Light slanted in through the window.
It cut a narrow strip of gold across the carpet.
Dianzi was still taking her afternoon nap. The squirrel was hugged in her arms.
I sat by the window flipping through the morning's livestream replay.
In the frame, that middle‑aged man in the blue jacket crouched beside the cardboard boxes. He flipped through the resumes on the floor. His movements were very slow. He looked at each copy for a long time.
I closed the replay.
I scrolled down to the young woman's footage. She stood in the queue practising her self‑introduction, over and over.
"My name is Yunai… graduating this year… graduated from Kirishima University… my strengths are strong learning ability, good stress resistance, team spirit…"
On the seventh time, she finally did not pause. She said it all, then let out a long breath.
I closed the interface.
Dianzi woke up.
"Sister, what are you looking at?" she asked.
"The replay," I said. "This morning's lecture."
"That mother," she said. "Is there any footage of her?"
"No," I said. "She didn't come to the lecture."
"Oh." She sat up and placed the squirrel on the pillow. "What about that person who took photos? The one by the cardboard boxes last time."
"He hasn't appeared again," I said.
"But maybe he will," she said.
"Maybe," I said. "Some people reappear not because they want to be remembered, but because they don't know where else to go."
She didn't ask again. She picked up the squirrel and hugged it.
"Lychee, why do you think he took photos of those resumes?" she asked.
The squirrel hugged its acorn.
"It says maybe he's looking for a job too," Dianzi said.
[chat] That person is weird
[chat] Why take photos of resumes?
[chat] Maybe he's sending them out too
I didn't answer.
Outside the window, the light was beginning to fade. The sun was sinking, leaving a long, thin orange‑red band at the edge of the sky.
"Sister," Dianzi said suddenly, "where do you think those resumes end up?"
"Some get taken away," I said. "Some get thrown away. Most go nowhere. They just sit there, waiting for someone to clear them out."
"Do the people who wrote them know that?" she asked.
I looked at her. She was hugging the squirrel, her expression very serious.
"Maybe they know," I said. "Maybe they don't. But they still write them, still send them out. Because if they didn't, they wouldn't even have that one chance."
She looked down at the squirrel.
"Lychee, do you think this young lady will have to write a resume one day?" she asked.
The squirrel did not move.
"It says no," Dianzi said. "This young lady is a blogger. Bloggers do not need to write resumes."
She lifted the squirrel and made it face the window.
"Lychee, look," she said. "The sky is getting dark."
Outside the window, that orange‑red band was narrowing. The light on the sea shifted from gold to purple, then to dark blue.
I closed the interface.
Dianzi climbed out of bed and walked to the window.
"Sister, do you think he will come again?" she asked.
"Who?" I said.
"The person who took photos," she said.
"I don't know," I said. "But some people reappear not because they want to be remembered, but because they themselves don't know where to go."
"If he comes," she said, "this young lady wants to ask him why he took photos of those resumes."
"All right," I said. "I'll ask with you."
"Let us go," she said. "Time to eat."
We walked out of the room.
The lights in the corridor were already on. The carpet absorbed all footsteps.
When we passed the main dining room, it was already full of people. The clinking of cutlery and the sound of laughter mixed together, muffled by the door into a faint hum.
Dianzi took the squirrel out of her bag and let it look at the lights inside the dining room.
"Lychee, look," she said. "So many people."
The squirrel hugged its acorn.
"It says it does not like crowded places," Dianzi said.
"Where does it like, then?" I asked.
"Quiet places," she said. She tucked the squirrel back into her bag and patted its head. "Just like this young lady."
[chat] Lychee is so cute
[chat] It says it likes quiet places
[chat] Just like our daughter
When we reached the fifth deck, the conference centre doors were already closed.
There was no one in the corridor. Only the fluorescent lights hummed.
The cardboard boxes were still there. The resumes were still there. Their corners were lifted by the wind and then dropped, making a very soft sound.
Dianzi stopped and looked at the pile of resumes.
"Sister, they are still here," she said.
"Yes," I said. "No one has come to take them, and no one has come to throw them away."
"No one has come to take them?" she asked.
"No one has come to take them," I said. "And no one has come to throw them away. They're just stuck there – like something extra in this corridor."
She stood for a while. Then she crouched down and straightened the resumes that had been blown askew.
"Lychee, look," she said. "This young lady helped you tuck in your blanket."
The squirrel poked its head out of the bag. Its expression was dazed and earnest.
"It says thank you," Dianzi said.
She stood up and brushed off her knees.
"Let us go," she said.
As we turned, footsteps came from the far end of the corridor.
Someone was walking over. The footsteps were heavy, echoing in the empty corridor.
He walked to the cardboard boxes and stopped.
It was the young man with the camera bag from last time.
White shirt, no tie. The collar was slightly wrinkled. The camera bag was slung across his shoulder, the strap digging into the shirt fabric, leaving a mark on his shoulder.
His fingers gripped the strap of the camera bag. His thumb rubbed back and forth along the edge of the strap twice – then released, then gripped again.
He stood beside the cardboard boxes, looking down at the pile of resumes.
He looked for perhaps ten seconds.
Then he took out his phone and took a photograph.
He was not photographing people. His lens was aimed at the top left stack of the cardboard box – at the top few resumes' school columns. Ivy League. He was photographing the place where the school name was written.
After taking the photograph, he did not leave immediately.
He lowered his phone and looked down at the resumes again.
This time he crouched. His knees bent very slowly, as if afraid of making a sound. He reached out, his fingertip touching the corner of the top resume. He turned it over to look at the back. The back was blank – only the reflection of the paper.
He turned it back, smoothed the corner with his finger. Then his finger stopped on the photograph on the resume. He paused for a second, then withdrew.
When he stood up, his knee made a cracking sound.
He did not look at the other resumes. He only looked at that stack.
The common feature of that stack was not the school, not the major. It was a small mark in the top right corner of each resume – a very small number written in pencil. Different from the printed text.
I could not see what the number was. But I knew it was not written by the job seeker.
He looked down at his screen for a long time. The light from the screen fell on his face, casting deep shadows under his cheekbones.
Then he bent down and pulled out one resume from the stack beside the cardboard box.
He did not look at the name. He did not look at the school. He pulled it out directly, folded it, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his camera bag.
That stack of resumes was one copy lighter. He straightened the remaining copies and placed them back.
——He was not documenting the scene. He was screening. Those numbers were not serial numbers – they were rankings. He knew who should stay.
Dianzi looked at me. I looked at her. Neither of us spoke.
He put away his camera bag, turned, and left. As he walked away, he did not look back.
Dianzi watched his back until he disappeared at the end of the corridor.
"Sister," she said. "He took someone else's resume."
"Yes," I said. "I saw."
"Why did he take it?" she asked.
"Because he thinks those resumes are useful," I said. "Not useful to the person who wrote them – useful to himself."
She looked down at the squirrel. The squirrel poked its head out of the bag.
"Lychee, whose do you think he took?" she asked.
The squirrel did not move.
"It says it does not know," Dianzi said.
[chat] He took someone's resume
[chat] That's so strange
[chat] What does he want it for?
I walked to the cardboard boxes and crouched down.
The top copy of that stack had a crease at the corner. The one he had taken was probably the one underneath. But the corner of this top copy had also been pulled, flipping open a page.
I saw the symbols on that page.
Not the content of the resume. A line stamped over the personal information column – a small blue stamp, printing the words "Already Passed", followed by a date.
17 April 2026.
Today was the twelfth of April.
I closed the page and stood up.
My knee cracked again. This time I didn't look down.
"Let's go," I said. "We've seen what we needed to see. And we've seen what we shouldn't have seen."
Dianzi didn't ask what the shouldn't‑have‑seen was. She just tucked Lychee a little further into her bag and followed behind.
The fluorescent tubes in the corridor kept humming.
The resumes beside the cardboard boxes fluttered one page, then settled back.
No one else came.
Outside the window, the sea had gone completely dark.
Only the distant navigation light kept blinking.
Without stopping.