Wei Chen shut down his laptop at 11:17 p.m.
He knew it was 11:17 p.m. because the time in the lower-right corner of the screen was the last number he saw every day. Shut down, close it, slide it to the left side of the desk, aligned with the edge. He turned his phone facedown, plugged in the charging cable, and set the alarm for 6:45. He stood up and pushed the chair back under the desk, its legs settling into the four shallow dents in the floor.
He turned off the bathroom light last. He put his toothbrush back in the second slot of the holder, bristles facing left. He glanced at the mirror—not to look at himself, but to confirm that the bathroom in the mirror was the same as the bathroom behind him.
The same.
He turned off the light, went into the bedroom, pulled back the covers, and lay down. He picked up his headphones from the nightstand and opened the white noise app on his phone. Today he chose “Rain — Forest.” He set the volume to 42. He couldn’t lower it any further, or he would hear the apartment’s silence.
Silence was bad. When it was silent, he would hear things.
Not ghosts. Wei Chen didn’t believe in that. He was a software engineer. He had been writing code for nine years. He believed in cause and effect, logic, and verifiable facts. He just didn’t like silence. Some people were afraid of the dark. Some people were afraid of heights. He was afraid of silence. There was nothing to explain.
Rain filled his ears. He closed his eyes.
His breathing slowed. His shoulders relaxed. His consciousness began to sink, like a coin dropping into deep water, slowly, spinning—
He opened his eyes.
He hadn’t been startled awake. There had been no nightmare, no sound. He had simply woken up, as if someone had pressed a switch inside his head. His headphones were still on. The rain was still playing. His phone screen showed 2:03 a.m.
He stared at the ceiling.
Then he heard it.
Very faint. Fainter than the rain. If he hadn’t happened to be in that gap of total wakefulness and total silence, he wouldn’t have noticed.
It was coming from the right.
His bed was against the right-hand wall. On the other side of the right-hand wall was Unit 1203.
What did the sound resemble? He tried to classify it. It wasn’t the pipes. He knew the sound of the pipes. The pipes in this old apartment building often made noises by themselves in the middle of the night—dull, rhythmic sounds. This was different. This sound had no rhythm.
It was like something being dragged across the floor.
Very slowly. From one end of the wall to the other.
Then it stopped.
Wei Chen took off his headphones. The apartment was as silent as a hollowed-out box. He listened for thirty seconds. Nothing. Outside on the balcony, the air conditioner compressor turned with a low hum. The refrigerator occasionally gave off a faint buzz.
He put his headphones back on. He raised the volume from 42 to 45.
He closed his eyes.
The next morning, he ate breakfast at the office. A convenience-store sandwich and black coffee, sitting by the window in the break room. His coworker, Lin You-an, walked in carrying a mug. When he saw Wei, he nodded once.
“Going camping this weekend?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“Near Lalashan. A new campground.”
“By yourself?”
“By myself.”
Lin You-an didn’t ask anything else. Their conversations were usually like that, two machines exchanging exactly enough information to be useful. Lin You-an knew that Wei went camping every month, alone, never invited anyone, and rarely discussed the details.
Wei bit into his sandwich. Outside the window, the city skyline was gray, the glass curtain walls of several buildings reflecting the morning light. He thought of the sound from the night before the way he might think of a bug that had already been resolved—confirmed, no impact on operation, safe to ignore.
He finished the sandwich and the coffee, then threw the paper bag and cup into the sorting bin. Back at his desk, he opened his laptop and began writing the first line of code for the day.
That night, he returned to the apartment and pressed the button for the twelfth floor in the elevator. When the doors opened, the hallway’s fluorescent lights illuminated the off-white floor. His door, Unit 1202, was on the left. Unit 1203 was on the right.
He glanced at the door of Unit 1203.
A dark-brown fire door, exactly like his. The handle was silver and horizontal. There was no light beneath the door. No shoes, no doormat, no sign that anyone lived there.
He looked away, unlocked his door, and went inside.
Dinner was a convenience-store chicken bento with a can of unsweetened green tea. He sat at the dining table and ate facing the wall. The wall on the right. As he ate, he watched the wall: off-white paint, no cracks, no stains, nothing.
When he finished, he washed the dishes, flattened the bento box, and threw it into the recycling bag.
At 11:12 p.m., he shut down his laptop. Five minutes early today.
He completed every step of the process. Toothbrush, mirror, light. He lay down and put on his headphones. Today he chose “Rain — Eaves.” Volume 45.
He closed his eyes and waited to sink.
1:48 a.m.
He woke up.
The same way—as if there were no reason, no transition, as though someone had pulled him out of the water.
He didn’t take off his headphones. He lay there listening to the rain, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
Then, beneath the rain, he heard it again.
Today it wasn’t the sound of dragging.
Today it sounded like knocking. Very faint knocking. Not the kind you made on a door, but knuckles pressed against the wall, slowly, once, then once again.
From the wall on the right.
He counted. One, two, three, four, five. It stopped.
He waited a long time. Long enough for the rain to become something solid, packed into his ears.
There was nothing more.
He turned the volume up to 48. He closed his eyes.
But in the second before he closed them, he did something he wasn’t aware of doing.
He placed his left hand against the wall on the right.
His palm rested against the cold wall. As if confirming something. Or as if answering something.
That was how he fell asleep.