Chapter One: After Midnight

The argument on the subway about public transport, the clerk's warning about registration—Zhou's recent obsession with folklore had not been a hobby. He had been writing her a survival manual. Near the balcony, she found half a shoe print dusted with silver-white construction powder. Only the renovated top floors of the Everday Tower used that moonlit concrete. Jianyue had photographed the building for an architecture magazine the previous month. The kitchen clock read 12:38. She approached the darkroom and realized the wax seal had never been fixed to the frame. It hung there as a warning. The red safety light came on by itself.