The taxi pulled up to what could charitably be called a basketball court.
Charitably.
If you were feeling generous. If you'd had a few drinks. If your standards for "court" had been lowered by years of disappointment and a general acceptance that life wasn't always going to give you regulation-size anything—more like a cracked concrete parking lot that had lost a fight with entropy and was now moonlighting as a hoop dream graveyard, complete with weeds growing through the fissures like nature's middle finger to human ambition.
Phei stepped out, paid the driver—who looked at him like he'd just asked to be dropped off at the gates of hell and handed him exact change—and surveyed his kingdom.
Cracked concrete. Faded lines that might have been white once, back when optimism was still a thing people believed in—probably around the same era as dial-up internet and honest politicians.
