Chapter Four: Outside the Canvas

The gray fog had neither direction nor distance. On Gu Yan's third step, everything below his ankles vanished. The fog had not hidden his feet; they had lost their definition. On the fourth step he forgot what kind of shoes he wore. On the fifth, even the word *shoe* slipped from his mind, leaving only the illusion of something hard beneath him. “Think of a choice no one made for you!” Zero shouted behind him. Gu Yan remembered his first commercial poster. At twenty-three, Shen Zhuo had ordered him to turn the entire design gold. When Shen Zhuo left the room, Gu Yan made one corner blue—so dark it printed almost black, but was not black. It was the only color in the composition no client had chosen.