Thirty-one faces turned toward him at once, and none of them turned any further than that.
That was the part Lin Yue's mind snagged on, in the half-second before his body caught up with what was happening. Not the synchronization — he'd stopped being surprised by synchronized things somewhere around the fourth confirmed death of this instance. It was the restraint of it. Thirty-one heads lifted, thirty-one faces angled toward the door, and then every single one of them simply stopped, as if lifting their heads had used up the entire ration of movement the room was willing to spend.
They didn't stand. They didn't reach. They didn't so much as blink.
They just watched him, the way a held breath watches a match get struck.
"Lin Yue." Su Qing's voice, low, close behind his shoulder. "Don't move first."
"I wasn't going to."
"I know. I'm saying it for the rest of us."
