14 posts tagged with "Kafka"

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.

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. 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.

Doctor Xiao first realized something was wrong on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. He had just finished a not-too-complicated surgery and was taking off his sweat-stained mask when the head nurse handed him an unsigned grey envelope. The envelope's texture was unusually stiff, its edges sharp enough to seemingly cut a finger. "Someone left it at the front desk, said it was for you, must be opened personally." The head nurse's voice carried an unusual note of caution.

K was awakened by an absolute silence. Not the tranquility proper to the deep night, which contains subtle signs of life, but a complete stillness, a dead quiet as if the universe itself had stopped breathing. He fumbled for the switch by his bed; his finger pressed down, only to be met with a hollow, unresponsive "click." The light didn't turn on. Outside the window, the city, where neon and streetlights once flowed eternally, was now submerged in an unfathomable darkness. Only a few distant stars looked down coldly upon this suddenly silenced land.

Old Liu Tou recently felt a constant tightness in his chest, like a lump of poorly chewed wotou stuck there. That old locust tree at the entrance to the hutong, its leaves had yellowed and greened, greened and yellowed again; it had witnessed Old Liu Tou age from "Little Liu" to "Old Liu," and it had witnessed his son, Minghui, grow from a little tyke into a young man who had made something of himself, gotten into that... oh right, "Intelligent Monkey Academy," a company so bright it dazzled the eyes.

Old Wang felt like he was about to merge with his electric scooter, not in that cool Transformers kind of way, but more like a puddle of melted asphalt, sticky and grimy, clinging to the city's skin. He was a delivery driver, one crowned with the title "God of Bad Reviews." This wasn't a crown he chose; it was forced upon him by the algorithm, that formless, colorless digital phantom said to be impartial and just.

In that dusty small town, names, like dust, were easily forgotten. Lin Xiaoqing's name, however, was once the brightest star in town. Her home was a mud-brick house that seemed to tremble with every gust of wind. Her parents were farmers who toiled from dawn till dusk, their sweat watering the barren land and nourishing her seemingly unattainable dream of university. That year, the acceptance letter arrived like a golden dove, flapping its wings as it flew into their humble home. The red seal, the white paper, carried the entirety of a young girl's imagination about the future – sunlit classrooms, vast seas of books, and the hope of escaping this land.

That piece of news, like a stone dropped into the still lake of time, sent ripples spreading rapidly, eventually reaching the forgotten department where Archivist K worked. The President, during an impromptu remark, had expressed a desire for the miraculous—he wanted to meet the ghost allegedly 300 years old and still on the Social Security system's list. The order descended through layers of bureaucracy, finally becoming a memo with blurred ink placed on K's dust-covered desk. Task: Verify and locate Elias Greene, male, allegedly born 172X, currently still a social security beneficiary.

K. felt it necessary to go to the police station. This wasn't out of anger or revenge, although she had every reason to be angry—the man who claimed to be single, with whom she had been involved for nearly a year, the gentle and well-spoken Mr. Z, turned out to be already married. She discovered this purely by chance, as jarring as finding a hair not belonging to her on a clean floor. This isn't anger, K. told herself, it's a confirmation of order, a necessary clarification of facts. Deception is deception, just as two plus two equals four; it was a fact that needed to be recorded.