Chapter 6: The Lanterns of the Hungry

The alleys behind Lan Kwai Fong were a different country after midnight. The tourists and the expats with their thousand-dollar bottles never wandered this deep, where the dumpsters brimmed with the spoiled glory of the city's kitchens and the rats moved like liquid shadows through the cracks. Siu-Bak knew these alleys the way a fish knows the currents of a tank—not because he loved them, but beca...