It was an office building, most of its glass curtain wall shattered. Only the window at the easternmost end of the top floor remained intact.
Inside the window, a desk lamp was on, casting a warm yellow glow that seeped through the reflections of the broken glass, becoming a solitary point of light on the entire gray, dilapidated facade of the office building.
Su Shuang’er looked up for a moment, then spoke. She paused.
“This building is too strange.”
“That room upstairs is kept so intact—is something protecting it?”
White Peace’s voice was calm.
“There is indeed a Weirdness, but it’s harmless.”
“What Weirdness?”
“It’s a hand.”
“A hand?”
Mu Yingying had a face full of question marks. She was already too lazy to ask what kind of hand—after all, any answer would be beyond her understanding.
The broken glass made a faint rustling sound underfoot. Only where White Peace stepped with her bare feet did the broken glass automatically part to both sides, laying a clean path under her feet.
Su Shuang’er and Mu Yingying followed closely on this path, not touching a single shard.
The building had long lost power, but on every floor, the emergency lights with green exit signs were still on. These lights relied on built-in emergency batteries installed over a decade ago.
The apocalypse had been over for five years; logically, the batteries should have long been drained.
Yet they stayed lit, the light weak but stubbornly refusing to go out.
Mu Yingying lowered her voice.
“There’s still light in this place.”
“It’s that hand maintaining it.”
White Peace’s voice floated from ahead.
“It desperately holds on to everything it can keep.”
The stairwell was dirty, the paint peeling in patches, but the steps were relatively intact. They climbed to the third floor. Most of the doors in the corridor were open, revealing half-collapsed, empty offices.
Only the easternmost door was closed. A small plastic sign was nailed underneath, printed with the company name: Qingteng Advertising Planning Co., Ltd.
Su Shuang’er reached out and pushed the door. It was unlocked and swung open. What rushed out to meet them was paper—paper everywhere.
The office was not large, only about twenty square meters, but it was packed full of paper, not a single gap. Piles stacked on the floor, some up to the knee, some up to the waist.
On the desk, chairs, coffee table—any flat surface was covered in paper. The filing cabinet against the wall had paper stacked to the ceiling. Even the windowsill was packed solid. The entire room was devoured by paper.
Every sheet was the most ordinary A4 office paper, densely covered with writing. Mu Yingying bent down and pulled the top sheet from the most obvious pile by her feet.
On the paper, over and over, there was only one sentence.
“Xiao Min, I’m sorry.”
From the top of the page to the bottom, line after line. The handwriting was steady to the point of obsession.
Every stroke of the character ‘Min’ was perfectly horizontal and vertical. Every ‘I’m sorry’ was precise, as if printed.
She put this one down and casually pulled another from the pile beside her. Same words. She pulled another from the waist-high stack against the wall. Still the same.
From the desk, the windowsill, even the pile reaching the ceiling that she had to stand on tiptoe to reach—flipping them open, all the same five words.
The entire room, paper everywhere, every sheet, every line, every single character—only “Xiao Min, I’m sorry.”
White Night was lying on Su Shuang’er’s shoulder, watching, silent.
Su Shuang’er’s voice was very low.
“How many years has he been writing this…”
“Five years,” White Peace was still standing at the door, not taking a step inside.
“On the day of the apocalypse, he was working overtime. From the moment he died until now, he’s been writing.”
Mu Yingying swallowed her saliva and walked along the narrow path just wide enough for one person through the piles of paper. At the end of the path was an L-shaped executive desk.
On the desk were a desktop computer with a black screen, an old enamel teacup with chipped paint, and a flip calendar that had stopped on that page forever, never turned again.
The auxiliary desk beside the main desk was completely clean, with only one thing on it. A hand. The hand of a man in his forties, knobby knuckles, but the flesh had long dried and blackened, clinging tightly to the bone.
The wrist was severed cleanly at the elbow, the cut smooth without any tearing—it had been crushed off by a falling steel beam.
This severed hand was tightly gripping the most ordinary blue plastic ballpoint pen—the kind you buy in bulk for a few yuan. It was writing.
Stroke by stroke, so slowly it seemed almost frozen, yet each stroke landed steadily, moving with real substance.
Every time it finished a line of “Xiao Min, I’m sorry,” it would pinch the pen and move one line to the left.
When it finished a whole sheet, it would gently push the paper to the edge of the desk with its knuckle, letting the paper slide down onto the top of the pile on the floor.
It didn’t look up—it had no head to look up with.
After finishing one sheet, it would reach into the drawer that was always open and pull out a new blank A4 sheet, spread it in front of itself, and continue writing.
“Xiao Min, I’m sorry.”
Mu Yingying stood by the desk, watching the endlessly writing severed hand. Her throat tightened. Thousands of words surged to her lips, but she couldn’t say a single one.
At that moment, Su Shuang’er went around to the back of the main desk and pulled open the closed drawer below.
The drawer was a mess—paperclips, staples, a lighter, a pack of long-expired stomach medicine, a pair of nail clippers, a dried-out red pen, scattered half across the drawer.
She pushed aside these odds and ends. At the very bottom was a photo frame.
It was a simple wooden frame the size of a palm, inside was a formal family portrait. You could tell it was taken at a photo studio.
The photo had three people. The man in the middle was in his forties, wearing a white shirt, a dark blue tie, and metal-rimmed glasses, smiling somewhat awkwardly.
His left hand rested on the shoulder of the woman beside him—she wore a beige knit sweater, her smile much more relaxed. His right hand was on the shoulder of a little girl in front.
The little girl looked about four or five, with two pigtails, a pink dress, missing a front baby tooth that had just fallen out, smiling brilliantly, holding a pink cloth doll in her arms.
“It’s his wife and daughter,” Su Shuang’er stared at the photo for a long time.
Mu Yingying leaned over, looked at the photo, then turned back to look at the hand still writing. Her voice was a bit hoarse.
“The daughter must be Xiao Min.”
Su Shuang’er hummed in agreement and gently put the photo frame back in place. Then, from the very back of the drawer, she pulled out a white envelope.
There was no address written on the envelope, no stamp. Only two characters on the front: Xiao Min.
She hesitated for a moment, then took out the envelope. The envelope wasn’t sealed at all, just folded and pressed. She tore it open easily. Inside was just a piece of letter paper.
Only two lines were written: “Xiao Min, Dad is working late today. Tomorrow Dad will pick you up from school and bring you your favorite strawberry cake.” The space for the signature was empty.
He didn’t have time to finish writing before the apocalypse came. Su Shuang’er finished reading, looked up at the constantly writing severed hand, and suddenly understood.
Her voice was very quiet, trembling slightly.
“What he originally wanted to write was not ‘I’m sorry’ at all.”
White Peace had been standing at the door. Her voice drifted through the piles of paper filling the room, each word striking like a heavy blow on the heart.
“What he originally wanted to write was: ‘I miss you,’ ‘Dad will pick you up after work,’ ‘Tomorrow I’ll bring you your favorite strawberry cake,’ ‘Dad has never forgotten you.'”
“But the apocalypse came, and he could only write, ‘I’m sorry.'”
The office fell completely silent. Only the rustling sound of the hand writing on paper remained. The sound of the pen tip gliding across the paper was very soft, but each stroke struck deep into everyone’s heart.
Mu Yingying crouched down beside the main desk, staring at the hand for a long time. Suddenly she asked, “What about his wife? Xiao Min?”
White Peace was silent for a moment.
“Who knows?” White Peace said.
“When he was crushed to death, he still thought his wife and daughter were alive and well. He thought the greatest regret of his life was not finishing that letter. He didn’t know that writing it or not—it made no difference.”
That hand stopped. It had been writing the ‘qi’ character in ‘I’m sorry’—halfway through, the pen tip paused on the paper. Its knuckle trembled slightly.
It released the ballpoint pen it had clenched for five years. The pen rolled half a turn on the desk and stopped.
It extended its fingertip and gently touched that letter paper.
It paused for a long time. It recognized it—this was the letter its owner hadn’t had time to finish before the apocalypse came.
Trembling, it felt for the pen again, gripped it tightly, and positioned the tip over the letter paper. It paused for a very long time before starting to write.
Every stroke was crooked, exceptionally difficult—it was fighting against something.
It had written ‘I’m sorry’ for five years. Now, it had to write different words.
Below those two lines, it wrote the first line: “Dad won’t come back.” After writing this line, it stopped for a very long time. Its knuckle loosened, as if suddenly remembering something. Then it gripped the pen again and wrote the second line: “Let me be your father in the next life.”
With the last stroke, the pen tip left a small, deep blue ink dot on the paper, almost piercing through.
It put down the pen, carefully folded the letter paper into a neat little square, placed it back in the white envelope, and gently set the envelope on the desk.
It then shrank itself beside the envelope, guarding it with care. When the letter decays and disappears, it will repeat all the actions above.
“Let’s go. Don’t disturb it. There’s no Ghost Crystal here.”
White Peace had seen many such things. She was the first to speak, breaking the silence, then turned and left. The other three followed.
They went downstairs. When they reached the next intersection, Su Shuang’er suddenly stopped and glanced into a side alley.
Deep in the alley, there was a vending machine, its red indicator light blinking. In the nearly pitch-black alley, it became the only source of light.