Hollywood Road smelled like wet fireworks. The typhoon had stopped chewing up the city three nights ago, but the city still bled stormwater, gutters carrying incense ash and neon reflections like clotted blood. Shops had dried themselves as best they could: antique stores propping their porcelain gods back in windows, paint flaking from once-proud signs, bamboo scaffolds cinched tight with ropes that looked more like stitches than repairs.
Fortune-tellers had already reclaimed the street, dragging plastic stools into place beneath tarps patched with duct tape and talismans. Each stall shouted louder than the next. One hawked charms to banish water spirits, another promised to "stabilize your stars" for the low price of HKD 300. Their AR banners flickered half-dead in the drizzle, layering glitching horoscopes over real smoke.
Tourists loved it. Ponchos squeaked like plastic bags as they milled between the stalls, holding up phones that overlaid neon kanji across their selfies. "Authentic Hong Kong mysticism," Iris thought, watching an auntie smack a dripping talisman flat onto a tram pole and charge a banker in loafers for the blessing. Authentic her ass.
her backpack wriggled. Warmth purred through the canvas, steady as a small generator. She tapped the strap once, firm. "Don't start, Kid. Mama's just buying smokes."
Not cigarettes. Those had died with cash. The only vice she let herself keep was the violet-leaf sticks — synthetic, enchanted, who knew — their ember glowing the wrong color, their smoke curling sweet-metallic into her lungs. A comfort ritual, not addiction.
Man Mo Temple was the only place that still carried them.
The temple hunched between shops like it resented being noticed. Roof tiles slick from rain, stone lions dripping on their paws, red pillars bleeding pigment into puddles. As Iris approached, she saw the commotion:
A chromehead stood at the gate arguing with a monk.
He was built like a forklift wrapped in wet leather, limbs lacquered in aug-steel, dermal plates shined mirror-bright.
"Just one blessing, laa! My shop drowned."
The monk at the door didn't flinch. He barred the way with two fingers and a bow. His robes clung to him like soaked parchment but his voice carried steady. "For your safety, sir. The wards will unseat your circuits."
The chromehead tried to shoulder forward. The air rippled around him, vermilion brushstrokes painted across the doorway shivering like angry ghosts.
The monk's head inclined, polite as steel. "Better no blessing than a melted spine."
The chromehead cursed, loud and bitter, then stomped back into the street. His overlays jittered into nonsense symbols as if the temple itself had spat on them. Tourists parted around him with the kind of respect reserved for dangerous animals.
Iris slipped past, muttering, "Goddamn cyberpsychos. Some people don't know when to stop bolting shit on."
Inside was a furnace. Coils of incense spiraled down from the rafters like burning galaxies, smoke dragging low enough to scratch her tongue. The altar drowned in folded petitions and AR overlays advertising "Blessings at Scale." QR codes shimmered faintly in the air where devotees had stuck them over centuries-old wood.
The counter monk knew her. Teeth parchment-yellow, fingers stained from decades of nicotine. He didn't bother with prayer. He slid the violet pack across the wood like contraband candy. Transaction complete.
She should have left.
Instead she heard the voices from the side hall.
Not chanting. Arguing.
She leaned into the doorway. A half-circle of fortune-tellers and geomancers bent over a table littered with talismans, compasses etched in cinnabar, and brushes still dripping with red ink that smelled like iron. A cracked laptop sat among the relics, screen coughing static where ward-lines bled into its circuits.
"You marked it wrong—"
"The south vein shifted in the storm—"
They bickered like it mattered more than breath. Then one of them spotted her. Relief hit his face like dawn.
"Finally," he said. "The runner."
Iris raised a hand. "Sorry, wrong girl—"
Too late. A lacquered box was shoved into her arms. Warm. Heavier than its size. A talisman sealed across its lid, ink bled fast and ugly.
"Ten Thousand Buddhas," the man said. "Sha Tin. Don't shake it."
"I'm not—"
Her AR chimed. Transfer received. Enough zeroes to cut her protest in half.
The satchel wriggled. The kitten sneezed. A violet spark jumped, bit the air, and one of the paper charms curled black and died.
Silence spread around the table. The fortune-tellers looked at her backpack like it was a bomb.
Iris zipped it shut, slid the lacquered box in beside the kitten, and muttered, "All this for a smoke run."
Kowloon steamed like a rusting boiler, everything damp and grumbling. The typhoon had gone but left its fingerprints everywhere — scaffolds lashed together like broken bones, tarps ballooning, tram rails clogged with mud. Monks in orange slickers repainted wards on pylons with brushes that looked better suited for scripture than infrastructure. Every stroke of vermilion bled into the drizzle and fizzed faint in Iris's visor overlay like it didn't want to share bandwidth with the city's circuits.
She cut through it on two wheels, the bike humming steady under her thighs, front tire hissing where puddles hid asphalt. The satchel thumped against her hip, heavier than groceries, warmer than it should be. Every time the kitten shifted, she felt static tickle through the canvas.
The violet pack of smokes rode in her jacket pocket. She lit one on the first long straight, ember flaring wrong against the stormlight. Sweet-metal filled her lungs, curled into her chest like a second breath.
"Worth the trip already," she muttered, though the satchel purred like it disagreed.
Checkpoint ahead. Floodlights washed the road silver. A barricade bristled with portable shrines — brass bowls catching rain, talismans nailed in quick lines across the plastic barriers. Military police stood in black armor, helmets dripping, batons tucked like rifles. One of them flagged her down.
She throttled down, let the bike roll slow.
Scanner baton lifted. Its screen spat static, then filled with drifting hexagrams. The officer cursed under his breath, smacked it once. The hexagrams smeared into a fortune reading: FIRE DRAGON: AVOID TRAVEL. The baton flashed RED — REJECT. The officer swore, smacked it. The screen broke into hexagrams, then PASS. He groaned and waved her through.
Iris saluted sweetly through her visor. "Blessings, officer."
The kitten sneezed at the exact moment she rolled past. Sparks jittered against the barricade. One of the paper wards burst into flame, soggy ashes fluttering sideways. The officers yelped, doused it with a bottle of rainwater. She bit back a laugh.
Keep it up, kid, she thought. We'll get banned citywide by sundown.
She cut left at Mong Kok, alleys still half-flooded. Market stalls were already open, water dripping off tarps into fish buckets. A butcher hacked frozen pork ribs with one hand and nailed a talisman above his stall with the other. A fortune-teller sat cross-legged in rubber boots, reading palms while her AR feed scrolled warnings of another storm.
As Iris passed, one of the vendor drones sputtered overhead, rotors coughing, belly marked with brush-stroked glyphs. Someone had taped joss paper to its casing like a child's drawing. The glyphs wobbled, then glowed, keeping it aloft even as water streaked into its circuits. Magic and tech welded together like a bad marriage, but it worked.
Iris snorted smoke. "Half prayer, half lithium. No wonder this city survives."
She throttled into Nathan Road. The storm had scraped it raw — neon signs still out in half the towers, tarps lashed across broken glass. Screens shouted about Resilience Loans and APEX's Storm Relief Packages in three languages. Between them, monks had projected AR hexagrams straight onto the facades, each one shimmering faint under drizzle. Neon and ward paint glared at each other like rival gangs.
Traffic snarled at the bridge approach. She threaded the gaps, slipping between buses that steamed like caged beasts. One of the drivers spat a curse, then folded his hands in apology — not to her, but to the small shrine bolted to his dash, incense stick glowing faint.
The satchel shifted again. The kitten wriggled free enough to poke his head out, whiskers damp, eyes violet in the gloom. He sneezed.
The taxi beside her lost its headlights for half a breath. A chorus of horns erupted. The driver banged his dash, cursed every ancestor in reach, then the lights flickered back. Iris shoved the kitten back down into the satchel.
"Behave, Wulong," she said without thinking. The name slipped out, foreign but familiar. The kitten purred smug like he'd been waiting for it.
She nearly swerved into a lane divider. "Don't get used to it."
Sha Tin's hills rose dark ahead. Roads narrowed, trees hunched wet and dripping across slopes. The rain tasted sharper here, less city, more mountain. She slowed, checked her mirrors. Nothing behind her but a tram grinding uphill, bells muted by ribbons.
She rolled into the foothill road, throttle low, and found the stairway yawning ahead. Stone steps slick with rain, lined with Buddhas in gold paint that had already started to peel under storm scars.
She killed the engine, rolled the bike under a banyan whose roots gripped the slope like knuckles. The satchel was heavier than before when she swung it onto her shoulder. The lacquered box pressed against her ribs, kitten purring hot beside it.
The climb waited.
She lit a stick, let the ember burn violet against drizzle. "All this," she said, exhale curling sharp, "because I wanted cigarettes."
The kitten sneezed in agreement.