"Present."
The word vanished into the air, but something about it remained—an invisible cold settling beneath the skin.
Nobody moved.
Lin Yue's eyes remained fixed on the chalkboard, on the precise rows of numbers beneath Mr. Xu's handwriting, while the steady count of his pulse gave him something to hold on to.
Then Mr. Xu picked his chalk back up.
He continued beneath the equation, adding one small line after another, as though the voice from the back of the room had been no more substantial than a draft stirring the curtains or a window trembling in its frame.
Lin Yue thought that was worse than hearing the voice in the first place.
Shen Rui broke first. He leaned toward the boy beside him, a thin young man with a nervous cast to his face, and whispered something Lin Yue couldn't quite hear over the pens moving around them again.
"Did you hear that?"
"Yes," the other player breathed back, not looking away from his textbook. "Yes, I heard it."
"Who said it?"
