In our parts, summer arrived early and lingered exceptionally long. By May, the sun was already scorching, the asphalt roads softened by the heat, making your soles sticky when you stepped on them. The air was filled with the sweet fragrance of gardenias and the reek of rotting waterweeds from the riverside. Back then, the cicadas hadn't started their chorus yet, but the afternoons always made one drowsy.
Lao Zhang, Zhang Fushun, a man nearing fifty, had recently been feeling like there was a wall in front of him. Not made of brick, nor of cement, but rather as if condensed from the suffocating summer heat of a late evening – transparent, yet tangibly obstructing him, impossible to push through or circumvent.
Back in the day, Lao Zhang was a well-regarded figure in the hutong. Not because of any high office or vast wealth, but for his steadfastness. He'd worked diligently at the non-staple food store for the better part of his life, saving up 400,000 yuan. This 400,000 was the foundation for the latter half of his life, the capital his wife kept mentioning for a bigger refrigerator, for a washing machine with a dryer function, and his own dream of carrying a birdcage, drinking tea, and listening to opera after retirement. The Beijing sun, in his eyes, had once been warm and golden.
No one knew exactly how the retired couple, surnamed Zhang, had accumulated that debt of one hundred and twenty million. Their residence, a three-bedroom apartment in an unremarkable old building on the city's edge, punctually received their monthly pension of twelve thousand yuan. This sum was as clearly discernible in the transaction records of their joint bank account as the rising and setting of the sun. However, in stark contrast to this steady trickle of income was the debt, which had swelled exponentially, eventually solidifying into an astronomical figure.
Lao Lei, Lei Zhendong – quite a resonant name. But this past month, he felt more stifled than a sealed gourd. The little things at the company snowballed from sesame seeds to watermelons, then to winter melons, crushing him till he could barely breathe. The numbers on the reports were like rows of baring-fanged imps, constantly invading his dreams at night. People nicknamed him "the second Lei-Jobs," but the taste of being "second" now was nothing but bitter Coptis root. He himself grumbled, "This past month, damn it, has truly been the toughest time since I started the business!"
Lao Wang, Wang Shouyi – a plain name for a down-to-earth man – had been a clerk in the sub-district's "Comprehensive Governance Office" for what felt like an eternity, nearly twenty years. The office window faced the central garden: flowers in spring, cicadas in summer, fallen leaves in autumn, and the longing for heating in winter. Life, well, it was like the seasons outside his window, one after another; bustling on the surface, but not much real difference underneath.
Wang Er'mangzi, ever since he was born, had a left eye that was black, and his right eye, well, it was light blue, like a cat’s eye in one of those foreign paintings. Here in Sand Ridge Town, where yellow sand filled the sky, his eyes were quite the "sight," not too big, not too small. The townsfolk were used to sandstorms, used to clods of earth; a sudden glance at Wang Er'mangzi's eyes always made them ponder a bit. Some said it was unlucky, others said it was a gift from Heaven, a pair of "divine eyes" that could see through sandstorms.
K discovered the notification on a tired Tuesday morning. On his phone screen, a stubborn red dot glowed in the top-right corner of the familiar orange shopping app icon. "Congratulations!" a push notification popped up, "You've won a free order qualification in the 'Everything Carnival' event! Click for details."
The day was stifling, like a sealed soy sauce vat. The Start of Summer had just passed, and the real summer heat hadn't truly arrived, but in a place like Shanghai, once the crowds gathered, the warmth rose up on its own accord, like from a stove. Old Wang, Wang Deshun, retired for nearly five years, had been pestered endlessly by his little grandson today. Giving up his usual chess game at the alley entrance, he'd reluctantly trailed along to this confounded "Happy Valley."
K felt like a forgotten screw in a vast machine, rusted and irrelevant. He worked in District Seventeen of the 'Integrated Information Processing Center,' responsible for verifying endless streams of data that could never truly be finished. When he dragged his exhausted body back to the white cube they called 'home,' his wife, Ella, was sitting calmly at the gleaming dining table. Before her, suspended in the air, was a soft halo of constantly shifting colors—one of the existential forms of 'Unit 734.'
K. stood in the Comprehensive Student Services Hall, clutching the crumpled receipt in his hand like a useless map. The air hung thick with a peculiar mixture of disinfectant and old paper. He needed to return a skirt—a pale lavender pleated skirt he had never intended to buy, yet which had somehow materialized in his shopping bag. It should have been a simple task, like erasing a misplaced punctuation mark, but he quickly discovered that what he was trying to erase might be an entire, incomprehensible text.