With my chin nuzzled into the knitted cardigan, I stepped out of my apartment. I staggered into the city shrouded in an impenetrable mist, one that blurred the horizon between day and night, light and darkness, ambiguity and objectivity.

This morning, I had been jolted awake by a frantic knocking at the door, my mind still murky with a hangover-like haze. When I answered the door, the mailman pushed a stack of envelopes through the letterbox. Nestled between real estate flyers and overdue electricity bills was an ornate card that read: Your funeral will be held at 8:00 AM on the 29th of December.

“Punctuality matters,” he muttered as he turned to leave. “They don’t waive late fees for the dead.”

Within ten minutes of my trudging, snowflakes began falling obliquely against the lamplight. I lifted a hand to clear my vision, only for my knuckles to sink into the cold, hollow curve of a bony socket. A bittersweet smirk tugged at my lips as I registered the absurdity of my situation. My eyeballs, or rather, the pair of meatballs I once called eyes, dangled against my cheekbone like a pellet drum.

For a moment, I stared into the blank space where my body should have cast a shadow. The city bustled around me bearing its usual indifference: office workers clutching their thermos, delivery riders weaving through traffic, children bundled in scarves. No one saw me. No one flinched.

It was not until then that I realized I was dead, the truth finally settling in my chest like tangled wool being teased into a single, unbroken thread.

When I lifted my gaze up from my reveries, I found myself dawdling in front of the crematorium. From afar, the poignant mourners’ voices commiserating my passing mingled into a rehearsed chorus, each line delivered with the same cadence. Some already drifted towards the refreshments table, as though grief were something best endured on a full stomach. Others gripped the phones pressed against their chests, replying to messages and thumbing through news feeds, the glaring light flickering across their faces with a devotion they failed to muster for the dead.

Reluctantly, I trampled over the threshold, buoying past clusters of neighbors. The sweet and cloying incense curled through the room, smothering the atmosphere like a damp veil. Ba fixed his bloodshot eyes on my graduation portrait as he wrenched his hands, veins crawling across them like gnarled tree roots. Ma’s white strands of tousled hair fell loosely at her temples. Her parched lips parted to utter my name, but faltered.

“妈!” I blurted out as I instinctively limped forward, reaching for Ma’s trembling shoulder, only to slip through the translucent air. A sudden pang crackled through me like an electric current as I watched them side by side, a sight once so familiar, now unbearably far away.

I was standing there, torn between the weight of my parents’ grief and the unbearable lightness of my own absence, when a faint tingle traced the length of my spine, soft as a feather caressing the surface of my skin.

Tick Tack. The soft percussion of footsteps crept behind me. I spun around, bewildered, only to collide with a gaze that did not skim over me but gripped me unwaveringly.

“What’s your business here, huh?” I hissed, tottering toward him, my voice more high-pitched than intended.

His face blanched. A tremor crawled across his jaw.

“I—I shouldn’t be here,” he stuttered, stepping back until his knees knocked against a metal chair. “But I needed to… to see…”

“To see what?” I snapped. “To make sure I’m actually dead?”

He flinched. “No. I mean… yes! Wait, what? I don’t know!”

I attempted to close the formidable gulf of misunderstanding within us in a stumbling lurch. “Who are you?” I demanded, fury coiling in my voice like a serpent.

“Wang.” His breath came in ragged shudders, as if every inhale pulled at some unseen tear stitched deep in his chest. When he looked up, his brown pupils glimmered with fragility, guilt, and agony. Words flitted across his face, none of them finding purchase on his lips. I spun through a carousel of terrible scenarios, searching for the one that could have muted him. When the most probable explanation surfaced, my stomach churned, my expression shifting to mirror his.

“It was you?” My voice suddenly became the faint whine of a mosquito. “You… drove that night?”

He nodded, tears trickling down like morning dew slipping off leaves.

“I didn’t see you,” he muttered, scuffing his dirt-streaked shoes against the floor. “I woke with the same dull headache that had been lingering for weeks, an ache brewed not from alcohol but from exhaustion so thick it had begun to ferment. I feed this ravenous city day after day, yet I’m twenty-four already, older than half the couriers racing beside me. That flimsy diploma taped above my kettle never fails to remind me of my past glory. After being laid off by the factory, I was enmeshed in mortgage loans. With my father lying on that metallic hospital bed and my sister in school, I had to take the first job I could find. Delivery. Every night riding between cars like a firefly on the brink of burning out, but I had no choice.”

Wang doubled over, pressing his face into his hands until three charcoal-gray smears streaked across his cheeks like bruises. “That day was my girlfriend’s birthday. I… I just wanted to deliver the last meal before I could go home and celebrate. That’s the only reason why I rushed the yellow light.” His throat cinched. Then, as though some inner dam had snapped, relentless tears poured down his cheeks like a faucet wrenched open.

“You’re not the only one,” I assured. Compassion surged from the bottom of my heart, nudging me to rest a hand on his shoulder. Two souls amidst the turbulent current of life found solace in each other’s company. “People like you, like my parents — they’re all caught in it.”

He lifted his head slightly.

“In what?”

“In the merciless algorithm,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “Every family is unfortunate in its own way, yet all are squeezed to their last drop by the latent expectation of unpaid extra hours, by the implied burden of drinking-culture obligations.” I stumbled. “Everyone is in the same dilemma.”

Wang stared at the floor. “But with all this indefatigable effort, they promised a life with better future prospects.”

“There’s some truth to that,” I conceded softly. “But it can also become more daunting. We live in an age dazzling with technology, from delivery apps to generative AIs, yet opportunities keep diminishing as pressures soar. People slip through the cracks. People get forgotten. People die.”

Admittedly, he confessed, “Sometimes I feel like the city is devouring us alive.”

“I resonate with you,” I whispered.

“Do you think they’ll even hold a funeral for me?”

“Yes,” I uttered with an unwavering certainty. “Everyone deserves a farewell. Even those the city forgets. Come on, let’s go to yours.”

We stepped out of the crematorium together. The gray mist, hanging like an iron curtain above our heads, was penetrated by the mellow sunlight. We hastened on, stepping into pools of gold wherever the boughs parted. Birds wove through the dappled light above us, their soft chirps mingling with the rustle of branches.

Wang tilted his head back, squinting into the sun as he lifted his hand, light pooling around his index finger like a diamond ring. “Basking in the sunlight never felt so rejuvenating and invigorating when I was alive!” He exclaimed delightedly.

“Perhaps all we ever needed, it seems, was a shift in perspective,” I remarked. “Then the objective world we detest might feel less loathsome, at least less intent on crushing us. In the deepest abyss of life’s adversity, there might yet be light.”



For a fleeting second, I dared to believe it.