The library did not look like a place that had almost killed someone.
That was the first thing Lin Yue noticed once his breathing evened out — how ordinary everything had gone back to being. The bookshelf sat flush against the wall, spine-out titles catching lamplight the way they always had. No seam. No gap. No dust disturbed in a fan along the floor. If he hadn't still been bleeding from both palms, he might have believed none of it had happened at all.
That was the worst part, he thought. Not the classroom. Not the desk. This — the wrongness folding itself back into normal so completely that normal became the thing he no longer trusted.
"Sit down," Su Qing said, already pulling the first-aid kit off the shelf behind the circulation desk like she'd done this a hundred times. Given how many instances she'd survived, she probably had. "Before you drip on the riddle sheet."
"It's fine."
