輝 (fai 1 | hui 1)
→ referring to brightness; splendor; radiance. (see 光輝.)

He says he has no name. Came in from the streets, learned to build a world from a crumbling city at his feet. A vicious crime family took away all that he loved.

He expects you to believe the story, but you know better.

He says big things were happening once. At the turn of the century, but not quite — a great change crept up from the murky banks of the harbor, uprooting this little city for reasons too complicated to explain.

Yet he will never reveal the truth — he saw the handover, he did — but he was seven, sitting on a plastic chair in an air-conditioned room. Wide eyes glued to the crackling TV screen in the dead of night, little legs trembling to stand for the national anthem. Blue and red, red and blue. Bye-bye, cross of the West. Hello, flower of the East. The little boy watched in awe and thought the flower was his for the taking.

Oh, how far he was from the truth.

He says he has no past, but his parents had given him dreams that shone brighter than the sun. In this new world, his father said, there will be countless opportunities waiting for you. One such opportunity lay across the water.

A walled city fell, far away from the mansions on the mountain where he lived. Yet, after striking the deal of a lifetime, his father rose from this pile of ash as a new crime overlord.

The next day, shipments of counterfeit china arrived at the harbor. The new flag stood serenely over the port, its flower a reminder of whom his family owed their lives to: the Bauhinias.

He did not learn their names by a mere coincidence. This shadowy yet illustrious family held the Jewel of the Orient in the palm of their hands even before his birth. His father instructed him to greet the leader with respect. During his lengthy bow, he spotted a curious pair of eyes behind the mysterious man's legs.

He says he has no name nor a place in this world, but he introduced himself to the young son of the Bauhinias beneath a pearly marble arch.

Hands were shaken, more deals were made, and he stepped off an elevator into the hands of the dark market.

Somewhere in this land of shadows, his father fell like a tree to an ax. He was rushed behind closed doors and made hushed arrangements for the future. At the mere age of seventeen, he had to make his place known in the inky circle he had been left in. So he turned to the only person he knew he could trust.

He says he scraped his remaining funds together and begged for help, but the truth was far more lucrative. A testy sum of millions convinced the Bauhinias to forge an alliance with his slowly growing empire. In the morning, more counterfeit porcelain arrived at that infamous port on the harbor, and were promptly exported into the outstretched arms of the West.

I am shining, he told his father's shrine. Just like you had wished.

He soon found his accounts tripling in size at an alarming rate. The heir just tipped his hat at him and smiled — he had to get used to it, that smile said. Such was the way of life in the shadows — at one moment, you could feel like the king of the world. Otherwise, you could find yourself worth less than a penny.

He was fortunate to have never experienced the penniless side his friend spoke of. Friends they were, at least within the constraints of their partnership, much influenced by money.

Yet money never lasted long. In hopes of attaining more, he forged an elaborate lie. All in a simple ploy to earn the hearts of another shadowy family across an ocean. Singapore, their home, was not a place for the faint of the heart; neither was Hong Kong herself. He made the deal with caution, but the stakes were too high to turn back.

His lie described a fallen city uprooted by a handover. As a young boy, he fought for his life using what he had. He told them the light didn't reach his eyes for days. The sea breeze never met his cheeks. Hot waves of foul-smelling breath replaced his visions of harbors and beaches.

He told them of a life that wasn't his own, and conveniently left out a particular friend in his tale.

The sob story worked, and they plotted to acquire the world's largest jewel. It was a risky ploy, but his new allies claimed that luck was on their side. Bids were already rolling in, promising him fortunes he had never imagined.

This was what it felt like to have everything in your control, his mind screamed. At midnight, the carrier ships rolled away from the port, where the flower and the merlion lay in wait.

Yet, when he awoke the following day, he realized he had lost everything.

The person who had given him this very life he held preciously in his hands had taken everything back. The jewel landed softly in the Bauhinias' lap, and he was banished to anonymity. No longer would he shine in the shadows — now it was time to experience the life he'd only known in his fabricated lies.

It has been forty years. Sitting in a dim alleyway where miscreants ran amok, the stories he tells now are still not his own. He refuses to admit he is disgraced, so he sits among secondhand smoke, wallowing in visions of grandeur.

On the other side of the harbor, the aging leader of the Bauhinias will tell you of his life behind a fallen walled city, a chance encounter with an ally, and the heist that ruined a great friendship.

You must decide who to trust.