Rain streaked the window of Lin Wen Zhe Elias's fifth-floor apartment, blurring the neon lights of Taipei into smudges of color. The patter of raindrops against the glass was the only sound that filled the room, as Yi Li stood motionless by the window, his gaze fixed on the world outside. He had always found solace in the rain. The downpour muffled the restless thrum of the city, and the silence felt less like an ache and more like a worn, familiar blanket. It was a rare moment of peace in a life that was otherwise filled with chaos and turmoil. As he looked at the untouched takeout on his kitchen counter, Elias realized that he had spent another night alone with his thoughts. He pushed the container aside and walked to the window, his reflection a ghostly image superimposed over the cityscape. His glasses were slipping down his nose, and he nudged them back into place with an automatic, tired gesture. He was not an unattractive man. His features were gentle, his hair neatly styled, and his clothes clean and uncreased. But there was a slump to his shoulders and a dimming of his eyes that hinted at a profound weariness, a weariness that came from years of dealing with the problems of others while ignoring his own. Elias was a social worker at the local service center, and his job was to solve, advise, and patch together shattered lives with the efficiency of long practice. But as the office lights flickered off and the evening stretched before him, he became less a problem-solver and more the unsolved problem himself. A hollow echo resonated within him, a hunger he couldn't name. Some nights he filled it with work, staying late until the fluorescent hum felt more comforting than the empty silence of his apartment. On nights like tonight, he simply existed within the rain-smeared confines of his world, a solitary island in Taipei's sea of bustling humanity. He glanced at the screen of his phone, but there were no new messages. A flicker of disappointment pricked him before he ruthlessly crushed it. There was no one to hear from anyway. Friends were a distant concept, relationships an abstract theory. He understood the mechanics of connection in the same way he understood the workings of an engine, but it didn't make the machine run any smoother in his own life. The solution, he had come to realize, was simple if unpalatable: payment. Transactional, defined, with an expiration date. It eliminated the agonizing uncertainty and the crippling fear of rejection that lay coiled beneath the surface of his polite smiles. In that neatly packaged world, Yi Li could almost believe in the illusion of affection. Almost. He pulled a worn piece of paper from his wallet. 'Julian – For When You Need a Little Company'. It was creased at the edges from restless nights when the loneliness gnawed too sharply. Perhaps tonight was one of those nights, Yi Li thought, and a flicker of something close to anticipation twisted in his chest. He hesitated for a moment, then made up his mind and dialed the number on the card.