We wandered until night fell in the forest.

  Wei poked the fire with a green stick. The wood was damp. The resulting smoke thick and dark.

  "You let him go," he said.

  "He left. There's a difference."

  "You could have made him stay."

  "Why would I?"

  "Because his core is cracked, he's walking north into nothing and you watched him leave the way people watch things they're not done with."

  The fire cracked. Sparks — orange, brief, dead before they cleared the canopy.

  "He's not my responsibility."

  "I didn't say he was." Wei set the stick down. "I said you watched."

  True. I said nothing. The fire said things instead — small things, combustion things, the vocabulary of wood becoming less.

  "At breakfast," Wei said. "When he told me about the tremor. About slowing down. You didn't say anything."

  "He was right."

  "I know he was right. That's not what I'm asking." Wei looked at me through the smoke. "He told me the truth. You gave me a theory."

  "They're the same."

  "They're not. He said it breaks. You said I'm growing too fast."

  I exhaled. The kind that costs something.

  "If a core grows faster than the body can regulate, the channels overheat. The tremor is the warning. If the growth doesn't slow — yes. It could break and does so most of the time." I looked at the fire. "Growing too fast is the cause. Breaking is what happens when the cause isn't addressed."

  Wei was quiet. Processing. The explanation was sound. He knew it was sound.

  "Then why didn't you tell me that part?" he asked. "The breaking part. Why just the cause?"

  "Because the cause is the thing you can act on. Slowing down avoids the break. Focus on the problem, not the consequence."

  Correct. Precise. Complete. The kind of answer that closes a door and locks it.

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  Wei nodded. Slow. Accepting the answer the way you accept a coin — checking the weight, the edges, the face. Valid currency. Potentially counterfeit.

  He picked up another stick. Stripped bark with his thumbnail. The motion was patient. I mistook the patience for resolution.

  "You asked him something," Wei said. "At the inn. After I went inside."

  "We talked."

  "You asked what it felt like. When the core breaks."

  I looked at him. He wasn't guessing. He'd heard. Through the window, through the wall, through whatever gap existed between my assumptions about privacy and his actual range of perception.

  "I did."

  "It was the first question you've asked anyone since I've known you."

  "That's not true."

  "Name another, that's not pleasantries, but a genuine request for knowledge."

  I opened my mouth. Closed it. The fire continued its commentary.

  "You don't ask," Wei said. "You answer. You explain. You correct. Sometimes you instruct. But you don't ask. Asking means not knowing and you always know."

  He let that sit. I let it sit. We both sat with it.

  "But you asked him," he said. "About breaking."

  "Curiosity."

  "You're not curious. You're the least curious person I've ever met. Everything you see, you've already seen."

  Also true. The boy catalogued.

  "He was a new case."

  "He was a mirror." Wei looked at me. Steady. "You asked him about breaking because you wanted to know what happens to me."

  The stick in the fire shifted. A log settled.

  "That's a reach," I said.

  "Is it?"

  Silence. The fire chose this moment to behave — burning clean, steady, offering no distraction.

  "You worry," Wei said. Not a question. A reading. "About him. About me. About the tremor and the breaking and all of it. And when I ask, you give me the version that sounds like an answer but has the weight removed. You told me 'growing too fast.' You didn't tell me 'it could break.' You let a stranger tell me that and then you didn't correct him and then when I bring it up you explain how they're technically the same and they are technically the same and that's exactly the problem."

  He wasn't raising his voice. He was lowering it. Each sentence quieter than the last.

  "You do this," he said. "Every time. Someone matters and you say they don't. Something hurts and you say it's nothing. I ask and you give me the smallest true answer that still fits inside a lie."

  He wasn't angry. That was worse. He was organizing.

  "'Sleep.' 'It doesn't matter.' 'Just a traveler.'" He listed them. My deflections from weeks and months. Catalogued. Indexed. Presented in sequence — not a pattern like weather but a pattern like policy. "And tonight: 'He's not my responsibility.' 'They're compatible.' 'Curiosity.' 'A new case.'"

  He looked at me. The fire between us. The smoke that stung.

  "I don't believe you anymore. Not as long as you keep feeding me breadcrumbs, while keeping the loaf for yourself."

  Not loud. Low. Steady. The weight of every half-answer I'd given since we'd met, compounded, settling.

  "Wei—"

  "I'm not asking you to tell me everything. I'm telling you I notice when you don't."

  He lay down. Turned toward the fire. Pulled his blanket up. Done. Not resolved — shelved. The way someone puts a tool away because the work isn't ready for it yet.

  I sat. The fire burned down. The forest performed its nighttime operations.

  I don't believe you anymore.

  The sentence sat in me. The weight of something that had been coming since the first lie and that had arrived not with drama but with the inevitability of a season.

  The fire went out and I didn't relight it.

  Wei breathed. Sleep or its imitation. He deserved my not poking.

  I sat in the dark. It was a long night.