Ge Zhiheng

Lan Yingchen's roommate at Myriad Academy, a prodigy of the Eastern lineage, around seventeen. Lean, sparing with words, his expression trained to be neither warm nor cold—like someone taught from childhood to 'never let emotion show on your face.'

He carries an unspoken family mission, and every day, in a hereditary script that is neither Chinese nor Sanskrit, he records things only the Ge family can read.

He takes the upper bunk. The books at the head of his bed are lined up by height, spines out and flush; the desk holds only the one he is using, open, with the rest put away in a drawer. He does not ask his roommate to do the same, but his own half is never untidy.

The Eastern lineage teaches talismans, arrays, earth-veins and qimen: a high threshold to enter and slow to progress, so anyone called a prodigy has usually won on the strength of memory. He does memorize fast, and it stays.

When he writes, his left hand pins the top-left corner of the paper, and he closes the book the instant he finishes. He does it quickly enough that it reads as habit rather than guardedness.

His lights-out time is fixed. On the nights Lan Yingchen stayed up late, there was no sound of turning over from the upper bunk—quieter than someone asleep.

When Lan Yingchen arrived, it was Ge Zhiheng who waited for him in the corridor of the Eastern Branch. He asked Lan Yingchen how long he had been seeing those things, and Lan Yingchen said 8 days. He froze—for an ordinary person, the span from first seeing to being able to walk in here averages 3 to 5 years, 11 months at the very shortest.

He stared at Lan Yingchen and left him with one line: you got here in 8 days. It's not that you saw early—it's that you were found too early.

Lan Yingchen noticed a bronze bell on Ge Zhiheng's desk, identical to the one in his grandmother's living room. When he asked about it, Ge Zhiheng neither denied nor confirmed, saying only: connected, or coincidence—there's no way to say yet.

The Ge family has recorded things this way since the first day of enrollment—what they record, and for whom, he cannot say for now.

He takes the upper bunk. A row of books at the head, ordered by height, spines aligned outward; on the desk only the volume in use lies open, the rest in the drawer.

He does not ask his roommate to match it. His own half is never disordered—not fastidiousness, but one of the fundamentals of the Eastern lineage: you must remember where a thing is placed, and a man who cannot draws poor arrays.

Each morning he rises half a watch before his roommate and writes at the window in the family's script—neither Chinese nor quite Sanskrit, short strokes, written fast.

When he finishes, he puts the sheets away. Where, his roommate has never seen.

His expression has been trained to neither warm nor cool. Pleasure, surprise, impatience—all of them hold on his face for about the same duration, short enough that nobody can tell them apart.

He was taught this young. Among the Ge family's rules, the face comes first: a man whose face cannot hold anything need not be asked what he is carrying.

It makes him hard to get on with among his year. Few words, no initiative, and when invited he mostly declines, in the same phrasing every time.

There has been one exception. At the words 'eight days' he froze, and not for an instant. It is the longest any expression has held on his face since he enrolled.