Storm is coming
The gloomy sky persisted until the fifth day. Far from dispersing, the clouds grew thicker, their color shifting from grayish-white to a murky, leaden gray, weighing heavily on the entire city. The air grew sticky, the wind died down, and a stifling feeling of impending rain permeated every corner.
Ye Shu still woke up at that precise time. But this time, after opening his eyes, he didn't get up immediately. Instead, he lay quietly, listening to the unusually dull city noise outside the window—the sound seemed to be absorbed and suppressed by the thick cloud layer, losing its usual high-frequency components and leaving only an unsettling, persistent low hum.
He sat up and instead of going directly to the kitchen as usual, he walked to the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room first.
Outside the window, the world seemed shrouded in a vast gray filter. The tall buildings lost their sharp angles, and the distant scenery blurred. Traffic continued to flow, but it seemed to move with greater difficulty, its red brake lights forming a hazy, ominous streak through the gray haze.
His gaze didn't scan the city wide-angle as usual. Instead, it narrowed slightly and focused toward the east of the city. There lay a burgeoning technology park and several massive construction sites. Even on a cloudy day, the outlines of towering cranes could be seen. Now, the area was shrouded in an even thicker haze, leaving only blurry, distorted silhouettes.
A subtle, almost imperceptible tension appeared in his usually relaxed shoulder line. It wasn't alarm or fear, more like... an instinctive reaction to sensing unusual harmonics within a vast system. Like a seasoned sailor, his skin sensed subtle changes in air pressure, knowing a storm was brewing in the distance.
He stood still for a full ten minutes, motionless, only his light-colored pupils occasionally moving extremely slowly, as if tracking the flow of some invisible particles in the air that ordinary people could not see.
Finally, he turned and began his usual routine. Boil water, brew tea. But today, his movements seemed slower than usual. When he poured the water, it flowed in a longer arc than usual.
He held the teacup in his hand, but didn't sit down, still standing by the window. He took a sip of tea, but his eyes never left the haze-shrouded area in the east.
He put down his cup when the tea was empty and walked to the door. He put on his off-white coat. Today, he took an extra soft hat of the same color from the hook behind the door and put it on his head, pulling the brim slightly low.
He needed to "feel" it more closely.
As the elevator descended, the property management staff in the lobby seemed somewhat listless, even affected by the weather. Pushing open the glass door, the hot, metallic, and dusty air from outside instantly enveloped me, making me feel even more suffocated than usual.
Without hesitation, he took a step towards the east.
The further east we went, the more oppressive the feeling seemed to grow. It wasn't a psychological effect; the airborne particulate matter had increased noticeably, and a subtle astringency was noticeable when we breathed. Pedestrians were mostly hurried, their masks on at a significantly higher rate, their faces expressing either annoyance or numbness.
He walked slowly, but his stride was steady, like a fish swimming upstream, moving precisely along the increasingly crowded sidewalks. His gaze was no longer scattered, but selectively skimming over details: tiny new cracks appearing on building facades; unusually thick dust accumulation on the leaves of plants in the green belt; the high PM2.5 readings flickering on the screen of a roadside monitoring station.
He passed the edge of the tech park, where a massive glass-walled building looked cold and arrogant in the haze. Several stylishly dressed young men stood by the roadside, smoking and talking loudly about an upcoming project, their voices excited and ambitious.
"...It will definitely explode the market! The valuation will at least triple!" "Did the server pass the stress test? Don't let it crash..." "Don't worry! We spent so much money on top-notch hardware!"
Ye Shu's gaze swept over them without pausing, but his pace slowed imperceptibly for a moment. He heard the words "server," "stress test," and "downtime." Like a few pebbles, they dropped into the lake of his mind, which was already perceiving unusual harmonics, stirring up faint ripples that quickly formed a vague connection with the sense of disharmony he was experiencing.
He didn't stop, continuing forward. Ahead lay a vast construction site, where a new landmark building was rising from the ground. Tower cranes, like giant arms, moved slowly through the gray haze. The sounds of piling, concrete mixing, and metal clashing blended into a continuous, deafening industrial roar.
He paused outside the construction site fence, which was spray-painted with brightly colored renderings and slogans like "Building a New City Center" and "Future Smart Community."
He looked past the wall, at the deep, massive foundations dug deep by machinery. Bare earth lay beneath a jungle of steel. The air was thick with the stench of diesel and earth.
It’s here that the sense of dissonance becomes particularly clear.
It wasn't noise or dust, but something deeper. A tension... a tension that was too eager for success, stretched to the limit, ignoring a fragile balance. Like a string stretched to its limit, it vibrated inaudibly but was enough to unsettle those with keen senses.
He raised his head slightly, and his eyes from under the brim of his hat swept over the towering tower cranes and the temporary protective nets and supporting structures that looked strong enough and were erected outside the construction site.
Everything looks to be in order and in compliance with regulations.
But the barely perceptible wrinkle between his brows reappeared, this time lasting a little longer.
He stood quietly for about five minutes, like a silent plant growing in the noisy waves, absorbing and analyzing the complex information conveyed by the surrounding environment alone.
Then he turned around and went back the way he had come.
On the way back, the sky grew increasingly gloomy, the leaden clouds looking as if they would drip ink at any moment. The pedestrians on the road walked even faster.
Passing by a central park, he spotted a familiar sight—a young man in a puppet costume handing out flyers. Today, he was portraying a dejected dinosaur, his movements even more clumsy and slow. Perhaps it was the sweltering heat, or perhaps it was the increased fatigue, but his steps were unsteady. Turning once, he nearly bumped into a nearby bench.
Ye Shu's footsteps did not pause at all, and his eyes just glanced past.
However, just as he passed by the "dinosaur", a suppressed, short cough came from the doll costume, followed by heavy breathing.
Ye Shu took two more steps forward.
Then he stopped.
An extremely rare pause.
He didn't look back. He just stood there, his back looking particularly thin and lonely under the gray sky.
About three seconds later, he continued to move forward, his speed seeming to be a little faster than before.
When he returned to the apartment building, he didn't even notice the gaze of the property staff and walked straight into the elevator.
Back in the apartment, he took off his coat and hat and hung them up carefully. Without washing his hands first, he walked to the French window in the living room again.
Outside, the first heavy raindrop finally hit the glass with a soft "pa" sound. Then came the second drop, the third... Soon, the rain curtain merged into one, blurring the entire world.
The mountain rain finally came.
The rain washed the glass and temporarily washed away the gray city.
But Ye Shu's gaze still penetrated the rain curtain and stared at the east.
The taut string he felt didn't relax despite the rain. The unusual harmonics continued to vibrate at a low frequency beneath the sound of the rain.
He slowly raised his hand and pressed his fingertips on the cold glass again, feeling the faint vibration from the raindrops hitting it.
This time, his fingertips stayed there longer than ever before.
An extremely clear yet indescribable premonition, like the dark clouds outside the window, weighed heavily on his heart.
Some things seem inevitable.
And he might have already silently glimpsed the fateful trajectory.
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