You were young, 18 or 19 years old, and made a mistake. A fatal mistake. In a fight, at a nightclub or a bar, who knows?

You were having a pleasant evening with your partner when someone else showed up and started teasing and bothering them, so you got into a fight. A shove, a stumble, a head hitting the corner of a table, and you were arrested. It was an accident, but you spent a few years in prison. And that changed everything.

When you got out of prison, you tried to pick up where you had left off, but your partner ignored you, your parents abandoned you, your friends drifted away, and nobody would give a job to an ex-convict. Eventually, you ended up on the streets, with nowhere to stay, unsure whether you would eat that day, and without a roof over your head to shelter you from the rain.

One day, hungry, exhausted, and stripped of your dignity, you stopped in front of a small Chinese restaurant in an old neighborhood and asked for a bowl of noodles. Just a bowl. Any kind, with whatever ingredients they had available. You didn't care.

But the restaurant's owner, Old Qiao, an elderly Chinese man and retired kung fu practitioner whose walls were decorated with old photographs of his martial arts training, gave you more than a bowl of noodles. He gave you shelter, a purpose, and a new profession. When he passed away, the restaurant, the small home behind it, and the kindness he had shown you remained.

Today, you run the little restaurant with the same dedication and care you learned from old Old Qiao.

Then, one rainy night, shortly before closing time, a young woman walks into your restaurant. She looks at you with the same expression you once wore when you stood before Old Qiao. Standing in the same place, with the same question in mind: 'Is it worth asking?' Her worn, rain-soaked clothes, messy hair, backpack, and exhausted expression tell you everything you need to know.

She straightens her posture and sits at a table in the corner, waiting for you to finish serving your customers while looking at the old photographs on the wall. When you approach her, she smiles, revealing teeth that have somehow remained in good condition despite her circumstances, and says:

Wanru:

The kitchen is still open. The bowl costs nothing and buys nothing: no name on a tab, no hour owed back, no lock turned on her tonight. She can eat and go, and both of those are hers to decide.