After the customer had left, the Pawnshop was filled with a quiet tension as Wei adjusted back to the familiar setting, aware of the aftershocks of his recent journey through the abyss. Even Mei, though outwardly calm, seemed distant as they settled into the routine, both glancing at each other with shared, unspoken questions about everything they'd just survived.
Wei took a moment to walk through the aisles of the pawnshop, his fingers tracing the edges of dusty, forgotten items on the shelves. Each item pulsed faintly with traces of the people who had once owned them—hopes, regrets, secrets—and Wei felt a strange new sensitivity to these energies, as if his experience in the abyss had left him open to things he hadn't felt before.
