Separated only by a pane of glass, the crowd outside braved the biting snow, faces contorted as they pounded and rammed. Inside, Zhang Yi lounged in a chair, leisurely eating, coffee steaming at his side. The contrast was obscene—warmth, food, comfort on one side; frost, hunger and fury on the other. Shouts rose, raw with envy and rage: "Zhang Yi, you bastard! Break this and we'll finish you! All that food will be ours!"
Zhang Yi raised his cup in a mock toast. "Keep going — you can do it," he called, amused. The assault ground on. Twenty-four storeys up, the wind stole heat faster than they could replace it; men rotated every ten minutes, breath clouding in the air. After half an hour the glass bore only faint scratches. Despair crept in, but hunger and resentment kept hands moving.
He spotted Chen Zhenghao's men threaded through the mass and decided the spectacle had gone on long enough. Calmly he stood, produced a bottle that looked like a drink, lit it, and sent it arcing through a hidden opening above the window. The flame hit—gasoline, even in this cold, caught ferociously. The little balcony became an instant inferno. Down jackets and padded pants ignited; ten people were trapped by fire and panic.
Zhang Yi tossed another bottle without hesitation. "Fire! Help!" voices fractured into screams. Some tried to leap to adjacent ledges but fell twenty-four storeys — the drop guaranteed broken bones or death. "Better to fall than burn," Zhang Yi said with brutal economy, and a man pressed his hands to the glass and begged for help. Zhang Yi spat: "Save your own ass." The flames swallowed him.
From the next door over, neighbors watched the carnage and some, in the sudden, perverse calculus of survival, kicked a burning man as he clawed toward safety. "Don't drag us down!" they shouted, crushing his fingers to keep him away. For a few, the fire offered a rare, selfish warmth: hands drew forward to hover over licking flames, a guilty smile hidden behind haggard faces.
When the flames finally licked out, the tally was gruesome: thirty to forty people dead, many more maimed. Silence fell in the snow-choked corridor, replaced by a different, hungrier sound. A woman broke down, stumbling to the glass on trembling knees. "Zhang Yi—please, I'm starving—just a piece of bread!" Her plea opened a floodgate; others shoved forward, scraping and bowing, begging for scraps. Mostly women, their voices thin with desperation, pleaded for pity.
On the other side of the glass, Zhang Yi watched them grovel, fork poised over his food. The room smelled of roast and coffee; his world hummed with warmth. Hunger had reduced them to supplication. He considered the spectacle and the bargaining it invited — and, with a deliberate slow motion, he returned to his meal.