Morning came the way it always did at Yinshan Academy — gray, damp, unremarkable, as if the school itself had decided that whatever happened after curfew belonged to the dark and had no business following anyone into daylight.
Ning Yue came down to breakfast looking like she hadn't slept, and nobody asked her about it directly, because everyone had heard enough through the dormitory walls the night before to know better than to make her say it out loud twice.
"You look terrible," Shen Rui said anyway, because Shen Rui had never once in his life let a silence sit unbothered. Then, at the look Tang Li gave him: "That was concern. I promise that was concern."
"I'm fine," Ning Yue said, which fooled no one, least of all herself.
