He set it down.
She had kept the book. He had never found out which one.
The first tear came without warning, sliding down the ridge of his cheekbone before he'd registered that his eyes had filled, and he didn't wipe it away, just sat with his palms flat on the desk and let it fall. The second followed. His throat constricted and he pressed his lips together and breathed through his nose, slow and deliberate, his shoulders rigid.
He thought about Guiying growing up in that house. Illegitimate, treated as surplus, as inconvenience, as something to be managed rather than loved. The details he had assembled over the past months sat in his mind without softening — the isolation, the arranged marriage to a violent man, years of being systematically ground down by people who should have protected him instead. His fingers curled against the desk, knuckles whitening.
