The clamp didn't make the yard louder.
It made it quieter in the wrong places.
Jokes stopped near the forge lanes. Complaints died the moment a clerk's sleeve appeared. Men learned to swallow words the way they swallowed bad porridge: fast, without chewing, because tasting it too long made you sick.
And when people stopped asking in public, they started doing something worse.
They started arranging moments.
Li Shen felt it before he saw it, the way you felt a draft before the door opened—small shifts in timing, bodies arriving half a breath too early, corridors that suddenly had "someone" standing in them like furniture nobody remembered moving.
He didn't get paranoid.
He got governed.
He moved the way Grey Step had been training his feet to move: never straight back, never locked into the spine of a crowd, always with an exit priced in. Half a meter to the side was the difference between contact and space. Between a bump and a grab. Between "accident" and "incident."
Boring on the surface.
Alert underneath.
It happened after second bell, when the ration line had thinned and the yard pretended it was normal again.
Almost.
Li Shen was carrying a wrapped packet of treated cloth back toward the dorm lanes. Head down. Posture neutral. Nothing in his hands that looked expensive. Nothing on his face that looked angry. The expression of a man who wasn't worth anyone's time.
Three men were standing where they shouldn't have been standing.
Not blocking the path—not openly. They were placed like obstacles in a training yard: one near a barrel stack, one at the wash-tub corner, one at the corridor pinch where the stone narrowed and shoulders naturally brushed.
Each left just enough space for a man to pass.
Just enough space to "accidentally" touch.
Just enough to create a story.
Li Shen saw them and did not slow.
Slowing was permission.
He adjusted his line by half a meter—outside the corridor's natural spine—so he would pass with air between cloth and flesh.
The man by the barrel stack shifted at the same moment, like he'd been waiting on a cue.
A shoulder came in—sharp, controlled, aiming for contact that could be explained as clumsiness.
Li Shen didn't retreat straight.
He stepped forward and out at an angle, hips turning before shoulders, letting the shoulder cut through empty space.
The man missed and stumbled half a step.
A stumble was noise.
Noise attracted witnesses.
Witnesses were a problem unless you made them expensive.
The second man, by the wash-tub corner, moved to "correct" the stumble—too close, too fast. His hand didn't reach for Li Shen's throat. It didn't reach for a weapon.
It reached for Li Shen's sleeve.
Sleeve grabs created narratives. Narratives created reviews.
Li Shen pivoted again, the half-meter becoming a curve. He didn't jerk. He didn't look like he was dodging. He simply wasn't where the hand expected him to be.
Fingers caught only air and wet stone.
The man's hand scraped the wall, leaving a pale streak of soap and irritation.
Li Shen's face stayed empty.
Empty faces didn't invite escalation.
He kept walking.
The third man stepped in.
This one wasn't here to bump or grab.
He was here to talk, because talk was how you made a trap feel like a choice.
"Brother Li," he said, loud enough for two passersby to hear, quiet enough to sound reasonable. "We just want a word."
Li Shen didn't stop.
Stopping was agreeing to be framed.
The man matched his pace, half a step behind, angled like he knew how to stay in your peripheral vision.
"You're walking like you're scared of friends," he said.
Li Shen kept his eyes forward. "I'm walking like shared windows are prohibited."
The man laughed softly—too soft to be humor. "Prohibited. Sure. But everyone's sharing. Only some get caught."
Li Shen turned his head just enough to look at him without squaring his shoulders. Grey Step again: never give a man your full front.
"Everyone shares," Li Shen said evenly, "until a clerk needs a name."
The man's eyes narrowed. "Lane five's frozen. People are choking. You're going to let them choke because of paper?"
Morality bait.
Li Shen didn't bite. He answered structure.
"If they're frozen," he said, "then they're being watched. If I 'help,' I become their explanation."
The man stepped closer, trying to make closeness feel like authority. Close enough that breath could become pressure.
"You can help," he said. "You just choose not to."
Li Shen shifted half a meter—small, almost casual—so the man's closeness became awkward and obvious.
Two passersby glanced over.
Witnesses were a shield when you didn't have rank.
The man stiffened. He hadn't wanted eyes. He'd wanted isolation.
Li Shen didn't raise his voice. "Move."
The man didn't move.
Li Shen didn't shove him. A shove was a fight. A fight was a scene. A scene was paperwork.
Instead he did the most boring thing possible.
He stepped aside and slid along the corridor edge where the stone was slick and the wall was close—narrow path, ugly footing, not the route anyone chose unless they were deliberately avoiding contact.
Half a meter of margin turned into an exit.
He slipped past without touching.
No bump. No shove. No grab. No scene.
Just absence where their trap expected presence.
Behind him, one of the men cursed—low, but not low enough.
The speaker snapped something under his breath that sounded like a name.
Not Li Shen's.
Someone else's.
Li Shen filed it the way he filed heat in a furnace: not as proof, as signal. Network signal. Coordination.
He didn't turn around.
Turning around was how you gave them a second attempt.
He kept walking until the dorm lane opened into a wider yard space where bodies moved freely and corners were fewer.
Only then did he let his breath out.
Not Smoke-Sealing. Not technique.
Just breath.
His calves felt heavy from drills. Not pain—weight. The price of changing default movement.
His forearms were fine. He hadn't used Iron Grip. Good.
His Qi stayed quiet. He hadn't stacked anything. Better.
He had escaped a setup with no violence.
Which meant the next setup would change shape.
He saw Bai Ren later at the wash tubs, because Bai Ren lived where water and rumor met.
Bai Ren's mouth tried to be casual. It didn't quite manage.
"You're walking different," Bai Ren said.
Li Shen rinsed his hands slowly. "I'm walking alive."
Bai Ren snorted once. "They tried you."
Li Shen nodded. "Three bodies. One mouth."
Bai Ren's eyes flicked toward the corridor. "Contact?"
"No," Li Shen said. "That's what they wanted."
Bai Ren's expression tightened, the humor thinning into something sharper. "Good. No contact means no clean story."
Li Shen squeezed water out of a cloth and kept his voice flat. "They'll try again."
"Yeah," Bai Ren said. "But next time they won't ask for your window."
Li Shen looked at him. "What then."
Bai Ren lowered his voice. "They'll make it look like you already shared it."
Cold settled behind Li Shen's ribs—not fear, design constraint.
A shared-window ghost. A tag swap. A log smear. A defect that "belongs" to him because the paper says it does.
Procedure as a weapon.
Li Shen dried his hands and didn't let his jaw tighten visibly. Control was optics as much as it was breathing.
"So," Bai Ren added, like he was reading weather, "don't give them a clean place to print you."
Li Shen nodded once.
No slips loose.
No apron left unattended.
No log tag sitting on a shelf long enough for fingers to get ideas.
And no narrow corridors without an exit priced in.
Half a meter.
Not victory.
Margin.
Under clamp, margin was the only thing that kept you from waking up to your name on someone else's incident report.