At night, on the edge of the brightly lit city.
Amidst the dazzling and bustling neon colors, there stood a strange building with no lights on. It was pitch black from the top floor to the ground floor, not letting a single ray of light through. It loomed across from the city's largest shopping center like a gigantic monster absorbing the surrounding light.
As one slowly walked closer to it, they would realize that this thirty-six-story building overlooking the prosperous city was actually incomplete and unfinished.
On the cement walls, supporting bars stuck out. In some places, the walls hadn't been sealed, exposing the edges of the apartments to the night sky, allowing the inside of the apartments to be visible from outside.
Strangely, this semi-finished building and these apartments weren't empty. In the dim, vague, multicolored lights, one could faintly see the furnishings inside at night.
In some apartments, there were simple bedding, sleeping bags, and desks. On the floor was a kettle and two or three rolls of toilet paper. It was obvious someone lived there.
In some apartments, there was only an offering table with a black-and-white photograph sitting on top of it. Alongside the photo were stacked apples, a censer, and a small urn that could be kept inside a household shrine.
In the censer were four lit incense sticks that hadn't burned out yet, indicating that someone had just come to burn incense.
The incense smoke coiled upwards, and in the nighttime, the sound of a phone ringing came from the unfinished building. A person carrying a heavy bag of apples in their left hand and a bag of joss paper and incense in their right struggled to hold the phone between their chin and shoulder, softly asking, "Hello? I just lit incense for Auntie Li over here. What about on your side?"
This was a clear, pure voice from a young male.
"Finished lighting floor 17's." A female voice came from the phone, similarly youthful. "Then let's reconverge at Wang-ge's place on the 18th floor?"
After speaking, the man struggled to lift his hand to hang up the phone.
The woman on the other side was silent for a moment, then spoke softly, "Yuan Guang, we still haven't lit incense for the two team members who died in the preseason matches this year."
The man's movement to hang up paused. The bag of apples in his hand seemed too heavy, pulling his hand down bit by bit. His shoulders were slowly hunched, his head lowered, letting out a long exhale. "…After we win the last match, we'll light incense for them all together."
The woman gave a sound of affirmation and hung up the phone.
Floor 18, unit 1803.
Inside the home was an offering table. On it was a black-and-white photograph of a bearded uncle with a big, hearty smile. Beside the photo was his name—[Wang Shuqi, passed away at 42].
The man carrying apples was silent. As if he had OCD, he placed the apples one by one neatly on the offering plate in front of the uncle, then took out four incense sticks, properly lit them, and bowed three times. With his hands pressed together in prayer and eyes closed as he stood still, he murmured to himself:
"Uncle Wang, we reached the playoffs again this year. I hope that, in the spirit of heaven, you watch over us, keeping everyone safe, and that we all make it through alive."
"…Last year… last year's match…"
As the man reached this point, he paused, took a deep breath that seemed stuck in his throat, his eyelids fluttering and slightly moist. "You've worked hard!"
After speaking, he stepped forward and solemnly placed the incense sticks in the censer.
In the passageway on the side, a woman walked in.
The woman wore flat shoes, a t-shirt, and jeans, her hair twisted into a bun at the back of her head. She looked only 27 or 28, obviously an age full of vitality and carefree beauty, yet her fatigue was hard to hide. Watching the man's practiced movements as he offered incense, she let out a complicated sigh and handed him a candle. "Yuan Guang, I bought candles. Light a couple for Uncle Wang?"
"Not lighting them." Yuan Guang shook his head, turning around in the dark. The moonlight outside fell on his side profile, rippling in layers.
Single eyelids and thin lips; judging from his facial features, he had the look of a promising young talent, but upon a full view, that impression was instantly undone.
His hair, long and untrimmed, was clumsily tied in a bundle but slightly crooked, slanting over his right shoulder, with strands sticking out from both sides. Dark circles surrounded his eyes, making him look like he hadn't slept in three days, his body hunched from fatigue.
On the left side of his forehead, a slanted Band-Aid was stuck on his temple, and along his cheek was a red mark drawn with a marker, but he seemed completely unaware that his face had been marked.
The appearance startled the woman. She remembered Yuan Guang's condition had been fine the past two to three days, but right now he was really…
Worn out past the limit.
Yuan Guang shook his head as he tidied up the items. "Better not light the candles. Qian-jie still lives here. There aren't any fire precautions here, so lighting candles is a little unsafe."
"We'll keep watch until the incense burns out and go then."
Both people silently stood watch in front of the offering table, not saying a word.
Yuan Guang's eyelids drooped twice, and his body suddenly stumbled forward, falling straight down, almost hitting his head on the incense burner.
The woman beside him jumped in fright, immediately reaching out to support him. "Yuan Guang!!"
Yuan Guang's head roughly hit the offering table. He clutched his head and let out a hoarse cry, drowsily shaking his head. Still dizzy, he fell backward.
The woman didn't know whether to laugh or cry as she helped him sit down. "How many days has it been since you last slept?"
Yuan Guang leaned his head against the wall, only exhaling without inhaling. He choked out in a sobbing voice: "…Recently, our company had a project launch, and the lead designer has been pushing us to work overtime like crazy. Because I want to take tomorrow off to compete in a match, the boss said I can only take leave if I finish the work in the first two days…"
The woman sucked in a sharp breath. "Then you haven't slept at all in two days?!"
Yuan Guang, barely clinging to life, nodded with eyes blurred by tears. "I only finished it this afternoon."
"The injury on your right temple happened the same way, didn't it?" The woman was dumbfounded and distressed. "You have a match tomorrow; it's uncertain whether you'll survive. Can't you let it go and skip work?"
Yuan Guang hadn't spoken when both his and the woman's phones simultaneously let out a sound.
[The loan with the receipt ending in XXXX will have a payment of 6,437.96 RMB deducted starting at 18:00 on September 29. Please ensure that your repayment account has sufficient funds. Your credit record will be accurately…]
Both people looked down at their phones, and the woman fell silent.
Yuan Guang gazed at the woman faintly. "You must be thinking that if I don't die, I'll still have to keep working and pay the mortgage?"
The woman: "…"
Fuck, no way to refute.
The woman heaved a sigh, patting her butt and sitting beside Yuan Guang, feeling that it was laughable yet also miserable. "Other guild masters can command the wind and summon rain, but look at you, Yuan Guang—you can't even pay your mortgage."
"Other teams' ace players also rally everyone with a single call, have millions of fans, and make over ten million from a single livestream, don't they?" Yuan Guang hugged his knees, resting his head on them as he looked at the woman, muttering softly, "Shi Qian, look at yourself, our guild's ace fog-type skill player. Right now, the audience doesn't even remember what your face looks like."
Shi Qian: "…I'm a fog-type skill user. I release fog to obscure the battlefield when I play. What kind of audience would be able to remember my face?"
At this point, the two of them fell silent again, both letting out a frustrated, disappointed sigh in unison.
"Really enviable, those wealthy big guilds and whatnot."
Yuan Guang spoke first. "How many years is your loan for?"
Shi Qian recalled for a moment. "I took an equal principal and interest loan for twenty years. How about you?"
"Same. At the time, I chose this because they said the payments would get smaller over time." Yuan Guang lowered his head to check his messages and look at his bank account balance. When he saw it was more than 6,437, he let out a long sigh of relief. "If there are three years less, each month would be less than a hundred yuan."
"Uncle Wang… how many years was his loan for?" Shi Qian lowered her head and asked very softly.
Yuan Guang was silent for a moment. "Thirty years. Uncle Wang's household income wasn't high, and it was the whole family had to repay the loan. The down payment was also pooled together, borrowing over a hundred thousand. By the time the developer ran off and things went wrong, he had just finished paying off the down payment."
"When he entered the game, Uncle Wang couldn't hold on. He tried to endure for a while in the game, but still couldn't. In the end, he knelt in front of me, begging me to let him play in the league, asking me to do a good deed so he wouldn't die in such a cowardly way."
"When I didn't agree, Uncle Wang… slit his wrists."
"Fortunately, Uncle Wang lived in this unfinished building, where the apartments don't even have doors. If anything had happened, the neighbors nearby could have seen immediately, so he was rushed to the hospital in time."
Yuan Guang was silent for a long while. He lowered his head and fiddled with the apples in the bag, one by one:
"Last year, I let him play."
"Last year, during the midseason, hundreds of people came to me wanting to play. Some were owners of this unfinished building, and some joined the guild later. In short, for all sorts of reasons, they couldn't hold on in reality or in the game—their situations more or less like Uncle Wang's."
"Among the players who died last year, 47 of them were owners of this unfinished building. They all entered the game with me, endured for several years, couldn't hold on, and begged me to let them play in the tournament."
"I… agreed."
Yuan Guang poked an apple and sighed, then tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I knew they were at their limit, because I'm almost at mine too."
Shi Qian didn't speak. She firmly patted Yuan Guang's shoulder, and the two of them sat back to back, curled up in the room of the unfinished building that didn't have a roof, exposed to the open air.
The red glow of the four incense sticks on the offering table behind them was faint and small in the darkness, flickering as if they could go out at any moment, yet it was the only light in this building standing amid a sea of city lights.
Yuan Guang lifted his head and looked toward the multicolored night scenery, lights dazzling as they flickered in the reflection of his eyes, just like chaotic oil paints blended together, forming a droplet about to fall from the corner of his eye.
Yuan Guang sniffled, then suddenly let out a laugh. "Thinking back, it's funny. In the past, so many guilds came to analyze our tactics, saying things like 'cruel,' 'cold-blooded,' 'willing to sacrifice,' 'the members' brains must have a problem,' 'their minds are weird,' only then would they be willing to rotate players onto the field to be sacrificed."
"But at the beginning, the reason we couldn't fix the team lineup… these people would never have imagined."
Yuan Guang exhaled a breath, the corners of his eyes red, his voice trembling as he laughed, saying, "It's because everyone has to go to work every day in real life to earn money and pay their mortgages. Taking time off is inconvenient, so we can't stay in the game continuously to compete. We can only… can only take turns participating in the matches."
"Didn't expect that in the end, it actually became the unbeatable strategy of our guild."
His fist, hanging by his side, clenched tightly:
"Shi Qian, sometimes I think it's very strange. Actually, everyone in the guild has jobs, friends, relatives, people they like, supporting each other. Living with such difficulty and earnestness, swallowing all hardships on your own, refusing to trouble others even in death, and striving to help others survive no matter how difficult it gets."
"Everyone is a good person. Why is living so hard, so exhausting that they couldn't even make it three years?"
The night wind caressed Shi Qian's hair. She softly said, "Yuan Guang, we have to play tomorrow."
"Say, a year from now, do you think it'll be our death anniversary?"