The equation sat on the board like a held breath.
Lin Yue stared at it for the fourth time, tracing each variable through the same collapse it had produced the first three times, and got nothing new. No matter which value he tried, the equation folded back on itself — a sentence engineered never to reach a period.
Beside him, He Yuan scratched out another line of substitution, chewing the end of his pencil down to splinters.
"Maybe I'm reading it wrong." He Yuan squinted at the board like it might rearrange itself out of pity. "If x equals — no. No, that gives negative on both sides. That's not — that can't be right."
"It's not wrong," Lin Yue said. "It's not meant to resolve."
"That's not comforting."
Two rows back, Su Qing had her notebook open, pen hovering. She wasn't solving. She was checking — running her eyes over every symbol like she expected to find a transcription error, a smudged sign, something human enough to blame.
