Leaving the talent market, the plane tree leaves along the street flipped over in the wind.
Their undersides were pale gray, like countless palms turned upward.
The air carried the burnt-sugar smell of roasted chestnuts drifting from an iron barrel at the street corner, mingled with exhaust fumes and the warm draft surging up from the subway entrance.
The job fair was set in Exhibition Hall Three of the Modu Convention Center. A fifteen-minute walk from the talent market.
A signboard stood at the entrance—white background, red characters spelling out Job Fair.
There was a crack along one edge, mended with transparent tape that had already started peeling up.
Several empty cardboard boxes were stacked beside the signboard. The top one had been blown over by the wind, rolled half a turn, and come to rest below the steps.
Six rows of booths filled the hall. At each booth, an HR rep sat behind a table; resumes lay in front.
Some booths had lines. Others had no one at all. The overhead spotlights bleached every booth white, the light striking the black text on the resumes and reflecting back harsh enough to make people squint.
I stood at the entrance and swept my eyes across the hall.
A biotech company's booth was packed—not with applicants, but with spectators.
The LED screen scrolled a single line: Urgently hiring former employees of competitors. Bring core experimental data. Starting salary at five times the industry standard. Equity included. Three-year lock-in period.
At the next booth, a pharma company immediately followed suit. The HR rep stood up and shouted through a megaphone: We'll do six times, plus independent lab naming rights. Project authorship rights belong to the individual.
The first HR rep turned to look, crossed out five times on the LED screen, and changed it to seven times.
The two HR reps stared at each other across the space of three booths, each clutching their recruitment sign.
The trailing echo from the megaphone bounced once off the exhibition hall wall, then was swallowed by the bidding cry from the next booth.
I pulled my gaze back and kept walking.
At the fifth row against the wall, an HR rep was revising a recruitment poster. A middle-aged woman in a gray jacket, her hair pinned behind her ears with black clips.
The poster listed the requirement: Master's degree. She picked up a black marker and crossed out Master's, writing Associate's beside it.
She paused, capped the pen, then uncapped it. She stared at Associate's for several seconds, crossed it out, and wrote No restriction.
The pen cap clicked shut. She hung the poster back above her booth and leaned into her chair.
Her hands lay folded on the table, fingers gripping each other. Her nails were cut very short, and a tiny dried smear of black marker ink was caught in the crease of her finger.
I walked up to that booth. She looked up, her eyes moving from the table to my face.
The lines at the corners of her eyes were deep. A faint blue-gray tinge shadowed her lower lids.
"How long have you been recruiting?"
She gave a bitter laugh. "Three months. Not one usable candidate."
The stack of resumes in front of her was taller than at other booths, but every one had been flipped through, the edges no longer neat.
The top resume had a sticky note taped to its upper right corner, an interview time scribbled in pencil, and a cross marked in the notes column behind it—the last stroke of the cross had torn through the paper.
I lowered my voice. "If there were a way that meant you never had to worry about hiring again, never had to stare blankly at resumes again—would you be willing to try it?"
She looked at me. The weariness in her eyes pulled slowly taut. The light in her pupils gathered for a moment, then scattered.
"Little miss, I've been in this line for twenty years. I know nothing drops from the sky." She paused. "Thank you for your kindness. But I want to finish this myself. If I can't hire anyone, I'll keep recruiting. Someone will come eventually."
I nodded and turned away. After a few steps, Dianzi fell in beside me.
"Another refusal."
"That's what makes the willing ones rare."
At the hall exit, I stopped and turned slightly to glance at that booth. She was still holding the marker in her hand.
The cap was chewed and deformed, the plastic shell covered in bite marks—some deep, some shallow, some bitten all the way through.
She raised the pen to her eyes, looked at it, then lowered it.
——Nothing drops from the sky. So they wait for things to drop, and wait, until their pen caps are chewed to pieces.
Then she picked up the pen and crossed out the words No restriction she had just written. The strokes were slow.
The horizontal line dragged from left to right. The sound of the pen tip scraping the paper carried across several rows of booths.
After crossing it out, she stopped there, the tip pressed against the paper. It didn't move.
I turned and walked out of Exhibition Hall Three. Dianzi walked beside me, slipping her hand into the crook of my arm.
Beyond the glass door at the end of the hallway, plane tree leaves were blown up by the wind and settled below the steps.
The empty cardboard box that had been blown over earlier still lay beside the steps.
A boy was crouching in front of it, tracing something on its side with his finger. When he finished, he stood up and ran off.
On the side of the box, in crooked letters, were two characters: Keep going.
I pushed the glass door open. Everyone on the street outside was rushing somewhere.
No one noticed the signboard at the exhibition hall entrance.
That crack mended with transparent tape fluttered softly in the wind.