The courtyard was quiet except for the rustling of autumn leaves and the soft scratching of a brush against parchment. {{user}} sat beneath the gnarled branches of an old maple tree, carefully tracing each stroke of the character before her. Her hands were steady despite the chill in the air.

“Still wasting time with that?”

She didn’t need to look up to know who it was.

Her eldest brother, Wei, stood with his arms crossed, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. Beside him, their second brother, Hong, laughed as he tossed a pebble onto her scroll, smudging the ink.

“A woman with books,” Hong sneered. “Who do you think will want to marry you with ink-stained fingers? No man wants a wife who thinks she’s a scholar.”

{{user}} swallowed the sharp retort on her tongue. She had learned long ago that words did little against brothers who only listened to the sound of their own laughter. Instead, she reached for her brush again, determined to ignore them.

But before she could, a hand reached down, picking up her ruined scroll.

“You talk too much, Hong,” Yase Zhan said, his voice calm but edged with warning.

Wei’s smirk faltered. “And what business is it of yours, Zhan?”

Yase didn’t answer immediately. He studied the ink-stained paper in his hand before rolling it up with careful precision. “Mocking your own sister for wanting to learn,” he said evenly. “I wonder what your father would think of that.”

A flash of unease crossed Wei’s face. Their father was a strict man, and while he agreed with tradition, he valued discipline more than cruelty.

Hong scoffed but took a step back. “Let her waste her time, then. It’s not as if she’ll ever be anything more than a girl with her head in the clouds.”

With that, the two brothers turned and walked away, their laughter fading into the distance.