The sketchbook was still open when he came back to it.
Lin Yue hadn't touched it in the time he'd spent standing at the edge of the room, arms folded, listening to the ordinary noise of the Hall bleed faintly through the wall — a door somewhere down the corridor, a terminal chiming for no one he knew, the low mechanical breath of a building that never really slept. He'd told himself he was giving Bai Wuyin the chance to walk back in before he looked again. That had lasted about four minutes.
Now he was crouched by the low table, one knee on the floor, staring down at a page that had no business existing.
It wasn't the Academy. That was the first thing his mind kept insisting on, as if some smaller, more stubborn part of him needed to rule that out before it would accept anything stranger. No chalk dust. No Classroom 3-7. No rows of desks with a faceless boy seated at the back of them.
This was the Game Hall.
But not from anywhere Lin Yue had ever stood.
