Tian hummed cheerfully as he juggled an armful of clothes, balancing the t-shirt-wrapped piglet precariously on top of the pile. The load was honestly way too much for one person, so he was using his chin as a makeshift support beam, his neck cramping with every step. Behind him, the old man pulled the house door shut with a soft click.
"You can go home now," Grandpa Chao said.
"But... the store?" Tian blinked, genuinely confused. It wasn't even close to closing time.
"Eh, we'll close up early. It's not like we're drowning in customers anyway." The old man waved a dismissive hand.
"Oh. Okay then. Goodbye, Grandpa Chao." Tian waved enthusiastically, nearly dropping the entire pile in the process. The old man didn't really wave back. He just sat in his chair on the terrace, gazing out into the empty street with a faraway, lonely look in his eyes—the kind of look that made Tian's chest feel a little tight, even if he didn't fully understand why.
He shook it off and hurried home.
The second he stepped inside, he dumped the clothes and the piglet onto the bed without much ceremony. Right on cue, Lu Chen's mother walked in.
"You're back early, kid."
"Yes, Aunty! My shift ended sooner than expected." He kicked off his shoes and padded toward the small kitchen. "Are you making dinner? Do you need any help?"
The older woman was already at the counter, happily chopping vegetables, humming under her breath. "You can wash those cucumbers."
Tian rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Together, the two of them cooked up a meal—well, "together" was generous. Tian's culinary skills could best be described as "chaotic enthusiasm". He nearly took off a fingertip, dropped half a tomato on the floor, and somehow managed to set off the smoke alarm with nothing but boiling water. But Lu Chen's mom just laughed and patiently fixed every single one of his blunders, never once losing her smile.
Peace and warmth filled the little house. It was, by all accounts, a perfectly ordinary, happy evening.
---
But in the city, something "much" bigger was brewing.
The stock markets had crashed. Major tech companies were scrambling like ants under a magnifying glass, frantically trying to keep their footing as the markets swung wildly up and down. And the reason for all this beautiful chaos?
The disappearance of the most prominent tech genius and CEO of a multimillion-dollar empire: Hui Lang.
He had vanished into thin air—but not before leaving behind a string of cryptic, eerie messages to his subordinates. Messages that left them completely in shambles, scrambling and panicking and trying to piece together a single, solitary clue.
And one person in particular was far more stressed than the rest.
"Did you get it? The CCTV footage?" Jun Ming paced around the office like a caged animal, gnawing at his fingernails down to the quick.
"Sir, we managed to pull footage from the nearby stores and the streets. It's being verified right now—"
"No time. Just show me." Jun Ming practically launched himself across the room, shoving his way to the computer and pulling up every clip he could find.
There he was. Hui Lang. Sitting in a restaurant, eating.
It all looked perfectly normal. After all, his boss always wore that same stone-cold expression, even while enjoying his favorite food. The man could be served the best meal of his life and you'd never know it from his face.
But then...
Jun Ming squinted. "Something" happened.
His boss's eyes shifted. Locked onto someone across the room. And that face—that famously emotionless, granite slab of a face—
Looked "shocked."
"What is he looking at?" Jun Ming whispered, leaning in until his nose nearly touched the screen. "I've "never" seen him make that expression."
He waved off the other employees and dug deeper into the mystery, switching between camera angles.
The footage from inside the restaurant was crystal clear.
His boss was staring at a young man. Another lone diner. Only the young man's back was visible, but Jun Ming could make out enough—roughly five and a half feet tall, with soft black hair that fell to his neck in feather-light wisps.
He changed the camera again. Kept watching.
His expressionless boss "still" had that shocked look frozen on his face.
It was, to put it mildly, "surprising." This was a man who had never shown a flicker of emotion in his entire life. The kind of guy who, if the literal world were ending and the sky cracked in half, would just glance up, mumble ""Ah, so it's the end,"" and go back to sipping his coffee. That was the kind of person Hui Lang was.
And yet—he was making an "expression."
At a young man!
"Who is this guy?" Jun Ming's brain spun.
He watched as Hui Lang slowly began to type something on his phone, that same forlorn, faraway look softening his eyes. Jun Ming checked the timestamp on the footage—and his blood ran cold.
It was the "exact" moment his boss had sent the message ordering him to liquidate all his assets.
"Why...? What made him do that...? Who "is" this man?" He clicked through angle after angle, trying desperately to get a clear shot of the boy's face. But nothing worked. It was as if something were deliberately "blurring" the young man's face, and his face alone.
The video rolled on. A waiter approached and chatted with Hui Lang—but somehow, his boss's eyes never left the young man.
And then something "much" stranger happened.
A burst of feathers appeared around the young man. With a soft "poof." They scattered through the air, drifting down all around him like the petals of a wilting flower.
"...What?" Jun Ming breathed.
It got weirder.
The young man's face—blurred this entire time—suddenly snapped into perfect focus.
He was crying. Tears streaming down his cheeks while a waiter tried to console him. Moments later, the young man left, the waiter following close behind. And shortly after that, Hui Lang stood up and left the restaurant too.
Jun Ming sat back, completely shell-shocked.
"What "is" this... is this a love triangle or something?! This doesn't make "any" sense! Was my boss—was my boss "heartbroken"?! And I didn't even "know" about it?!" He clutched his head. The world's most ruthless CEO. Heartbroken. Over a crying stranger in a restaurant. The very thought short-circuited his brain.
He scrambled to his feet and called the other assistant back into the room.
"Who else has access to this CCTV footage?"
"The police, sir... and the team trying to track Mister Lang down."
"Remove all authorization. No employees view this footage. I'll do the search myself."
"But sir—"
"Just "listen" to me." Jun Ming's voice dropped, deadly serious. "Something is very, very wrong here. I have to find out on my own."
---
And so, while the frantic search for the missing Hui Lang raged across the city, the protagonist himself—the great vanished subject of the manhunt—finally woke up from his beauty nap.
Yawning softly, Hui Lang blinked his beady little eyes and gazed around at the familiar ugly walls.
"Ah. I'm back at the house. So that guy's done with his shift for today, huh..."
Then he noticed his current predicament. He was lying on top of a mountain of clothes piled high as a hill. And from the perspective of his tiny, vulnerable piglet body, the sheer "height" of it all very nearly gave him a heart attack.
"What the f—!"
He clung to the t-shirt beneath him for dear life, trotters trembling.
"That stupid angel left me in such a DANGEROUS position! One roll and I'm a piglet pancake! I swear, I am going to bite that guy's ass! I SWEAR it!"
Trembling, he slowly, "carefully" picked his way down the towering pile of clothes, sliding the last stretch and flopping onto the floor with an indignant little "oink."
Soft voices drifted from down the hall.
His ears twitched. He immediately dashed off, fully prepared to march in there and give that annoying angel a "generous" piece of his mind.
But he skidded to a halt right at the kitchen doorway.
Inside the old lady and the stupid angel were talking and laughing while they cooked together. The whole scene was unbearably warm and harmonious and "nice" to look at.
Especially the angel.
He looked... ethereal, laughing like that. Soft and bright and utterly unguarded.
Hui Lang stood frozen, his little piglet heart doing something strange.
"Why does this guy hate me so much?" he thought, staring. "He doesn't hate humans. He's clearly perfectly capable of being kind. So why ME? What did I even do to him? I've never harmed him in any way. Not once." All the spiteful, hateful things the angel had said to him replayed in his head, and his snout drooped.
Then he shook his head violently, ears flapping.
"No. No, no, no. Snap out of it. I have to focus. I need to contact my people."
He shoved all the useless, mopey thoughts away and bolted back into the bedroom.
Earlier that morning, the old lady had handed the stupid angel a mobile phone before he left for work—and that guy had just "tossed" it carelessly onto the bed and walked out the door.
"It's my chance."
Grinning a little piggy grin, Hui Lang scrambled up onto the bed and located the phone. To his utter delight—the thing was "unlocked." No passcode. No fingerprint. Nothing.
Triumphant, he nudged open the dialer with his snot, smearing a little piglet snot across the screen, and then—
He paused.
"...Wait."
"What's my assistant's number?"
"...No way."
"No way. I—I don't actually know ANYONE'S number?! Technology has made me DUMB! I have a phone surgically attached to my hand twenty-four hours a day and I can't remember a SINGLE PHONE NUMBER?!"
He let out a long, anguished "OINK," wailing at the cruel, cruel injustice of the universe.