Li Feng was at his side immediately.
"Master Mu...."
"I'm fine."
He was not fine. Li Feng could see it in the gray cast of his face, the way his left hand had stopped moving naturally at his side, the way his breathing had taken on a shallow, effortful quality that had nothing to do with grief.
"You're injured. You need to let the medics..."
"I'm fine," Mu Yunchen said again, and his voice was so flat, so completely emptied out, that Li Feng almost stepped back from it.
He didn't step back. He stayed close, watching.
Mu Yunchen's gaze had returned to the water. To the boats. To the divers' flags marking their search patterns across the surface.
He stood there watching them work, and Li Feng watched him, and the light shifted overhead as time moved forward the way it does, indifferently, continuously, without any regard for the people standing broken beneath it.
The first sign was the way Mu Yunchen's hand came up slowly, pressing flat against his ribs.
