.
Just as he remembered the woman in the fire.