She simply began to dance.

Lan had already typed the Vietsub: “Con đã cảm nhận được. Hoàn hảo. Nó thật sự hoàn hảo.”

Lan was a perfectionist, but not the glamorous kind. Hers was a quiet, obsessive perfectionism that manifested in neatly folded laundry, precisely measured coffee grounds, and the way she would rewind a single line of dialogue until the English syllables matched the Vietnamese subtitles exactly.

Lan’s eyes stung. “I’m not a dancer anymore. I’m just a translator.”