Ladies’ Market did not change over the years Iris remembered. It always felt like it had always been there, stretched between decades by sheer stubbornness. Neon signs flickered with the same tired rhythm, some replaced, some patched, some still buzzing with old logos no one bothered to take down. Temporary stalls leaned into each other, tables full of fake watches, cheap clothes and tourist trinkets filling the whole street.
The air smelled of frying oil, cheap incense, rain-soaked cardboard, and something faintly sweet, something like carnations.
She slowly rolled the bike through.Foot traffic thickened around her as she stepped in, vendors calling out prices in three languages, hands flashing calculators, plastic bags snapping in the humid night. It was late, late enough that the crowds had thinned into locals and insomniacs, people who knew where they were going and did not look around much.
Iris had not planned to stop here. She had not planned much at all, beyond realizing she was hungry and that whatever she had eaten earlier did not count. That was usually how it went. Jobs ended. Adrenaline drained. Hunger re-surfaced, no longer supressed by cheap chocolate.
She cut the engine near a side street and wheeled the bike in by hand, careful not to clip anyone’s ankles. Somewhere below street level, she knew, there was a place that served food out of an old industrial freezer, the kind of spot that survived because it never tried in the first place. She had eaten there before. Once or twice. Or maybe more. It was not kind of place you remember well after you leave.
On the way there, she almost missed it.
The door sat wedged between a shop selling fake designer sneakers and a narrow takeaway joint. It was almost invisible behind stacks of cardboard boxes, hiding under improvised tarp, and if not for reflective paint, Iris would definitely skim past it. A single word was stenciled across it, the letters thick and uneven, as if the person holding the spray can had been rushing or tired.
VITRIFIED.
Iris slowed, one hand still on the bike’s grip, the other resting on the seat. She stared at the word longer than she meant to.
It was not new. That was the strange thing. She tried to remember the last time she had actually paid attention to one of those doors.
The answer annoyed her.
She had passed this street dozens of times. Maybe hundreds. She had bought noodles from the place next door. She had leaned against these boxes waiting for a signal to clear. The door had been there the whole time, and her eyes had slid right off it.
Iris exhaled through her nose, then shook her head.
The stairwell she was looking for opened a few steps further down, marked only by a flickering tube light and the sound of clattering dishes echoing up from below. Warm air spilled out, heavy with spice and steam. She followed it without hesitation, boots thudding softly on concrete steps polished smooth by years of traffic.
As soon as her feet dropped on the landing at the very bottom of the stairwell, a vending machine tucked below the stairs shook itself, made a wet, grinding sound and started to humm.
She flinched despite herself and glanced over. Yellow plastic cover was cracked, scratched screen cycling through an ad loop that had not been updated in years.
The glow spilled sideways across the concrete, catching on grime and old water stains, and for a second it picked out something behind it.
Not the whole thing. Just letters.
–IFIED.
They were faint, almost erased, the paint worn thin enough that the metal showed through in places. Iris’s gaze lingered on it for a moment longer, and she turned away, towards the open bulkhead door to the restaurant directly ahead, propped open with a plastic crate.
Iris stepped through without another thought. The plastic crate scraped slightly as she nudged past it, the sound lost under the clatter of dishes and the hiss of oil.Stainless steel counters scarred by years of use, a row of stools bolted to the floor, steam fogging the upper corners where the ventilation never quite kept up.
She took the first empty seat she saw and set her helmet down by her boots. Someone on the other side of the counter slid a laminated menu across the table without ceremony. Iris barely glanced at it.
“Two bowls,” she said, only now looking up. “Whatever’s hot.”
The cook grunted in acknowledgment and took the menu back before she had even finished speaking. Oil popped somewhere behind him. A ladle clanged against the rim of a wok.
Iris leaned her elbows on the counter and closed her eyes for a brief moment, letting them rest. Food would be taking a while, and she let her eyes linger wandered without purpose. A calendar on the wall, months out of date. A row of chipped bowls stacked too high. A small shrine wedged into a corner near the fridge, incense burned down to stubs, the offering dish empty except for a few coins that had lost their shine.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The first bowl landed in front of her with a soft thud, steam rolling up in her face. She smiled despite herself. The second followed a heartbeat later.
She did not wait.
The first mouthful burned just enough to be satisfying. She ate fast, then slower, letting the heat work its way through her chest. Halfway through the first bowl, she realized how hungry she had actually been.
Between bites, she nodded toward the stairwell again, keeping her voice casual.
“That door back there,” she said. “Behind the vending machine.”
The cook glanced up this time, only briefly.
“What about it?”
“Looks sealed,” Iris said. “Got a warning on it.”
The man shrugged, already turning away.
“Old Hong Kong.”
That was all. Like it explained everything. No superstition, no story, no lowered voice. She snorted between bites. Should have watched less movies.
She finished the first bowl, then the second, slowing only when the heat finally caught up with her. The last mouthful sat heavy and satisfying in her stomach. She wiped her mouth with a napkin that had already lived a full life, slid her bowls toward the counter, and tapped her card against the reader when it was pushed her way.
The cook nodded once, already turning back to the stove. That was the whole goodbye.
Iris picked up her helmet, stepped back into the stairwell, but instead of heading up, she climbed one flight higher.
She wanted quiet. A minute to herself. Somewhere out of the way where no one would ask for directions or stare at the bike or pretend smoking was a crime.
She reached the next landing, smoke already between her lips, and stopped.
There was no light here, and all illumination came from the street below, flickering neon and, to her surprise, a hole in the wall where apartment door was supposed to be. At the far end of the empty room, candles burned inside.
Dozens of them, packed close, their flames unsteady in the draft. Wax had pooled and hardened along the concrete, layered in drips and runs that marked time better than any calendar. Paper charms clung to the stone, some fresh, others darkened and brittle, their ink blurred into near abstraction.
An offering shelf had been bolted into the alcove at waist height.
In front of it hovered a drone.
Small, civilian grade, its casing scuffed and mismatched. One side panel had been replaced with a piece of orange plastic that did not quite fit, a faded produce sticker still clinging to it.
It hummed softly as it worked, a sound Iris had never heard from hardware like this before.
The drone extended a manipulator arm and placed an orange onto the shelf. A pale oval sticker still clinging,a smiling sun logo she had seen a thousand times on market crates, corner stalls and shrines like this one.
It rolled. Tipped. Fell.
The drone dipped, retrieved it, and rose again.
Orange. Shelf. Fall.
Iris leaned back against the wall, exhaled smoke, and watched.
The drone placed the orange again.
It fell again.
She flicked ash into the corner and frowned despite herself. When it fell again, she stepped forward and nudged the orange with her boot, sending it skittering out of the candlelight and into shadow.
The sound it made shifted, a short, sharp mechanical chirp cutting through the quiet. It hovered in place, optics flicking between the empty shelf and the dark where the orange had gone. It did not pursue it, instead hovering there, uncertain. Then it dipped and picked up the nearest thing it could find.
A stub of burnt incense, snapped clean in half.
It held the incense stub for a second longer than necessary. Then let it fall.
Picked up small, worn down buddha statue. Dropped it.
The sound wobbled, uneven now.
Frustrated.
The drone rotated slowly, scanning the alcove, pulling in details Iris had stopped seeing years ago. Wax drips. Coins. Ash. It hovered closer, lowering itself by a few centimeters, optics tightening on the shelf.
As it adjusted position, the underside of its chassis passed through the candlelight.
Orange plastic.
The faded smiling sun sticker caught the glow, and the drone froze. Then, carefully, reached to it. Its manipulator hesitated mid-motion, then completed the movement anyway.
It touched the panel, and the plastic creaked softly under the pressure. The drone paused again, optics fixed on the shelf, on the empty space where the offering should have been.
Then it pulled.
The panel came away with a dry, tearing sound, the sticker peeling back in a tired curl. The drone held the piece in front of itself for a moment, rotating it a few degrees until the color caught the candlelight just right.
Orange. Smiling sun sticker.
Close enough.
It lifted the panel to the shelf and placed it where the fruit had been, adjusting the angle with care. For a heartbeat, it stayed. The sound the drone made softened, settling into something almost level.
Iris held her breath without realizing it.
The panel slipped and fell.
The drone dipped, retrieved the panel, and rose again. It pressed the plastic harder this time, wedging it against the back of the alcove, trying to force it to remain. Wax cracked. Paper charms shifted.
For another brief moment, it held.
Then gravity won again.
The panel fell.
The drone did not pause now. It picked it up and returned to the shelf, repeating the motion with the same careful precision, as if the failure had not been data, only noise.
Panel. Shelf. Fall.
The loop reasserted itself
Iris cursed, and shook her hand. She didn’t even notice her cigarette burned down and burned her fingers. She crushed it against the wall and stepped back to the landing.
The alcove stayed lit behind her, candles wavering, paper charms stirring in the draft. The drone continued its work, patient and exact, as if nothing else in the world required its attention.
