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A New Guest in the Old House

Original short story · AI-assisted writing and editorial revision · 18+

This is a work of fiction. Every character involved in a romantic relationship is a fictional adult over the age of twenty-five, and none of them are related by blood.

Chapter One: Half a Well

On the seventeenth of the ninth month, rain came through a broken seam in the east-wing tiles and fell straight onto the open account book. Gu Wanheng covered it with her sleeve. The corner of the page had already bled black. Outside, the bronze door ring sounded twice, paused, and sounded again.

She gathered the book against her chest and opened the door. Under the eaves stood a tall, thin man, his blue cloth soaked through. One hand held a roll of tools, the other an oilpaper letter, and a fir pole lay across his shoulder. He saw the ink on her cuff and spoke at once: “Move the accounts first. If that purlin soaks another night, tomorrow it won’t be a matter of patching tiles. The whole beam will have to come out.”

“Who are you?”

“Pei Xingzhi, thirty-five. Gu Bonian sent me to check the accounts, and to look at the house while I’m at it.” He held out the letter. “Wages by the day, written down as far as the work goes. The clan has set a limit: before Frost’s Descent they will decide whether this house is to be sold. On the morning of the nineteenth, everyone will be here.”

Gu Wanheng did not take the letter. She was thirty-two this year. Since her father, Gu Jingshan, had died, the house had been in her keeping. She had opened her clan uncle’s letters more than once. Opened, they were mostly demands that she sell.

“The house is in my charge,” she said. “Repairs can be discussed. The account books do not leave the house. No one goes up into the east wing today.”

Pei Xingzhi set the fir pole down on the stone step with a thud. The sound was hollow. “The purlin in the east wing is already hollow. You can forbid people to go up. The rain will go up on its own. I’ve done repairs for twelve years. I know what that sound means.”

Aunt Song came out of the main hall carrying a wooden basin set to catch the rain. The rim struck the threshold and water spilled in a line. She called, “Mistress, it’s dripping on the deed box too. I weighted the oilcloth with bricks, but the wind still pushes in through the seams.”

Only then did Gu Wanheng step half aside. Pei Xingzhi did not go toward the account table. He followed the water stains into the east wing. The deed box sat on the narrow table under the window. The oilcloth covered only the lid, and a dark line had seeped in along the crack. He reached to lift it. She pressed the corner of the box.

“Don’t touch the deed.”

“I’m lifting the box, not opening the deed. Once a deed goes soft, the boundary is the first thing lost.”

Someone passed in the lane with shoulder poles of water. A bucket struck the wall with a clang. Gu Wanheng let go. He set the box on the driest corner of the account table in the main hall, then went back to the east wing and braced the sounding purlin with the fir pole, a brick under the foot of the pole. He wedged it tight.

“It will only hold through tonight.” He wiped his face. “If you truly mean to repair it, the tiles on the east slope have to come off and the rotten purlin has to be drawn out. The old timber will sell for something. It can cover part of the labor.”

“The east wing is not coming down.”

“I said replace the rotten wood. I didn’t say pull the house apart.”

“Replacing timber means moving the eave wall. Move the eave wall, and the boundary of the well path goes to ruin.” She carried the wet account book into the kitchen and separated the pages one by one beside the fire. “You may repair the main hall. The figures you’re meant to see, you may check. As for the tiles of the east wing, until I nod, not one of them is to be lifted.”

Pei Xingzhi stared at the page by the fire. The ink had bloomed. Only the two characters for “masonry” still held. He argued no further. He set the roll of tools inside the threshold, sat himself on the stool farthest from the account table, took out a private notebook, and wrote: Seventeenth of the ninth month. Arrived at the house. East purlin braced for now. The mistress forbids the tiles to be lifted. Accounts on the nineteenth.

White vapor slowly rose from the paper. Gu Wanheng set a paperweight on that page. The weight was a stone shard missing a corner. On the back, half the character for “well” was carved.

Chapter Two: Twenty-Two Shi of Rice

On the eighteenth of the ninth month the rain had lessened, but the rooms were still damp. Pei Xingzhi laid the wet account books out by year and asked Gu Wanheng to sit across from him. Aunt Song boiled water at the stove.

The masonry entry was written eleven years ago: repair the well coping, lay the foundation of the east eave wall, labor and materials forty-eight taels of silver, under the name of Liu Dashi. The column for payment was blank. Outside the column were only three pale dots of ink, and no signature.

“Empty for eleven years.” Pei Xingzhi tapped the three dots with a knuckle. “Forty-eight taels hanging there gives a reason to sell the whole house.”

Gu Wanheng turned over an old door plank from behind the stove mouth. On the back, row after row of knife marks, some deep, some shallow. “The Liu family’s rice is cut into this. Two shi every year after the autumn harvest. I’ve handled it for eleven years. Twenty-two shi. It never went into the account book.”

“Why not enter it?”

“Enter it, and it becomes paid.” She looked at those pale dots. “My elder brother, Gu Cheng’an, agreed with Liu Dashi that the wages would be offset by the storehouse on the west side, and that the well path would be left for the whole lane to draw water. The words were spoken. The draft was never finished. Then he was gone. If I convert the rice to silver and write it in, the clan will take the debt as cleared and turn around and press me to sell the east side.”

Pei Xingzhi pushed his own notebook across, then drew the abacus over. “If the rice stays off the books, the forty-eight taels is the whole debt. Gu Bonian uses the whole debt to argue for selling the whole house. Twenty-two shi, at the old rice price clipped into the back of the book, seven mace a shi, comes to fifteen taels and four mace. Subtract that, and thirty-two taels and six mace are still owed. That figure can be acknowledged in front of everyone. The rice counts only as a provisional payment. The debt stays open. The well path is not written into the sale.”

The abacus beads stopped. Gu Wanheng said, “Liu Dashi has been dead five years. The rice was given to Madam Ruan. Converted at the old price, she may not agree.”

“Which is why she has to agree to your face.” He closed the abacus. “Where is your brother’s draft? Words on paper hold harder than a door plank.”

She looked toward the east wing. The fir pole was still braced under the purlin. The brick at its foot had shifted by a finger’s width. “In the camphor-wood box, on the high shelf in the east wing. I’ll fetch it after the accounts are copied. No tiles come off today.”

“What I need is that, before the copying is finished, no one steps on that purlin again.” Pei Xingzhi bent to his copying. The brush was dry, the characters heavy. “The people for the nineteenth are already sent for. If it rains hard again tonight, this pole will not hold. Leaving the draft on the high shelf is betting those few lines on the weather.”

“The draft is not for the clan to see.” Gu Wanheng set the door plank back against the stove, the knife marks facing the wall. “My brother wrote only halfway. There are words in it cursing the clan accounts. If I take it out, it will look as if I were using his private talk as proof.”

“The cursing lines need not be copied.” He still did not look up. “The two sentences on the boundary and the wages have to stay. If you don’t keep them, tomorrow Gu Bonian will see nothing but an empty column of forty-eight taels.”

The water boiled. When Aunt Song lifted the lid the steam knocked her back a little, and she said all at once, “Mistress, when Madam Ruan took the rice last year she said her husband had told her the money could come slow, but the lane must not be blocked. I heard it. What was heard is not on paper.”

Gu Wanheng turned the “masonry” page to the top. Pei Xingzhi finished copying the last column as the sky rubbed dark. The fir pole creaked once. She pointed toward the gatehouse and said there was one straw mat, and lamp oil was his to provide. He carried the roll of tools over. He still did not take a single step into the east wing.

Chapter Three: The Draft Dissolved

In the night the wind turned. The rain changed and poured straight down, striking the tiles of the east wing. At the first crack, Pei Xingzhi sat up from the straw mat in the gatehouse. He did not wait for a lamp. He seized rope and hammer and ran for the east wing.

Gu Wanheng woke too. She did not go for the rope. She moved a stool to reach the high shelf. The camphor-wood box sat at the very back of the shelf board, with old account covers and a bundle of dried mugwort piled in front of it.

“Come down first.” Pei Xingzhi called from the doorway. “The pole is walking.”

“The box comes out first.”

“The person leaves that wall first.”

The two sentences struck each other. He stepped in to catch the fir pole. The brick at its foot had already split under the pressure, and the head of the pole was slipping on the purlin. She stood on the stool, her fingers just hooking the rim of the box.

The second sound was heavier. A hollow purlin inside the eave wall broke. Ash and splintered wood came down together. The stool tipped. Gu Wanheng fell back beside the threshold. Pei Xingzhi dropped the rope, caught her sleeve, and pulled her out. A board from the eaves smashed down where they had just been standing, carved face down, broken in two. The pattern was a well railing wound with vines. The broken face was snow-white. It would not join again.

Rain poured in through the new hole. The camphor-wood box split in the fall, and the paper soaked into muddy water. Gu Wanheng knelt to fish it out. The paper tore as soon as she lifted it. She spread the few pieces she could still hold under the lamp in the main hall.

Half a line was still there: “Three bays of the west storehouse…” Below that the ink had opened and run. On another scrap, “well path,” touched once, left grains of ink stuck to a fingerprint. The whole box had become a puddle of dark pulp.

Pei Xingzhi still held the hammer. His hands were covered in ash. He looked at the two pieces of eave board, then at the pulp.

“I went to brace the pole. I was late.”

“I went to fetch the box. I was late too.” Her voice was hoarse. “On the seventeenth that pole should have been changed for a proper post. I would not allow the tiles to be lifted. You made do with a length of fir. Tonight is something the two of us dragged out.”

He did not argue. On the account table in the main hall the half-copied wage book still lay open, the stone shard weighing it down, the edges dry.

Gu Wanheng gathered the paper pulp into the broken box. The lid would not close, so she bound it with a strip of cloth and set it on the right side of the account table. She glanced at the fire pit and did not move the box toward it.

“Do we still meet on the nineteenth?”

“We meet.” She wiped the mud from her hands. “The draft is gone. The knife marks on the door plank are still there. The figures you copied are still there. If Madam Ruan is willing to come, let her say it to their faces.”

Wind still poured through the hole in the east wing. Pei Xingzhi no longer used the fir pole that had slipped. He braced the ruined eaves on a slant with the two door leaves that had fallen in the east wing, and set a stone millstone on them from below. Aunt Song rolled the millstone out of the kitchen. Once it was braced, the hole still leaked, but wood no longer fell.

Near dawn, Gu Wanheng wrote a line in the blank of an account page: Night of the eighteenth of the ninth month. East purlin broke. Eave board shattered. Cheng’an’s draft destroyed. She passed him the brush. He wrote his own name after it. The last stroke sank into the damp paper and blurred.

Chapter Four: Marks Made on the Spot

On the morning of the nineteenth the rain stopped. Gu Bonian came in first. The paper-shop keeper Qian, Madam Ruan, and Zhou Laosan, who carried water, followed. Door planks braced the hole in the east wing on a slant. Pei Xingzhi spread the wage book and the notebook on the table in the main hall and began by calling the figures.

“Eleven years ago Liu Dashi repaired the well coping and laid the foundation of the east eave wall. Labor and materials, forty-eight taels. The payment column is empty. Gu Wanheng paid two shi of rice after every autumn harvest, eleven years, twenty-two shi. At the old price at the back of the book, seven mace a shi, that converts to fifteen taels and four mace. Thirty-two taels and six mace are still owed. The rice counts only as a provisional payment. The remainder of the debt, to this day, has not been settled.”

Gu Bonian struck the table. “If it never went into the books, it cannot count. Short forty-eight taels, the east wing has to be sold together with the well path before the matter is clean.”

Gu Wanheng set the door plank with the knife marks upright before them all. “The fault is mine for not writing it down. The rice was delivered. Aunt Song went every year.”

Madam Ruan was forty-nine. Only after she had felt the knife marks did she speak. “My husband told me the money could come slow, but the path must not be blocked. I accept the old price. I want the thirty-two taels and six mace. And it still has to be written on paper: the path stays with the whole lane.”

Zhou Laosan said, “I walk those four feet outside the east wall every day. If the wall is sold, where do the buckets strike?”

Shopkeeper Qian looked at the broken hole. “I’m buying the storehouse to keep paper in. I’m not buying a lawsuit over a well path, and I don’t want this ruined east wing.”

Pei Xingzhi opened the house deed. A watermark had soaked the edge. The characters were still there: “The well path lies outside the east eave wall, bounded by the wall, four feet wide, for the whole lane to draw water.” He turned his notebook to the back. What had been written there was: dismantle the east wing, sell the rotten timber, use the dry fir from the west court for the purlins of the main hall. He circled that line and wrote another: the east wall stays; the three bays of the west storehouse are sold; timber for the north slope is bought separately.

“The dry fir could have been used for nothing. Sell the rooms, and new timber has to be bought. The repairs will be tight.” He turned the circle toward Gu Bonian. “If the east wall is sold, the boundary on the deed has nowhere to stand. This plan is one the deed forced me to change.”

Shopkeeper Qian named a price: sixty-five taels for the three bays of the west storehouse, foundation included. The well path, the east wall, and the main hall were not in it. Pei Xingzhi reduced the figures on the spot: thirty-two taels and six mace to Madam Ruan, thirty-two taels and four mace remaining. The house repairs were restated at thirty-four taels, replacing only the north slope and the broken purlin, the wall untouched. Short by one tael and six mace.

Gu Wanheng looked toward the pear-wood cabinet in the corner of the hall. Inside it were the winter quilts. “The cabinet counts as two taels. The old account covers go with the cabinet. The quilts stay.” Shopkeeper Qian agreed. The extra four mace were written into petty cash, to buy lime for filling the seams.

Pei Xingzhi drafted the deed of sale. Gu Wanheng changed two places: the well path was not part of the property sold, and the east eave wall was the boundary; the thirty-two taels and six mace were to be paid in full that day, and the old masonry account marked received. Gu Bonian wanted to add “the remaining house to be disposed of later at the clan’s discretion.” She dipped the ink and struck it out, and said the remaining house stayed in her keeping and would not be written into this deed.

Madam Ruan bit the silver and pressed her handprint on the receipt. Zhou Laosan pressed his. Shopkeeper Qian and Gu Wanheng pressed theirs in turn. Pei Xingzhi wrote only “accounts verified, no error” beneath the reckoning, and signed his name. Gu Bonian pressed last. Half a fingertip took the ink paste. Pei Xingzhi waited until the print was dry, then folded the deed paper.

Chapter Five: The Mark on the Rim of the Cup

Early on the twentieth, Pei Xingzhi chiseled two pieces of old stone flat and set them at the two ends of the path outside the east eave wall. Only four characters were cut into the stone: Well Path of the Whole Lane. Zhou Laosan came by with empty buckets. The rims passed a palm’s width from the stones. He looked once and went on.

Gu Wanheng opened the broken camphor-wood box. The paper pulp was still bound in cloth. She set the cloth bundle at the bottom, and above it, in order, the copy of the deed of sale, Madam Ruan’s receipt, and the house deed. The lid would not close tight. She drew the cloth strip tight around it again.

The pear-wood cabinet had been carried away. In the corner of the hall a darker floor brick showed. The bedding was rolled on the couch. She pushed the quilts farther in and cleared a space to write.

Pei Xingzhi came in with a sheet of paper he had cut himself. He read: “A separate agreement for the repairs. From the twenty-first of the ninth month to the winter solstice. Only this: replace purlins and patch tiles on the north slope; in the east wing, replace the broken purlin and shore the damaged eaves. The east wall is not to be moved. Daily wage, one hundred and twenty cash, settled by the day. I sleep in the gatehouse. Meals are entered separately on Aunt Song’s stove account. If the work is to stop, say so three days ahead.”

Gu Wanheng changed one place: the meal money would not be entered separately; twenty cash a day would be deducted from the wage. Pei Xingzhi circled “entered separately” and wrote “twenty cash deducted each day, one hundred cash actually paid,” and tapped the figures with the tip of the brush.

“Those twenty cash taken for meals, reckoned against the rice on Aunt Song’s stove—if it isn’t enough, add a dish.”

“No adding,” Pei Xingzhi said. “The work agreement doesn’t say a dish is to be added.”

“The lime and the tiles arrive this afternoon,” he said again. “Ordinary blue-gray tiles. A carved eave board can’t be patched back into the old vines.”

“If the hole is covered tight, that will do.”

They each copied the work agreement once. Hers went into the cloth-bound box. His was folded into the notebook. When the writing was done, the abacus was pushed to the corner of the table.

From the wall cupboard she took a small tin canister, left by Gu Cheng’an. Ordinarily she scooped a pinch only on nights she stayed up. Today she scooped two pinches and poured boiling water into two coarse bowls.

“The work agreement is written.” She pushed one bowl across. “This bowl is counted apart.”

Pei Xingzhi moved the bowl aside first. The ink was not dry. The base of the bowl would press on the date. Gu Wanheng set the broken-corner stone on the corner of the paper, half the character for “well” facing down.

Only then did he lift the bowl. The tea was old, and bitter. Both bowls were drunk to the bottom.

The two of them stood a while under the north slope of the main hall. He measured the purlin that was to be replaced with a gauging rod, set the old marks on the rod against the wall, and drew a line on the pillar with charcoal. “The new timber is cut to this line. Whatever is left at the end stays to patch the east wing. It will not be opened as a separate account.”

Pei Xingzhi leaned the gauging rod in the corner of the gatehouse wall. “I’m going to the mouth of the lane to wait for the tile cart. Tonight I sleep in the gatehouse as before. Tomorrow, at the mao hour, I go up on the north slope. The measurements follow the work agreement.”

Gu Wanheng set the empty bowl upside down on the rim of the basin. The last water dripped into the basin and sounded twice. She walked to the hole in the east wing and shifted the wooden bucket that caught the water half an inch back into place. The next drop fell into the heart of the bucket and broke a small ring in the cloudy gray water.