A young worker stood at the doorway, clutching a game console, his fingers picking at the scratches on the edge of the casing. No one spoke inside; only the projector fan continued to spin.

Chen Hao stood up, walked over, and took the machine. The screen had a diagonal crack, and the power connector was a little loose. "What games does your dad play with this?"

"Tetris." The young man looked down at the tips of his shoes. "He said this thing is like life. You can't avoid the things that fall from it; you can only try to arrange them neatly."

Chen Hao placed the machine on the podium and dusted it off. "Looks like tonight's theme was decided long ago—we didn't choose the stories, the stories came to us."

He turned to Susan: "It's your turn. Tell me about your painting."

Susan didn't move, but squeezed her knee. She had been taking notes, the pen cap still in her mouth. Hearing her name brought her back to her senses, and she put the pen in her pocket and slowly stood up.

“I brought a painting,” she said. “It wasn’t framed; it was rolled up.”

Karl pulled a paper tube from under the table and handed it to her. She untied the rope and spread the drawing on the podium. The drawing depicted a wasteland with collapsed towers in the distance and shards of glass and metal scattered on the ground nearby. The colors were dark, but some areas shimmered, as if reflected from minerals.

“When I first came here three years ago, the studio was set up next to the maintenance area.” She said in a low voice, “Every afternoon at three o’clock, as soon as the welding machine was turned on, the whole room would shake. The paint bottles would rattle and clang, and the brushstrokes on the canvas would all tremble.”

Someone chuckled softly.

“I know what you want to say.” She looked up and said, “An artist comes to the base and wants to create in peace? That’s so pretentious.”

The laughter stopped.

“I’m not complaining,” she continued. “I just think I was wrong back then. What’s needed here isn’t painting, but hands that can fix things. So I put away my art supplies and enrolled in a machine operation training program.”

Chen Hao leaned against the wall, took out a piece of candy, and popped it into his mouth. It was sweet, but it turned a little sour after holding it in his mouth for too long.

“On the third night of the training, it rained heavily,” Susan said. “I couldn’t sleep, and when I passed by the studio, I found that the door wasn’t closed properly. The wind blew the curtains all up, and rainwater poured into the room, soaking all the canvases.”

She paused for a moment.

“I rushed in to try to salvage it, only to find that the top one had been blown to the ground and was soaking in water. I squatted down to pick it up, and as soon as my hand touched the painting, I suddenly saw that the paint and muddy water were mixed together and flowing into the cracks in the floor.”

Nana tilted her head slightly, and the optical module gently adjusted the focus.

"The next day, I borrowed a scraper and absorbent pad from the maintenance team and turned the canvas over to clean the back. I found that the mineral powder from the base surface stuck to the paint and reflected light after it dried. The light wasn't the kind of shine that comes from a mirror; it was like light shining through bone."

"And then you started using this thing to draw?" Chen Hao asked.

“Not immediately,” she said. “We tried it for half a month first. We scraped soil from different areas and mixed it with pigments. Some were greenish, some were bluish, and one was high in iron, which looked like rust after drying, but showed gold lines under light.”

Carl, who had been staring at the painting, reached out and touched the edge: "Is this what you call the 'language of the wilderness'?"

“Yes.” She nodded. “I’m no longer painting what I want to see. I’m starting to paint what this land is really like—broken, crooked, barely holding on. But it is alive.”

The room was quiet for a while.

"Later, the studio moved," she said. "It wasn't next to the repair area, nor was it facing the street. It was very quiet, and the lights were on. But I couldn't paint anything anymore."

"Why?" Chen Hao asked, chewing on his candy, his cheeks puffing out.

“It’s too clean,” she said. “There’s no noise, no vibration, and even the dust is cleaned regularly. My hand is steady now, but the things I draw look lifeless. So I moved back and built a small shed in the corner of the repair area. The welding still goes on as usual, and the wind and rain can’t stop it. But now I know how to use it—the pen can shake with the rhythm, and the paint can be flicked out with the vibration.”

She put the painting away, rolled it up again, and tied it with a rope.

"So that night, I didn't actually fix many paintings. But I realized—some things don't exist to be seen by others."

No one applauded.

A few seconds later, a female worker in the first row raised her hand and wiped the corner of her eye quickly, as if afraid of being seen.

Then applause broke out, not enthusiastic, but it lasted a long time.

Nana whispered, "The listener's heart rate synchronization rate has risen to 78%, and the intensity of emotional resonance has reached its peak."

Carl looked down and flipped through his notebook, tearing off a page and replacing it with a blank one. He didn't write anything, but instead drew a tree with a pencil—crooked, with cracked bark, but branches reaching upwards.

Chen Hao walked to the front of the stage and picked up the microphone.

“The story about the game console we just heard was about how to neatly arrange things that have fallen down,” he began. “And Susan’s painting teaches people how to grow something from a crack.”

He paused for a moment and looked around the room.

“We always thought culture was something grand. Putting on performances, organizing exhibitions, shooting videos and uploading them. But today I realized that it's actually about a person being willing to do something even when no one is watching.”

"For example?" someone in the back row asked.

“For example, you hum a song while you’re on night shift,” Chen Hao said. “For example, you assemble scrapped parts into small animals and put them on the windowsill. For example, you remember that a colleague likes spicy food, so you take an extra packet of chili sauce when you get your food.”

He looked at Susan: "These things don't count, and they won't be recorded. But once people start talking about them, people will listen. And if people listen, people will start doing them too."

"Then what?"

"And then that was it," he said. "It doesn't have to turn into a result, nor does it have to affect anyone. It doesn't matter if the flame is small, as long as we don't let it go out."

He put the microphone back on its stand but didn't leave the stage.

“I know many people think this is a waste of time.” He looked at the person asking the question. “I think so too. I used to not even want to participate in a five-minute sharing session; I would rather lie down than sit.”

Someone laughed.

“But I’ve figured it out now,” he said. “People aren’t machines; they can’t just stop after tightening the screws. We need something else to support us, or we’ll break down sooner or later.”

“So this isn’t an artistic activity,” he said, pointing to Susan’s painting. “It’s self-salvation.”

The applause rang out again, even louder than before.

Nana approached the podium and whispered to Chen Hao, "The efficiency of human emotion transmission is 41% higher than expected."

"You know about this?" He raised an eyebrow.

“There are relevant models in the database,” she said. “The data shows that individuals who are in a single-task environment for a long time experience an average increase in neural activity of 12.6% with each non-utilitarian expression.”

"So in the end it's all about improving efficiency?" Chen Hao laughed.

“Not entirely,” she said. “Some of the data cannot be quantified. For example… when Susan mentioned ‘the wind made the painting wet,’ Carl’s heart stopped for 0.8 seconds.”

Chen Hao turned to look at Karl, who was folding paper with his head down. He had folded an A4 sheet of paper into a small box with the edges pressed tightly.

"You've been hiding it well," Chen Hao said.

Carl didn't look up: "I just felt that the night she mentioned was a bit like the sandstorm I encountered while on duty. All the equipment stopped, communications were cut off, and I sat in the control room all night. I thought I was going crazy, but then I discovered that the light leaking through the cracks in the wall shone on the floor like a smiling face."

"So you saw it too?" Susan asked.

“I saw it,” he said, “but I didn’t say it.”

Chen Hao picked up the microphone again.

"Is anyone else going to speak?" he asked.

No one stood up.

But he didn't put down the microphone.

The lights were still on, and the air conditioner vent gently ruffled the corner of a piece of paper. Susan's drawing tube stood beside the podium, the knot in it slightly crooked.

Chen Hao opened his mouth, about to say something.

Footsteps approached from outside the door and stopped at the entrance.