Eric's alarm clock rang at five in the morning.
He rolled over, habitually reached out to smack the battered mechanical alarm clock beside his bed silent, then lay there for another two minutes before reluctantly getting up when it rang a second time.
The sky outside the window was a dull gray, making it impossible to tell whether it was the morning mist or black smoke belched out by factory chimneys.
Mornings in Mist City were always like this. You could never tell where the sun was.
He lived on the third floor of this old apartment building, in a single room less than ten square meters in size.
One bed, one table, one wardrobe—that was the entirety of his possessions.
His window faced the narrow cobblestone road below. The street was always wet, and nobody knew whether it was rainwater or wastewater discharged from some factory.
Eric spent ten minutes washing up and getting dressed, then fished two banknotes out of the tin can on the table and tucked them into his pocket.
The bakery downstairs sold day-old bread every morning. It cost half as much and was hard enough to kill someone with, but soaked in hot water, it could barely fill your stomach.
As he went down the stairs, he habitually glanced out the window.
Then he froze.
Because the street scene that had remained unchanged for so many years—so unchanged that he had almost thought it would stay that way forever—had changed.
Across the street downstairs, three door numbers away, stood a dilapidated house that had been empty for at least seventeen or eighteen years.
More than half the plaster had fallen from its exterior walls, exposing blackened bricks beneath. Two windows on the second floor were broken and nailed shut with wooden boards, while the