The Day the Sign Turned Green

That afternoon, like any other afternoon, was unremarkable, perhaps even a bit tedious. Faint motes of dust floated in the air, along with the hesitant warmth of impending early summer. I had just finished a rather uninteresting translation job and was walking home, headphones on, listening to Bill Evans's "Waltz for Debby." As I passed the Mixue Bingcheng on the corner, a sense of wrongness, like a small pebble dropped precisely into the calm surface of my consciousness, made itself felt.

I stopped, pulling one earbud out.

The sign. That huge sign, usually a dazzling red—a red that carried a kind of cheap, undeniable cheerfulness—was now, somehow, green. Not a vibrant emerald green, nor a deep forest green, but a strange, sickly fluorescent green, as if it had faded or perhaps had never been colored correctly in the first place. The Snow King mascot was still there, its smile unchanged, but the sudden shift in background color made the smile look eerie, like an ill-fitting mask.

The world seemed to stutter for a moment, like the momentary pause of a skipping old record. Bill Evans's piano continued to flow into my other ear, soft and melancholic, creating an utterly absurd contrast with the green sign before me.

I stood there, staring at the green sign, feeling like an extra who had stumbled onto the wrong movie set. Was something wrong with my eyes? Or was my memory failing? The Mixue Bingcheng sign, hadn't it always been red? That red representing sweetness, icy refreshment, and summer evenings.

A few students in school uniforms emerged laughing from the shop, ice creams in hand. They paid the green sign no mind, as if it had been born that color. A delivery driver hastily parked his electric scooter, rushed in to pick up an order, and emerged without even glancing up.

Only I stood there like an idiot on the pavement, perplexed, even panicked, by a sign that had turned green. This panic didn't stem from danger, but from a suspicion about established reality. Like if you'd always believed 1 plus 1 equals 2, and then one day, the entire world tells you it equals 3, and they act completely normal about it, utterly unfazed.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Maybe it was a new store opening? Or some special marketing campaign? I walked to the entrance. Posters with discount information were taped to the glass door, but there was no explanation about the sign's color change. Inside, the lights were bright as usual, and the staff in red uniforms (at least the uniforms were still red) were busy, backgrounded by the typical kind of energetic yet indistinct pop music.

I pushed the door open and ordered the cheapest item, a lemonade. While paying, I casually asked the young male employee, "Excuse me, your sign... when did it change to green?"

He looked up, a programmed smile on his face, but a trace of bewilderment in his eyes. "Green?" he repeated, as if I'd asked an extremely odd question. "Sir, our shop's sign has always been this color."

"Always?" A chill crept up my spine. "Are you sure?"

"Of course, I'm sure," he chuckled, somewhat like appeasing an unreasonable customer. "We've been here since the store opened, and the sign hasn't changed. It's always been this... well, quite unique green, hasn't it?" He gestured outside, his tone light and natural.

I didn't say anything more. I took the lemonade and walked out silently. Standing outside again, I looked up at the green sign. In the sunlight, the green seemed even more jarring, more unreal. It felt like a huge, silent joke, mocking my inherent understanding of the world.

I began to doubt my memory. Had I remembered wrongly? Was it possible that, deep in my subconscious, some weariness with the red sign had led me to fantasize its original color? Or was this simply a dream? I pinched my arm; the pain was distinct.

Continuing down the street, I had turned off Bill Evans. Everything around seemed normal—the traffic, the pedestrians, the plane trees lining the road. But the green sign followed me like a ghost, lingering silently in my mind.

Back in my apartment, I opened my laptop and typed into the search engine: "Langfang Mixue Bingcheng sign green".

Among the search results, a local news flash popped up prominently. The headline read: "[Bizarre News] Langfang Mixue Bingcheng Sign Turns Green Overnight? Netizens Buzz, Store Claims 'It's Always Been Green'". The publication time was just this morning. The article was brief, mentioning that citizens had noticed the color change of the corner Mixue Bingcheng sign, sparking minor discussion, but the store insisted the sign's color had never changed. The report's tone was slightly playful and puzzled, concluding with "Perhaps a case of collective false memory?"

So, I wasn't the only one who noticed. This brought a slight sense of relief, followed by deeper confusion. If the store was lying, why would they? It's just the color of a sign; what was there to hide? If the store wasn't lying, what did that imply? Did all of us who remembered it as red simultaneously experience memory corruption? Or had the world itself, at some unknown juncture, quietly altered one of its trivial settings?

I closed the laptop and walked to the window. The street below was bustling with traffic as usual. I thought of Kafka's novels, those absurd, inexplicable situations where the protagonist struggles without finding any escape. That green sign felt like a tiny crack that had suddenly appeared in the solid wall of reality, through which I glimpsed some nameless, unsettling possibility.

Perhaps the world isn't as stable as we think. Perhaps what we call reality is just a thin layer of paint, susceptible to being altered or peeled away at any moment. And that abrupt green was the undercoat revealed after peeling, an undercoat we couldn't comprehend or explain.

In the evening, I cooked spaghetti with canned tomato sauce and a little parmesan. I ate without turning on the lights or music. Outside, the city lights glittered like a silent ocean. I imagined that Mixue Bingcheng store, its eerie green sign lit up in the night, like a solitary lighthouse, guiding lost souls.

The next day, I deliberately took a detour back to that Mixue Bingcheng.

The sign was still green. The sun shone brightly; everything seemed normal. People still hurried by, buying ice cream, drinking lemonade, none casting a particular glance at the green sign.

I stood across the street, watching it. For a long time. Then, I turned and walked away.

Perhaps acceptance was the only option. Like accepting the sudden losses in life, the inexplicable coincidences, and the deep, unspoken loneliness within. We see what the world presents to us. As for what color it originally was, or what color it should be, perhaps that doesn't matter at all.

What matters is that the green sign is there. And I have to keep walking my path, listening to my jazz, translating those tedious texts, trying hard to live in this world that occasionally changes color without warning. That's all.