Su Ding'an was covering gravity's shift for the fourth time this month, experienced enough now to start scrolling through his phone the moment he stepped into the control room.
On his first day, he hadn't even dared to use the bathroom. Now, he'd worked out a rhythm of his own.
After clocking in, he first checked whether the boundaries of his jurisdiction had changed, then reviewed whether there were any special matters scheduled for the day. The rest of the time was usually quiet and uneventful. The distribution of weight along this street rarely caused trouble.
He leaned against the wall beside the card reader and unlocked his phone to check the group messages. Someone at Hongchang Trading was asking about the format for the monthly reports. He casually sent back a couple of replies, then took the opportunity to respond to a request for approval he'd failed to finish processing last week. After all, the only thing waiting for him here was usually quiet air.
He'd done the math for this month. He'd already covered thirty-eight hours, still a long way from the 174-hour limit. For now, his work hours weren't something he needed to worry about.
He even had enough breathing room to wonder whether, once the month ended, he should proactively ask Zheng Yang about taking on a few more shifts. The cover-shift pay was much higher than a regular employee's hourly wage. There was nothing wrong with saving a little extra money.
The sky outside was still bright. The air conditioner in the control room hummed softly, and everything looked no different from an ordinary afternoon.
He glanced out the window. Looking outside was a habitual motion for him, and usually nothing ever happened.
This time, he saw the old apartment building inside his jurisdiction. Its exterior walls were somewhat weathered, and air-conditioning units hung in rows outside. On the fifth-floor windowsill, a little boy was climbing out over the frame.
He was still wearing cartoon-print pajamas. Half his body was already hanging outside the window, both hands gripping the edge of the frame tightly, as if he were playing some dangerous game, completely unaware of how close he was to falling.
Su Ding'an's first instinct was to make him fly, or at least slow him down so he could drift to the ground like a feather.
Nothing happened.
He froze for half a second. Cold sweat broke out all at once, and his heart slammed against his chest hard enough to hurt.
Forcing himself not to panic, he hurriedly pulled up the photo of the duty chart on his phone. His finger swiped too quickly across the screen, skipping through two pages before he found the right section, then searched downward line by line.
“The gravity duty officer's responsibility is to maintain the constancy of objects moving downward. Reverse action is not included.”
There was another line of fine print beneath it, in lettering a size smaller than the main text. It said that positions related to reverse action had been eliminated in 1974. The field for the reason they had been eliminated was blank as well. Nothing had been written.
A sarcastic thought surfaced in his mind: So who was the idiot who cut the flying position? He really ought to report that person someday, for making an entire position capable of saving lives disappear like that. But clearly, now was not the time to dwell on it. He gripped his phone more tightly and continued reading, searching for any other clues.
The boy's hand slipped. His whole body tilted outward several inches. Su Ding'an's heartbeat skipped, and his fingers instinctively clawed at the air, but caught nothing.
“Don't move!” he shouted, loud enough to startle even himself. The control room walls bounced the words back, making them sound unnaturally hollow. But the building was some distance away. The boy couldn't hear him. There was no way he could hear him.
He forced himself to calm down and reread the line from the beginning: maintain the constancy of objects moving downward. Reverse action is not included.
He broke it apart word by word, as if dissecting a math problem he'd never seen before. The sentence was talking about direction. It said nothing about speed, nor did it say how the weight at the point of impact should be distributed.
He checked it three times, afraid he might have misread or overlooked something at a moment like this. After all, this was the first time he'd had to rely on a written regulation to make a decision in a real emergency. If he got it wrong, the consequences wouldn't be as simple as rewriting a report or submitting a late document.
Suddenly, he understood one thing: he couldn't make the boy fly, but he could decide how heavy the boy would be at the instant he landed.
He barely hesitated before focusing his attention on the falling body.
The sensation was strange. It wasn't like operating some kind of instrument. It was more like suddenly knowing he had a way to hold two things in his palms at the same time: the weight of the boy and the weight the awning below could bear.
He tried reducing the boy's weight at the instant he landed, lowering it to nearly zero, while reaching toward the old awning below.
The awning was already somewhat rusted, with a few dead leaves caught on its corners. He pushed its load-bearing capacity to the maximum, far beyond what it could normally withstand.
Everything happened incredibly fast—so fast that even he couldn't make out the details clearly.
The boy fell.
At the instant he landed, it was as if a mass of air caught him. He bounced lightly on the awning, his speed slowing to an unbelievable degree, then rolled onto the ground and sat there before bursting into loud, ringing tears. He sounded perfectly healthy.
Su Ding'an stared at him from a distance, counting to make sure his fingers and toes were moving. Only after confirming that, aside from being frightened, he had no obvious injuries and could still move all his limbs did Su Ding'an slowly let out a breath. He realized his hands had been shaking the whole time, shaking so badly that even clenching his fists took effort.
A scream came from below. The apartment building's front door was practically slammed open, and a woman rushed out barefoot onto the sidewalk. She scooped the boy into her arms, crying and scolding as she rubbed his head and arms, repeatedly checking him for injuries. He couldn't make out exactly what she was saying, but she was probably talking about how she'd told him hundreds of times not to climb onto the windowsill.
She didn't notice the pale young man standing beside her, his entire body trembling, his phone still in his hand with the photo of the duty chart displayed on its screen.
That young man had just used every ounce of his strength to keep a tragedy that should never have happened from happening. And of everyone there, not a single person knew what had occurred.
Su Ding'an stood there watching for a long time. Only after the mother and son's figures disappeared behind the apartment building's entrance did he slowly return to the control room.
His legs felt a little weak along the way. When he reached the card reader, he leaned against the wall and sat down, locking and unlocking his phone as he looked at that line in the duty chart over and over, confirming that he really hadn't remembered it wrong. He compared it word by word at least five times.
His hands were still shaking. It was completely different from the first time he'd covered a shift. The first time had been a mix of novelty and nerves. This time, he was genuinely afraid—afraid he'd been half a second too late, afraid he wouldn't have thought of that solution during those three seconds, afraid of what the scene would have looked like if he hadn't. He didn't even dare think it through.
He sat there for nearly ten minutes before his heartbeat slowly returned to normal. The air conditioner in the control room continued its low hum. Nothing had changed. Only he knew what had just happened.
He pulled out his phone and typed the details he could still remember into a note: the time, the location, and the two things he'd done. He recorded each item carefully, afraid he might leave out something important when he wrote his report later. After all, this was the first time he'd had to write a formal explanation for one of his own decisions.
He stayed fully alert for the rest of his shift, no longer daring to scroll through his phone. Every so often, his eyes flicked toward the apartment building, until six o'clock sharp, when a prompt appeared on the card reader's screen. He swiped his ID card, clocked out, and his access dropped to zero. The sensation of suddenly knowing the weight of the entire street was snatched away in an instant.
He left the building with his legs still a little unsteady. Halfway there, his phone vibrated.
It was Zheng Yang calling.
“That move you just made—the Audit Division is going to ask about it.”
She got straight to the point without any small talk.
Her voice was as brisk as usual, with no hint of blame. It sounded more like she was informing him of something that was about to happen. There was even a trace of interest in her tone that he couldn't quite identify.
“I didn't go beyond my job description.”
Su Ding'an sounded certain, though he spoke a little faster than usual. There was a tension in his voice that even he hadn't noticed.
He ran through the contents of the duty chart again in his head, checking each line and confirming that he really hadn't crossed that boundary. This was the first time in his life he'd used a regulatory document to defend himself, and even he found it a little unreal as the words left his mouth.
“I know.”
There was a two-second pause on the other end. The sound of typing in the background stopped as well.
“But you'll be the first person who has to explain it.”
She said it evenly. Su Ding'an could tell there wasn't the slightest hint that she doubted him. It sounded more like a statement of the trouble that was about to come.
“Because before you, no one had thought of reading the duty chart that way.”
She paused after saying that, as though deciding whether to add anything. In the end, she continued, “It isn't a bad thing. It's just that over the next few days, you may be called in for questioning a lot. You might even have to repeat the same explanation several times. Get yourself mentally prepared. Don't get annoyed and say the wrong thing when they keep asking.”
Su Ding'an acknowledged this, thanked her, and hung up.
He stood by the roadside, watching his phone's screen go dark and reflect his still-pale face.
People streamed along the entire street, and not one of them knew what had nearly happened here half an hour ago. Everyone hurried toward wherever they needed to go. Some were on the phone, others had their heads down, scrolling. The city continued operating as usual. Not a single part of it looked as if it had ever been disrupted, and no one would ever know that it had.
He looked toward the apartment building from before. There was no one on the fifth-floor windowsill now, only the window still standing open. He could vaguely see someone moving inside, probably the mother comforting the boy.
He put his phone to his ear, wanting to ask something else, but for a moment he didn't know where to begin. His mind still felt a little scrambled, with too many thoughts piled together. The scene from those three seconds kept replaying before his eyes. In the end, he asked only, “So what do I need to prepare?”
Zheng Yang said, “First, organize what happened today into a brief statement: the time, the location, what you did, and which line you based it on. Submit it once the Audit Division notifies you.”
She explained it in a clear, orderly fashion, listing each item in sequence, as if she'd gone through this process countless times.
After finishing, she added, “You'd better do it quickly. Mr. He examines things very closely. The longer you drag it out, the more questions he'll ask.”
Su Ding'an listened and committed each item to memory. He had no paper or pen with him, and nowhere to stand and write, so he could only repeat the details over and over in his head to remember them, afraid that if he waited until he got home, he'd forget something.
He acknowledged this, thanked her, and hung up, then stood by the roadside and replayed the movements from those few seconds in his mind.
The boy's weight at the instant of landing, the awning's load-bearing capacity—both things had happened almost simultaneously. He hadn't even had time to consider whether it was the right thing to do. He'd simply relied on the line he'd read and taken a gamble.
He looked down at his hands. They were still trembling faintly, but he felt a solidness inside that he couldn't quite explain, as if he'd just done something he knew he had to do—and had done it right.
He suddenly realized that rules were actually the only tool capable of saving people, provided you understood them first, and understood them more thoroughly than anyone else. The thought steadied his steps as he walked.