Yang Junheng’s Junheng Bistro sits on an old street in Qingyu City. Every morning at four, he starts simmering soup, while his spirit pet Yuanbao crouches by the stove, using its tail to predict the day’s profits and losses. His neighbor Zhou Min asks him to cater a birthday banquet for free, his childhood friend Sun Demao has owed him money for six months, and Lin Qiaoyun, the neighborhood committee director, is always saying, “Young people should contribute more.” He smiles and agrees, until Yuanbao’s prediction shows that his luck will hit zero today. He closes his eyes and serves the last portion of braised pork to the old man who never pays. The moment the old man takes his first bite, tears suddenly splash into the bowl. The tip of Yuanbao’s tail glows gold, but the price is that it can’t move for three days.
Late that night, after closing, a line in unfamiliar handwriting appears in the ledger: “Heaven will repay you for taking things slow.” He looks up to see a girl carrying an instrument case outside the door: Yang Yao. She asks, “I heard you can repair the old pipa my father left behind?”
At eleven at night, the last streetlamp on the old street went out.
Lin Shen’s tweezers kept moving.
Squinting, he lined them up with a hairspring in the clock mechanism, finer than a strand of hair, and held his breath.
More than a hundred parts lay scattered across the table. Brass gears were piled like a small hill, and the volatile watch oil stung his nostrils with the rusty tang of meshing metal.
Old Bai crouched on the edge of the desk lamp’s shade, its gray-white feathers dyed orange by the warm light. Its claws gripped the sheet metal, making a faint creaking sound.
It tilted its head, watching Lin Shen’s fingers, then suddenly spoke:
“Someone will knock in three seconds.”
Lin Shen’s hand jerked. The tweezers slipped off the hairspring and scratched a white line across the brass plate.
“Could you please...”
“Bang, bang,”
