The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like dying insects, their cold glow spilling across rows of grey cubicles. Lin Yuan blinked at the spreadsheet before him, the numbers blurring into a dull, indistinguishable haze. His back ached. His fingers were numb. He didn't remember the last time he had slept peacefully—or slept at all without the help of cheap alcohol.
He rubbed his eyes and glanced around. People moved through the office like ghosts wearing suits. Smiles were stretched too thin, laughs too sharp, and words too polished to be real. Every gesture was practiced. Every nod held calculation. Every greeting weighed profit, followed by murmurs of shallow office gossip and politics.
But not for him.
Lin Yuan was different—not because he was special. But because he didn't have the energy to pretend. He did his work. Quietly. Efficiently. Without complaint. That alone made him an oddity here.
He wasn't here to climb. He wasn't here to shine. He was just surviving.
At twenty-eight, he had no family, no lover, no purpose—just a desk, a salary, and the lingering ache of loneliness that followed him home each night. It had been that way since the orphanage from the age of eleven. He had grown up learning that people left, promises faded, and silence was safer than hope.
A notification blinked on his screen. Deadline moved to tonight. Urgent.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard for a brief moment. He exhaled slowly. There was no use being angry. No one would hear him anyway.
So he worked. And just like that, another evening had vanished.
Hours later, the office emptied around him. The coffee machine fell silent, the building seemed to exhale into darkness and all that remained was the distant hum of the air conditioner and the frantic tapping of his keyboard.
When he finally left office at 9pm, rain had already soaked the city.
Beijing's night sky was swallowed in heavy clouds, and the streets glistened like sheets of broken glass. Neon signs flickered on puddles. Cars sped by, and their motion stirred ripples in puddles painted with reflections of red, blue, and a solitary yellow.
Lin Yuan walked with his hands in his pockets, coat damp, collar turned up. The city, as always, didn't care as people rushed by under umbrellas, too busy to notice anyone without one.
He crossed a nearly empty bridge one he'd taken a hundred of times before, overlooking a restless, churned and dark river churning below. His breath formed fragile ribbons of fog in the cold air. He leaned against the rail for a moment, letting fatigue settle into his bones. In that moment, fatigue wasn't just in his body—it was in his heart.
He closed his eyes, and the silence slowly consumed him as his thoughts drifted.
To the life he once imagined—one with warm sunlit mornings, laughter that didn't feel forced, and conversations that meant something. A small house. A small garden. A peaceful, ordinary life. Perhaps a cup of warm tea waiting on a windowsill. No deadlines. No noise. No pretending.
He didn't need wealth. He didn't need glory.
He just wanted rest.
He smiled faintly at the impossibility.
Then a sudden sound snapped him back—
Footsteps. Running. Light. Quick. Careless.
He opened his eyes.
Not far ahead, opposite to him a little girl in a raincoat—maybe six, maybe seven—was running along the bridge path, her tiny boots splashing through puddles. She giggled, arms outstretched, chasing raindrops like they were magic.
Behind her, alarmed voices—
"Xiao Yu! Slow down!"
"Wait! Be careful!"
Her parents. Far behind.
She didn't hear them.
She only saw freedom in the rain.
And then behind her—
Headlights.
A truck was speeding along the slippery road parallel to the pedestrian path. Too fast. Too uncontrolled. Tires skidding.
The girl—still laughing—didn't see it.
The driver—panicking—hit the brakes, but it was too late.
Lin Yuan didn't think.
He ran.
His feet splashed through puddles, water spraying in every direction. His heartbeat slammed against his chest. The cold wind cut through him like knives.
He didn't shout—there was no time.
He reached her.
He lunged.
He pushed her—firm, protective, urgent.
She fell safely toward the pavement, wide-eyed and stunned.
He felt relief.
Just before the world exploded into pain.
The impact threw him backward—airborne, weightless, helpless.
The rain blurred into streaks
He saw the girl's shocked face. Her mother's scream. The driver's horror.
He felt no anger. No regret.
Only peace.
As he fell backward over the railing, toward the raging river below, one thought flickered softly in his mind—
As long as she never knows the loneliness I did and lives a life different from mine… then it was all worth it.
Then he vanished into the storm
The rain swallowed him.
The river embraced him.
And the world, for the first time in many years, went silent.
—
That night, an ordinary office worker quietly vanished from the city.
Is this the end of him...?