Shen Yuan stumbles back from Luo Binghe, slipping from his arms much more easily than he might if they were really physically entangled. He doesn't know what he looks like, right now, whether he's his dead self or his fictional living one, and either feels—impossible to embody, impossible that being touched, here, could mean being touched in truth. He barely sees where they've ended up, too flooded with relief not to be where they'd been, and then that thought, and what Binghe's said, fills him with guilt and self-loathing, rushing in to fill the emptiness the relief left behind. He sits down, abruptly, on the ground.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't have—you called me a spirit and I thought you knew—I didn't think about how it would feel, to—to be there. I—I want you to be able to see my world, I want to show it to you, but—" he shakes his head. "I'm sorry," he says again, uselessly. "You were—you were so excited, and I ruined it."