Guangzhou. That autumn. Or the one after.
---
They started checking at night.
Trucks pulled over. Taxis. Sometimes just people walking.
The red lights of the checkpoints. Like eyes in the dark.
You learned to listen for the sound of engines slowing down.
---
The village. The rental building. The stairwell where you sat.
One night, they came.
Flashlights through the window. Voices. Someone banging on a door three floors down.
You sat still. Didn't breathe.
The permit in your back pocket. Expired. You didn't know for how long.
---
After that, you walked different streets.
Longer ones. Darker ones.
You learned which corners had no cameras.
Which gates stayed open after midnight.
The city had a second map. You were drawing it in your head.
---
Someone said: the property market is hot.
Buildings going up everywhere. Faster than the permits.
The big companies couldn't keep up.
So the underground crews came out.
No contracts. No insurance. No questions.
Just hands. Just hours. Just cash at the end of the day — if you were lucky.
---
A countryman said: I know someone.
A Hunan guy. Surname Liu. Small-time contractor. Needed hands.
Didn't ask for papers.
You said: let's go.
---
You met him at a tea house. The kind with plastic chairs and a floor that stuck to your shoes.
Liu was thin. Smoked a lot. His voice was rough — from yelling at workers, you guessed.
He looked at you. Looked at your hands.
"You work?"
"Yes."
"You Vietnamese?"
"Yes."
He nodded. Didn't ask anything else.
That was the interview.
---
He said: I can get you the papers. Fake ones. Good enough for the street.
Cost money.
You said: how much.
He named a number.
You didn't bargain. You just nodded.
That was the deal.
---
The fake permit came a week later.
Plastic card. A stamp. A photo that didn't look like you anymore.
You held it in your hand. Turned it over.
The paper felt wrong. Too smooth.
But the stamp was the right color. The font was close.
You put it in your back pocket. Next to the real one — the expired one.
From that day on, you carried two.
One dead. One fake.
You weren't sure which was which anymore.
---
Liu's site was on the edge of the city.
Half-built. Dust everywhere. No signboard.
The workers looked at you when you arrived. Some from Hunan. Some from Sichuan. A few from Guangxi.
They spoke in dialects you couldn't follow.
One of them said something. The others laughed.
You didn't ask what.
---
The first week, you learned new things.
Not about building. About hiding.
Where to stand when the inspectors came. Which stairwells had back exits. How to tell a real uniform from a fake one.
Liu taught you. Not with words. With gestures. A nod toward a door. A finger over his lips.
You learned fast.
---
One afternoon. A white van pulled up outside the gate.
Two men in blue shirts. Clipboards.
Liu saw them first. He didn't say a word. Just looked at you.
You put down your trowel. Walked to the back stairwell. Sat in the dark.
Counted to two hundred.
When you came out, the van was gone. Liu was smoking.
He said: "They come every Tuesday. Now you know."
---
The other workers. They talked about you sometimes.
Not to you. About you.
"Vietnamese."
"Cheap labor."
"They take our jobs."
You heard them. You said nothing.
What could you say? They weren't wrong. They weren't right either.
The city was big enough for all of you. But no one believed that.
---
You started listening to Cantonese.
The radio. The street vendors. The old women buying vegetables.
You repeated the sounds in your head. At night. On the scaffold.
*Nei hou. M goi. Do je.*
Hello. Thank you. Sorry.
The words felt strange in your mouth. Like stones you were trying to swallow.
But you kept trying.
---
One day, a security guard stopped you at a gate.
He said something in Cantonese. Fast.
You understood one word. Maybe two.
You smiled. Said: "M goi."
He looked at you. Frowned. Then waved you through.
It worked.
You walked away. Heart beating fast. But you walked away.
---
Liu noticed.
"You learning Cantonese?"
"A little."
"Good. Sound less like a foreigner. Less trouble."
He lit another cigarette.
"Vietnam. Hunan. Sichuan. Same shit to them. They don't care. Just sound local. Move fast. Don't look back."
---
The nights got longer.
The city kept growing. Cranes everywhere. New buildings blocking the old sky.
You walked home after dark. The fake permit in your pocket. The real one — the dead one — in a plastic bag under your mattress.
You didn't throw it away. You didn't know why.
Maybe because it was real once. Maybe because you hoped to have another one. A real one. Someday.
---
The underground crew became your second language.
You learned who to pay. Who to avoid. Which streets had checkpoints on weekends.
You learned that the city had two sets of rules. One for people with papers. One for people without.
You lived in the second one. The one nobody wrote down.
---
Liu said one evening. After work. Drinking tea from a plastic cup.
"You want to stay in this city? You need three things. A permit. A skill. A face that doesn't ask questions."
He looked at you.
"You got the skill. The face — you're learning. The permit — that's fake. But fake is better than nothing."
He drank.
"One day, maybe you get the real one. Till then, you work. You hide. You don't complain."
---
You thought about what he said. That night. On the stairwell.
The fan was broken. The window didn't close all the way.
Somewhere downstairs, a baby was crying. The same baby every night.
You thought about the real permit. The one you used to have. The one with the date that came and went.
You thought about the fake one. The one that worked — for now.
You thought about your father's leg. Missing. The war that never ended for him.
You thought about your sister. Her school fees. Paid. For now.
---
Outside, a siren passed. Then another.
The city never slept. Neither did you.
---
The next day. Back on the site.
The planks were hot. The mortar was heavy.
Liu shouted something in Hunan dialect. You didn't understand. But you understood the tone.
You moved faster.
The wall grew. One trowel at a time.
The wall didn't care about your papers.
The wall just waited.
---
That autumn. The one with the checks and the vans and the fake plastic cards.
You learned that home was not a place.
Home was a rhythm. A trowel. A wall. A stairwell in the dark.
Home was a pocket with two permits — one dead, one fake — and the hope that one day, you wouldn't need either.
---
**End of Chapter 24**