Chapter 1
The Man the World Forgot
The room smelled of smoke.
Not the sharp bite of a fresh cigarette—
but the stale, suffocating odor of something that had been rotting here for years.
The curtains were half-drawn, allowing only a thin slice of grey daylight to enter. Dust drifted through that beam like ash, slow and weightless, as if even time had grown tired inside this place.
A bottle lay on its side near the table.
Another stood upright, half-empty.
The air was cold.
The heater had stopped working months ago.
Or perhaps Zheng Wen Te simply no longer cared enough to fix it.
He sat in the corner, shoulders hunched, a cigarette trembling faintly between his fingers.
His hair, once neatly combed for business meetings, was now streaked with white. His face carried the quiet ruin of someone who had been awake too long in a life that refused to stop.
Fifty years old.
Not ancient.
Not young.
Just… worn down.
He stared at the floor until the cigarette burned nearly to his skin.
Ash fell.
He did not move.
The television in the corner was dark.
No noise.
No voices.
He didn't want voices.
Voices reminded him of everything he had lost.
His gaze drifted toward the wall.
A photograph hung there, crooked in its frame.
A family photo.
A man, a woman, a son, a daughter—
all smiling, warm, alive.
He looked at it the way a starving man looks at food behind glass.
Not with hunger.
With grief.
His lips parted slightly.
No sound came out.
What was there to say?
Sorry?
Come back?
I tried?
None of those words mattered anymore.
Five years.
Five years since the business collapsed.
Five years since the calls stopped being answered.
Five years since his home became nothing but a shell.
He inhaled again, slow.
The smoke filled his lungs like poison.
Maybe that was the point.
He exhaled.
The smoke curled upward, disappearing into the dimness—
just like everything else.
Once…
this room had been filled with laughter.
Once…
he had believed effort meant something.
Five Years Earlier
Back then, warmth still existed.
Zheng Wen Te had owned a small shop. Nothing glamorous, nothing famous—
but it was honest.
It was his.
The days were long, the stress constant, but when his phone buzzed with a message—
Wife: Are you coming home? The kids miss you.
—something inside him loosened.
He typed back quickly.
Zheng Wen Te: Soon. I'll bring their favorite.
That night, dinner was simple.
Rice.
Soup.
A table full of voices.
A home full of life.
He remembered thinking, briefly, that peace was something permanent.
He was wrong.
The Collapse
It began quietly.
A missed payment.
A delayed shipment.
A contract that vanished without explanation.
Then another.
Then another.
The world shifted, like ice cracking beneath his feet.
Zheng Wen Te worked harder.
Longer hours.
Less sleep.
He smiled through exhaustion and told his wife—
"Just a rough patch."
But rough patches did not always pass.
Sometimes…
they swallowed you whole.
The day the bank called, his hands shook so badly he dropped the phone.
The day he closed the shop for the last time, he stood outside the locked door for nearly an hour, unable to move.
It felt like burying a version of himself.
Debt piled up.
Friends vanished.
The city that once nodded politely now looked away.
His wife tried, at first.
She really did.
But stress was a slow poison.
Love could suffocate under enough weight.
Arguments became frequent.
Silence became normal.
Then one day—
she packed.
The children stood behind her, confused and frightened.
His daughter cried.
"Papa… are you coming too?"
Zheng Wen Te opened his mouth.
No words came.
His son looked at him with disappointment too old for his age.
His wife's voice trembled.
"I can't do this anymore."
The door closed.
And the world became unbearably quiet.
Now
Five years later…
Zheng Wen Te sat alone.
A man hollowed out by time.
He no longer chased dreams.
He no longer believed effort mattered.
All he did was smoke.
Drink.
Eat only when hunger became unbearable.
Outside, the world continued.
Children ran.
.