At dusk, as the city lights flickered on one by one, the streets of Brooklyn, New York, glowed with restless life. Among the crowd walked a thin, small-framed girl named Clara Johnson, a flower basket hooked over her arm.
Inside the basket were neatly wrapped bouquets—roses, tulips, carnations, and more. On the streets of New York, children selling flowers to help make ends meet were not uncommon. What set Clara apart, however, was that alongside the real flowers were delicate paper blossoms, folded from brightly colored sheets. These lifelike origami flowers caught the eyes of passersby and earned her far more customers than usual.
As night deepened, foot traffic thinned. Clara carried her basket past the brightly lit commercial district, turned down one narrow alley after another, and finally stopped in front of an old apartment building. She unlocked a worn security door and stepped inside.
A dim yellow bulb illuminated the entire room.
The apartment was tiny—less than ten square meters. A bed, a wardrobe, a table, and two chairs filled almost every inch of space. There was no television, no refrigerator, none of the usual household appliances. And yet, despite being cramped, the room somehow felt empty.
The only thing that truly stood out was the wall.
Pinned there was a poster of Tony Stark, clad in his Iron Man armor—cold, confident, and impossibly charismatic. Surrounding it were countless newspaper clippings, all praising Tony Stark.
From building a circuit board at four years old…
To constructing his own generator at six…
Graduating from MIT at seventeen…
Becoming CEO of Stark Industries at twenty-one…
And finally, publicly declaring to the world that he was Iron Man.
Every achievement, every headline.
Clara poured the day's earnings onto the table and counted the bills carefully, one by one. When she was done, she pulled a metal box from under the bed and placed the money inside.
Then, she let out a long sigh—far too heavy for a twelve-year-old—and smiled bitterly.
The metal box was filled with cash. Eight hundred dollars in total. For a child her age, it was a small fortune.
But it was also everything she had.
The money included not only what Clara had earned selling flowers, but also the entirety of the inheritance left behind by her mother, Laura Johnson. In a city like New York, surviving on this amount was nothing more than a fantasy.
Clara picked up a photograph from her bedside table.
The woman in the photo—sensual and radiant, reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe—was her mother, Laura Johnson.
Who could have imagined that Laura would die in her early thirties, at the height of her beauty? By the time she passed, her face had withered until she looked more like a woman in her fifties.
Drugs had drained away Laura's youth, her money, and her life, leaving behind only a 13-year-old daughter.
Long-term substance abuse made Laura mentally unstable. On her good days, she doted on Clara like any loving mother. On her bad days, Clara became her emotional punching bag. In Clara's eyes, her mother had been a terrifying blend of angel and demon.
A week ago, during one of her episodes, Laura lost control and shoved Clara hard.
Clara fell backward, the back of her head slamming into the corner of the table. Blood poured out. By the time Laura regained her clarity, Clara had already stopped breathing.
In despair, Laura swallowed all the drugs she had left.
She died.
When Clara woke up again, she was no longer the same Clara.
She now carried the memories of 13-year-old Clara Johnson—and twenty-two-year-old Emily Kruser.
She still remembered the terror of opening her eyes to a room full of death. Mother and daughter had both gone to heaven, leaving behind someone entirely unrelated to face the cruelty of reality alone.
"…At least," she whispered, "I'm still alive."
Saying those words was easy. Living them was not.
Whether she was Emily Kruser or Clara Johnson, every day she lived alone in a room where people had died violently. She slept in fear, worried constantly about the rent coming due and the possibility of ending up on the streets.
If it weren't for her deep aversion to the word orphan, she would have packed her bags and gone to an orphanage long ago.
Now, Clara had only two choices.
One was to enter the foster system and live under government care.
The other was to verify a piece of information—true or false—and obtain the funds she needed to survive.
Whenever little Clara had asked Laura who her father was, Laura always gave the same answer.
"Tony Stark."
From Clara's memories, it was clear that Laura had loved Stark deeply. The walls full of newspaper clippings were all her doing. Clara had grown up firmly believing that Tony Stark was her father.
As a child, she hadn't understood what "Chairman of Stark Industries" really meant. But after Tony Stark publicly revealed himself as Iron Man, Clara had proudly told her classmates that she was Iron Man's daughter.
The result was predictable.
Ridicule.
Isolation.
Relentless mockery.
Already introverted, Clara became even more withdrawn and closed off from the world.
Now, she had no choice but to seriously consider the possibility.
Like buying a lottery ticket with two dollars—fully aware that the odds were nearly zero, yet still unable to resist trying.
What truly gave Clara the courage to make a decision was her own face.
She looked a little too much like Tony Stark.
Laura falling in love with Stark hadn't come from nowhere. There must have been something between them once.
After all, Tony Stark hadn't first become famous because he was Iron Man.
He was already world-renowned as a genius billionaire playboy.
Clara took out colored paper, scissors, wire—her tools for making paper flowers.
These weren't for selling.
They were tools she would use to confirm whether she was truly Tony Stark's daughter.
On the table lay a newspaper from a few days ago. The headline, printed in bold letters, featured Tony Stark prominently.
The International Red Cross Building, funded by the Maria Stark Foundation, was set to officially open. The ribbon-cutting ceremony would be personally hosted by Tony Stark himself.
The time: tomorrow at noon.
The location was in Brooklyn—only a few kilometers from where Clara lived. On that day, the plaza would be packed.
Business tycoons.
Media outlets.
And countless fans.
Stark the businessman might not attract overwhelming enthusiasm, but Iron Man's fans were another matter entirely. Anyone hoping to get close to Tony Stark would have to arrive very early.
A sheet of red paper seemed to come alive in Clara's hands. Fold after fold formed delicate petals. Before long, a beautiful three-layered red sunflower took shape.
A sunflower—always turning toward the sun.
Its meaning: passion, joy, warmth.
Unusually, Clara made the stem and leaves out of red paper as well. She added a few modifications of her own, carefully hiding several sharp pieces of wire within the folds.
She placed the sunflower beside the Iron Man poster.
Red petals.
A golden center.
A sunflower facing the sun—just like Tony Stark, the flamboyant man himself.
The thought made Clara laugh.
For the first time, she truly looked like a child.
She set her alarm, kicked off her shoes, pulled the blanket over herself, and lay down to sleep. She didn't turn off the light—the dim yellow glow remained on all night.
Through the small window, one could see that Clara slept uneasily. Her tiny body curled tightly beneath the blanket, almost impossible to spot.
It was the posture of someone who had no sense of safety at all.
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