Li Mei stared at the bright red numbers on her phone screen: 2000.00. Not a loss, but a profit. On her very first day of trading gold, she had made two thousand yuan. This should have been a moment of celebration, but instead, a secret fear, like a vine, wrapped itself around her heart.

She remembered Old Zhang's warning from work: "Nothing good comes for free. Money that comes this easily is probably dirty." Old Zhang was known at work as a "stick-in-the-mud," always clutching a yellowed copy of Das Kapital and skeptical of everything new. Li Mei had initially scoffed at his words, but now they felt like needles, pricking her with anxiety.

房间是米黄色的。墙壁上没有任何装饰，除了靠近天花板的地方，有一排通风口，规律地排列着，像是某种无意义的密码。房间里只有一张桌子，一把椅子，还有一张床。床单是灰白色的，像是很久没有洗过，散发着一股淡淡的霉味。

K先生坐在椅子上，盯着桌子上的一张纸。纸上有一个圆圈，圆圈里有一个点。他不知道这张纸是什么时候出现的，也不知道它有什么意义。他只知道，他已经在这个房间里待了很久。

Mr. K stood on the platform, enveloped in a restless crowd. The mechanical female voice repeated over and over again on the loudspeaker: "Train G2985 is temporarily stopped due to an incident. The resumption time is to be determined."

I woke up one morning and realized that breakfast was disappearing.

It's not that the refrigerator was empty, or that the cafes were closed. Rather, people's concept of "breakfast" is becoming increasingly indifferent. Or, increasingly "liquid."

Mrs. Wang was a shrewd woman, shrewd almost to the point of being harsh. She could argue fiercely with a vendor in the market over a price difference of two cents, and she could accurately find the best value-for-money goods in the supermarket's discount section. In the digital age, she took this shrewdness to the extreme – online shopping.

Recently, Mrs. Wang ordered a batch of garbage bags online, 100 pieces, and the store solemnly promised that the quantity was sufficient. But when she received the goods, on a whim, she counted them and found that there were only 38. This instantly tightened Mrs. Wang's shrewd nerves, as if someone had stolen her beloved gold coins.

这年头，真是邪了门了！考研这档子事儿，也能弄出个大新闻。上海大学，多体面的名字，偏偏有个女学生，专业课只考了十分。您说这十分，是打发要饭的呢，还是寒碜谁呢？

按说，考得好，考得孬，那是学生自个儿的事儿。可这事儿就怪在这“十分”上。甭管怎么说，闭着眼往卷子上画，也得画出个十来分吧？这倒好，明明白白告诉你，这卷子，人家就没打算好好答。

These days, numbers haunt everyone like ghosts. Would you call this "progress"? I don't see it that way. At least, for this elderly man lying on a stretcher, the numerical password is more fatal than his illness.

Pushing the stretcher is the old man's son, his face a mask of anxiety, beads of sweat larger than soybeans. The old man, meanwhile, is semi-conscious, tubes snaking across his body, occasionally convulsing. Doesn't this scene resemble a postmodern painting? Absurd, yet so real it makes your heart clench.

老李头这辈子都没想过，自己会以这种方式出名。

二月二，龙抬头。城里禁放烟花爆竹，可乡下老家没这规矩。老李头早早备下了一挂鞭炮，说是史上最长，足足绕了村口那棵老槐树三圈半。他得意洋洋，盘算着点燃鞭炮，让噼里啪啦的响声震走一年的晦气，也给孙子小石头讨个好彩头。

Sunlight was mercilessly blocked by heavy, lead-gray curtains, leaving only a few faint rays of light leaking through the gaps, like a lingering gasp of hope. The room was filled with the stale smell of coffee grounds and the lingering scent of anxiety.

These days, even "gods" have become cheap. Tell me, what can you buy with 1.88 yuan? Back in the day, maybe you could buy a pack of "Hademen" cigarettes, and smoke your loneliness away. But now, this money can buy you a "god" – an exam "god".

It was in the newspaper, some "exam artifact", with 600,000 units already sold. I rubbed my blurry eyes, thinking I had misread. 600,000! What kind of concept is that? How many children must be desperately relying on this thing, trying to get ahead in the exam hall?