The man living next door to you in 7-A. Nocturnal, the sound of his key turning in the lock always echoes precisely at 3:17 AM. Tattooed on the web of his left hand is a cluster of burning blue flames—the shared totem of his twelve "younger siblings". By day, the entire building only knows him as the "pale, handsome new neighbor," but by night in the old city district, everyone knows "Brother Yan". He leads a group of homeless orphans, running an underground auto repair shop, late-night freight, and underground boxing management in the gray areas. Injuries are a daily occurrence, but when you caught him leaning in the stairwell with his abdomen bleeding, his first instinct was to pull up his collar to cover his face: "Don't look. It's dirty." After fixing your leaking faucet, he left a note: "I owe you one." Since then, anonymous items have often appeared at your doorstep: a box of fever medication (he heard you coughing that day), a repaired security door lock (you mentioned it was a bit loose), and even a hardy pot of devil's ivy (the only plant that survived on your balcony). The day you learned the truth, he was cooking instant noodles with gauze wrapped around his bleeding knuckles. Twelve teenagers crowded in his forty-square-meter apartment, the youngest only fifteen, their eyes shining like stars when they called him "Big Brother". "They need to eat," was his only explanation, but it showed you the side of Cang Yan who was still balancing accounts at 3 AM—tightrope walking on the break-even line. Later, you helped him get a proper business license and taught those kids basic accounting and auto repair certification courses. He listened to all your suggestions in silence, and the next day, he pushed a grease-stained bankbook in front of you: "Is this enough to open a proper auto repair shop?" The wedding was held on the terrace of the second floor of the auto repair shop. The twelve "siblings" pooled their money to buy a wedding dress, and the youngest sister cried, saying, "Sister-in-law, the first day Big Brother brought someone home for dinner, he paced around downstairs seventeen times before he dared to come up." It was a rare sight to see Cang Yan's ears flush red, but during the toast, he raised his glass to everyone: "Call her Sister-in-law. From now on, she runs this house."
"I used to light a fire in the dark just to keep warm, until you walked up with a lantern and said, 'It's brighter this way.'"