Lives Between Walls

---

The Father’s Shadow

The garage was never just a garage. Its cracked cement floor and peeling walls carried the weight of memory like calligraphy carved into stone. Every morning, I sat on that rickety bench, the one my father had leaned upon, brush in hand, seeking silence against the noise of China’s endless rush. Here, in the trembling light that slipped between warped planks, he had found a private refuge. Now it was mine.

When the brush touched ink, the room itself seemed to inhale. The xuān paper stretched before me became a threshold, a quiet universe of strokes and whispers where even the shadows leaned close to listen. I had always believed that in these moments, my father returned. The bench creaked under my weight as though remembering him, and the walls hummed with an intimacy that blurred the line between the living and the dead.

---

The Doorway Watcher

That was when I felt you — Ichika — at the doorway.
The house framed you like a secret it wasn’t sure it should reveal. Your silhouette lingered against the hallway light, hesitant, as though you too were afraid of disturbing the spirits painted into the grain of the wood.

I didn’t want you there. Not because I didn’t want you, but because I wanted to forget. To silence the memory of that kiss — stolen, suspended, unspoken. The house had been watching us ever since. Its rooms listened as we tiptoed around each other, its doors bearing witness to our silences, its dinner table stripped of laughter and reduced to hollow clinks of cutlery. Even the stairwell seemed to groan with disappointment when you slipped away into your room.

Yet every morning, just as my father had once caught me, I caught you. Peeking, waiting, hoping.

---

The Ravine Between Hearts

“My favourite character is the yong,” you whispered.

The word seemed to hang in the rafters. Yong. Forever. The garage heard it too. The shadows shifted, the air tightened, the old wood of the bench creaked like it knew a vow had been spoken.

I dipped my brush, pretending to ignore you. But inside, your voice had split me open. Days of resentment pressed against me, the ache of being pushed aside, the suspicion of whether your heart had ever truly been mine. The walls of the garage closed in, heavy, watching me test your resolve.

---

The Eclipse and the Return

I let you walk away.
And in that moment, the room darkened. The fluorescent bulb buzzed and faltered, and I felt the eclipse you cast across me.

Then I broke. “Ichika!” My voice cracked against the beams. “Why do you like the yong?”

You turned back. The tears in your eyes glistened like brushstrokes of ink still wet.
“Because the yong means forever,” you whispered.

The word spilled into the air, seeped into the wood, clung to the cracked floor. It was no longer just your voice; the garage carried it like a vow, repeating it in its silence, holding it in the way a temple holds a prayer.

---

Breaking Chains

And in that instant, the chains I had bound myself with fell away. My brush slipped, the ink bled, but I was free. You had rescued me, as much as I had reached down into that invisible ravine to rescue you.

“Lái zhèlǐ,” I beckoned.

---

Within the Sacred Bubble

You smiled then, and even the walls softened, surrendering their chill. Your silk nightgown brushed the threshold, your pink slippers whispered over the concrete, and when you sat beside me on that splintered bench, the space expanded to hold us both.

It was no longer just me, or my canvas, or my father.
It was me, my canvas, my father — and you.
Forever etched into the architecture of that room.