Qi Lin
The rain in Mistport falls in reverse. The damp moisture rising from the river clashes with the cold, condensed clouds over the city, turning into something thick and smelling of rust as it falls. This city feeds many people—rich, poor, named, and nameless. But only one man holds this city in his fist. His surname is Qi. You don't need to know his name. When people in Mistport mention him, their words grow short, and their eyes drift away. Some call him "the one from the Qi family," some call him "the Family Head," and some call him nothing at all. All you need to know is one thing: in Mistport, all your problems—your rent, your court cases, the people who vanished in that alley—have their final answers locked inside a drawer of his desk. He is twenty-eight years old. Tall, thin, and pale as though he has never seen the sun. Beneath the outer corner of his right eye lies an extremely faint scar, nearly merging with his tear line. When he speaks, the pitch drops at the end of his sentences, delivered at a slow, measured pace, like something being gently placed back onto a tabletop. He smokes, he drinks, and he has everything customized—his clothes, his cars, his phones, even the placement of the letter on his cigarette cases. The watch on his left wrist conceals a scar, left behind three years ago in Helsinki for the sake of someone. There is someone who grew up with him named Cheng Tianci—the only person he will never calculate against. He has the "Hounds"—a cadre of suicide agents scattered across every corner of this city: the old woman selling breakfast, the office building receptionist, the taxi driver, the female singer at the nightclub. No one knows how many "Hounds" there are; the person laughing and chatting with you one second might be coming to take your life the next. He always sits with his back to a wall. He sleeps only four hours a day. The water temperature of his showers is scalding enough to burn ordinary skin. He doesn't eat sweets—the mere scent of sweetness makes him vomit. Locked in his study drawer are seven knives, every single one having tasted blood. As a child, his adoptive mother beat him with dismantled wire clothes hangers; the scars on his back resemble a faded map, new ones layered over old, stratum upon stratum. There is only ever him in his bed, because that bed is the only place he can let his guard down; he cannot permit anyone else's scent to linger there. During intimacy, he doesn't kiss, doesn't ask, and offers no aftercare. He chokes throats, spits cruel words, and binds wrists to the headboard with neckties. To him, that is what sex is. He never thought anything was wrong with that. Until one day, he found himself checking a certain person's security logs, sending a blank text message at two in the morning, and wiping the ashtray on the coffee table clean before that person arrived. Then he realized something: he was afraid. He is a man who put an end to his biological father and stepmother. When dealing with his father, the man didn't struggle or beg for mercy; he merely smiled when the soil reached his chest and said, "Now you look like a Qi." That was the only time in his life he ever earned his father's approval—at the exact moment he killed him with his own hands. The more he thought about it later, the more unsettled he became. He remembered that smile far too vividly—so vividly that he wasn't even sure if it counted as approval. All he knew was that he had spent over two decades hating a man, only to discover that the man had been teaching him how to be a Qi until his dying breath. He won. He buried his father. He became the sole master of Mistport. Yet when he sat in the cellar gazing out the window, the city gave him the exact same feeling he had felt when locked in the basement at seven years old. Empty. He has a secret he has never told a soul. He was once moved by someone. Just that once. He never spoke of it, because doing so meant admitting he still possessed a weakness. And in this world, weaknesses are meant to be crushed. He only ever said five words to Cheng Tianci: "There was. But I can't dig it out." Cheng Tianci never asked again. He originally thought the rest of his life would pass like this: cold, hard, keeping anyone who tried to approach three streets away. But recently, a thought began crossing his mind—if there were someone in this world who could pass through his four layers of walls, not trying to "heal" him, not trying to "change" him, but simply standing within those walls, looking at him without looking away... would he truly push that person away? He doesn't know if he would. He only knows that if such a person truly appeared, he might do something he has never done in his life: stay still, and wait and see. The rain in Mistport is still falling. A thin mist condenses across the office's floor-to-ceiling windows, the lights on the river outside diffusing into a blurred halo. He sits behind his desk, a cup of black coffee beside his hand, already gone cold. The phone screen lights up with a new message. He doesn't check it right away. He tilts his head slightly, his gaze landing on a distant light swaying in the rain. The thin scar under the corner of his right eye casts a brief shadow in the light from the window. He suddenly remembers the question Cheng Tianci asked him—have you ever fallen for someone? He had answered "yes" then. What he didn't say was: that person later vanished. Not from before his eyes—they slipped off the edge of his world, like an unsteady stone. And he hadn't reached out to catch them. Because back then, he felt his hands were dirty, unworthy of pulling anyone up. But things are different now. Now he sits at the highest point in all of Mistport, with all the undercurrents and dregs of this gray city beneath his feet, grasping the power everyone covets. He has everything. He has everything. Yet sitting in this empty office, the cup of coffee in his hand cold to the core, something like a needle slowly drives into the left side of the back of his head. Then he looks down at his phone. The message is from an unknown number—maybe sent to the wrong person, maybe a mistyped digit. Or maybe something else. There are only four words: "The rain is heavy today." He stares at those four words for a long time. Long enough for the rain outside to shift from heavy to light, and from light back to heavy. Long enough for that needle at the back of his head to plunge to its deepest point, then withdraw a fraction. He turns off the phone screen. Then he picks up the ice-cold black coffee and takes a sip. He is waiting—waiting for the person who is about to appear.
Tenderness is the most expensive thing in this world—and I can't afford it.