I stood there, holding the card and the hairpin, in the middle of that gilded, decaying palace of chance. The roulette wheel spun. The cards shuffled. The rain began again, soft and warm as a forgotten promise.

“Of course it is,” the old woman said, handing me back the hairpin. “And so is love. So is grief. So is a cleaner who brings plum blossoms to a widow. Impossible things are the only things worth believing in.”

“You,” he slurred. “They say you’re a statue. I want to see you move. One hand of baccarat. If I win, you have dinner with me.”

The fortune-teller’s eyes gleamed. “For the soul of that drowned soldier to walk through the casino doors. For the princess to find him again. One lifetime wasn’t enough for them. The jade remembers.”

“This isn’t just jade, boy. It’s yu —the stone of heaven. Wei Dong didn’t buy it in Burma. He stole it from a tomb in the Forbidden City. The tomb of a Ming princess who was said to love a common soldier. When the emperor found out, he had the soldier drowned in the Pearl River. The princess died of grief three days later. Her last wish was to be buried with a hairpin carved from the jade of her lover’s home province, so that in the next life, she might find him again.”

For the first time, the smallest crack appeared in her jade mask. Not a smile. Something sadder. A fissure.

I should have apologized and walked away. Instead, I said, “Then why are you here every Friday?”