The dark lasted three seconds. Maybe four.
It felt longer, the way pain always stretches itself thin across a short span of time, but Lin Yue counted it out of habit even as it happened — one, two, three — and by four, the fluorescent lights above them buzzed back to life with a suddenness that felt almost rude, as if the room itself had simply blinked.
Nobody had moved. That was the strange part.
Xin Yu still stood exactly where she'd been standing, eraser raised an inch from the board, her arm frozen mid-motion the way a photograph freezes a moment nobody meant to keep. Shen Rui was still braced near the door frame. Lin Yue's own hand was still half-lifted from where he'd reached out, uselessly, a half second too late to stop anything.
For one breath, no one spoke.
Then Xin Yu lowered her arm.
