For most, Lan Wangji is content to be distant, unknowable, and silent, appearing where there is chaos and then vanishing again before he can resolve into a person in their eyes, but there is something precious in being known, and seen, by someone he values. Today, he spent hours alone in middlingly successful meditation, and yet nothing has helped to coax his mind back toward calm as much as conversation with a friend. If others have lost respect for him, then he can do nothing about that, but at least there is this. He offers up a tiny, rabbit-quick smile.

"Luo Binghe is unworthy of your keen eye," he says, evenly but witheringly. That clear and cutting sight of Claudius' is, to him, a gift, and not one that Luo Binghe has earned.