Three days passed. Zhao Lingxi did not speak to Lan Yue once.
Not a word. Not a glance. Not even the small, unconscious acknowledgments that strangers give each other when they pass in narrow corridors, the slight turn of a shoulder, the reflexive dip of the chin. Zhao Lingxi offered Lan Yue nothing. She moved through every shared space as if the air where Lan Yue stood was simply empty, a gap in the world that required no attention.
Lan Yue had been ignored before. In the apocalypse, in her old life as Bethany, she had gone days without another person looking her in the eye. She knew what invisibility felt like. It was survivable. Lonely, but survivable.
This was different. This was being invisible to the one person who had made her feel seen.
