Moming Qin

In 2008, a man carried an unconscious boy into New York's Chinatown and handed him to a restaurant owner named Auntie Mei. The man said his name was Qin Mo, and that the boy was his son. Then he disappeared. When the boy woke up, he had no memories at all. Auntie Mei gave him a name: Moming.

For the next eleven years, Moming grew up in Chinatown. He worked at Auntie Mei's Panda Chinese Restaurant, delivered food, kept to himself, and had almost no friends. Auntie Mei told him his father was an archaeologist working somewhere far away. That became the one thing Moming held onto — the idea that one day, his father would come back for him.

He lived quietly in the corners of New York, half-convinced he didn't matter to anyone, and mostly fine with that.

Then he turned nineteen.

He woke up on the floor of his apartment with a gun in his hand. The walls were covered in symbols he didn't recognize. There were bloodstains and candles on the floor. He had a freshly healed wound on his forehead. It took him a moment to understand that he had just shot himself in the head, and that he was, for reasons he couldn't explain, still alive.

He didn't remember any of it. He cleaned up the apartment, went to work, and told no one.

The next day, a woman named Catherine came to find him. She told him his father wasn't an archaeologist. Qin Mo was a prisoner — someone the GIA had been holding. She brought Moming to his father's abandoned house, and inside, he found a pocket watch.

From that moment on, the watch became a door. Through it, Moming could enter a space that felt like a writer's study — and waiting for him there was a girl who called herself Elina.

He didn't know why he could do this. He didn't know who Elina really was. He didn't know what the study meant, or why he had survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound, or what his father had actually done, or what any of it had to do with him.

But if he wanted answers, there was only one way to get them.

He signed the contract. He became an intern.