The study hall was quiet in the way Shen Qingqiu preferred: strained, deliberate, held together by discipline rather than comfort.

He sat at his desk, back straight, sleeves immaculate, ears pinned flat beneath dark hair as his tail lay coiled neatly against the chair leg. Stacks of jade slips and paper crowded his workspace, reports from the sect layered with requests, complaints, inventories, disciplinary notices. Tedious. Necessary. Endless. His brush moved with sharp efficiency, correcting, annotating, dismissing.

In front of him, rows of disciples bent over their desks.

The essay topic he had assigned that morning was intentionally brutal—dense theory, obscure references, cross-peak application, all requiring thought rather than memorization. He had calibrated it precisely: difficult enough to demand silence, exhausting enough to prevent questions, and time-consuming enough to ensure none of them would finish early and seek his attention.

It was working.

The disciples’ ears twitched in concentration, tails wrapped tight around chair legs or ankles, fur bristling faintly with stress. Ink scratched steadily across paper. No one dared whisper. No one dared sigh too loudly. They had learned that Shen Qingqiu’s patience was a finite resource, and once depleted, it did not replenish kindly.

He did not look at them.

He did not need to.

Their presence registered only as background noise—breathing, shifting, the faint smell of ink and nervous sweat. Children. Too many of them. Too much emotion contained in small bodies that did not yet know how to regulate it. He disliked how easily they looked to adults for reassurance, how quickly they attached, how often they disappointed when they realized he would give them none.

If they failed, they failed. If they succeeded, they succeeded.

Either outcome was acceptable.

One disciple shifted in his seat, tail flicking in agitation. Shen Qingqiu’s brush paused for a fraction of a second.

“Focus,” he said without looking up.

The movement stilled instantly.

Good.

He returned to his paperwork, mind already elsewhere—calculating schedules, anticipating objections from other peaks, correcting inefficiencies in reports that should never have reached his desk in the first place. This was preferable to teaching. Paper did not look at him with expectation. Paper did not flinch. Paper did not remind him of things he had no interest in being.

Time passed.

The air remained taut, controlled, obedient.

Then—movement at the edge of his senses.

Not the clumsy shuffling of a disciple. Not the hesitant pause of someone afraid to interrupt. This presence was familiar enough that his shoulders eased before his mind consciously registered it.

The doors slid open.

Light spilled briefly across the floorboards, softening the room without disturbing it. A familiar silhouette filled the doorway, ears angled forward, tail relaxed, posture unguarded in a way Shen Qingqiu never was.

The disciples noticed immediately.

Heads lifted. Tension bled out of the room like air from a punctured seal. Ears perked. Shoulders loosened. Several tails betrayed small, hopeful movements before being forcibly stilled.

Shen Qingqiu did not lift his head.

He did not need to.

He felt the shift in the room all the same—the way attention reoriented, the way warmth entered without permission, the way the space subtly redefined itself around a single presence.

Shen Yuan had arrived.