Looking Glass

The morning light of the third day was no different from yesterday, still filling the room punctually and indifferently.

Ye Shu opened his eyes while lying on the floor. The first thing that caught his pale pupils was the swaying ripples of light projected from the window onto the ceiling—the neon sign of a store downstairs had begun its flashing for another day.

He lay still for a few seconds, not lingering on sleep, but simply completing the transition from absolute silence to the beginning of awareness. Then he stood up, washed, boiled water, and made tea. Each movement was smooth and precise, like some inner rhythm.

He held the teacup in his hand, and instead of choosing the sofa or leaning against the table legs, he walked to the huge French window and sat down directly on the floor. The floor was slightly cool, and the heat seeped through the fabric of his clothes.

He faced outward, as if sitting on the edge of a stage, overlooking the slowly unfolding curtain of a never-ending human drama.

This height filters out most individual details—the expressions of pedestrians, the make of car, the writing on signs—leaving only the flowing blocks of color, the regularity of movement, and the vast background of noise. Yet this seems precisely his method of observation: not interpreting individual joys and sorrows, but observing the overall trends and threads.

The morning rush hour traffic began to converge and flow into the main road from various branch roads, soon becoming sticky and slow. The red brake lights formed an intermittent river of light, and the honking of horns was like an anxious pulse. Even through a height of a hundred meters and double-glazed windows, one could faintly feel the tension of the congestion.

He watched the traffic for a moment, his gaze calm, as if examining a model on a sand table. Then, his gaze shifted slightly, settling on the middle floor of an adjacent office building. There was a window there, its curtains tightly drawn. But almost the next second, the curtains were flung open, revealing a figure in a suit. He was talking on the phone, waving his arms vigorously, his face etched with a mixture of excitement and anger that was faintly palpable even from this distance.

Ye Shu's gaze didn't linger on the window for more than three seconds before drifting away, returning to the river of light below. It was as if the intense emotion was just a tiny speck of dust, drifting past his vision, no need to pay attention.

The teacup was empty. He stood up to refill it.

As he sat down again, his gaze drifted toward an old neighborhood farther out. The demolition work there was nearing completion. Most of the houses had been bulldozed, leaving only a few broken walls standing alone, like forgotten tombstones. A massive excavator, like a steel beetle, moved slowly through the rubble, raising a cloud of dust with every shovel stroke.

He looked at the ruins, watched the excavator's mechanical arm rise and fall, his eyes still without any fluctuation, neither nostalgia nor anticipation for new things. It was as if it was just the natural metabolism of the surface of the earth, one forest fell, and another had not yet grown, that's all.

In the afternoon, he briefly left the window to eat a few soda crackers and a handful of nuts for lunch, then returned to his original position.

The angle of the sunlight began to tilt, stretching his shadow behind him into a long, thin line. After a brief lull in the afternoon, the streets below began to brew the congestion of the evening rush hour.

His eyes chanced upon the sidewalk below. A figure in a puppet costume was laboriously handing out flyers to passersby, most of whom averted their gaze with blank expression. The puppet's hood was removed for a moment, revealing a youthful yet exhausted face, its hair damp with sweat. The young man tilted his head back to take a sip of water, his gaze unconsciously shifting upwards, seemingly meeting Ye Shu's gaze for a fleeting moment.

Ye Shu's gaze didn't evade, nor did it respond. It simply passed by calmly, like passing by a cloud or a tree. The young man seemed to see nothing, quickly donning his heavy hood again and continuing to wave his arms mechanically.

Just as the setting sun was about to begin its farewell ritual, Ye Shu's gaze fixed on an unassuming newsstand on the corner. An elderly man was slowly gathering up the magazines and newspapers displayed outside the window. His movements were slow, each one a bit laborious. Next to the newsstand, several middle school students in school uniforms were huddled around a mobile phone screen, their shrill voices a stark contrast to the elderly man's slow, silent demeanor.

Ye Shu watched the old man collect the last stack of newspapers, bend over, and seem to cough a few times before slowly pulling down the newsstand's shutter and locking it. With his back hunched, he slowly walked away in the opposite direction of the students.

His eyes followed the hunched figure until it disappeared around the corner.

Then he blinked very slowly, one of the few noticeable physiological movements he made that afternoon.

Outside the window, the city lights gradually lit up, the prelude to nightlife began to sound. The neon lights flashed even more vigorously, and the river of light from the traffic became brighter and more congested.

Ye Shu finally stood up from the window. His legs and feet were slightly numb from holding the same position for so long, but he moved as usual, without any hesitation.

Without turning on the lights, he walked to the kitchen in the gathering dusk and prepared his dinner—still oatmeal and lettuce.

Eat, wash.

As he placed the cleaned dishes upside down on the drain rack, he paused for a moment. His gaze fell on a drop of water on the edge of the sink that hadn't been completely wiped away. Reflecting the blue neon light outside the window, the drop trembled faintly like a miniature, restless heart.

He looked at the drop of water for two seconds, then stretched out his finger and wiped it away with extreme precision using his fingertip.

There were a few wet marks on his fingertips. He turned on the tap, rinsed his fingers with a tiny stream of water, and then dried them carefully with a linen towel beside him.

After doing all this, he raised his head, his gaze seemingly unintentionally casting to the window once again. The city's nightscape was magnificent, but beneath that sea of ​​light, the traffic he had witnessed today, the angry employees, the ruins, the exhausted doll costumes, the elderly man locking his door... At the very bottom of all these images, a vague, inexplicable sense of disharmony stirred, like an undercurrent beneath the surface of the water.

It wasn't a clear omen, more like... an extremely faint abnormal frequency band in the background noise. It came from a certain intuition formed from his long-term observation of the vast laws of this city.

He couldn't define what it was, where it came from, or where it led.

It is not even certain whether it really exists. Perhaps it is just an illusion caused by light and shadow, or auditory hallucination caused by the minor disturbances caused by Chen Xu for several consecutive days.

He stood still for a moment, his light-colored pupils reflecting the flowing lights outside the window, deep and unfathomable.

Then he turned around and walked to the bedroom to wash up before going to bed as usual.

Everything is as usual.

But tonight, in the dreamless and silent sea where he usually sank, that extremely faint abnormal frequency band, like an elusive abnormal current in the deepest sea, continued to tremble at a low frequency.

It failed to cause a stir, but it also couldn't be ignored.