But when Yuren was around… the noise paused.
Somehow, with his sharp grin and dry humor, his terrible karaoke impersonations when we closed late, his dramatic sighs whenever I forgot my gloves, he kept me afloat. He didn’t ask about the pain in my eyes or the way my hands sometimes trembled when a name slipped from a customer’s mouth. He knew, and he didn’t press. He just gave me space, and in that space, I could breathe.
But he’d been gone for two days now.
Mysteriously. As always.
“Family stuff,” he’d muttered the last time. “It’s complicated.”
Everything was complicated.
And now I was alone again.
The streets were quieter here. Cracks ran along the cobblestones, and a distant siren echoed somewhere too far away to mean anything. The streetlights flickered above, their dull glow b
