"It belongs to one of the Feathers of a broken Wing." Zhou Zhuang repeated the phrase the middle-aged man had just used.
"That's right. A Feather of a broken Wing." Gregor took a drag from the cigarette in his hand.
"In the City, while a Wing is still spreading its feathers, the Feathers attached to it are people the Backstreets can never hope to reach. A Feather living in a Nest can enjoy benefits that begin practically from the moment they are born and last until the day they die—medical care, education, work, food, clothing, housing, transportation, everything."
"And the price of becoming a Feather is just one damn condition: work for the Wing. Of course, becoming a Feather doesn't mean you can rest easy forever. Inside a Wing, even if you want to stay where you are, you'll still get dragged along by all the people trying to climb higher. Either you become their stepping stone, or you surpass them and climb over their heads instead. Ah, I'm getting off track. Sorry." Realizing he had wandered from the point, Gregor apologized to Zhou Zhuang and pulled the conversation back.
"When a Wing is broken for one reason or another, then as one of the Feathers of that broken Wing, every convenience and privilege you once enjoyed vanishes like a wisp of smoke. And from the moment that Wing falls, you're branded with a title of shame.
"The instant any employer sees your application, they'll toss your résumé into the trash without a second thought. And if you want to shake off that title, there's only one way: make yourself so valuable that people can ignore the disgrace hanging over you. Otherwise, all you can do is pray you saved enough money in the first half of your life to last until you die."
"I see." Zhou Zhuang nodded along. It made sense. If getting into a Wing and becoming a Feather had already consumed all of a person's energy, then the low-level Feathers who never managed to climb within the company would have no achievements worth mentioning when the Wing collapsed, and no chance of successfully jumping ship.
Seeing that Zhou Zhuang understood, Gregor continued explaining the reason for his current sorry state. "Of course, more importantly, there was the source of the greatest evil in history—the Smoke War, that single catastrophe that broke two Wings at once."
"Oh, that, I know." As soon as the story reached a point he recognized, Zhou Zhuang immediately responded. "The event where the current L Corp and several other companies launched a war and successfully used it to rise to power."
The old man at the side, no longer able to bear sitting out a topic he knew so well, finally gave in to the urge to share and joined the conversation.
"The Smoke War, huh. After that war ended, the fate of every single survivor was changed by it." The old man dragged over a stool and sat down beside Gregor. Ignoring Gregor's cursing, he casually took the pack of cigarettes from the table, pulled one out, and lit it.
"In the early days of the war, most of the Fixers who took part were lured in by all the empty promises—people saying that once the war was over, they'd be rewarded with residency rights in a Nest. Tempted by that bait, those blinded by profit each chose the side they fancied. The victors took everything. The losers left nothing but bones."
The old man's gaze drifted back into memory.
"During the war, methods known and unknown flew through the air. Every second, every moment, countless unlucky bastards died. By the late stages, nobody even knew whether the person beside them was an enemy or an ally. People who had killed until they were numb simply acted on instinct, slaughtering whoever entered their range. Because if you didn't kill them, they'd kill you."
He took a deep drag from his cigarette and continued.
"But then, after the war ended, after the dust had finally settled, all we got—after crawling back from hell alive—was one light, casual sentence: 'All participants in the Smoke War are barred from gaining residency rights in any Wing.' Heh. What a joke. If you didn't join, you couldn't get residency. If you did join, you still couldn't live there. All I can say is, the big shots upstairs really are impressive. They took all the benefits for themselves and dumped all the consequences on us."
"Yeah, those big shots really are shameless." Zhou Zhuang ground his teeth as he chewed on the skewer in his hand. "Still, I didn't expect the two of you to have gone through something like that. Both of you survived the Smoke War, and one of you is even a Feather from a broken Wing."
Gregor immediately corrected him. "No, kid. I wasn't like this old fossil here, watching the whole thing from start to finish. I was just a deserter before the war even ended."
"That's still not bad! At least you survived." Zhou Zhuang waved a hand, making it clear that, to him, deserter or last survivor—it was all the same.
Then suddenly, a flash of insight shot through his mind.
A Feather from a broken Wing. A deserter from the Smoke War. A worn-out middle-aged man. Not very tall, either.
Zhou Zhuang picked those keywords apart one by one, then looked Gregor up and down with a scrutinizing gaze.
Having made a little more room in his stomach through conversation, Gregor reached into the middle, took a piece of chicken breast he had picked out earlier, and started eating. Then he noticed Zhou Zhuang staring at him from across the table.
"What is it, kid?" Gregor asked around a mouthful of meat, puzzled by that questioning stare. "Did you suddenly think of something?"
Hearing the question, Zhou Zhuang hesitated for a moment before asking for more details.
"Um, sir. Let me ask you something. If you don't want to answer, just pretend I never said anything. Which of the two Wings broken in the Smoke War did you work for?"
Faced with such a pointed question, Gregor fell silent. Even his chewing stopped.
Just as he was about to apologize to Zhou Zhuang, the old man beside him cut in instead.
And with the words that followed, Gregor's expression stiffened further and further.
"I'll answer for him, kid. From what I can tell, you don't seem like a bad person. Him? He was the war hero pushed forward by the former G Corp—their most successful model specimen of augmentation surgery."
"Gregor." x2
Hearing Zhou Zhuang speak Gregor's name at the exact same time he did, the old man looked surprised.
"So you knew already, kid?"
"Ah, only after you explained that this man was the war hero G Corp pushed to the front. That's when it clicked."
"Gregor…" Zhou Zhuang murmured the name under his breath. After repeating it a few times, he finally snapped out of the sudden shock of delight.
Then, with growing excitement, he fixed Gregor with a blazing stare.
Damn, this really fell right into my lap. I actually ran into Bug Uncle from the Thirteen Sinners just like that.
Under Zhou Zhuang's increasingly intense gaze, Gregor's whole body stiffened. He had just started to raise his head to explain himself when the overexcited Zhou Zhuang blurted it out first.
"Sir—no, Gregor. I sincerely invite you to join my company."
"I… huh?"
....
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