Chapter One: The Woman in the Rain

He put away the camera. He knew the brightness in Tang's eyes when she found a story. It had led them to expose abuse at a private sanatorium. It had also led Shen across a line he could never uncross on another investigation. He did not want to chase a photograph he could not explain. At nine that evening, the stock agency rejected the image as “suspected compositing.” At 9:15, Shen posted the original to his own social account with a single caption: *Rain in Linchuan*. At ten, it passed ten thousand shares. At eleven, foreign accounts had named it *The Lady with the Red Umbrella*. Some said the woman was a singer missing for a decade. Others were certain she was a nurse in a famous war photograph.