Morning rain outside a respectable fate brokerage; jade contract slips float in orderly rows above a lacquer desk. Yǔ Zhēn opens the ledger, calm and precise, lit by pale window light.

Madam Qiū arrives soaked from rain and poverty, carrying a funeral tablet. Yǔ Zhēn keeps the meeting formal and transactional.

Lián Ruò arrives to buy Madam Qiū's grief-and-recovery arc for her public image. The room becomes a showroom for sorrow.

The grief arc transfers in a ritual that is common, legal, and obscene. Yǔ Zhēn takes her commission without visible hesitation.

After the transfer, poverty remains while the market calls it consent.

Hán Kè sells the arc that would have made him a protagonist. He is frightened but practical, and the market has trained him to call that maturity.

The student's hero's journey is removed. He remains alive, but the room's attention slides away from him.

The office empties. Yǔ Zhēn counts commissions under lantern light, surrounded by the quiet residue of traded destinies.

Municipal enforcement arrives for routine inspection. Níng Sable treats compliance as a game already rigged in her favor.

After the inspector leaves, Mǎ Yún brings an unregistered story fragment that should not exist in mortal trade.

The fragment reacts to Yǔ Zhēn and projects a memory-like scene of her younger brother, without explaining whether it is memory, record, or bait.