Ling doesn't return to the tents.
She stays where she is—near the bikes, arms crossed, posture relaxed enough to convince anyone watching that she is exactly where she wants to be.
People notice.
They always do.
Someone laughs too loudly near the fire. Ling's gaze flicks there once—flat, dismissive—and the sound dies instantly. Authority restored. Control intact.
Inside, it's a different story.
Her thoughts circle one place like a wound she refuses to touch.
Rhea.
Not her face. Not her mouth.
Her silence.
Ling hates that silence more than Rhea's insults. At least the insults look at her directly.
She tells herself this is discipline. Distance. Strategy.
My mother is right, she thinks, immediately rejecting the thought with quiet violence.
No. I am right.
Her fingers flex, remembering warmth they shouldn't remember. A waist that fit too easily under her palm. A breath that hitched because Ling was close—not because she ordered it to.
Ling's jaw tightens.
She schools her expression again. Cold. Untouched. Untethered.
When Rina passes by and pauses, eyebrow raised in question, Ling doesn't look at her.
"I'm busy," Ling says before Rina can speak.
Rina watches her for a second longer than necessary, then smirks faintly and walks away.
Ling exhales only when she's alone again.
Control, she reminds herself.
And yet—
She angles herself deliberately so she won't see Rhea's tent.
Because if she looks, she knows exactly what will happen.
Mira sits near the fire, wrapped in her jacket, hands clasped loosely in her lap.
From the outside, she looks calm. Thoughtful. Almost serene.
Inside, she is glowing.
Ling didn't go back to Rhea.
Ling answered her mother's call.
Ling stayed away.
Mira watches Ling from across the camp, noting the rigid stillness, the way her shoulders are too straight, too locked.
She chose control, Mira tells herself.
She chose me.
The satisfaction is sharp—but thin.
Because Ling isn't looking at her either.
Mira's smile falters when Ling doesn't come sit beside her, doesn't seek her out for comfort, doesn't even glance her way.
She presses her lips together.
She always does this, Mira thinks. When something matters too much.
That thought scares her.
Because Rhea isn't supposed to matter.
Rhea is loud. Defiant. Temporary.
And yet Mira remembers what she saw in that tent—Ling's focus, her stillness, the way the world had narrowed down to one injured girl who didn't even want her.
Mira's fingers curl into her sleeve.
She tells herself she won.
But the hollow feeling in her chest doesn't listen.
Rhea notices before she admits it.
Ling doesn't come.
Not to check the wound.
Not to bark an order.
Not even to glare.
At first, Rhea tells herself she doesn't care.
She sits in her tent, phone face-down, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the canvas wall like it personally offended her.
Good, she thinks. Finally learned restraint.
The thought should feel like victory.
It doesn't.
Time passes differently when you're waiting without permission.
Rhea hears voices outside. Laughter. Someone revving a bike.
No footsteps she recognizes.
Her chest tightens—not panic. Something worse. Disappointment she refuses to name.
Of course she stayed away, Rhea thinks bitterly. That's what she does. Takes control. Then leaves.
Her mind twists the memory cruelly.
Ling's hand leaving her waist.
Ling saying get some rest.
Ling walking away.
Rhea's jaw clenches.
She got what she wanted, Rhea tells herself. Dominance. Compliance.
She presses her palm against her sternum, annoyed at the ache there.
"You didn't matter," she whispers to the empty tent. "You never mattered."
The lie doesn't settle.
Rhea lies back, staring at the dark, forcing her breathing steady.
She doesn't cry again.
She won't.
But her hand drifts unconsciously to her waist, to the place where Ling's touch had been firm and infuriating and—worst of all—careful.
Outside, Ling Kwong stands rigid in the cold night, Mira watches from the firelight with a smile she doesn't trust, and Rhea Nior stares at absence like it's an answer.
Night fell and they got back to their tents.
None of them say a word.
And all of them are wrong.