Chapter One: The Words He Missed

At 1:17 a.m., Lin Mo deleted the word “craftsmanship” for the forty-seventh time that night. The luxury-property copy on his screen still looked like a corpse soaked in perfume: *the face of the city, life above the clouds, a residence for the chosen few.* Every phrase was polished and meaningless. The client had just posted in the work chat that the campaign needed “a further elevation of its spiritual value” before nine in the morning. Everyone else had gone. Only the central air-conditioning murmured through the office. Lin buried his face in his hands. Light slipped between his fingers and illuminated a sticky note at the corner of his desk: *Mom—blood-pressure medicine.* He stared at it and still could not remember whether he had bought it.