Rain stitched the city together in silver seams as I burst out of the alley and into open street.
My boots slapped water off cracked asphalt, each step a careful theft of time.
The mission still clung to me—the hush of the room, the single breath before everything narrowed to a point—but regret was a luxury item. Survival was math: distance, cover, speed.
Headlights flared.
The sedan lunged from a cross street like it had teeth. Tires screamed against wet road, white light skidding across puddles and brick, stretching my shadow into something frantic and thin. I cut left, ducked under a sagging fire escape as rain hammered metal into a standing ovation.
I vaulted a trash barrier. Rust bit my shoulder; heat bloomed.
Not now.
I landed, rolled, ran. Copper and rain coated my tongue. The city offered options in fragments—doorways, scaffolding, flickering neon—but the car owned the straight lines.
I needed angles.
I veered into a service road barely wider than optimism. The driver tried anyway.
The sedan fishtailed, kissed a dumpster, spat sparks. The horn screamed like it was offended. I smiled—brief, mean—and climbed stacked crates two at a time, slipping, grabbing holds by muscle memory.
The rooftop was glass.
I slid, caught the gutter, hauled myself up as the car roared beneath me, wipers flailing like panicked hands. The driver leaned out and shouted something dramatic and useless. I declined to respond.
Across the rooftops I ran, the city dropping away into dark. Sirens wailed somewhere else—another hunt, someone else's bad night. I leapt a gap and gravity took its toll; my fingers screamed but held. I pulled myself up, lungs on fire, rain slicking my hair to my face.
The car couldn't follow here. It prowled below, engine growling, deeply offended by physics.
I slowed. Stopped. Pressed my forehead to cool brick. Water streamed down my gloves, carrying the last warmth of the job away. The night reduced itself to rain and breath.
Then I moved with the city instead of against it—down a ladder, through a stairwell that smelled like damp concrete and stale cigarettes, into a crowd blissfully unaware that I'd just outrun a bad decision.
Umbrellas bloomed.
Traffic hissed.
The sedan idled at the corner, searching.
I vanished into the rain, already counting how long until I could be someone else.
For three—four—steps, the rain almost convinced me I'd made it.
The crowd thinned near the underpass. Umbrellas folded, people hurried. I matched their pace, shoulders rounded, breath boringly normal. For a handful of steps, I was just another tired woman going home.
Then a hand closed around my arm.
Not rough.
That was the problem.
Firm. Precise. Fingers finding the nerve above my elbow like they'd studied anatomy.
Of course they had.
The car idled behind a concrete pillar, engine ticking as it cooled. Another man stood behind me, rain beading on his jacket, face empty with the calm of someone crossing an item off a list.
I didn't struggle. Old habits made me catalog exits I already knew were fictional. My breathing evened out anyway.
Surgeon's calm. Flatline certainty.
So this was the remainder.
They guided me under the overpass, away from the lights. Water dripped steadily from concrete overhead, each drop obnoxiously loud. I felt detached, like I was watching myself from a bad film—hands shaking once, then stopping; posture straightening because muscle memory doesn't care about fate.
And of course my thoughts went somewhere idiotic.
The book.
The dog-eared paperback wrapped in plastic in my go-bag like contraband. I'd reread everything except the end, hoarding the final chapters like a reward. I loved the way the characters circled each other with knives disguised as dialogue.
I'd been saving the last scene.
Yes. That scene.
For a safer night. A quieter city. Dry socks. A drink within reach.
I'd earned it, hadn't I?
The absurdity nearly made me laugh. Of all the regrets to surface now—this was it? Not the blood, not the lies, not the double life.
Just unfinished fiction and unresolved tension.
The grip tightened. A gun entered my field of vision—small, efficient, extremely real.
Rain slid down my face. I closed my eyes, not in fear but focus, trying to invent the ending whole in the space I had left. Heat, breath, collision, release. Front-row seats.
No interruptions.
The sound was sharp and final, swallowed almost immediately by the rain.
The city accepted it without comment.
Water pooled, ran, erased. Somewhere, a car pulled away. Traffic resumed its hiss.
The night continued, blissfully unaware that a story had ended a few pages too soon.
My name is Su Wanning, and I live by rules.
By day, I save lives. I am the surgeon people call divine when hope is thin and blood won't listen. My hands are steady. My mind is sharp. I do not hesitate.
By night, I take lives just as cleanly.
Not because I enjoy it—but because I am precise. Every job is a procedure: assess, prepare, execute, disappear. No wasted motion. No feelings allowed in the sterile field.
What no one knows—what I lock away under routine and control—is that I am none of those things inside.
I am bubbly. Dramatic. Incorrigibly soft.
I sing too loudly when I'm alone. I cook elaborate meals I forget to eat. I rearrange rooms until they feel right. I play traditional instruments late at night, fingers shaking with melodies that insist my hands were meant to create, not end.
The world I live in has no tolerance for that.
Standing beneath a leaking overpass, rain soaking through my clothes, I know the rules have finally expired.
The city smells like wet concrete and exhaust. The car ticks nearby, impatient. A hand grips my arm—professional, polite, absolute.
I don't struggle. I breathe evenly. I recognize the end the way I recognize a flatline.
And still, my mind goes to the book.
The stupid, beloved novel in my bag. I wanted to finish it somewhere safe and dry, boots off, savoring every word. I wanted to know if the characters survived each other
. If the tension broke into something reckless and alive.
I almost laugh.
All this discipline. All this control.
And my regret is narrative closure.
I think of the transmigration dramas I secretly love—the ones where death is a revolving door and the universe hands out second chances with cheat systems. I've watched them over cold leftovers, mocking the logic while wishing, just a little.
I know better.
Miracles don't happen to people like me.
The gun lifts. Rain slides down my lashes. I close my eyes and make one last, ridiculous wish.
If heaven exists… if the author is kind…
The thought is barely formed before the sound cuts it off—
—and everything goes quiet.
But what if heaven has different rules?
What if stories notice when someone loves them enough to mourn an ending they never reached?
What if, somewhere between rain and darkness, the author pauses—pen hovering, page unfinished—
—and decides this isn't where Su Wanning ends after all?