Outside, the lane hums with morning commerce. Motorbikes cough, a vendor shouts the day’s catch, and the air carries the metallic tang of hope and compromise. Ayaan steps into it like a man walking into a verdict. He’s twenty-two, all angles and rehearsed calm, but the lines at his temples belong to decisions made for money and not for him. Today, he’s meant to meet someone who could change everything: a recruiter from a company that recruits boys like him for work nobody talks about.