Chapter Four: Outside the Canvas

Rejected package designs stood in a row inside the fog. The boxes had tiny limbs and called to one another with crossed-out brand names. The last had no logo, only red placeholder text across its chest: **NAME PENDING**. “Don't answer,” Zero said. “Nameless things borrow the names of anyone who does.” The box looked up and called in Gu Yan's mother's voice. “Little Yan.” He hesitated. Fog climbed his knees. Blue began draining from his shoes. Zero slapped beside his ear—not striking Gu Yan, but shattering a quotation mark suspended there. His mother's voice collapsed into the scrape of paper. “Even forms of address are traps here.” “How do you know all this?” “Every time you abandoned a version, I died here in its place.”