Chapter 210 - Out

Talon stood before the door of the small studio apartment, staring at a plain slab of gray metal fitted with a cheap lock and framed by peeling paint, and the sight of it struck him with a force far greater than its shabby appearance should have allowed. There was nothing remarkable about the door itself, nothing that suggested it should belong to someone like Yu, whose very existence had always seemed too radiant, too vivid, and too extraordinary to be contained by anything so worn and ordinary. The contrast cracked something open inside him, because after five years of imagining every possible version of survival, he had still not prepared himself for the indignity of seeing Yu reduced to a life hidden behind such meager protection.