Before Ryan could process the phantom izakaya expense glowing against his laptop screen, a sharp, authoritative rap echoed against his apartment door, shattering the quiet hum of the afternoon. Blinking away his fatigue, he stood up from the small wooden desk and walked down the narrow hallway, his bare feet padding softly against the laminate floor. When he unlatched the deadbolt and pulled the door open, he found a burly courier standing in the dim hallway of the Rhodes tower, wearing a high-visibility vest beaded with fine mist from a sudden, passing harbour squall outside.
Without a word of greeting, the courier thrust a damp, dog-eared delivery slip and a plastic stylus toward him, pointing urgently at a signature line near the bottom. The thermal paper was slick with moisture, curling slightly at the edges and smelling faintly of salt air and warehouse grease. Glancing down past the courier's thick arm, Ryan's eyes caught the destination details printed on the manifest: high-capacity international container freight dispatched from an overseas port directly to his sixth-floor unit address, all stamped and categorized under the same ominous internal tracking hash that had been systematically dismantling his life all week.