The morning Nanyang turned the color of dirty dishwater, Wendy Chen learned exactly how much a signature could cost.
"Just sign here," Mr. Zhao said, tapping the last page of a settlement agreement with a manicured finger. "It's only a formality."
The photocopier in his office coughed warm paper. On the wall behind him, a framed calligraphy for "Integrity" tilted a few degrees left, as if embarrassed to be there.
Wendy kept her hands in her lap so he wouldn't see them shake. The agreement said she was responsible for "procurement negligence" that had caused a multimillion-yuan loss. On the desk, the defective purchase order—hers, apparently—named a cheaper grade of membrane than the contract demanded. She remembered drafting the order. She also remembered uploading the correct spec.
"Someone changed it after I submitted." Her voice sounded like a stranger's. "You know our system logs edits."
Mr. Zhao smiled the way people smile at toddlers insisting the moon follows them home. "IT checked. No irregularities."
A lie. Two weeks ago, Mei from accounting had whispered that someone borrowed Wendy's seal log-in while the server was "down for maintenance." Two days later, Mei stopped answering calls.
"Company can't absorb the loss," Mr. Zhao went on, as if reciting weather. "You're conscientious. Let's be practical. Sign, and we'll let the police matter go quiet."
Police. The word squatted in the room like a dark dog.
Wendy looked at the date: April 8. In her chest something small and winged scratched to get out.
"Give me a day," she said. "I'll take it home. My mother—"
Mr. Zhao's eyelids dropped to half-mast. "We're all family here, Xiao Chen. But family is only family when everyone does their part."
He slid the pen closer. On the clip, the company logo gleamed—two interlocked rings that suddenly looked like manacles.
Wendy stood. "I'll come back tomorrow."
He didn't stop her. How could he? To drag her back, he'd have to show there was a trap.
Outside, the air smelled of coal dust and fried dough. Electric bikes threaded the gray traffic like fish finding secret channels. She walked with no aim, past the herbal shops with garlands of dried roots in their windows, past the riverfront where an LED screen preached prosperity. Nanyang moved as if it always had and always would.
Her phone buzzed.
Jack: You okay? It's late there. Did you eat?
Jack again: I found a café with pie so bad it's charming. You'd hate it. Come taste it anyway.
Jack: I'm not joking, Wen. Come to Sydney. Just rest. Start again.
Eleven hours and a whole planet sat between Jack's morning and Wendy's rotten afternoon. They had met in an English chat room when Nguyen was still called "that Vietnamese guy with impossible grammar" and Jack was someone whose jokes landed two seconds late because of lag. Years later, Jack sent photos of a life that looked airbrushed by sunlight: a harbor stitched with white boats, a beach named Bondi where even the ice cream had abs. He worked somewhere that sounded vaguely technical and wonderfully stable. He called himself a "glorified spreadsheet janitor." He laughed at kookaburras. He never asked for money.
Wendy typed: I can't think. The company, they want— She erased it. Typed again: Tell me about your terrible pie.
Three dots blinked, blinked, blinked. Stopped.
Her mother called.
"Come home early," Ma said. "I made lamb soup. Your aunt is bringing that pickled garlic you like."
"I'm at the river. I'll be there."
"You sound tired."
"I'm fine."
"Don't lie to me. Your sister was at the market. They're saying things at her temple—about your company. Come home."
Wendy ended the call. People were always saying things at temples. The gods were busy; gossips did their work for them.
She stood on the bridge and counted the arches until she reached seven, because seven was a number she could hold like a railing. On the eighth arch she turned and went home.
At dinner the table sagged under bowls: lamb soup with cilantro, noodles slick with sesame, cucumber smashed into submission. The TV muttered a drama nobody watched.
Her older sister, Lin, arrived late, hair pinned like a weapon. "I talked to a lawyer," Lin announced. "If they altered your purchase order, it's fraud. We can sue."
"Eat first," Ma said.
"I'm not hungry."
"You're always hungry," their younger sister, Xia, said. She was half laughter and half knives; today she was knives with pink nail polish. "I told you to stop using the company's stamp system on your phone. Everyone steals everything there."
"It's biometric," Wendy said. "Face ID."
"Faces are easy to steal," Xia said. "They just wear you."
Ma put a hand on Wendy's wrist. "We don't fight. We fix. Tell us exactly which paper they want you to sign."
Wendy laid the agreement on the table. The characters looked fat and smug under the warm light.
Ma's thumb traced the words for "negligence," the way she used to trace characters on Wendy's back when teaching her to write: simple strokes first, then the complicated ones. "They think you're soft," Ma said. "People think that about you because you don't shout."
Wendy bit her lip. "I don't want to shout."
Lin rotated the paper so it faced her. "Mr. Zhao has a cousin on the supplier's board. I checked. That's your 'no irregularities.' They need a body."
"You checked?" Wendy asked.
Lin cocked a brow. "What do you think I do between accounting audits? I gossip like an auntie and call it due diligence."
Xia's phone chimed. "Your friend Mei posted a photo yesterday." She paused. "Then deleted her account."
Wendy felt the winged thing in her chest tire itself out, rest for a breath, then start again.
Ma ladled soup for everyone. "We'll return the pot before we borrow a new one," she said, which was her way of saying: We will not let debt make us fools.
It should have been simple, right then—take Lin's lawyer, take Ma's stubbornness, take Xia's speed, make a shield out of sisters and soup. But Depression didn't do simple. It built rooms inside rooms and locked the doors behind you.
After dinner, Wendy lay on her childhood bed and watched the ceiling fan pretend to be the wind. Her head carried too many versions of tomorrow. In one, she signed and became a cautionary tale. In another, she refused and woke up to men at the door. In a third, she ran with no plan and called it courage. She had told herself for years that leaving was failure. Tonight, staying looked like it.
Her phone chimed.
Unknown number: You think Sydney is far? Paper follows you further.
Unknown number: Pay what you owe. Everyone sleeps better.
Her mouth went dry. She took a screenshot, sent it to Lin.
Lin: Don't reply. Forward to me and to the lawyer. I'll check the number.
Wendy closed her eyes and tried to count down from one hundred. At ninety-four, she remembered an affidavit she'd translated in college for a professor who couldn't tell "effect" from "affect." At sixty-eight, she remembered Jack's first voice message, his vowels stretched by some other sun. At thirty-one, she remembered Mr. Zhao's pen, bright as a hooked fish.
At five, she stopped remembering at all.
Wendy woke to the sound of her mother boiling water like a verdict. A Saturday that pretended to be gentle spread itself under the windows: bird chatter, the clank of tiles from the mahjong parlor downstairs. She sat up and waited for the fog to thin. It didn't. It sat on her chest, a patient animal.
She brushed her teeth, spat, stared at the woman in the mirror. The woman looked competent, which was the cruelest trick of mirrors.
In the kitchen, Ma folded jiaozi with fingers that moved like prayer. "Your father used to say," Ma began, which meant grief was coming to the table uninvited, "that luck isn't a wind. It's a door. You decide to open it or not."
Wendy sealed a dumpling too hard; its belly burst. "I don't want to be the kind of person who runs."
Ma put down the dough. "There are two kinds of running. One is away. One is toward."
"You want me to go."
"I want you to look at your choices with both eyes." Ma's gaze didn't waver. "You are not a pot to be filled. You are a person. If here turns you into a pot, go see if there makes you a person again."
Lin breezed in, eyes already on her second phone. "Number was a burner," she said without hello. "Registered last month, three messages total, all harassment. I asked a friend at telecom to freeze it. Also, your boss sent an email at midnight, cc'd legal. I replied requesting all system logs for your purchase order and the seal app. Dead silence."
"Mei?" Wendy asked.
"Her landlord says she moved out yesterday. Cash. No forwarding address." Lin dropped her voice. "Wen, the audit team arrives Monday. They want a scalp before they leave."
Xia looked up from her bowl. "If Sydney is a trap, it's at least got better weather."
"Not helpful," Lin said without heat.
Wendy laughed, and the sound surprised her. It sounded not quite like a sob. "Jack invited me again."
"Jack is a spreadsheet janitor in Australia," Xia said. "How dangerous can he be."
"Dangerous enough if he's a catfish," Lin countered. "We've all seen documentaries."
"He's sent videos," Wendy protested. It felt like a thin umbrella in heavy rain.
Lin's eyes softened. "Then verify more. Ask him to video call at a specific time from his office, hold today's newspaper, spin around. Make him ridiculous. Real people can stand being ridiculous."
Ma wiped her hands on her apron. "If you go, go because you choose. Not because fear pushes or Jack pulls."
Wendy looked at the flour on her mother's hands, the little white moons on brown skin. She didn't feel chosen by courage. She felt chased by exhaustion.
Her phone buzzed with a new email. Subject: Attachment: Flight Itinerary. No sender name, just a string of numbers. She opened it. A PDF blinked up: a reservation for a flight to Sydney in three days, departing Zhengzhou at 11:15 p.m., connecting in Guangzhou. The passenger name said "CHEN WENDY." The fare said "HOLD: UNPAID."
There was a note in the body of the email: You already chose. — J.
Wendy's stomach went cold, then hot. She forwarded it to Lin.
Lin: Not from Jack's email. Different IP, different domain. This J could be anyone. Or it's him and he thinks he's dramatic. Either way, this is pressure. Don't let anonymous people curate your fate.
Wendy put the kettle on again even though it was already on. The water rattled like distant applause.
At noon, Mr. Zhao called.
"Xiao Chen," he said in a voice slick with concern, "no need to make this bigger than it is. Bring the signed agreement Monday morning, and we'll settle everything. I'd hate for outsiders to think poorly of your conduct."
"You mean the auditors. Or the police." Wendy's words surprised her. They held. "If I sign, I want the system logs. And a statement saying the company takes shared responsibility for vendor management."
Silence. The kind that tells you someone is deciding how much of you he needs to keep and how much he can afford to lose.
"That's not how these things work," he said at last. "Don't be foolish."
The fog in Wendy's chest shifted. A corner of the room sharpened, then another. "Then I won't sign."
Mr. Zhao chuckled. "Where will you go?"
Wendy looked at the itinerary on her screen, at the word Sydney standing there like a dare and a door. She thought of Jack's bad pie. She thought of Mei's sudden silence. She thought of her mother's hands and her sisters' voices and how love can feel like both anchor and rope burn.
"I don't know," she said. "But not where you point."
She hung up before he could shape the word consequences into the room.
Ma stood in the doorway, a towel thrown over her shoulder. "I heard," she said simply.
"I'm scared," Wendy said.
"Of course." Ma's face softened. "Fear is not a police officer. It cannot force you to do anything."
The doorbell rang. All three women turned. Ma made a small gesture—stay. Lin went to the door, peeked, then opened it a crack. A courier handed over a small cardboard box, no return address. Lin set it on the table and cut the tape with a key.
Inside lay a single item: Wendy's office mug—white ceramic, a chipped lip—wrapped in company letterhead. The mug was cracked through the handle. The letterhead had one sentence printed in 12-point font:
We wish you every success in your future endeavors.
Xia whistled. "They threw your life away and sent the trash back COD."
Wendy picked up the mug. It fit her palm the way it always had. The crack pinched her finger, the small clean pain of something honest.
She set the mug down carefully. "I'm going to call Jack," she said. "On video. From his office. With a newspaper if I can bully him into finding one."
"And then?" Lin asked.
Wendy looked at the itinerary again. The hold would expire in twenty-four hours. Decision, like milk, has a shelf life.
"Then I pack a bag," she said, and heard her voice steady itself on the sentence. "And I go to Zhengzhou. And I don't sign anything except immigration forms."
Ma nodded once, as if checking a final box on a list only she could see. "Take the red sweater," she said. "Sydney pretends to be warm."
The phone in Wendy's hand buzzed. Jack's face filled the screen—bright office, a fern behind him, a blue sky so saturated it looked fake. He grinned, then held up today's Sydney Morning Herald and spun in his chair like an idiot.
"Is this ridiculous enough?" he asked, breathless. "Please come before I develop taste for terrible pie."
Wendy began to laugh and didn't stop until it sounded like crying. Then she wiped her face and said, "Maybe."
Behind her, Lin snapped a photo of the cracked mug and the letterhead. Evidence, or memory, or both.
Outside, the dirty dishwater sky lightened by half a shade. Not blue. Not yet. But lighter than before.