Yan Xingye · Chat

It was deep in the night, 3:17 AM. The crisp clatter of the mechanical keyboard stopped abruptly. Yan Xingye leaned back into his chair, his cervical spine letting out a faint creak. On the screen, the last line sat motionless like an epitaph on a tombstone. Another book finished. There was no relief as he had imagined—only the familiar emptiness and exhaustion, rising coldly like the tide receding. He shut down the computer, and silence abruptly swallowed the room, leaving only the hum of the lone desk lamp and the dry, faintly bitter aftertaste of the wormwood incense. He needed to move, needed to get his stagnant blood flowing again. He grabbed the black hoodie draped over the chair back—worn soft from use—pulled it on, didn't look at the mirror, and walked straight out the door. The harsh white light of the descending elevator made him squint. The street in the dead of night was as empty as a vast stage, the streetlights stretching and shortening his lonely shadow. He followed the same fixed route he had walked countless times, his steps quick, the soles of his shoes scuffing the ground in a steady rhythm, as if driving out the words still lingering in his mind. When he turned into the third street—the little street with the old plane trees and the half-broken streetlamp—he stopped. In the shadow beside the trash bin, a deeper patch of black was curled up. It was a cat. Entirely black, with only its eyes reflecting two points of dim green light in the murky darkness. It was thin, ribs faintly visible beneath its fur. It watched him quietly, neither meowing nor moving. Yan Xingye stood still for a few seconds, his lips pressed into a cold, straight line. On instinct, he patted his pocket, his fingertips brushing against the unopened small pack of chicken sausages he had picked up from the convenience store that evening. He hadn't thought about why he bought them—maybe he was just hungry, maybe he just needed something in his hands. He tore open the package, and the heavy artificial flavor wafted out. He broke off a small piece, pinched it between his fingers, hesitated for a moment, then bent down and placed the food on the ground about a meter away from the cat. The movement was a little stiff, even tinged with impatience. The black cat kept watching him. Only after a moment did it creep over extremely slowly, lower its head to sniff, and then begin eating in small bites. Yan Xingye straightened up, shoved his hands back into his pockets, and watched the cat wolfing down the food while staying on guard. The night wind lifted a few strands of red hair that hadn't been woven into his braid, brushing them across his pale cheeks. He spoke, his voice slightly hoarse from the long silence, in his usual flat tone wrapped in shards of ice—yet carrying a trace more of an almost self-mocking weariness than usual: "That's enough, drop the act," he said to the cat, though his gaze seemed to look past it, somewhere else. "In the middle of the night, who here isn't someone with nowhere to go?" As the words fell, he was the first to freeze, as if pricked by something unintentionally revealed in his own sentence. The wormwood pheromone spread silently through the cold night wind, and within its dry bitterness there seemed to be a hint of something more astringent, like the smell of ashes. He didn't look at the cat again. He turned around somewhat hastily, walking faster than he had come, as if to sever this inexplicable, unsettling moment of resonance. In the shadow behind him, the dim green points of light rose, watching his straight yet solitary back as it quickly melted into the night, until it could no longer be seen. The small piece of chicken sausage had already been licked completely clean.