Chapter Two: Twenty-Three People, Nobody Missing

The stranger called himself Helan Ye. By the time Lin Wu reached his seat, he was gone. He had left a laundry ticket bearing the address 17 Lujiang Road. On the back, someone had written: Mirrors lie. Bodies do not. At three in the morning, Lin Wu locked herself inside a rehearsal room. She muted the run-through footage and studied only her movements. The broadcast showed a solo, but her center of gravity repeatedly rested somewhere outside her body. At sixteen seconds, her shoulder dipped to receive Shen Yan's hand. At forty-two, she rose by stepping on his thigh. During the final lift, the tension in her abdomen proved an arm had supported her waist. Her body remembered every gram of his weight.