The Game Hall didn't stop for what had just happened.
That was the thing Lin Yue kept returning to, standing near the Rank Board with the crowd slowly peeling away around him — the Hall didn't care. Somewhere off to the left, a reward terminal chimed cheerfully for a player two settlements removed from theirs. Somewhere behind him, a vending machine dispensed something with a small mechanical sigh. Ordinary sounds, ordinary indifference, folding back over the space where a boy's name had just appeared twice on a board that had never once repeated itself in eleven closings.
