84 posts tagged with "Society"

  Zhang Xiaowei’s nail salon was located on the second basement floor of an office building. The store was not big, but business was fairly brisk. She had great skills, fair prices, and most importantly, she always managed to accurately capture the deepest desires of her customers. For example, a white-collar worker who was mentally exhausted by PPTs could have their nails transformed into a beautiful starry sky, as if carrying her away from this oppressive reality.

At six o'clock in the morning, the sun has not yet completely dispelled the fog on the edge of the city. In the "Starlight Hotel" near the university town, the laundry room on the first floor is already bustling. There are no business people in suits and ties, nor are there tired travelers, just a group of plainly dressed college students. They skillfully operate the coin-operated washing machines, stuffing bags of dirty clothes inside.

Li Ming is one of them. His movements are smooth, obviously not his first time here. He wears black-rimmed glasses, and his eyes show a tiredness that doesn't match his age. He expertly operates his phone, paying for the laundry, his actions carrying a sense of mechanical repetition. Today, he's wearing a light blue T-shirt with a small line of text printed on the front: "Reject Internal Competition, Starting with Me." This line seems particularly ironic in this setting.

"You see, isn't this height perfect?" the doctor said with a smile, pointing to the X-ray image. On the image, in the middle of my shin bone, there was a steel rod, like a scar that stretched across.

I stared at the steel rod. It wasn't perfect, it was even a bit ugly. But in the doctor's eyes, it represented the height I had dreamed of, the height accepted by society.

Teacher Zhang has been a bit bothered lately. It's not because of the mountain of exam papers at the end of the semester, nor is it the endless pleasantries of "Teacher, you've worked hard" in the parents' group chat. Instead, it's because he's recently become obsessed with a "new course" – human behavior studies, and a practical one at that.

The location of this course is a bit unusual; it's his colleague Teacher Li's single dormitory. The method is also simple: he installed a pinhole camera in the desk lamp next to Teacher Li's bed.

"You touched my waist!"

This sentence was like a bomb, instantly detonating the crowded subway car.

The gas station's bell rings on time, not a real bell, but a system notification sound. Every day at six in the morning, it announces the start of a new day in a mechanical yet slightly excited tone. "Go for it, working stiff!" The cartoon character on the screen waves its fist, its smile frozen, as if mocking.

Li Ming skillfully puts on his work hat, which is printed with "Today's Oil Price: 7.88 yuan/liter". This number changes every day, stimulating his nerves like a stock price. When it goes up, he sighs; when it falls, he feels disappointed, as if he has become a slave to oil prices.

Zhang Qiang stood in front of the full-length mirror, a slight smile playing on his lips as he gazed at his tall figure. He had paid an unimaginable price for this moment.

A few months ago, he was just an ordinary office worker, standing at 1.68 meters tall, feeling like a sardine in the crowded subway and a replaceable cog in the company machine. He was tired of looking up to others and longed to be the center of attention. So, he sought out the "Highly Customized" company.

Old Li died, quietly and without a sound. Just like the decades he lived, equally silent. When the community members cleaned his room, they found three bank cards and a property certificate, with a total value of nearly five million yuan. But this inheritance became a hot potato, unclaimed.

Old Li was never married, had no children, his parents had passed away early, and he had lost contact with distant relatives. It was as if he had appeared out of thin air in this city, and disappeared just as suddenly, leaving behind a pile of ownerless wealth.

At three in the afternoon, sunlight poured onto the windowsill of the legacy management office like melted honey. Old Lin, a seasoned administrator with twenty years of experience, was staring blankly at the cold numbers on his computer screen: 4.3 million yuan, and an apartment in the city center, unclaimed. This wasn't the largest estate he had handled, but it was the most absurd.

Old Lin adjusted his reading glasses and sighed. In this day and age, someone could actually be "so rich no one wants it," a merciless mockery of the social principle of "men die for wealth." He opened the thick case file, which recorded the life of the deceased Mr. Zhang, a life that was sketchy and brief, much like his quiet existence. No spouse, no children, not even distant relatives could be found.

Old Wang's greatest joy after retirement was organizing his "legacy list." This wasn't a traditional will, but a detailed list of every small item in his life: a tea set used for thirty years, each cup with a different chip, like the irreparable regrets in his life; a pile of expired newspapers, recording the boring news of each day, like his monotonous life day after day; and a box of matchboxes he collected in his youth, the patterns on which always reminded him of those blurred past events.

He lived in a small bachelor apartment, the walls a mottled yellow, the window looking out at towering skyscrapers. Old Wang always sat by the window, sipping his strong tea, staring at his list in a daze. The list had been updated dozens of times, the writing becoming denser and denser, like his life, increasingly complicated yet increasingly empty.