Please

The second time I stood at that door, I didn't even ring the bell politely.

He answered it again. Old Yang. Half a year had visibly aged him a full ring: the shoulders still wide as a ship's bow, but the ship riding lower in the water. He saw me, and something crossed his face too fast to read — not surprise. More like finally.

"I told you—"

"I know what you told me." I cut him off. The Daisy with the floating voice hadn't made this trip. The one who came was the Daisy who'd fought for headcount, smiled through the small white room, been disowned by her own mother and lived. "You said there was nothing here for me. I spent half a year thinking about that, and here's what I concluded. Whether he sees me is his decision — not yours to make for him. Whether I come is mine — and even less yours."

The old man's eyebrows moved.

"I don't have to come in," I said. "You can tell me one thing where I stand: is he all right. I'll hear it and go. But if you won't even give me that—" I gestured behind me, "—I've taken a room at the guesthouse by the harbor. I have no job, no visa clock, no schedule. The single richest resource in my life right now is time. I can come ring this doorbell every day until you get sick of me. Or until he comes downstairs himself."

Silence. Gulls overhead.

Then, entirely off-script, Old Yang said in Mandarin:

"Do you know why he won't see you."

"No," I said. "I've guessed a hundred versions. I'm tired of guessing. So I stopped guessing and came to ask."

He studied me. That look again — the vigilance, the risk assessment, the same look from six months ago. But this time I stood still and let him run it. However long it took.

I don't know how long it was before the old man exhaled. And the breath went out of him and took an inch of height with it, and what remained wasn't a door anymore. It was a father.

"He forbade me to say anything." His voice had gone hoarse. "That mule. Since he was a boy — once he decides, gods themselves can't bend him. Not seeing you is the cruelest thing he has ever done to himself, young lady. You see a shut door—" the old man turned his face toward the harbor, "—I see a boy who asks me about the weather three times a day. Urk weather. What is there to ask? Rain, then more rain. It took me a while to understand. He isn't asking about the weather. He's asking whether it's morning yet — where you are."

My throat locked.

"My own father," Old Yang said slowly, "watched my mother go, in just this way. The men of this family all believe they can carry it. All believe that sending the ones they love out of the room is mercy." He turned back to me, and in those grey-blue eyes — his son's exact eyes — something had come apart. "I kept you out for half a year because I was afraid you'd take the last of his strength with you. I've changed my assessment."

"Why?"

"Because just now you said you'd ring the doorbell every day." He stepped aside and pulled the door wide. "His mother said the same thing to me, once."

Inside was the front hall I'd stayed three nights above — everything the same, except the quality of the quiet. At the foot of the stairs Old Yang stopped and called up in Dutch, one sentence I couldn't parse except for a single word: Lucas.

For a long moment, nothing. Then the floorboards, overhead. One step. Another. Slow.

I'd packed a full magazine of hard words and used maybe a third.

The rest were decommissioned the moment the old man said: he asks me about the weather three times a day.