The clinic kept its treatment room open through the night before Hanlo’s dawn gathering. Jin Rui’s fever had gone down, but his hands still trembled when he tried to tie a bandage. Fenna could stand without dizziness. She asked Qinghe if she could go to the field and hear the preacher explain the missing part.
“You may choose to attend,” Qinghe said. “You should not practice the copied method.”
Fenna said she understood. “I want to hear what he planned to teach. I don’t want to leave without knowing what the rest was supposed to be.”
Jin Rui chose to stay at the clinic and help Tessa sort clean bandages. He wanted something useful to do while his pulse settled. “I don’t want Fenna to go alone,” he said, “but I’m not steady enough to stand in a crowd.” Fenna answered that she would go with Ning and that the clinic was only a short walk away. She did not want his worry to make the choice for her. Jin Rui accepted this and asked her to return if the preacher began the exercise instead of explaining it. Tessa gave him the easy task of matching folded strips by size. When his fingers trembled, she took the stack and waited without comment. He tried again after a few minutes and got through a dozen before the shaking returned.
