The question arrived without urgency.
Lune did not wake with it, nor did it interrupt his routines. It surfaced one afternoon as he sat in the school auditorium during rehearsal, watching the cast run through a scene meant to convey desperation. Voices cracked on cue. Hands shook convincingly. Someone cried—not badly, but effectively.
The room responded as expected. A hush fell. Attention sharpened.
Lune observed the reaction, then the performers themselves. Their faces were flushed, breath uneven. After the scene ended, they laughed shakily, adrenaline bleeding off in visible waves.
Something had moved through them.
Lune felt nothing.
The difference no longer felt theoretical. It felt measurable.
He had spent years cataloging reactions, refining timing, learning how to produce the appearance of feeling. But what he watched now was not performance. It was loss of control, sanctioned and applauded.
He wondered—without envy, without longing—what it was like.
Not what it looked like. He knew that well enough. But what it did. How it altered the internal landscape. How it justified the effort, the mess, the recovery afterward.
A missing variable, he thought.
At first, he tried to approach the question analytically. He replayed memories of others' extremes: grief at funerals, panic before exams, infatuation that rearranged priorities overnight. He could describe each response precisely, charting cause to effect.
But the descriptions ended at the surface.
There was nothing underneath them for him to reference.
That night, he stood at his window and watched the street below. A couple argued near the corner, voices sharp, bodies angled toward conflict. Moments later, they reconciled, laughter breaking through like a release valve.
Lune noted the sequence and waited for resonance.
None came. Curiosity replaced analysis.
It was not dissatisfaction. He was not unhappy. His life worked. The systems held. But the silence he carried now felt less like equilibrium and more like an experiment stalled for lack of input.
He wondered whether emotion was the missing input.
Not as a goal. Not as something to cultivate. But as a phenomenon to observe firsthand.
The thought was precise, contained. He did not yearn for it. He did not imagine it would improve him. He simply wanted to see it—from the inside, if that was possible.
At rehearsal the next day, Mr. Luo spoke about "raising the stakes."
"Don't think about how it looks," he said. "Think about what it costs."
The phrase stayed with Lune.
What it costs.
Cost implied consequence. Consequence implied disturbance. Disturbance implied change.
Change was rare for him now.
Later, walking home, Lune passed a group of students celebrating loudly, something won and proven. Their joy spilled into the street, uncontained. He watched it with interest, noting the inefficiency of it—and the way none of them seemed to mind.
For the first time, Lune considered stepping closer to the source of that inefficiency. Not to join it, but to test it. To provoke a response strong enough to register.
The idea did not feel dangerous.
It felt experimental.
That night, lying in bed, Lune acknowledged the curiosity without judgment. He did not promise himself anything. He did not plan.
He simply recognized the presence of a question he had never needed before.
What do others feel—
—and what would it take for him to feel it too?
The silence did not answer. But it did not push the question away.