The inside of the warehouse was... not what Tòumíng had expected.
Instead of the grim, industrial drug den he'd been mentally preparing for, he found himself standing in what looked like a bizarre hybrid of a pharmacy and a DMV.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting that sickly green-white glow that made everyone look slightly ill. A long counter stretched across the far wall, staffed by people in white coats who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else.
Rows of plastic chairs lined the walls, filled with impatient-looking people clutching numbered tickets and tapping their feet with varying degrees of annoyance.
Tòumíng blinked. He looked around, half-expecting hidden cameras to jump out and reveal this was some kind of elaborate prank. But no. This was real. A legitimate-looking pharmacy front, complete with a receptionist, a waiting area, and the kind of bored, bureaucratic energy that made government offices seem exciting by comparison.
"Cupid," he thought, his internal voice flat and confused, "is this a cocaine warehouse or a DMV?"
"Both," Cupid replied, equally baffled. "It's apparently both. The front is a pharmacy. The real stuff is in the back. This is... this is actually kind of brilliant. Who would suspect a drug operation that looks this boring?"
Tòumíng's theory was proven correct about thirty seconds later when a man in an overly polished suit walked through the door. He was the most obvious undercover cop Tòumíng had ever seen, stiff posture, nervous eyes, a haircut that screamed "I just graduated from the academy." He walked up to the receptionist with the kind of forced casualness that made Tòumíng's bullshit detector scream.
"I need some A5 Icodin in the back," the man said, his voice slightly too loud, slightly too rehearsed.
The receptionist didn't blink. She just nodded, pointed to a white door on the left, and said, "Go through there. Someone will assist you."
The undercover cop nodded, swallowed hard, and walked toward the white door. His hand was shaking slightly as he reached for the handle.
Tòumíng watched him go, a strange feeling settling in his stomach. Something was wrong. Something about that code word, "A5 Icodin" felt off. It was too clean, too specific, too obviously designed to sound like legitimate pharmaceutical jargon. The kind of thing a writer would come up with if they'd never actually been inside a real pharmacy.
He filed that thought away and joined the line, Lù Jī still clinging to his arm like a frightened kitten. Twenty minutes passed. Twenty minutes of shuffling forward, of watching people hand over cash and receive small packages in return, of pretending he belonged here while his mind raced through possible scenarios.
Finally, it was his turn.
The receptionist looked up at him with bored eyes, her pen poised over a clipboard. "Name?"
"Tòumíng."
"Business?"
"I need some A5 Icodin in the back."
The words came out automatically, rehearsed, exactly what the earpiece had told him to say. But even as he said them, something felt wrong. His gut was screaming at him, a primal instinct that had kept him alive through three years of debt collection and near-death experiences.
The receptionist's expression didn't change. She just nodded, pointed to the white door, and said, "Go through there. Someone will assist you."
Tòumíng started walking toward the white door, Lù Jī still attached to his arm. He was about to push it open when he heard it.
A soft sound. Almost inaudible. A simple *pew*—the kind of sound a suppressed weapon made in movies, quiet and efficient and utterly final.
Then the sound of a body dropping. Heavy. Final. A wet thud that made Tòumíng's blood run cold.
He froze, his hand hovering over the door handle. His brain processed the sounds, connected the dots, and came to a horrifying conclusion.
The "I need some A5 Icodin in the back" code was a trap. A honeypot designed specifically for undercover cops and other unwelcome visitors. They'd walk through that white door, expecting to find the real operation, and instead they'd find a bullet. A quick, efficient, completely deniable death.
The earpiece crackled to life. "Go through the door. The intel is solid. This is the right code."
Tòumíng's hand dropped from the handle. He shook his head slowly, his jaw tight. "No."
"No?" The voice in his earpiece was incredulous. "What do you mean, no? This is the code. Our intel is never wrong. Just go through the—"
"I said no." Tòumíng's voice was firm, unyielding. "That code is a trap. I heard it. That body that just dropped? That was someone who used that code. They're dead. And I'm not going to be next."
"Tòumíng, listen to me. The intel is—"
"I don't care about your intel. I care about not getting shot in the face. I'm finding another way in."
He turned away from the white door, leaving the earpiece's protests behind, and walked back toward the counter. Lù Jī followed him, her grip on his arm tightening, her eyes wide with confusion and fear.
The receptionist looked up as he approached, her expression shifting to mild annoyance. "Did you need something else?"
Tòumíng leaned forward, his hands flat on the counter, his eyes locked onto hers. He didn't whisper. He didn't try to be subtle. He just spoke, his voice carrying across the entire waiting room, loud and clear and absolutely brazen.
"Who here sells coke to Jin?"
The room went silent. Dead silent. The kind of silence that made Tòumíng's ears ring. Everyone froze—the receptionist, the other customers, the security guards standing near the walls. A dozen pairs of eyes locked onto him, expressions shifting from confusion to shock to something that might have been respect.
The receptionist studied him for a long moment. Her eyes narrowed, searching his face for any sign of deception, any hint that he might be a cop or a rival or a threat. But Tòumíng met her gaze without flinching, his expression steady, his posture relaxed.
Because here's the thing about the "I need some A5 Icodin in the back" code: it was clean. Professional. The kind of thing a well-trained undercover operative would say. But real criminals don't use clean codes. They use messy ones. They use codes that only someone who actually knows the business would understand.
And "Who here sells coke to Jin" was about as messy as it got. It was so brazen, so suicidal, so completely out of left field that only someone who actually knew Jin Chan, or at least knew someone who knew him—would have the audacity to say it out loud in a room full of strangers.
The receptionist's expression shifted. The annoyance faded, replaced by something more calculating. She studied Tòumíng for another long moment, then sighed—a heavy, resigned sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her chest.
She pointed to a bronze door on the far right wall. A door that Tòumíng hadn't even noticed before, tucked away in the corner, almost invisible against the concrete. "Through there. Someone will assist you."
Tòumíng grinned. "Thanks."
He walked toward the bronze door, Lù Jī still clinging to his arm, the silence of the waiting room following him like a physical weight. He pushed the door open and stepped through into—
An open warehouse space. Massive. Industrial. Rows and rows of shelving units filled with boxes and crates and plastic containers. The air was thick with the smell of chemicals—something sharp and bitter that made his eyes water. Workers in white coats moved through the aisles, their movements efficient and practiced, like ants in a colony.
Tòumíng whistled softly. "Holy shit."
The earpiece crackled to life again. The voice on the other end was different now—still incredulous, but carrying an undercurrent of something that might have been respect. "How did you know? How did you know that code was fake?"
Tòumíng's grin widened. He looked around the warehouse, at the workers, at the boxes of drugs, at the operation that had been hiding in plain sight all along.
He tapped his chest, right over his heart the place where Cupid lived, the place where all his instincts and experience and bullshit artistry resided.
"Simple," he said, his voice carrying the kind of confidence that came from being right when everyone else was wrong. "I'm the king of bullshitting."