Forty-One Days in the Darkroom

A northern port city. Half the year, it is steeped in sea fog. The fog rolls in from the ocean, creeping along the ground, never lifting by day or night. The old buildings of the eastern docks, the Xiling tenement district on the western slope, and the Salt Warehouse District thirty kilometers north of the city. In this city, the dead cannot lie, and the living cannot object. That is why I have to die. Only when I'm dead will my words count.