The bell was still ringing when Lin Yue understood, with a strange and total clarity, that it had never been meant for them.
It came again — a third time, then a fourth — and each toll seemed to arrive from somewhere different than the last, as though the sound weren't traveling through the corridors so much as being placed inside them, one after another, like objects set down on a shelf. It was too deep for a school bell. Too long. It should have faded by the second toll, and instead it kept unspooling, low and patient, bleeding through the dormitory walls in a way that made the plaster itself feel thin.
Bai Wuyin was already awake when Lin Yue's eyes opened, sitting up straight in the other bed with his sketchbook clutched to his chest, staring at the door.
"You heard it too," Lin Yue said. Not a question.
