The second night came faster than the first.
Not because time moved. Because Li Shen's body stopped resetting all the way.
Wet cold outside. Dry heat inside. Sleep in between that felt shallow, interrupted by the same thought dressed in different clothes:
Three clean slips. Gate opens.
He didn't romanticize it.
A gate was a gate. You didn't argue with hinges. You got your hand on the latch.
The forge board still carried the standardized stacks like it had always been this way—paper issued like tools, opinions packaged into boxes.
Wu Kai arrived early again, tool roll tight, face too careful.
He didn't bow too deep this time. He'd learned that part.
He kept his voice low. "Senior Li. They said… same assignment."
Li Shen didn't reply with sympathy. He replied with structure.
"Same rules," Li Shen said.
Wu Kai answered immediately, like a man reciting a prayer he didn't understand but couldn't afford to forget.
"Hands off racks unless you say. If I touch anything, I say it out loud. Immediately."
Li Shen nodded once and started work.
Heat. Shape. Check. Dip. Lift. Cool.
He kept Iron Grip in short pulses. Clamp. Release. Clamp. Release.
No dragging holds. No prolonged squeeze.
The first hour passed clean.
The line was quieter now, not because men had learned discipline, but because the slips had made language dangerous. People saved their words for when they needed a knife.
Li Shen didn't give them that.
—
The late window came with the usual shift in the room.
Not a change in metal. A change in men.
Hands hovered longer. Breath got louder. Tiny hesitations started showing up at the edges of every motion.
Li Shen felt it in his forearms first.
A faint tightness that meant tremor would arrive earlier if he was greedy.
He refused greed.
Wu Kai hovered behind him, watching the jig, watching the racks, watching the slips stacked under a station weight like they might bite.
Across the line, a senior on another station snapped at his helper.
"Write it down," the senior hissed. "He's reckless. He keeps dragging the rack like it's a cart."
The helper's eyes flicked to the clerk moving down the line with a stamp block. Then to the slip. Then away.
Reckless.
That word was already halfway to a hold sheet.
Li Shen didn't turn his head.
He kept his rhythm.
Then a runner appeared at Line Three, carrying a tray with two clasps that didn't belong there.
No tag strip. No station mark. Just metal and the runner's neutral face.
"Support," the runner said, setting the tray near Li Shen's jig like it was natural. "You're coverage."
Coverage.
A word that meant take the work and take the blame.
Li Shen didn't touch the tray.
He looked at the runner. "Tag."
The runner's eyes narrowed. "It's urgent."
Li Shen kept his voice flat. "Tag first."
The runner exhaled through his nose, annoyed. "Everyone's tired, Senior Li."
Li Shen didn't correct the title. He pointed with the tongs, not his hand.
"If it's urgent, it needs a name faster," Li Shen said.
The runner hesitated.
That hesitation told Li Shen what he needed.
Urgent was a mask. The missing tag was the teeth.
The runner reached into his sleeve, produced a blank strip with the kind of impatience that made mistakes, and pressed it onto the tray edge. He scribbled quickly.
Li Shen watched the strokes. "Station," he said.
The runner's jaw tightened. He added a station mark.
Li Shen nodded once.
Only then did he lift one clasp with tongs and seat it in his jig.
It didn't seat clean.
Not a dramatic failure. A small resistance that made the jig speak truth.
Wu Kai leaned forward instinctively, then froze and said out loud, tight: "I stepped forward."
Li Shen didn't acknowledge it. He stayed on the clasp.
The metal wasn't wrong in a way you could fix with force.
It was wrong in a way you could fix by understanding where the wrongness lived.
The mouth angle was close. The tension line was off by a hair.
A long clamp could brute it into shape.
A long clamp would also bring tremor early and turn his hands into a show.
And show was what the system wanted.
Li Shen adjusted his grip.
He didn't squeeze.
He pulsed.
One short clamp—enough to bite the angle into place—then release before the tendon in his forearm could start shaking.
He rotated the clasp a fraction, checked the contact points, and pulsed again.
Clamp. Release.
The jig clicked.
Clean.
Wu Kai's breath sounded like it wanted to turn into praise. He swallowed it.
Li Shen pulled the clasp out, seated the second one.
It resisted the same way.
He repeated the sequence.
Two pulses, no drag.
Click.
Clean.
He set both aside and wiped the jig face once, calm.
Only then did he look at the runner.
"Not mine," Li Shen said.
The runner's eyes hardened. "It passes."
"It passes now," Li Shen replied. "It didn't arrive passing. That's the point."
The runner opened his mouth.
Li Shen cut him off without raising his voice. "Witness."
Meng, two stations down, had been watching without looking like he was watching. He stepped closer on his own, expression empty.
"Show," Meng said.
Li Shen set the clasp back into the jig without correction this time—letting it sit how it had arrived.
It resisted.
Meng's eyes narrowed.
Li Shen lifted it, applied the two pulses again—clean, short, controlled—and seated it.
Click.
Meng grunted once.
The runner's face tightened. He knew what had just happened: Li Shen had turned "urgent support" into "tagged transfer of variance" with a witness standing on it.
The runner snatched the tray away as if it offended him.
"Fine," the runner said. "Put it on the slip."
Li Shen's gaze didn't move. "Put facts on the slip."
The runner stared at him for a beat, then walked off with the tray, shoulders tight.
Wu Kai whispered, barely audible, "Your hands—"
Li Shen didn't let that become admiration.
He didn't want admiration. Admiration was a spotlight.
He flexed his fingers once under his sleeve, checking for tremor.
There was none yet.
Not because he was stronger.
Because he hadn't paid twice.
A clean realization settled into place, silent and usable:
Long holds weren't control.
They were panic disguised as strength.
He went back to his batch without pause.
Heat. Shape. Check. Dip. Lift. Cool.
The line didn't slow.
The story didn't get a new adjective.
—
By the end of the late window, Li Shen could feel the tremor waiting closer than it should have been—behind the forearms, like a warning that the body kept its own ledger whether you wrote or not.
But it still hadn't surfaced.
He kept the last pieces boring.
No extra. No hero.
The clerk arrived with the stamp block and the second standardized slip.
"Observation," the clerk said, bored.
Li Shen took the form and wrote one sentence—tight, factual, cold.
Helper assigned. No incidents. Batch clean.
Wu Kai signed under the sentence without looking at the boxes.
The clerk stamped it and moved on, disappointed by the lack of narrative.
As the clerk walked away, Wu Kai exhaled slowly.
"That's two," Wu Kai whispered, as if afraid the number would attract attention.
Li Shen didn't answer.
Numbers always attracted attention.
That was why you handled them quietly.
—
Outside, the yard was a grid of mud and boards.
Bai Ren was on brace duty again, shoulders damp, hair stuck to his forehead, smile set like a shield.
He saw Li Shen and raised his hammer like a salute.
"Senior Li!" Bai Ren called out, bright. "Any exciting new forms today? Any boxes asking if you secretly hate your coworkers?"
A couple of servants nearby laughed, too relieved to be careful.
Bai Ren stepped closer, grin wide, voice dropping just enough to be useful.
"Someone tried to hand you work without a tag?" he murmured.
Li Shen didn't look at him. "Yes."
Bai Ren's smile didn't move. "Good. You made them write their name first."
Li Shen didn't confirm. Bai Ren didn't need confirmation.
Bai Ren nodded, satisfied. "Two slips," he said softly. "One more, and you get your air back."
Li Shen walked on.
Bai Ren stayed visible behind him, still smiling like a fool, because fools weren't targets. Fools didn't get assigned. Fools didn't get described in boxes.
Li Shen reached his plank in the dorm and sat down.
His hands were steady enough.
His throat was rough but quiet.
His eyes felt scraped at the edges.
He took his ledger out—not to narrate, not to confess—just to pin reality to paper the way a nail pinned a brace to a wall.
Dorm plank — slip #2
Fact: second clean slip filed; attempted "support" arrived untagged, returned with station mark under witness.
Cost: tremor held back by short clamps; throat rude but quiet.
Action: if "support" appears → tag + station first; correct with pulses, never a drag.
He closed the ledger.
Three slips wasn't a promise.
It was a countdown.
And he wasn't going to let anyone fill the last box for him.