Hạ Yên did not look surprised when Minh entered her office.
That was how Minh knew she had expected him.
Her office smelled of disinfectant and expensive tea. The blinds were half closed, cutting the morning into narrow bars across the desk. Minh noticed three cups arranged on a tray though only one had been used. Hạ Yên always prepared for conversations like a doctor preparing instruments.
"The pills," he said.
She set down her pen. "Good morning to you too."
"What did they do to me?"
"Prevented your nervous system from tearing itself apart under repeated khí backlash."
The clean answer made him angrier.
She did not lower her voice on the word khí. She also did not say it loudly. That was how people like Hạ Yên handled impossible things. They placed them in the middle of a sentence and trusted the room to keep the secret.
"And what else?"
Hạ Yên smiled faintly. "You are learning to ask better questions."
Minh stepped closer to the desk. "My hands went cold during training."
Her eyes sharpened by a fraction.
"Cold?"
"Like something blocked the flow."
She opened a drawer, removed a thin folder, then closed it before Minh could read more than two names.
Tùng.
Long.
His stomach tightened.
"Why are they in your files?"
"Because boys who survive violent khí exposure are rare. Boys who fail to survive it teach us why."
"Teach us?"
"Teach me," she corrected calmly.
Minh heard Gomboc growl.
The correction was worse than the plural. It made the dead boys smaller, reduced from warning signs to notes in a private experiment. Minh understood then why Lãnh Phong called polished things dangerous. Hạ Yên did not look cruel. She looked precise.
Hạ Yên noticed his breathing change and leaned back, unafraid.
"Do not compare my stabilizers with the trash being sold in student circles."
Minh froze.
"What trash?"
"Cheap tablets. Recovery boosters. Courage pills. Street nonsense dressed as strength."
"You knew?"
"I suspected." Her gaze moved to his phone when he placed it on the desk.
The hanging star symbol glowed at the bottom of the message.
For the first time, Hạ Yên did not speak immediately.
That silence frightened Minh more than any explanation could have. Hạ Yên enjoyed knowing more than everyone else in the room. The star had stolen that pleasure from her.
"What is it?" Minh asked.
"A myth students should not meet."
"I'm tired of people calling real things myths."
Her smile returned, smaller and colder.
"Myths are useful. They make witnesses correct themselves."
She pushed the phone back.
"Your pills kept you alive. Do not confuse survival with innocence."
"Yours or mine?"
Hạ Yên's pen touched paper.
"Both."
At the door, Minh stopped.
"If those cheap pills are killing students, why not expose them?"
Hạ Yên did not look up. "Expose what? That children are buying magic from alley sellers? That martial clans exist beneath school uniforms? That your body answers forces most doctors would call delusion?"
Minh had no answer.
"Myths protect monsters," she said. "They also protect witnesses from being erased."
When Minh left, she opened a hidden file.
Primary emotional stabilizer: Lâm.
External martial pressure: increasing.
Star contact: confirmed.
Minh returned after closing time with a question Hạ Yên had already refused twice.
The clinic receptionist had gone home. Hạ Yên was wiping the portable lamp with alcohol, erasing fingerprints from a machine that belonged to no official inventory. Minh stood between her and the locked cabinet.
"Did you make what is inside me?"
She kept cleaning. "Move."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the answer that keeps you from opening a cabinet you cannot close again."
Minh did not move. The old version of him would have lowered his eyes when an adult sharpened her voice. The newer version was worse at obedience and not yet good at judgment.
Hạ Yên set down the cloth. "I worked on a method meant to help injured fighters recover without destroying their organs. Other people wanted faster bodies, stronger reactions, obedient soldiers. I told myself accurate work would make misuse harder."
"Did it?"
"You are standing here. You tell me."
The cruelty of the answer surprised both of them. Hạ Yên looked toward the cabinet. For one second, the scientist and the guilty woman occupied the same face.
She opened the lowest drawer and removed a sealed dose. "This can reduce the pressure tonight. It can also make your body easier to measure if someone already knows what to watch."
Minh did not take it immediately. "What would you choose?"
"I would choose to be the person holding the dosage chart. That is my disease."
He took the vial, not as trust but as a decision with its cost visible.
After he left, Hạ Yên changed one line in her private file. Lâm was no longer listed as a regulator. She wrote his name under leverage and hated the accuracy enough to encrypt it twice.
That evening, Minh followed the dosage instructions exactly and wrote the time on his forearm. When warmth began beneath his ribs, he sat on the floor instead of testing it against the wall.
Lâm called during the reaction. Minh let the phone ring, afraid his voice would reveal too much. A minute later, Lâm sent a photograph of the untouched milk tea with one word: Thanks.
Minh used the message to steady his breathing, then hated how quickly care became a medical tool in his mind. He turned the phone face down. Lâm was not a regulator. The distinction had to begin with him.
At the clinic the next morning, Hạ Yên found the dosage time copied from Minh's arm onto a scrap of homework paper. His handwriting had deteriorated as the reaction rose. She filed the paper without translating it into a number.
The uneven letters showed when control began costing him more than he could say. She kept the original fold and his misspelled dosage note.
She did not correct the spelling.