Before Ryan can bypass the blockaded threshold, a senior magistrate steps out from the dusty, lantern-lit shadows of the courtyard, raising a heavy wooden hand to halt him in his tracks. The official fixes Ryan with an intense, unyielding glare, demanding an immediate, itemized accounting for the provincial tea tax—treating the small, unassuming tin of loose-leaf green tea tucked inside Ryan's canvas bag with the grave, suspicious gravity of an unvetted corporate import audit. The magistrate’s severe posture and stern interrogation carry the exact, suffocating authority of a department head cornering an employee over a missing budget receipt right before a long-delayed evening departure.
Ryan lets out a quiet, bone-weary sigh—the exact hollow exhale he usually reserves for an unbudgeted catering discrepancy or a late-afternoon email chain about obsolete promotional collateral. Shifting the heavy strap of his canvas messenger bag higher on his aching shoulder, he maintains his placid, salaryman composure, treating the ancient tax dispute with the weary patience of someone trying to clear a minor administrative ticket at the end of a very long Wednesday. With mild deliberation, he unzips the bag just enough to reveal a crumpled event run-sheet, a spare plastic pen, and the disputed metal tea tin, offering the official a calm, diplomatic nod as if hoping a display of mundane personal rations will satisfy the arbitrary tariff check.
With the unruffled patience of a middle manager trying to close a petty grievance ticket before the building locks up, Ryan politely suggests that the tea allocation is merely a minor personal allowance that should be properly routed through the regional breakroom accounts rather than held up at the courtyard gate. He taps the face of his wristwatch out of pure muscle memory, ignoring the useless analog hands as he hopes to wrap up this absurd administrative bottleneck before his evening connection vanishes into the maritime fog for good.