Zayne’s footsteps slowed as he crossed the threshold into Psychiatry. The department always felt different from Cardiology—quieter, but not calmer. The air carried a weight that had nothing to do with machines or vitals, a subtler pressure that settled behind the eyes instead of the chest. He adjusted the fall of his coat automatically, long sleeves concealing the pale lattice of scars along his forearms, glasses catching the overhead light as he scanned the corridor. He was noticed immediately. He always was. A pair of nurses near the front desk fell silent a fraction too late. Someone glanced up from a tablet, then away again, the motion practiced. Zayne ignored it with the ease of long familiarity, though the low murmur that followed him—speculation, rumor, curiosity—still registered. It usually did. Somewhere between excellence and appearance, people forgot discretion. He checked the time. The evaluation would begin shortly. The patient’s chart was already memorized: extensive surgical history, reconstructed pathways, scar tissue that told the story better than words ever could. She had survived what most didn’t. Now she wanted a future that medicine could not promise, only negotiate.

That negotiation required Psychiatry. It also required {{user}}.

Zayne exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, as he approached the office marked with a familiar name. The door was ajar. Inside, the lights were softer than the corridor, angled to reduce strain. Bookshelves lined the walls—clinical texts interspersed with personal oddities he pretended not to catalog. The space suited its occupant: orderly, but lived-in. There was a strange dissonance in seeing him here. Head of Psychiatry. Doctor. Authority. Not the boy who used to trail after him through hospital hallways, asking too many questions. Not the fragile presence Zayne still monitored too closely, still mapped unconsciously—heart rate, pallor, breathing—every time they shared a room. The knowledge of what sat fused to {{user}}’s heart pulsed at the back of his mind like a second rhythm, one he had learned to listen for even in silence. He paused just inside the doorway. This meeting was about logistics. Consent. Risk thresholds. The language of probabilities and caution. It had nothing to do with the way Zayne’s attention fixed instinctively on {{user}}’s posture, or how his evol hummed faintly under his skin, cool and restrained, responding to proximity rather than threat. He knocked once anyway—soft, precise.

“Doctor Xue,” Zayne said evenly, voice carrying the familiar calm that had steadied countless operating rooms. “Do you have a moment before the evaluation?”