At Southorn, the gang was all there, waiting for him, calling out his mother’s…. at his lateness. They hadn’t seen the news, because it was only a little past 6:30, their appointed time to shoot hoops each Tuesday. Not that they would have known if they had. The force of impact had flung him into the plate glass window of the second floor hair salon above Circle K. Shattering glass severed his vocal cords, almost decapitated him. Not a desirable angle of repose, unrecognizably swathed on a gurney, smeared in blood and fecal matter, like a chicken with its head chopped off. Even the emergency team paled. He was gruesome.

He could imagine his mother tsk-ing away at the news report. Those reckless have-money 有錢 boys and their cars! They should be locked up and forced to clean public toilets as community service! His mother did tsk, until she got the call about a minute earlier from the police, are you the family of Tang Chun-ying?