On the way back, Shuo made do with buying some candy-the confectionery was closed, so he went to the corner grocery, where the owner knew him and slipped in two extra pieces.
"Eat more. Look how skinny you are."
Shuo said nothing, shoved the candy into his pocket, and ambled along with Sai beside him. Neither of them brought anything up.
But Shuo knew without looking that Sai's breathing was as erratic as an untuned string. Most likely, his head was full of that whole mess with his brother.
At the foot of the dormitory building, Shuo stopped without turning around. "Do whatever you want this afternoon. Nobody's stopping you from thinking yourself to death."
Two steps up, he stopped again and added, "Come get me for dinner tonight. Don't stand downstairs like a block of wood. It's annoying to look at."
With that, he went upstairs, leaving Sai standing there in a daze.
Sai watched his unhurried figure disappear into the stairwell, then looked down at his own hands. He returned to his usual spot against the wall and stood there without sitting, straight as a utility pole.
At three that afternoon, Shuo lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. He couldn't turn off Lightspeed Thinking's passive effect, and it was driving him crazy-the weave of the curtain fibers, the flight paths of birds outside, even Sai's breathing downstairs, fourteen breaths a minute, a little slower than that morning, all forced their way into his head.
He tried several times to switch it off, without success. Turning it down a little finally made it less intrusive, reducing it to background noise.
He rolled over to face the wall. A thin crack ran through it like a dried riverbed. After barely two seconds of staring, his brain started calculating