The ceiling was a map of failures. Water stains had carved out continents of mold over the years, yellowish-brown borders expanding with every winter leak. Ryo watched them through a haze of thick, sweet smoke that tasted like burnt sage and desperation. The joint between his fingers was a small, glowing lighthouse in the dimness of a room that smelled of unwashed clothes and old grease.
He wasn't high yet. Not really. He was just baffled. The sharp edges of the world—the unpaid rent, the debt to the man on the corner, the stinging knowledge that his charcoal pencils were gathering dust in a corner—had been sanded down.
"You're staring at the wall again, Ryo. It's not going to give you answers."
The voice belonged to Jin. He was sitting on a crate near the window, peering through the slats of the broken blinds. Jin was the only one of them who still bothered to look outside, as if he expected a different city to appear overnight.
"I'm not looking for answers," Ryo said, his voice scratchy. "I'm just waiting for the gravity to let go."
"Gravity doesn't sleep in this district," Jin replied without turning. "The cops are at the end of the block. Blue lights, no sirens. They're picking someone up. Probably one of Kwon's runners."
Ryo took another drag, feeling the heat crawl into his lungs. He felt a flicker of something—disgust, perhaps—at the routine of it all. This was the rhythm of the city. A heartbeat made of slamming car doors, the distant rhythm of a bass beat from a passing car, and the quiet, frantic negotiations of people who had nothing left to sell but their time.
He looked at his hands. They were steady but stained. Not with ink or paint, but with the grime of the street. Ryo was twenty-three, and in the mirrors of the public bathrooms, he saw a man who had already decided that the finish line was a myth. He had the talent to draw the soul out of a person with ten strokes of a pencil, but here, in the gut of the city, talent was just another thing that got stolen.
"Where's Takumi?" Ryo asked, exhaling slowly.
"Downstairs. Picking a fight with a vending machine or a stranger. Whoever hits back first," Jin said. He finally turned away from the window. His face was lean, his eyes tired in a way that sleep couldn't fix. "He's restless. The dealer—Elbznas—is late with the shipment. Everyone's on edge."
Ryo stood up, the room tilting slightly before righting itself. He threw the roach into a half-empty beer can. The hiss of the dying ember sounded like a tiny scream.
"I'm going out," Ryo said.
"To do what? You don't have any credit left at the grocery store, and the street's crawling with uniforms."
"To breathe," Ryo lied.
He didn't want to breathe. He wanted to move. If he stayed in this room any longer, the mold on the ceiling would start speaking to him, reminding him of the scholarships he'd ignored and the girl whose phone calls he'd stopped answering because the sound of her hope made his teeth ache.
The hallway of the apartment complex was a gauntlet of smells: rotting cabbage, bleach, and the metallic tang of old pipes. He passed a door where a woman was sobbing quietly, and another where a television was blaring a game show. The laughter from the TV speakers sounded hollow, a canned joy imported from a world that didn't use concrete as a blanket.
Outside, the air was cold enough to bite. The city didn't have a name that mattered. To Ryo, it was just 'the grey.' It was a labyrinth of alleys where the shadows were thicker than the walls.
He walked toward the main strip, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He saw the 'Bznas' before the man saw him. He was standing in the shadow of a rusted fire escape, a silhouette that everyone in the neighborhood recognized but no one could describe to the police.
"Ryo," the dealer said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "You're early. Or late; I lose track."
"I'm just here," Ryo said, stopping a few feet away. "What do you have?"
"The usual. Something stronger if you have the coin. Red pills from the port. They make the world look like a movie."
"I don't want a movie," Ryo muttered. "Just give me the wrap. I'll pay you Friday."
The dealer laughed, a dry, rhythmic sound. "Friday. Everyone's favorite day. The day that never comes. You're lucky I like your sketches, kid. Otherwise, I'd let Takumi's temper handle your debts."
He tossed a small plastic baggie. Ryo caught it with a reflex born of years of habits. It felt heavy with the promise of a few hours of silence.
"Why do you stay here, Ryo?" the dealer asked suddenly. There was no mockery in his voice this time, just a strange, clinical curiosity. "I've seen the way you look at the buildings. You see things the rest of us don't. You could be in a gallery, drinking wine with people who have soft hands."
Ryo looked at the man. He looked at the cracked pavement, the flickering neon sign of a closed laundromat, and the black sky that held no stars—only the orange reflection of the city's lights.
"The soft-handed people don't want what I see," Ryo said. "And I don't want their wine."
He turned away before the dealer could respond. He didn't want a conversation. He wanted to go to the park—the strip of dead grass and broken benches that served as the neighborhood's lungs—and disappear into the smoke again.
As he walked, he passed the grocery store. Mr. Kwon was outside, sweeping the sidewalk with a grim intensity. Kwon was a man who had mastered the art of seeing everything and saying nothing. He bought stolen copper, sold expired milk, and kept a ledger of souls that Ryo was sure he was at the top of.
"Kazehara!" Kwon called out, his voice sharp.
Ryo didn't stop. "Not today, Mr. Kwon."
"Your mother called the shop again," the old man shouted after him.
Ryo's pace faltered for a fraction of a second, but he didn't turn back. The mention of his mother was a sharp needle prick in a numb limb. It reminded him of a house with a garden, of a piano that he used to play before he realized that music couldn't pay for the holes in his spirit. It reminded him of the disappointment that had turned into a quiet, permanent grief in her eyes.
He reached the park. It was empty, save for a few shadows huddled under the overpass. He sat on a bench that had been tagged with gang symbols he no longer cared to decipher.
He pulled out a cigarette, emptied half the tobacco, and replaced it with the contents of the baggie. His movements were precise, surgical. This was the only thing he was disciplined about anymore.
As he lit it, the first flake of snow fell. It landed on his sleeve, a perfect, intricate crystal that vanished into a grey smudge the moment it touched the fabric.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
Ryo looked up. Lucas was standing there. He was wearing a jacket that was too thin for the weather, his hands tucked under his armpits. Lucas was the youngest of their group, a boy who had been chewed up by the foster system and spat out into the street. He had a cynical wit that masked a desperate need to belong to something, even if that something was a failing circle of addicts.
"It's just cold, Lucas," Ryo said, offering him the joint.
Lucas took a hit, his eyes narrowing as he exhaled. "Everything's cold. Did you hear about Hana?"
The name hit Ryo harder than the drug. Hana. The girl who smelled like vanilla and rain. The only person who had ever looked at his drawings and seen a future instead of a tragedy.
"What about her?" Ryo asked, trying to keep his voice flat.
"She's leaving. For good this time. I saw her at the station earlier. She was with that guy—the one with the suit. Hale? Victor Hale. The guy who owns the development firm."
Ryo felt a hollow thud in his chest. Victor Hale. A man who built glass towers and demolished the lives of people like Ryo for a tax break.
"Good for her," Ryo said, but the words tasted like ash.
"She was crying, Ryo. I think she was looking for you."
"She was looking for someone who doesn't exist anymore," Ryo snapped. He took the joint back and inhaled deeply, holding it until his vision blurred.
He didn't want to think about Hana in a glass tower with a man who could provide a life that didn't involve counting coins for bread. He didn't want to think about the way she used to hold his hand and tell him that his talent was a way out.
"You're a coward, you know that?" Lucas said, his voice surprisingly soft. "You'd rather drown in this shit than try to swim. You think it makes you deep. It just makes you a corpse."
"Get lost, Lucas."
The younger boy shrugged and walked away into the dark. Ryo was alone again. The snow was falling faster now, a white shroud beginning to cover the filth of the alleyways.
He leaned his head back against the cold metal of the bench. The drug was finally taking hold. The world began to lose its sharp edges. The concrete didn't feel so hard anymore. The sounds of the city drifted away, replaced by a low, humming drone in his ears.
*"I'm better than them,"* he thought, a familiar, poisonous mantra. *I see the world for what it is. They're all just actors in a bad play. I'm the only one who knows the script is blank.*
He closed his eyes. In his mind, he wasn't sitting on a broken bench in a dying park. He was standing on a cliff, looking out over an ocean of ink. He had a brush in his hand, and he was going to paint the sun.
But as he reached out, the ink rose up. It wasn't water; it was thick, black oil. It wrapped around his ankles, his waist, and his throat. It tasted like the smoke in his lungs.
He opened his eyes with a gasp. The joint had fallen from his fingers, burning a small hole in his pants.
He stood up, his legs shaking. He needed to get back. The buffered feeling was gone, replaced by a sudden, sharp anxiety. The air felt too thin. The buildings seemed to be leaning in, narrowing the street until it was a throat ready to swallow him.
He began to walk, then run. He didn't know where he was going. He just needed to outrun the silence.
He crossed the street without looking. The screech of tires was the last thing he heard—a high, piercing sound that cut through the humming in his ears. Then came the impact.
It wasn't a sudden pain. It was a sudden absence of everything. He felt himself lifted, tossed like a rag doll against the very concrete he had spent his life hating.
His head hit the curb.
The last thing Ryo Kazehara saw was the moon, pale and indifferent, staring down at him through the smog. And for a split second, before the darkness rushed in, he thought he heard a thousand voices screaming at once, all inside his head.
Then, there was only the shadow.