Here's the number that matters: 99.1 percent of Wang Fuk Court owners took the buyout. That's basically everybody. Seventeen didn't. The deadline closed anyway, no extension, and now the whole rebuild is stuck waiting on those seventeen decisions. After a fire that bad, you'd think the paperwork would be the easy part. It isn't.

This is what people mean when they say Hong Kong runs on signatures, not sympathy. Ninety-nine percent agreement doesn't move a bulldozer. You need everyone, or you need the government to force the last few out, and that's a slower, uglier process than anyone wants to explain out loud. So the building sits. The other 99 percent wait on the 1 percent. Nobody's wrong here, but somebody's stuck.