The Lin household had never known silence like this.

It wasn’t the silence of luxury—soft carpets muffling footsteps, chandeliers dangling above still air. It wasn’t the polite hush of an upper-class family eating dinner without speaking.

It was grief.

Grief that hung in the corners of every room like a ghost no one dared name.

Because for the first time, they weren’t grieving someone who had died.

They were grieving someone who was still alive.

And walking further away every day.

Mother Lin stood at the doorway of Zhiwei’s room, fingers curled lightly around a folded blanket. She had planned to come in. She’d brought fresh sheets. She even brought the jasmine tea Zhiwei used to drink—though she wasn’t sure Zhiwei still liked it.

She hadn’t asked.

She hadn’t asked anything, really. Not in the first life. Not when it mattered.

Zhiwei was seated at her desk, shoulders straight, hair tied loosely, her laptop open to a screen full of text.

Mother Lin couldn’t see what was written, but she recognized the format.

Scholarship letters.

She swallowed.

“Zhiwei…” Her voice trembled.

Zhiwei didn’t turn. “I’m busy.”

“I just—”

“You don’t need to bring anything. I’ll do my own laundry.”

Her words weren’t cold.

They weren’t cruel.

They were careful.

Measured.

Like she was sparing her mother the pain of being useful too late.

“I… saw your spreadsheet,” Mother Lin whispered. “Your… plan to leave.”

Zhiwei said nothing.

She tapped her keyboard once. Twice.

Then stopped.

Without turning around, she spoke.

“I’m not doing it to punish you.”

Mother Lin’s heart cracked at the implication.

Because that meant there was something to punish.

She stepped inside, placing the folded blanket at the edge of the bed like it might give her the right to stay.

“I was afraid of doing the wrong thing,” she whispered. “I thought if I acted too familiar, you’d reject me. If I was too distant, you’d resent me. So I waited for you to come to me.”

Zhiwei looked up from her screen. Not at her mother. At the far wall.

“Do you want to know what I remember most about the first time I came here?” she asked.

Mother Lin was, silent.

“It wasn’t the marble floors. Or the staff bowing. Or the way Yiran held my hand like we were sisters on a drama set.”

She exhaled.

“It was the first dinner. Everyone asked Yiran how her day was. And when I spoke, the table went quiet. Like I’d interrupted something.”

“I thought,” she added after a moment, “maybe it was just awkwardness.”

“But it kept happening.”

She finally turned to look at her mother.

And smiled.

It wasn’t bitter.

It wasn’t sad.

It was just tired.

“I used to practice what to say before I came downstairs. I wrote out little scripts. Things I thought you’d like. But no one ever asked me anything. So I stopped.”

Mother Lin’s knees buckled.

She sat on the edge of the bed, head in her hands.

“I didn’t know—”

“You didn’t ask.”

Zhiwei’s voice was soft. Unchanging.

“You listened to Yiran. You trusted her. She cried, and you held her. I bled, and you asked me not to cause trouble.”

Tears dripped silently from Mother Lin’s chin onto the blanket.

“You didn’t hate me,” Zhiwei said. “I know that.”

Her eyes softened slightly.

“You just didn’t care enough to question the story you liked more.”

Downstairs, Father Lin stood by the garden window.

He wasn’t crying.

He wasn’t speaking.

But his reflection in the glass looked older than it ever had.

On the table behind him sat Zhiwei’s old student ID from her previous school—the one she never showed them. The one she hid because she didn’t want to explain the bruises in the photo.

He’d found it in a drawer last night.

And now, it sat in full view.

Mocking him.

Zhiwei closed her laptop when her mother left the room.

She lay back on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

They’re trying now. But it’s too late.

I was a corpse in this house the first time. And no one noticed.

Now they hear my thoughts, and they finally see me. But I’ve already buried the version of me they want to save.

She closed her eyes.

And for the first time in this life, she didn’t cry.

Because crying was for people who still believed someone would catch them.

She didn’t.

Not anymore.