Beneath the flicker of a failing streetlamp, Yan City’s Flower Market District wore its contradictions like a mask. One side glittered with money, ambition, and glass-walled promise; the other crouched in damp alleys, dreaming of fortunes that would never arrive. The air was warm enough to smell barbecue smoke and stale sweat, cold enough for secrets to gather in the shadows. In a polished coffee shop on the prosperous side of the road, a young man entered with the quiet certainty of someone who had already decided what the night would become. Decaf vanilla latte. Metal-framed glasses. Hair falling like a curtain across half his face. He seemed too refined for the slum next door, too unreadable for the people watching him. But the city was about to learn that refinement is only a mask, too. Somewhere between the auctioned-off buildings and the cramped rooms of the forgotten neighborhood, a truth was waiting to be found. Bitter. Dangerous. And impossible to ignore.
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