Chapter 163: Just a Minute

Chapter 163: Chapter 163: Just a Minute

Nobody answered her.

The clock above the door ticked once more and stayed where it was. 3:17.

The elderly woman waited with her hands folded on her knees. She did not lean forward. She did not look at anyone but Fang Ning.

Lin Yue looked at her before he looked at anything else.

A small woman, past seventy. A plain dark coat, buttoned to the throat. Gray hair pinned back neatly. Her shoes were together, toes pointing forward, as though she had been taught to sit that way.

Nothing about her was worn, and nothing about her was new.

Observed: she was calm.

That was what he could not get past. In four days, everything in this hospital had wanted something from them. The nurses wanted answers. The ledger wanted names. This woman only wanted a small thing, and she was willing to wait for it.

"I’m sorry," she said again, softly. "I know it’s strange, being stopped in a hallway."

"It’s a lobby," said Xia Lian.

"Is it?" The woman smiled. "I’ve always thought of it as a hallway."

Qiao Lin shifted her weight. "Fang Ning. Let’s keep walking."

"Oh, please don’t," the woman said. She did not raise her voice. "It won’t take but a minute. You look like someone who checks on people."

Fang Ning flinched.

It was a small movement. If Lin Yue had not been watching her, he would have missed it. But he saw her hands tighten on her own arms, and he saw her eyes go somewhere else for a second, to a room on the second floor of Ward 2 and a bed made with perfect corners.

You look like someone who checks on people.

It was meant as a compliment.

It landed like a diagnosis.

"Who is it?" Fang Ning’s voice was very thin. "The person you want me to check."

"A patient. Upstairs."

"Which patient?"

"Someone I’d like to know is all right."

"Which floor?" Lin Yue asked.

The woman turned her head toward him. It was the first time she had looked away from Fang Ning. Her eyes were pale and mild, and they passed over him with no more interest than they would have shown a coat rack.

"The third," she said.

"What room?"

"It’s a small ward. She’ll find it."

"Is the patient assigned to a nurse?"

"Everyone’s assigned to someone, dear."

"Then why can’t the nurse check?"

"I’m sure she would." The woman’s smile stayed exactly where it was. "But I’ve asked Fang Ning."

Lin Yue felt something cold settle behind his ribs.

She had said the name again. She had said it the way a person says the name of someone they already know.

"Why can’t you go yourself?" Shen Rui said. His voice was rough. "You can walk. You could be upstairs in five minutes."

"I’ve been waiting here."

"That’s not an answer."

"No," the woman agreed, gently. "I suppose it isn’t."

She said nothing more.

Lin Yue waited for the rest of it. A reason, an explanation, a reach for sympathy. A person who wanted a favor usually offered something to make it easier to give.

She offered nothing. She only sat there, patient, with her hands on her knees.

Beside him, Bai Wuyin tugged at his sleeve.

"Lin Yue," the boy whispered, in the high, shaky voice he used when other people were close. "Why isn’t anyone else looking?"

Lin Yue did not turn his head.

He moved his eyes instead, along the rows of molded chairs. Seven people sat in them. Six faces were pointed at the floor, or the wall, or at nothing at all. No one had looked up when the woman spoke. No one had shifted when Fang Ning’s name was said.

They sat like people who had heard this before.

Or like people who knew better than to hear it.

"I see," Lin Yue murmured.

"Is it bad?" Bai Wuyin whispered.

"I don’t know yet."

"I don’t like her voice."

"What’s wrong with it?"

"Nothing," said the boy. His black eye did not leave the woman’s face. "That’s what’s wrong with it."

Across the lobby, a door clicked.

Lin Yue’s gaze flicked up. Su Yun had come out of the side corridor beside the reception counter, a clipboard against her chest and a pen in her hand. She was speaking to no one. She was crossing the floor with her usual even stride.

She looked toward the Waiting Room.

She stopped.

It was not a dramatic stop. She did not drop anything or gasp. She went still in the middle of a step, the way a person goes still when they hear their own name spoken in another room.

Her eyes moved straight to Fang Ning.

Then she started walking.

Not running. Su Yun never ran. But her stride had changed, and Lin Yue saw it. Long steps, faster than he had ever seen her take; the clipboard dropped against her hip.

"Fang Ning," she called.

The word crossed the lobby and thinned out. The hall was too big, and the sound seemed to leave her mouth and lose itself in the polished floor.

She was still thirty paces away.

She knows this, Lin Yue thought. She has seen this before.

"Fang Ning," the woman said again, very gently. "Would you?"

Fang Ning looked at Lin Yue.

He had been waiting for it, and it still hurt.

She wasn’t asking for permission. She was asking for a verdict. Which one is safe? Tell me which one is safe. Her face was gray, and her lips were pressed so hard they had no color.

Lin Yue thought quickly.

If she refused, was that a violation? The Rule Sheet said nothing about relatives. The ledger said nothing about favors. No chart had ever listed a request from the Waiting Room.

If she agreed, was that an obligation? He had no way of knowing.

There was no rule to read. There was no form to check. There was no test he could run.

"Fang Ning," he said. "Don’t agree to anything you don’t understand."

"I don’t understand," she whispered.

"Then don’t."

"But she’s not asking for—" Her voice cracked. "It’s not a chart. It’s not a bed. It’s just looking."

"I know."

"If I say no, and it’s a rule—"

"It isn’t written down."

"That doesn’t mean it isn’t a rule."

"No," said Lin Yue. "It doesn’t."

He could not tell her more than that. He could not promise that refusing was safe. He could not promise that agreeing wasn’t.

It was the first time in this hospital that he had nothing to offer her but honesty.

"It’s all right, dear," the woman said, kindly. "I don’t mind waiting."

That was worse than anything.

Fang Ning stood very still. Lin Yue saw her working through it, the same arithmetic as in the stairwell, the same small calculation of which fear was smaller. After Yun Shu, she had stopped trusting the part of herself that wanted to help. She had built a wall out of no and not mine and I’m sorry, I can’t.

But the woman was not asking her to help.

The woman was asking her to look.

And a wall that had only ever been built against one kind of danger had no answer for a request this polite.

"I’d only look," Fang Ning said.

Her voice was so small Lin Yue barely heard it.

"That’s all," said the woman.

"I wouldn’t touch anything."

"Of course not."

"I’d come straight back."

"Just a minute."

Fang Ning gave a small nod.

It was a hesitant, almost automatic thing. Her chin dipped and rose, the way a person nods when they are too tired to keep holding a door shut.

"Okay," she said. "I’ll go."

"Thank you," said the woman. "That’s very kind."

Nothing happened.

The lights did not flicker. The clock did not change. The woman did not stand, or reach for Fang Ning’s hand, or hand her a scrap of paper or a key.

She only settled a little deeper into her chair, hands still folded, face still mild. She looked, Lin Yue thought, like a person who had just been handed exactly what she had come for.

Nothing at all had happened.

And that was what made his skin crawl.

"Fang Ning!"

Su Yun reached them.

She was breathing hard. Lin Yue had never seen her out of breath. Her clipboard hung from one hand, forgotten, and her eyes went first to Fang Ning’s face, then to the woman in the chair.

For the first time since they had arrived, he saw something raw in her expression.

It was anger.

It wasn’t aimed at Fang Ning. It was aimed at the air in the room, at the clock, at the chair, at something he could not see. And it was aimed, he thought, at herself.

"What did you say to her?" Su Yun asked.

"I—" Fang Ning blinked. "She asked me to check on a patient. Upstairs. That’s all."

"Did you tell her you would?"

Fang Ning’s mouth opened.

She nodded.

Su Yun closed her eyes for exactly one second.

When she opened them, she looked at the elderly woman. The woman looked back, pleasantly, her hands still neatly on her knees. Neither of them said anything.

Su Yun’s knuckles were white on the clipboard.

"Don’t go yet," she said.

Fang Ning stared at her. "Why not?"

Su Yun didn’t answer.

The pause stretched out, and Lin Yue watched it.

He had seen her choose her words before. He had seen her turn a question until it fit the shape of what she was allowed to say. This was different. Her mouth had started to form something, and then her jaw tightened, and the word stopped halfway out like a hand against glass.

"Su Yun," said Zhao Feng. "If there’s something we need to know—"

"I know what you need to know."

"Then tell us."

"I can’t." Her voice cracked on it, once. "Not like this."

She stepped toward Fang Ning. She raised her hand, plainly meaning to take her by the wrist, to pull her away from the Waiting Room doorway.

Her fingers stopped.

They stopped an inch from Fang Ning’s sleeve, and held there. Nothing was in the way. There was no wall, no glass, no light. Only a boundary Lin Yue could not see, and Su Yun’s hand trembling against it.

She stared at her own fingers as if they belonged to someone else.

"Su Yun?" Fang Ning whispered.

The head nurse lowered her hand. She did it slowly, deliberately, like someone setting down something heavy that did not belong to her.

"You said yes," she said quietly.

"I—"

"You said yes before I got here."

"I didn’t think—"

"I know." Su Yun’s eyes flicked to the chair. Back to Fang Ning. "Of course you didn’t."

She said it like someone who had said it many times.

Her gaze moved to the clock above the door, 3:17, then back to the woman in the second row. Her mouth pulled into a hard, flat line.

Lin Yue had watched her show a dozen faces: warmth, courtesy, concern, regret. He had never seen her look like this. It was the face of a person who had been standing at the edge of a river, watching someone walk into it.

She wasn’t late, he thought. She was never going to be on time.

"I’ll be here," Su Yun said to Fang Ning. Her voice had steadied. "At the counter. In sight. If you need me."

"Can you—" Fang Ning swallowed. "Will you be able to help?"

Su Yun looked at her for a long moment.

"I’ll be here," she said again.

It was not an answer.

She turned and walked back to the reception counter. She didn’t go slowly. She put the clipboard down, laid both hands flat on the wood, and stood there with her head bowed.

Lin Yue saw her fingers whiten against the surface.

She resents it, he thought. Whatever it is. She hates that she can’t.

Behind him, Fang Ning’s breath hitched.

"Lin Yue," she said, barely above a whisper. "I said I would. I didn’t think."

She did not sound defensive. She sounded ashamed, the way a person sounds when they have dropped something precious and are only now watching it fall.

"I know," he said.

"I’m sorry."

"You don’t have to be."

"I should have—"

"You were asked a question none of us could answer." He kept his voice quiet. "You answered it the way anyone would."

"Yun Shu wouldn’t have."

"Yun Shu would have said yes in half the time."

Fang Ning made a sound that was almost a laugh.

It broke in the middle.

They went back up in silence.

Zhao Feng walked in front, and Qiao Lin stayed at Fang Ning’s elbow with a tight grip on her sleeve. Nobody said it, but everyone could hear it. The woman in the second row did not move to watch them go.

Lin Yue looked back from the lobby doorway.

He didn’t know why. A habit, maybe, the same impulse that had made him look back from the stairwell landing.

The woman was still in her seat.

She had not turned her head. She was looking at the space where Fang Ning had stood, calm and attentive, as though the girl were still there.

And now that he was no longer in the middle of the exchange, he looked at the chair.

Observed: the seat cushion was molded vinyl, like all the others.

Observed: it was sunk.

Not a little. The center of it had dropped into a deep, smooth bowl, the foam beneath it packed flat. The edges curled up around the shape of her, worn pale where her coat touched them. The armrests on either side were rubbed gray.

He had seen cushions like that once, in an old care home. They belonged to people who had sat in the same chair every day of their last ten years.

This one looked older than that.

How long? he wondered.

He tried to remember. Four days of passing through the lobby. Every time, the woman had been there. Every time, her hands had been folded the same way.

He could not remember seeing her stand.

He could not remember seeing her shift.

He could not prove it, either. It was only that, in four days, he had never once looked at her and thought, she has changed position.

The woman didn’t glance at him. Her eyes stayed on the empty place where Fang Ning had been.

"Lin Yue," said Bai Wuyin, in his small, frightened voice.

"I’m coming."

He turned away from the chair.

He did not say anything about the cushion. Not yet.

The ward was dim.

It was always dim now. After the stairwell, nobody had asked for more light. The long room breathed with the low hum of monitors, and the lamp on the nurses’ counter made a small gold circle in the dark.

Zhao Feng put them in a rough half-ring around the station.

"Say it plainly," he said. "What do we know?"

Xia Lian had her notebook open before he finished speaking.

"She knew Fang Ning’s name," she said. "No one told her."

"Su Yun could have."

"Su Yun was across the lobby. And she looked as surprised as we did."

"Not surprised," said Lin Yue.

Xia Lian glanced at him. "What, then?"

"Recognized."

Nobody argued.

"The woman didn’t break a rule," Xia Lian said slowly. She was writing as she spoke, small neat strokes. "She didn’t touch a chart. She didn’t give an order. She didn’t hand Fang Ning anything."

"No," said Lin Yue.

"And Fang Ning didn’t break a rule either."

"Not one we’ve been given."

"Has her form moved?"

Fang Ning had already pulled it out. It was folded in her pocket, soft with handling. She smoothed it flat on the counter with unsteady hands.

Four fields, all the same as yesterday. Blood type. Ward. Room number. A line for Diagnosis, still blank.

"It’s the same," she whispered.

"It’s the same," Xia Lian agreed. She looked at the form for a long moment. "Then what did she do?"

"She said yes," said Qiao Lin.

"That isn’t a rule."

"I know it isn’t."

"Then what is it?"

Lin Yue looked toward the doors.

"Something she agreed to," he said.

It was not an answer. He knew that. But it was the only accurate thing he had.

Zhao Feng rubbed a hand across his face. "So now we have three."

"Three what?"

"Three ways to die." He said it without humor. "Rules. Forms. And whatever that is."

"Favors," said Xia Lian.

"Is that what we’re calling it?"

"It’s what she called it. ’The favor.’" She wrote the word at the top of a fresh page and underlined it. "I’ll keep it separate. It doesn’t belong with either of the others."

"Why not?" Shen Rui asked.

"The rules say what we can’t do," she said. "The forms measure what we’ve already done. This one"—she tapped the page—"is something someone asked us to do. And we said yes."

Lin Yue found that he agreed with her completely.

It did not help.

The Rule Sheet had given them walls. The forms had given them a clock. This was neither. It was a door held open from the other side, with no sign saying what was beyond it.

"We can’t tell if refusing was the safe choice," Zhao Feng said.

"No."

"Or if agreeing was the wrong one."

"No."

"Then what do we do about it?"

"We find out if it can be undone," said Lin Yue. "Before she goes."

"And if it can’t?"

He didn’t answer.

It happened while Zhao Feng was rewriting the board.

Lin Yue only half noticed. He was watching Fang Ning, who sat on the edge of a cot with Qiao Lin beside her, staring at her own hands. Nobody was talking. The low murmur of the monitors filled the long room.

Then there was a small, sharp sound from the far end of the ward.

"Hello?"

Xia Lian’s voice.

Lin Yue’s head came up.

She had been resting since the stairwell. Zhao Feng had made her lie down, and she had gone without complaint. Now she was sitting upright on a cot at the far end of the ward, both hands gripping the blanket, her notebook gone from her lap.

"Hello," she said again, louder. "I need someone. Anyone awake?"

Lin Yue was on his feet before he decided to stand.

"Don’t," Shen Rui said, catching his sleeve.

"It’s Xia Lian."

"I know who it is. Wait."

He didn’t wait. But he didn’t run, either. He walked, fast and steady, with his hands visible at his sides.

Ye Xian reached her first.

He must have been closer. He was already at the foot of her cot, his hands tucked in his pockets and his face strangely quiet. He did not touch her. He did not ask what was wrong.

"I’m here," he said.

"I woke up," said Xia Lian. Her voice was dry. "This isn’t my bed."

Lin Yue stopped at the next cot over.

It was true. She had gone to sleep on the first cot by the wall, the one nearest the station. This was the ninth bed down. He could count the railings.

"I didn’t walk here," she said.

"I know," said Ye Xian.

"I want to stand up."

"I know."

"The clock stopped."

All of them looked.

The ward clock hung above the far doorway, a plain white face with a black rim. Its hands had been at 3:17 since the first night. Only the second hand moved, ticking in place, sweeping its small circle.

It had stopped.

Not slowed. Stopped, hard, a hair past the nine. The thin red hand stood against the face like a nail.

The silence was so complete that Lin Yue could hear his own pulse.

Nobody spoke.

He watched Xia Lian’s face. He watched the muscles of her jaw, her throat. He watched her swallow, once.

She wanted to ask.

He could see it in her. She was a person who timed everything, who wrote down the hour of every event, who trusted a number more than she trusted a face. A stopped clock was a wound in the one thing she believed in. The question was right there behind her teeth.

What time is it?

"Don’t," Lin Yue said, very quietly.

"I wasn’t going to," said Xia Lian.

She was holding the edge of the blanket so hard her knuckles had gone yellow.

"I’m staying where I am," she said. "I’m not getting out of this bed. I’m not asking what time it is. I’m not asking anyone what time it is."

"Good."

"Is that right?" She tried to smile. "Is that what the sheet says?"

"The sheet says call for help," said Ye Xian.

"Then I’m calling for help."

"You did."

"Then someone’s here."

"I’m here," Ye Xian said again. "You’re doing fine."

They waited.

Lin Yue counted the seconds without meaning to. Four. Five. Six. The air in the ward felt thick, like the instant before a held note.

At eleven, the red hand twitched.

It ticked forward.

The soft click of the second hand started again, in the same small circle, as though it had never paused.

Xia Lian let out a long, shaky breath.

Nobody moved.

"Is that it?" Shen Rui said at last.

"I think so," said Xia Lian.

"You’re sure?"

"I’m not sure of anything." She laughed, a thin, cracked sound. "But I’m alive."

She pressed her hand flat against her ribs, as if checking the fact.

She was already writing.

Lin Yue had known she would be. Her notebook was back in her lap, wrested from some pocket, and the pen moved fast.

"Walk me through it," he said.

"The clock stopped." She wrote as she spoke. "I noticed. I did not ask the time."

"Did you check it yourself?"

"I looked at it. I didn’t ask."

"Did you leave the bed?"

"No."

"What did you do?"

"I called for help."

"And then?"

"Then Ye Xian came." She glanced up. "And the clock started again."

"Anything else?"

"No." She tapped the page. "No adverse consequence observed."

Lin Yue crouched beside the cot.

He kept his voice low. "We can’t say what stopped it."

"No."

"Or whether it would have ended the same if you’d stayed silent."

"No."

"We can’t say that staying in bed is what saved you."

"I know." Her pen paused. "That was my choice. Not the Rule’s wording."

"The Rule’s wording was to call for help."

"Yes."

"You did that."

"Yes."

"It worked this time," said Lin Yue.

She looked up at him. "This time."

"I’m not going to say it will work every time."

"Good." Her mouth twitched. "Neither am I."

Behind him, Zhao Feng let out a breath that sounded like a laugh and something much heavier.

"Four deaths," he said. "And this is the first time we’ve watched someone do it right."

"It wasn’t clever," said Xia Lian.

"It was careful."

"That isn’t the same thing."

"No," said Zhao Feng. "But it’s better."

Lin Yue stood.

He looked around the ward, at the dim cots and the humming screens and the faces he had begun to learn by heart.

The Rules were real.

He had known it since Han Xu. He had known it every time someone had fallen to one. But he had never felt it the way he felt it now, standing over a woman with a notebook in her lap who had not died.

They are not only warnings.

They are doors. Narrow ones. But doors.

It was a small thing. Only a clock and a bed and a girl who did not ask a question.

But it was the first thing in this place that had gone right.

"Zhao Feng," he said. "Write it on the board."

"What?"

"That she’s alive."

Zhao Feng stared at him.

Then, slowly, he reached for the marker.

Bai Wuyin found him at the counter a little later.

The others were scattered. Shen Rui was talking low with Ye Xian near the cots. Zhao Feng and Qiao Lin were bent over the board. Fang Ning sat apart with her knees drawn up, watching the doors.

The boy slipped under Lin Yue’s elbow and stood very close.

"Lin Yue," he said. His voice had dropped. It was flat and level, with no tremble in it at all. "She never looked at the clock."

"Who?"

"The woman. In the chair." The black eye moved toward the lobby, though there was nothing to see. "When the second hand ticked. Everyone else in that room flinches a little. Even the quiet ones. She doesn’t."

"She’s been there a long time."

"Yes."

"You think it matters?"

"I don’t know." A pause. "Her chair."

Lin Yue went still.

"You saw it too?"

"It’s deeper than the rest."

"Yes."

"Like a bed someone’s been lying in. Not sitting."

"I noticed."

"Did she stand up?" the boy asked. "When she asked Fang Ning?"

"No."

"Did she stand up before that?"

Lin Yue did not answer.

Bai Wuyin looked up at him. For one second, the old, flat stillness was in his face. Then it slid away, and he was a frightened twelve-year-old again, thin and pale and clutching a sketchbook.

"I don’t want Fang Ning to go," he whispered.

"I know."

"Can we stop her?"

"I don’t think she’ll let us."

"Why not?"

"Because she said she would." Lin Yue looked across the ward at the small, still figure on the cot. "And because she’s the kind of person who keeps her word."

She stood up an hour later.

Nobody had told her to. Nobody had needed to. She rose from the cot with the movements of someone who had made up her mind and was afraid to stop moving long enough to unmake it.

"It’s time," she said.

"It isn’t," said Qiao Lin.

"I said a minute. It’s been—" Fang Ning’s voice faltered. "It’s been too long already."

"It’s only been—"

"She’s waiting."

Lin Yue stepped between her and the door.

"Fang Ning."

"Please don’t."

"I won’t stop you." He kept his voice gentle. "But I’m asking you not to go alone."

"I can’t take anyone."

"Why not?"

"She said me." Her hands were shaking. "She said, Fang Ning. If someone comes with me, and it counts as—"

"We don’t know that."

"We don’t know anything." She almost laughed. "That’s the problem."

"Then let someone stand at the bottom of the stairs."

"Okay."

"Go up. Look. Come straight back."

"Yes."

"If anything feels wrong, don’t open the door."

"I won’t."

"Don’t touch a chart. Don’t touch a bed. Don’t answer anything that speaks to you."

"I won’t."

"And if you’re not back in ten minutes—"

"I will be."

"If you’re not," said Lin Yue, "we come up. All of us. Together."

He did not say, I’m not sure that will be enough. He did not say, I don’t know what I’m protecting you from. He had no right to promise safety, and he did not make her a promise.

He made her a plan, and he hoped it would hold.

Fang Ning looked at him for a long moment.

"I know what I said," she said quietly. "I know I shouldn’t have said it. But I did."

"I know."

"If I don’t go, I’ll spend the whole night wondering what happens."

"I know."

"If I go—"

"Then you’ll know."

She nodded. Her eyes were wet, and she wiped them with the heel of her hand.

"Thank you," she said. "For not saying I was stupid."

"You weren’t."

"Okay." A breath. "Okay."

She turned.

They watched her go.

Qiao Lin walked her to the foot of the stairs and stopped there, one hand on the rail. Zhao Feng stood a few paces back, the marker still in his fist. Lin Yue stood at the edge of the lobby, where he could see both the stairwell and the Waiting Room.

Across the floor, Su Yun was still at the reception counter. She had not moved. Her hands were still flat on the wood, and her head was bowed. When Fang Ning passed, she lifted her eyes.

She didn’t speak.

Fang Ning paused for a second, one foot on the first step.

"Su Yun," she said. "Is it—"

"Go carefully," said the head nurse.

It was all she said.

Fang Ning swallowed and nodded. She started up the stairs.

Lin Yue watched her climb. One step. Two. Her hand slid along the rail, and the caged light above her threw a yellow circle on the treads.

She reached the first landing.

She turned the corner.

She was gone.

In the Waiting Room, the elderly woman had not turned her head. Her hands were folded. Her face was calm. She looked at the empty doorway as though she could still see someone standing in it.

Lin Yue stood very still.

Just a minute, she had said.

The minutes went by.

Five. Eight. Ten.

Qiao Lin looked at her wrist, though she wore no watch, and then at the ward clock through the lobby door. Zhao Feng stood beside her and did not tell her to stop.

At twelve minutes, she said, "She’s late."

"A little," said Zhao Feng.

"It’s only a little."

"Yes."

"She might be talking to someone."

"She might."

Neither of them believed it.

At twenty, Xia Lian came down from the ward with her notebook closed and her pen still between her fingers. She didn’t say anything. She stood beside Lin Yue and looked at the stairs.

"How long?" she said at last.

"Twenty-two minutes."

"We said ten."

"Yes."

"We said we’d go together."

"Yes."

Zhao Feng turned. "Then we go."

"Now?" said Qiao Lin.

"Now."

Lin Yue took one step toward the stairs.

Then the speakers overhead crackled.

A soft, bright chime rolled through the lobby, three notes, rising. The lights along the corridor dimmed by half. Down the hall, a heavy door sighed shut on its own, and then another, and another, the sound traveling away from them like a wave.

Su Yun straightened at the counter.

"Curfew," she said quietly.

The word fell into the lobby like a stone.

The doors along the ground floor were already closing. Lin Yue could hear the bolts sliding home, one after another, a long measured rhythm like a heartbeat. At the top of the stairs, a gate he had never noticed was descending in the dark.

Qiao Lin took a step forward.

"Fang Ning!" she called. "Fang Ning!"

Her voice went up the stairwell and did not come back.

The corridor remained empty.

Zhao Feng didn’t tell her to stop. Xia Lian had closed her notebook, but her pen was still between her fingers. Behind them, in the second row of the Waiting Room, the elderly woman sat with her hands folded neatly on her knees, and looked at nothing.

Lin Yue looked toward the stairs.

Fang Ning had gone up to check on a patient.

It won’t take but a minute.

The curfew chime faded.

Fang Ning did not come back down.