Lingyun had behaved for almost three hours, which was more than any reasonable person should have expected from him.
He had burned what Rouxi pointed at. He had waited when Zhenlan needed the fire kept back. He had stood near pipes, valves, tanks, filters, and enough damp metal to make the entire utility room smell like rust and old water. He had listened to people use words like pressure, seal, residue, intake, and contamination while pretending those words deserved a place in his mind.
They didn't.
There were parasites in the ground. Some of them might have reached the water. That mattered. He understood that it mattered.
But everyone seemed to have forgotten that Rouxi also mattered, and she had been standing on the other side of the room for far too long with soot in her hair, ash on her cheek, and that awful flat expression she wore whenever she was forcing herself not to feel something.
Lingyun hated that expression.
He hated it more than the parasites.
