Chapter Two: The Theater That Did Not Exist

Shen Yao awoke against the ward wall as Lin Mo drew a violent breath. The black ring around Shen Yao's wrist had darkened like ink beneath skin. "You said your name?" Lu Zhi demanded. "How do you know that rule?" He did not answer. Lin Mo woke and clung to her mother. But when the woman called her childhood nickname, the girl drew back. "Who are you?" Lin Mo remembered multiplication tables and every movement of the rabbit dance. She simply no longer felt that her mother was hers. That afternoon, Gu Linchuan arrived to consult. He was fifty-seven, silver-haired, his voice always pitched to calm an anxious patient. He diagnosed a rare dissociative agnosia. "Have you heard of the White Crow Theater?" Shen Yao asked.