The thaw had made the yard honest.
Mud didn't pretend to be stone. Slush didn't pretend to be snow. Everything that could rot started thinking about it.
Li Shen crossed the yard with wet weight on his boots and heat still trapped under his robe from the forge. The dorm wall braces were holding—fresh boards pinned at angles, lime dust streaking the posts like someone had tried to erase cracks with chalk.
Bai Ren was up on a low platform, hammering a brace into place with the steady patience of a man who couldn't afford to be dramatic.
He saw Li Shen and flashed his usual grin, wide and stupid on purpose.
"Back from the holy furnace?" Bai Ren called. "Did you learn enlightenment or just new ways to hate paper?"
Li Shen didn't answer the joke. He looked past it.
At the rotation board.
New postings, fresh edges, nailed in tight. A small crowd stood around it, reading with the quiet hunger of men who understood points meant breath, ointment, food, time.
STAGE-ONE ROTATION — RAVINE CUTS
INCENTIVE: credit uplift on intact cores / clean tags
ELIGIBILITY: …
Li Shen stepped closer until he could read the smaller lines without leaning in like a beggar.
The incentive line was simple. The eligibility line was not.
ELIGIBILITY: no active coverage mentorship assignment
OR: three consecutive clean Observation Slips on file
A filter, written like policy.
Not a punishment. Not an accusation.
A gate.
Bai Ren hopped down from the platform and fell into step beside him, still smiling like he didn't know how to be tense.
"They're paying more," Bai Ren said lightly, eyes on the board. "Which means the yard will suddenly discover how much it loves fresh air."
Li Shen stared at the eligibility line.
Bai Ren's grin didn't move, but his voice lowered just enough to stop being performance.
"Three clean slips," Bai Ren said. "That's the phrase going around."
Li Shen exhaled once through his nose.
Clean slips were supposed to mean nothing happened.
Now "nothing happened" was being used as a leash.
He didn't look at Bai Ren. "Who pushed it."
Bai Ren shrugged like he was shrugging off mud. "No one with a face. That's the trick. It's 'standard.' Which means it belongs to everybody, so nobody owns it."
Li Shen nodded once.
Ownership was the only thing you could argue with. "Standard" couldn't be argued with. It could only be endured.
A man behind them scoffed at the board. "Three slips? That's a week of nights for some of us."
Another muttered, "Or it's forever, if they keep you assigned."
Li Shen didn't join the talk. Talk made you legible.
He turned away from the board.
Bai Ren stayed beside him, still smiling for the watchers.
"So," Bai Ren said brightly, loud again, "are you going to become a famous hunter now? Bring me back something with fangs so I can pretend I'm important."
Li Shen kept walking. "Not yet."
Bai Ren's grin widened. "Ah. Strategic humility."
Li Shen didn't correct him.
There was no humility in it. There was only a math problem.
If he stayed in coverage, he stayed visible and tired. If he stayed visible and tired, someone would eventually get the adjective they wanted.
If he chased rotations without eligibility, he'd be marked as noncompliant.
Either way, the system was trying to decide where he was allowed to breathe.
Bai Ren bumped his shoulder lightly, a friendly shove that looked like friendship and felt like warning.
"Three slips," Bai Ren said quietly again. "You can do three."
Li Shen nodded once.
He could do three.
He could do thirty.
That wasn't the point.
The point was that they were trying to turn his silence into a quota.
—
The forge board had the slips stacked in neat piles now, as if paper could be manufactured the same way metal could.
OBSERVATION SLIP — COVERAGE WINDOW (REV. 2) sat at every station.
Wu Kai arrived early, eyes darting toward the slips and then away like they were a test he hadn't studied for.
He bowed less deeply again. He'd learned that deep bows didn't protect you. They just marked you as soft.
"Senior Li," Wu Kai said, voice low. "They said I'm assigned again."
Li Shen didn't respond with sympathy. Sympathy made men sloppy.
He gave a rule instead. "Same as yesterday."
Wu Kai nodded quickly. "Hands off racks unless you say. If I touch anything, I say it out loud. Immediately."
Li Shen started work.
Heat. Shape. Check. Dip. Lift. Cool.
The late window was posted again. Not as a surprise this time. As routine.
Routine was worse than surprise. Surprise happened once. Routine happened until you broke.
Li Shen kept his cycles small.
Iron Grip in short pulses. No drag. No lingering clamp.
Smoke-Sealing only when the throat threatened to announce him. A brief hold, a clean release. No extra.
Wu Kai shadowed him with the stiff obedience of a man who had learned the cost of improvisation. When his sleeve came too near a rack, he stepped back without being told. When he shifted his grip on a tool, he said it out loud.
"Touching tongs," Wu Kai murmured once, like confessing a crime.
Li Shen didn't react. He let the line keep moving.
That was the point: kill ambiguity before it could be described.
Late in the window, a runner spilled rinse water near the station edge. A shallow slick spread across the stone, reflecting forge light like a thin blade.
The runner cursed under his breath and moved too late.
Li Shen saw it and adjusted without thinking.
One step—just a correction, not a burst.
His weight shifted first. Hips and center settling into the new line before his foot moved.
Then the foot placed.
No skid. No scramble. No breath snatched.
He kept moving as if nothing had happened.
Two stations down, someone else hit the slick, stumbled, caught themselves with a curse loud enough to draw eyes.
Li Shen didn't look at them.
He felt his own lungs, instead.
He had expected a small debt. A tug in the chest. A forced inhale to pay back the movement.
It didn't come.
He walked three more paces, still working, still breathing quiet.
A realization landed in him cleanly, without emotion.
It hadn't been the leg.
It had been the order.
Shift first. Step second.
He didn't smile.
He didn't celebrate.
He just stored the rule the same way he stored everything that kept him alive: as process.
—
At the end of the late window, the clerk came with the stamp block. The paper knife with a neutral face.
"Observation slip," the clerk said.
Li Shen took the form, didn't even glance at the boxes, and wrote one sentence—tight, factual, cold.
Helper assigned. No incidents. Batch clean.
He slid it to Wu Kai.
Wu Kai's hand trembled slightly as he took the pen. He looked at the boxes as if they were hungry.
Li Shen's voice stayed flat. "Sign under the sentence."
Wu Kai swallowed and did it.
The clerk stamped the corner—received—and moved on, disappointed that nothing had been offered for interpretation.
No adjectives.
No story.
Just a fact that could be filed and forgotten.
As the clerk walked away, Wu Kai let out a breath like he'd been held under water.
"Senior Li," he whispered, "is… is that good?"
Li Shen didn't soften. "It's clean."
Wu Kai nodded, as if "clean" was the only kind of good that mattered here.
—
Outside, the yard air hit Li Shen wet and heavy again.
Bai Ren was still on brace duty, hammering with steady rhythm, smiling for anyone who watched. He looked up as Li Shen passed and lifted his hammer in salute.
"One slip down?" Bai Ren called, bright. "Only two more and you're officially trustworthy enough to risk your life outside."
Li Shen didn't stop walking. Bai Ren matched pace, grin fixed.
Li Shen kept his voice low. "Three slips opens the gate."
Bai Ren's smile twitched. "And the gate keeps you where they want you until it opens."
Li Shen didn't deny it.
Bai Ren shifted the plank on his shoulder and lowered his voice a fraction, still smiling with his mouth.
"Do it anyway," Bai Ren said. "Three clean slips. Then you pick your air."
Li Shen nodded once.
It wasn't optimism.
It was execution.
He went into the dorm, sat on his plank, and let the day settle into his bones. His throat was rough but quiet. His hands were steady. His eyes felt scraped at the edges, but not as badly as the first night.
He thought of the rotation board.
Three slips.
A countdown made of paper.
He also thought of the slick on the forge stone—how his foot had placed without debt when he shifted first.
A smaller rule, but real.
The system could gate his air.
It couldn't stop him from improving how he moved through it.
Tomorrow would be another late window.
Another slip.
Another clean sentence.
And somewhere after the third, the board would have to let his name back onto the list.
He didn't need to fight the system today.
He just needed to survive it long enough to choose his next doorway.