I can't quite recall when I first chewed betel nut. It was probably sometime during a summer in my second year of high school, when the air was thick and sticky like half-melted malt syrup. A friend handed me one, his tone like he was sharing a secret weapon: "It's a pick-me-up, hits harder than caffeine." The thing was coated in a sickly sweet syrup, but inside were coarse, tough fibers. Chewing it gave a primitive, almost violent pleasure. First, a fleeting sweetness in the mouth, then astringency, and finally a burning sensation that shot straight to the top of my head. The world seemed to sharpen for a fraction of a second, then quickly blurred again, like an old, out-of-focus projector.

In those days, absurd things were like chives, sprouting again after being cut.

The sky was overcast, as if water could be wrung from it. Old Man Li stood by the reservoir with his hands behind his back, puffing on his pipe. The water level of the reservoir was getting lower day by day, almost to the bottom. Normally at this time of year, the reservoir would be bustling with jumping fish. This year, however, not even a ghost of a shadow could be seen.

"Something's not right," Old Man Li exhaled a smoke ring. "I'm afraid something's going to happen."

天儿阴沉沉的，像块吸饱了脏水的破抹布，拧一拧，就能滴出墨汁来。街上的行人缩着脖子，快步走着，谁也不愿在外头多待一刻。

老李头儿搓着手，呵着白气，走进了“丸龟制面”——这名儿听着就透着股子洋气，可老李头儿知道，这儿的汤面，比他年轻时候吃的“烂肉面”还不如。

Li Mingrui felt like he had been thrown into the spin cycle of fate, spinning at high speed, dizzy, and finally slammed against the wall of reality with a "thud."

In those days, knowledge was still encased in paper shells, like fragile cicada exuviae, waiting to be ripped open to release the so-called "fate." But fate, you know, is like Schrödinger's cat; before the box is opened, it both exists and doesn't exist.

The truck driver, Old Wang, was a taciturn man with more wrinkles on his face than the roads he'd traveled. He drove his dilapidated Jiefang truck, carrying a load of answer sheets that determined the fate of countless people, bumping along the national highway. He felt like a fertility god, except he wasn't delivering babies, but rather the ethereal "future."

Eight-year-old Mayam lost her hair.

Not the slow, painful kind of shedding. But overnight, like wheat stalks cut by an invisible sickle, it scattered on her pillow, on the floor, and anywhere she had lain. Her mother said it was the shape of fear.

The overcast sky hung low, like a giant, gray, mournful face. In the slums of Paris, a dilapidated apartment building, like a rotten tooth, stood in the filthy streets. The stairwell was filled with the stench of decay and urine, and the walls were covered with distorted patterns scribbled by children with charcoal, like the cries of desperate souls.

Little Stone's life was like it had been fast-forwarded.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

My name is Li Ming, an ordinary office worker, shuttling daily through the city's cold concrete jungle. The cubicle is my fortress, and the food delivery app is my armory. I used to think that this was the progress of the times, where with a tap of a finger, delicious food would arrive. That was until a news report hit the surface of my calm life like a pebble shattering a tranquil lake – "Undercover reporter at Huang Men Chicken warns not to order takeout before 11 am."