Li Yu had taken leave to participate in the third era's offline written test. After completing the test, he took the subway back to the company to continue working on the proposal.
He worked until eight o'clock in the evening, sending the three versions of the proposal he had finished to his direct superior via the company group email, while also CC'ing the department head as required.
Five minutes later, he received a reply from his superior asking him if he could rush to produce two more versions by noon tomorrow to give the client more options.
Li Yu checked his schedule and found that there was a department meeting tomorrow morning, which would take up at least an hour and a half of his time, meaning that he would have at most only two hours afterwards to continue working on proposals, and he hadn't even written his work summary or plan for the next cycle.
So he took twenty minutes to complete this part of the work, and then stood up, stretched his body, went to the pantry for a cup of coffee, rubbed his sore wrists, sat down, and began to write the new proposal.
By the time he finished another proposal, the time displayed in the bottom right corner of his computer screen was now 22:59.
About half an hour ago, Li Yu's direct superior had just left the office, taken the elevator to the underground parking lot, and driven home.
So Li Yu also shut down his computer, packed up his backpack, and prepared to get off work.
When he was clocking out at the attendance machine, half of the department was still there, the blue light from the IPS screens reflecting on their faces made them look somewhat dull.
At the same time, most of the floors in the office building across the street were still lit.
Li Yu's company occupied the sixth and seventh floors of building A. Glancing at the elevators, he saw that three out of four had been stopped, and the remaining one was on the twenty-sixth floor. Not wanting to wait any longer, he walked down the stairs through the safety passage beside him.
When he reached the fourth floor, he heard faint sobbing sounds.
Li Yu didn't see the person making the noise, only guessing that it was coming from the platform between the first and second floors.
The voice was that of a girl who was on the phone with her family, crying as she spoke.
"I can't hold on much longer... I've been here three months since graduation, and I've only not had to work overtime for a total of seven days... I work at least twelve hours every day, doing whatever task they throw at me, and my boss still gives me the lowest rating in the group, scolding me in front of everyone as if I were a dog. Mom, I'm really exhausted..."
Not wanting to embarrass the other party, Li Yu quietly exited the stairwell and took another safety passageway.
This time, he didn't come across anyone else.
Li Yu successfully made his way downstairs, walked out the main door, cut across the little plaza in front of the office building at an angle, turned right onto the pedestrian crosswalk, and hadn't walked far before he smelled a fragrant aroma.
This area was almost entirely office buildings, and what wasn't lacking were people working the late shift.
Sensing a business opportunity, mobile street vendors came on their tricycles, pulling gas canisters, flocking over in droves. After nine o'clock at night, the roadside was filled with various snack stalls selling rice noodles, rolls, fried chicken cutlets... you name it.
At this time, the city management officers were mostly off work, so they didn't have to hide anymore, which was the best time for business.
Li Yu had eaten the remaining half bag of bread from this morning for dinner at five o'clock, and by now he was a bit hungry again, so he spent eight yuan on a box of stir-fried noodles.
After scanning a QR code to pay, he carried the steaming hot noodles and continued walking.
Li Yu's workplace was next to the North Fourth Ring, but the apartment he rented was outside the East Fifth Ring.
There was a distance between them, with the daily commute on the subway taking an hour and twenty minutes, and he especially had to leave ten minutes earlier during the morning rush to avoid being late.
The reason he lived so far away was, firstly, because the rent was cheaper on the east side, and secondly, to save on his rent, Li Yu had signed a two-year lease when he rented the place.
Previously his commute by bike took only thirty minutes to his old workplace, but since switching jobs to his current company a year ago, he spent even more time on the road.
Fortunately, it wasn't so long as to be unacceptable.
After working for a while since graduation, Li Yu found that there were fewer and fewer things he couldn't accept.
As he arrived at the bus stop, there were already six or seven figures standing there, like Li Yu, all working in nearby office buildings. Men and women.
Frankly speaking, the overall attractiveness of the white-collar workers in this CBD area was pretty high.
Particularly the women, many of whom worked out regularly, maintaining good physical shapes, and their makeup skills were even more impressive, being able to apply makeup steadily on the crowded subway whether it was forest style, Japanese style, or Korean style, easily handling any kind of outfit, attracting quite a bit of attention on the streets on regular days.
However, the four men on the platform were not looking around but were instead just looking down, playing with their phones on their own.
Some were texting girlfriends, others were reading novels or browsing forums, and some were watching VTuber livestreams. The rectangular light boxes behind them alternately scrolled through real estate and medical cosmetic surgery ads.
Ten minutes later, the night bus route number 6 came into the station.
Li Yu and the others got on one by one, swiped their cards, found empty seats, and sat down.
Many people might assume that buses traveling through the city at night would be empty, but that was not the case.
Passengers on the night bus were a mixed bunch, ranging from workers like Li Yu who worked overtime until late, to designated drivers with trolleys, scalpers equipped with sleeping bags ready to snatch up shoes, bags, or houses, young people dressed for a cool night out clubbing and drinking, to out-of-towners with worried faces, bringing children to the city for medical treatment...
In winter, there would sometimes be homeless scavengers who boarded the bus to warm up. They mostly huddled in the last row, silent, boarding at the start station and riding all the way to the terminal station, completing a full loop that took about two hours.
This was the cheapest way they could find to keep warm in this city.
Li Yu set his alarm and put on his headphones, hugging his backpack close and resting his head against the bus window. It didn't take long for the rocking of the bus to lull him into a light sleep.
The night route 6 bus traveled unhurriedly through the forest of steel and concrete constructions.
Day after day, it followed the same trajectory, much like Li Yu and the majority of people living in this city.
Li Yu didn't know when it started, but he always felt trapped by something.
At first, he thought it was because his last job was too monotonous, but after switching to his current company, the feeling of being trapped didn't go away—it grew even stronger.
The most obvious sign was the fading of his desire for communication and curiosity.
Li Yu was not particularly talkative, but he was nowhere near as silent as he is now. In college, he even joined the debate club and won several competitions.
However, after entering the workforce, Li Yu became less and less talkative by the day.
Because you never know which sentence you said in a WeChat group or elsewhere in private could be exploited by someone with ulterior motives, turning into a secret arrow shot at you.
You also can't tell which colleagues, who openly denounce the company's unfair practices with apparent righteousness, might be spies for the management behind your back.
Being cautious with words and observing more than speaking became the first rule of survival in the workplace for Li Yu.
As for curiosity, it was only after attending that bizarre written test at Blue Light in the afternoon that Li Yu suddenly realized he hadn't properly read a book in a long time.
He used to be interested in history, geography, philosophy, natural science, and other topics, eagerly reading books and documentaries well into the night. But he later realized that this scattered knowledge was of limited help in the workplace.
In this city, what everyone always cares about are KPIs, the charts and figures on the screen, how to show the boss their work results, how to get promotions and raises. Fewer people care about things that don't bring in profits.
But you can't blame modern people for being ignorant and dull because just surviving is already a struggle for most people.
These academic experts are always loudly exhorting on the internet, saying that short videos, fast-food literature, and trashy mobile games are destroying a generation.
Yet, they somewhat deliberately overlook why all of this is happening.
When you've been working overtime for weeks on end, returning home exhausted with a throbbing headache, does your overburdened brain want to embrace poetry, a masterwork of art, or would it rather casually indulge in some stockings, a thrilling round of Kings of Glory?
In fact, Li Yu hasn't touched a single-player game in a long time, even though he still hoards the year's hits during sales seasons instinctively.
But those games lie dormant on his hard drive after being downloaded and installed, quietly collecting dust.
Even watching movies, Li Yu has started to fast forward at double speed.
Of course, he also wanted to escape this sort of life, but didn't know where to flee to.
To settle in this city, you need to buy a house, and to buy a house, you must work hard. No matter which company you switch to, overtime is almost unavoidable.
By the time you've worked so much you're plagued with occupational diseases, you realize the money you've earned is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the lofty house prices.
Li Yu considered returning to his hometown, but he could barely find a job related to his field in a third-tier city, and the pay was even lower there, with private enterprise bosses treating people poorly—his only reliable choice was to take the civil service exam.
Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea, making the civil service exam increasingly difficult year by year.
In some cities, even street office assistants and auxiliary police start with postgraduate degrees.
Moreover, aside from the difficulty, lower-tier locations value relationships over rules, and upon entering the public sector, one must face endless official documents and ceaseless ideological indoctrination...
Nevertheless, taking the civil service exam remained a good exit strategy for the vast majority of young people adrift in the first-tier cities, including Li Yu.
But Li Yu had to face another problem—what if, after returning home, the feeling of being trapped didn't vanish? Where could he turn to then?
The longer Li Yu worked, the more acutely he felt that society was like a vast and complex machine, and individuals were merely screws and components within it.
No one cared what a screw originally aspired to be. Most people were just crudely fitted into ill-suited sockets and then, with a great roar, were thrust into the endless cycle of production and reproduction.
Until they were worn to a blur of flesh and bone, firmly wedged into that gap, unable to move any longer.