71 posts tagged with "Fiction"

Old Wang stood at the entrance of the "Good Neighbor" supermarket, staring at the huge red characters "Clearance Sale" pasted on the glass door. He felt like a sodden wad of old cotton stuffed in his chest, heavy and suffocating. This supermarket, which he had run for fifteen years, ultimately couldn't withstand the impact of the flashy, 24-hour new-style chain convenience store across the street. Like a leaking old boat, it was gurgling its way to the bottom.

Old Wang, full name Wang Jianguo, a name bearing the mark of an era, was now just a man sweeping fallen leaves and dust in an inconspicuous hutong in the East District. He was sixty-three, slightly stooped, like the weather-beaten old locust tree in the hutong, silently watching the sun rise and set. The bustling traffic seemed like the clamor of another world. His world consisted of this hundred-meter-long flagstone path and the meager monthly pension, barely enough to get by, plus feeding a few stray cats at the hutong entrance.

When Lao Wang pushed open the door, he wasn't greeted by the aroma of dinner, nor the babbling calls of his son, but by an almost vacuum-like silence. The apartment, this pigeon coop he called "home," seemed unusually empty in the evening twilight, as if space itself had been stripped of something substantial.

Lin Xiaohe carried an iPhone 6 in her pocket. Not the latest model, nor any special edition, just the kind with slightly worn edges, a screen protector replaced countless times, a battery that didn't last long, an old fellow that would occasionally "ponder life" when running. Most young people on the street held shiny new phones with multiple protruding camera lenses, click-clack, taking photos so sharp they looked like they could capture your very soul. Not Lin Xiaohe. She just used this old companion, taking photos slowly.

The street she lived on had some years to it. Flanked by tall French plane trees, it offered dense shade in summer and golden fallen leaves in autumn. At the street corner was a noodle shop that had been open for decades. The owner, surnamed Wang, always cooked perfectly chewy noodles with generous toppings. Lin Xiaohe often went there for a steaming bowl of noodles with pickled greens and shredded pork. She would take out her phone and snap a picture of the bowl of noodles. No filters, no searching for the perfect angle, just a casual shot. Photos from the old phone weren't brightly colored, perhaps even a bit grayish, veiled in a haze. But Lin Xiaohe felt this was fine, like looking at things through a thin layer of steam, possessing an indescribable gentleness.

Wang Er from the street corner is dead.

The rain wouldn't stop, like the final looping track of a cheap record – hoarse, stubborn, carrying a sense of weary fatalism. I was killing time in the old bookstore downstairs from my apartment building, the air thick with the mingled scent of musty paper and cheap coffee. The owner, a taciturn old man, was always behind the counter reading well-worn philosophy books, as if not even the apocalypse could disturb his rendezvous with Kant or Nietzsche.

That supermarket, named "Yongfu" – Eternal Fortune – ultimately failed to sustain its fortune. Like a weary behemoth stranded on the city's edge, it breathed its last on the day it announced its clearance sale and closure. The air hung heavy with the scent of cheap soap, expired bread, and something deeper, an essence called "despair."

Liu Wenhai, or Teacher Liu, as he was more accustomed to being called, was counting down silently in his heart. Forty-seven days left. In forty-seven days, he could step down from this lectern he had stood behind for over thirty years, clutching the pension—not hefty, but enough for him to retire to the countryside—and tend to the small vegetable garden he had long planned. Sunshine, soil, and the freedom of doing nothing—for an old teacher earning two thousand yuan a month and renting a cramped room on the city's edge, it was practically a preview of paradise.

When the plane landed at Keflavík, the sky was an indescribable grey-blue, mixed with a faint, elusive smell of sulfur. Three in the afternoon, yet the sunlight was as stingy as the residual glow before midnight. I had come to Reykjavik for a small translation seminar, the topic unimportant, at least to me. What truly drew me was the name "Iceland" itself, like an uncut piece of obsidian, cold, sharp-edged, yet potentially hiding unexpected light within.

No one knew exactly how many floors the "Interdepartmental Joint Review Office for Tariff Exemption Lists" occupied, or indeed, if the building truly possessed a structure like "floors" comprehensible to mortals. It was merely rumored to be like a self-replicating grey dream, entrenched in some forgotten corner of the city. I, Shen Mo, am a low-level archivist here, number 718. My job, simply put, is to verify and file the lists of goods granted "exemption" status. However, the word "simple" here was like a faded lie, an ancient joke long lost to time.