749 Bureau Work Notes

My name is Chen Mo. I was born with yin-yang eyes and can see a strange world beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Before I stepped through that iron door painted a bizarre dark teal, my life was like that of most young people struggling in the urban jungle of concrete and steel: ordinary, even a little dull.

A nine-to-five probationary job, a salary that barely covered expenses each month, and... a pair of eyes that had never done me any good since I could remember.

The sunny world everyone else saw was always veiled in a faint gray haze to me.

Black shadows curled up in corners, white-clad figures appearing out of nowhere in stairwells late at night, even colored mists coiling around certain people, representing different emotions or fortunes... They were everywhere, silently pressing in on my nerves and leaving me living like a frightened bird.

I’d seen countless doctors, from neurologists who relied on science to folk “masters.” Their conclusions were always “delusions,” “too much stress,” or, at worst, that I was a freak.

Over time, I learned to keep quiet. When I saw those “things,” I learned to force my gaze away and pretend everything was normal.

It became instinctive, a way to survive.

Then, three months ago, a man wearing a black Sun Yat-sen suit, with a manner as stiff as an old piece of wood, knocked on the door of my rented apartment.

He said his surname was Wang and that he was from an organization I’d never heard of: Bureau 749.