Refund Labyrinth

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.

The very structure of the hall seemed a paradox. There was clearly only one entrance, but once inside, countless vaguely marked corridors radiated outwards, leading to cubicles labeled "Affairs Alpha," "Affairs Beta," "Category Gamma Inquiries," and the like. Each cubicle looked identical, fronted by silent, patient queues of people whose expressionless faces suggested they weren't waiting for a specific transaction, but rather for some kind of existential confirmation.

Following the arrows on a sign, K. headed towards the area marked "Item Adjustment and Exchange." The arrow pointed down a narrow corridor flanked by closed, unmarked doors. At the end of the corridor, in the dim light, was a single small window, like a symbolic exit on a stage set. Behind the window sat an expressionless woman, her hair pulled back with ruler-like precision.

"I need to return this." K. passed the paper bag containing the skirt and the receipt through the opening.

The woman didn't even glance at the skirt. She merely picked up the receipt and said, in a voice almost too quiet to hear, "Fill out the form. Form 7-Gamma."

"Excuse me, where do I get the form?"

"Form rack, Zone G." Without looking up, she gestured towards the metal forest behind her, composed of countless filing cabinets stretching nearly to the ceiling.

K. turned to face the "forest." Where was Zone G? All the cabinets were marked with complex codes, like some undeciphered ancient script. He wandered aimlessly, feeling as though he were browsing an endless library where the shelves held not books, but countless fragments of other people's lives: applications, complaints, futile proofs. He saw someone curled up asleep in the shadow of a filing cabinet, another person arguing softly with a blank wall.

After an indeterminate time, he finally found a shelf labeled "Zone G" in a dusty corner. There was only one type of form on the shelf: 7-Gamma. He took one. The header read: "Application for Unscheduled Item Reverse Flow (Provisional)." Below were densely packed fields requesting information including, but not limited to: "Coefficient of Accidental Acquisition of Item," "Record of Emotional Fluctuation During Possession (Refer to Standard Scale in Appendix III)," "Brief Statement on the Philosophical Basis for Return Intent," and "Constructive (or Destructive) Opinions Regarding Existing Procedures." Appendix III? He hadn't seen any appendix.

He returned to the window with the form, but the woman was gone. In her place was a man wearing thick glasses, intently examining a postage stamp with a magnifying glass.

"I have the form, but..." K. began to explain.

The man looked up, his eyes behind the lenses blank, like those of some subterranean creature. "7-Gamma? Oh, that one. That's the old version. You need Form 7-Delta, following the enactment of the new regulations."

"New regulations? When were they enacted?"

"Effective upon enactment. The specific time? Time is a relative concept, isn't it?" The man gave a cryptic smile. "You should check the 'Regulatory Update Bulletin Board' on the third floor of Building H. Although, the bulletin board itself might be undergoing updates."

K. felt a wave of dizziness. Building H? Where was that? He wasn't even sure if he was still in the original hall. The surrounding corridors seemed to have subtly shifted position while his back was turned. He began to suspect that the pale lavender skirt had been, from the very beginning, his admission ticket into this labyrinth, a trap designed specifically for him.

He started moving between floors, each one like a mirror image of the last, yet with indescribably distorted details. He saw many people with the same bewildered expression as his own, holding various items needing to be "processed": a burnt-out lightbulb, an incomprehensible book, a calendar with the wrong date. They were like lost ants, circling within a vast, inscrutable anthill.

Around a corner in one corridor, he stumbled upon a group of students, perhaps sixty or seventy of them, each holding a pale lavender pleated skirt identical to K.'s. They were lined up, silently moving towards a door marked "Bulk Anomaly Processing Channel." K. was stunned.

"You... you're all returning this skirt too?" he couldn't help asking a girl at the end of the line.

The girl looked at him blankly, as if he had asked a meaningless question. "Return? We were notified to come here for 'coordination.' Apparently, our skirts have disrupted some kind of 'color balance.'"

"Color balance?"

"Yes, the system detected an anomaly in the regional saturation of pale lavender. We need to wait here for 'recalibration.'" After speaking, she returned to that vacant, instruction-awaiting state.

K. looked at the identical skirts, and the one in his own hands felt heavier, as if it were no longer an individual item but a single pixel in some vast, repeating pattern. Was he also part of this "bulk anomaly"? His personal desire to return the skirt seemed so insignificant, so absurd, in the face of this massive "color balance" issue.

He even began to doubt his original reason for wanting to return it. Was it ill-fitting? Did he dislike the color? Or was it simply because its very existence was a mistake? His memory grew hazy, as if corroded by the very air of this place.

He gave up searching for Building H, gave up on Form 7-Delta. He even considered just dumping the skirt in some corner and fleeing the place. But an invisible force held him, a sense of obligation—not to the skirt, but to the unfinished "process" itself. He had to see the procedure through, like Sisyphus compelled to push his stone.

Unconsciously, he drifted to the back of the queuing students, tightly gripping the pale lavender skirt and the nearly disintegrated Form 7-Gamma. The people ahead moved slowly, entering the door. K. didn't know what lay beyond it—perhaps another form, another window, perhaps an endless corridor.

He wasn't even thinking anymore. He just stood there, waiting. Everything around him—the repetitive faces, the identical skirts, the endless filing cabinets and corridors—gradually merged into a chaotic background. He felt himself being digested, absorbed by the system, becoming an insignificant cell in its vast organism. His individuality, his initial purpose, were being ground down, dissolved in this labyrinthine process, destined perhaps, like old files in those cabinets, to be archived, forgotten, becoming a silent part of what kept this absurd world running.

He took one last look at the skirt in his hand. The pale lavender seemed unnaturally sharp in the dim light, like an indecipherable symbol, a signpost pointing deeper into the infinite maze. Then, he took a step forward, followed the line, and walked through the door. Behind him, the hall remained clamorous yet silent, the smell of disinfectant and old paper unchangingly permanent.