The cheerful, manic shrieks of the caged songbirds in the Jordan market felt like a personal mockery, a soundtrack of freedom for creatures who would never know it. Kai walked away from the tea house, each step feeling heavy and deliberate, as if the pavement itself had turned to mud. Mister Wong's words echoed in his skull, a cold, precise script for a murder. Make him understand the finality of his situation. Permanently.
The order was so clean, so clinical. It wasn't a crime of passion in a smoke-filled back alley; it was an administrative execution. A piece of human accounting to be settled. And he, Jin Kai, was the ledger-keeper appointed to draw the final, red line.
He didn't go back to the apartment. He couldn't face Lok's eager questions, his simple, binary view of their new world. We're moving up! Lok would say, his eyes bright with ambition. He wouldn't see the abyss Kai was being ordered to step into. He would only see the prestige of a solo assignment from the White Paper Fan himself. So Kai walked. He let the dense, human river of Hong Kong's sidewalks carry him along, a piece of driftwood in a current of oblivious lives. He passed a young mother scolding her toddler, her voice a sharp mix of love and exhaustion. He passed an old man meticulously arranging copies of the Apple Daily on a rusty stand, his movements slow with a lifetime of repetition. A group of European tourists laughed, their phones held high to capture the chaotic symphony of the city. Their normality was a shield he could no longer possess, a world from which he was now permanently exiled.
His feet, acting on a muscle memory deeper than his current mission, carried him to the Tsim Sha Tsui Star Ferry pier. The familiar, green-and-white vessels chugged patiently at their berths. He paid the few dollars, the coins feeling alien in his hand, and boarded, finding a spot on the open deck away from the crowds. He needed the wind, the open space, the smell of the harbour—anything to cut through the claustrophobic pressure building in his chest.
As the ferry gave a low blast of its horn and chugged away from the Kowloon side, the full, majestic sweep of Hong Kong Island's skyline unveiled itself. The towering, glass-and-steel pillars of finance and power gleamed in the afternoon sun, a breathtaking monument to order and ambition. From here, it looked pristine, untouchable. A world away from the sawdust-strewn floors of mahjong parlours and the greasy, cloying fear of the Golden Sun Karaoke bar. He could almost pick out the building where his real desk was, in the Wan Chai police headquarters. He thought of the cheap instant coffee in the breakroom, the mindless banter with other uniforms, the tedious paperwork. A life of mundane bureaucracy that now seemed like a lost paradise.
He was a cop. The thought was a desperate, silent scream against the roar of the wind and the engine. He was a cop, and he had just been ordered to kill a man.
The protocol was clear, etched into his mind from a hundred training scenarios. He should make immediate contact with his handler. He should declare the red line, abort the mission. They would pull him out in a controlled extraction, debrief him for weeks, and maybe, just maybe, they could use the recorded intent to build a conspiracy case against Wong. But it would be his word against the White Paper Fan's, a man who never left fingerprints on his commands.
He knew, with a sickening certainty that settled in his gut like a stone, what Inspector Chan would say. He could hear the man's calm, dispassionate voice, the voice that had recruited him, the voice that saw people as assets and liabilities. The mission is the priority, Jin. The integrity of the two-year operation against the entire Wo Shing Society outweighs a single, low-level asset. This is the price of admission to the inner circle. Find a way. Create a delay, a plausible reason for failure. But do not, under any circumstances, break cover. The intelligence we stand to gain on their smuggling routes, their political connections, is immeasurable. This man Chan is a cost of doing business.
The mission. The greater good. It was the cold, brutal calculus he had voluntarily signed up for. But the calculus was a lie. It didn't account for the look in a man's eyes in the final second of his life. It didn't account for the warmth of blood on your own hands, the smell of it, the way it stuck under your fingernails. It didn't account for the silent scream that would echo in your own dreams forever.
His hand dipped into his pocket, his fingers closing around the cheap, plastic shell of his burner phone. It felt flimsy, a utterly inadequate tether to the world he was fighting for. He needed to report this. He needed to hear a voice from his real life, even if it was just the dispassionate, clinical tone of his handler. It was a test, not just of his cover, but of his own soul. If he could voice the order out loud to Chan, perhaps it would make it real, and he would know which side of the line he truly stood on.
He typed the coded message, his thumb clumsy and slow on the small keys. *Requesting a weather update. Conditions have changed. Potential storm surge expected on Lamma Island tomorrow. Seeking guidance.*
He hit send and leaned against the ferry railing, watching the churning, khaki-green water of Victoria Harbour. The city slid past, a breathtaking panorama of impossible beauty and profound corruption, two sides of the same coin. The phone vibrated in his hand almost immediately, a short, brutal tremor.
He looked down. The screen glowed with the response. *Acknowledged. Forecast remains. High pressure system holding. Proceed with scheduled itinerary. Dress for the weather.*
Proceed. The word was a death sentence, handed down not by the triad, but by his own side. Dress for the weather. A chillingly casual, coded instruction to prepare himself, mentally and physically, for the act of murder. There was no ambiguity, no room for negotiation. He was a tool, and tools are not consulted on their use.
He put the phone away, his hand trembling slightly now despite the warm air. He gripped the cold, salt-crusted railing of the ferry until his knuckles turned white, the wind whipping tears from his eyes that could be mistaken for the spray of the harbour. He was truly, utterly alone. The police saw him as a disposable asset to be used until he broke or was burned. The triad was testing to see if he was a tool they could use for their darkest work. He was suspended between two monstrous certainties, belonging to neither, and about to be damned by both.
When the ferry docked at Central, he immediately crossed the pier and boarded another one back to Tsim Sha Tsui. The pointless round trip was a physical manifestation of his spiralling thoughts, going nowhere. Back in Kowloon, the sky was beginning to bruise with the approach of evening, the neon signs flickering to life, their electric demands cutting through the twilight. He found Lok at their usual dai pai dong, hunched over a steaming bowl of beef brisket noodles, a newspaper spread open next to him displaying the day's horse racing results.
Lok's face lit up when he saw him, a genuine, uncomplicated joy that made Kai's heart ache. "Well? What did he say? Come on, don't keep me in suspense! What's the next job? Something big, right? I knew it! I knew he'd see your quality!"
Kai slid onto the sticky plastic stool opposite him. The rich, aromatic smells of star anise and frying garlic, usually a siren's call, now twisted his stomach into a hard knot. He forced a casual, almost bored expression onto his face, the first layer of a new, more terrible mask. He had to be Jin Kai now, fully and completely. Jin Kai wouldn't be troubled by this. Jin Kai would see it as an opportunity.
"It's a solo thing," Kai said, picking up a pair of chopsticks and poking at the noodles Lok had ordered for him. "Out of town. Just a collection. Wong wants to see if I can handle things on my own, without you holding my hand." He injected a note of wry amusement into his tone.
Lok's face fell for a fraction of a second, a flash of hurt and jealousy quickly masked by a wider, more forced grin. "Of course! See? I told you. You're on the fast track. A solo job from the White Paper Fan… that's huge." He leaned in, lowering his voice. "So, where? What's the score?"
"Lamma Island," Kai said, keeping his eyes on his bowl. "Some fisherman who's behind on his payments. Probably just needs a firm reminder." The lie was smooth, effortless. It horrified him.
"Lamma? Aiyah, that's a hike. But quiet. Good place for… firm reminders." Lok winked, then his expression grew slightly more serious. "You want me to come? Just to watch your back? I don't like you going alone."
The offer was sincere, and it was a knife in Kai's conscience. "Wong was specific. Solo. Don't worry about me. You hold things down here. Make sure no one from the 18K tries to move in on our spots while I'm gone."
Lok puffed out his chest, the responsibility placating him. "You can count on me, brother."
Kai nodded, finally taking a mouthful of noodles. They tasted like cardboard, the broth like ash. He chewed and swallowed, the food sitting like a stone in his stomach. He looked at Lok—his oldest friend, so proud of the monster Kai was being forced to become. The guilt was a physical weight, heavier than any envelope of cash, a cold, dense core growing inside him.
He was going to Lamma Island tomorrow. He was going to find a man named Chan. He was going to look into his eyes. And he was going to have to make a choice that would define not just the success or failure of the mission, but the very composition of the man he would be for the rest of his life. The ghost was being asked to claim a soul, and as he sat there in the noisy, vibrant dai pai dong, he didn't know if he could do it without losing his own forever.