I lost my job. My girlfriend dumped me. The balance in my bank account couldn't cover next month's rent. It was in the middle of all this hopelessness that I got the call about the night shift at that 24-hour convenience store.
Two thousand eight hundred yuan a month. No meals, no housing, no night shift allowance, no transportation subsidy. Just two thousand eight hundred. I took it. Gladly.
What else could I do? I needed to survive.
The store was on an old street in the south of the city, near a couple of mid-range residential complexes and a hospital. The sign was worn—"Jiale Convenience Store," though a few strokes were missing from the characters. At night, when it lit up, "Jiale" looked like "Jiale," but if you didn't look carefully, you might mistake it for something else.
The manager was Old Zhou, a man in his fifties with graying hair who didn't talk much. He showed me around the store once, then pointed at the oden machine and said something that struck me as strange.
"Xiao Chen," he said, "you're on nights. Ten PM to six AM. Everything else—organizing shelves, mopping floors—none of it matters. But there's one rule you must remember."
He paused, and his tone wasn't like someone giving work instructions. It sounded more like someone entrusting me with a last wish: "The oden broth cannot be kept overnight. No matter how much you cook, whether you sell it all or not—by five fifty AM, you must dump the broth and wash the pot three times. Three. Not once less."
At the time, I thought he was being ridiculous. It's just a pot of soup. Making such a big deal out of nothing. But I didn't ask questions. Just nodded obediently. Old Zhou's expression, though—it was as if I'd just agreed to something that meant life or death.
That was how my night shift life began.
To be honest, it was harder than I expected. After eleven at night, the street emptied out. Around one or two in the morning, I'd occasionally see people coming out of the hospital—buying water and bread—or those kids who'd been gaming all night, shuffling in wearing slippers to grab cigarettes and instant noodles.
Most of them were in a hurry. Our interactions limited to the beep of the scanner and the words "scan over here."
Working nights taught me something—the world after dark is completely different from daytime. All those lively, noisy rules that belonged to the sunlight hours? They stopped working once night fell.
Night had its own order. Quiet—the kind that made your ears ring. Occasionally a car would pass, the sound amplified several times before vanishing quickly, leaving behind an even deeper silence.
In that kind of quiet, I'd often get this feeling that this brightly-lit convenience store was like the only submarine with its lights on in the depths of the ocean, and the endless darkness outside was the bottomless sea.
Instant noodles sold fastest at night, followed by oden. Especially in winter, the steaming hot oden always attracted a few shivering late-night wanderers. I'd watch those skewered fish cakes, tofu, and seaweed knots bobbing in the curry-colored broth, and all I could think was—what a waste to pour all that out.
Old Zhou said I had to dump it. But I thought he was being stubborn, superstitious. The broth was made from concentrated packets, each one costing over ten yuan. Dumping unsold portions meant dumping money. Day by day it didn't show, but over a month, it added up.
I was just a night shift clerk making less than fifteen yuan an hour. Not the boss. I had no right to care about the owner's money. What I cared about was my own conscience. Wasting food brings heavenly punishment.
So, on the fourth night, I made a decision.
That day, the store's original half-pot of broth plus what I'd added came to a full pot. By five AM, still less than half remained. I stared at that thick, aromatic soup, hesitated a few seconds, and ultimately didn't dump it.
I just turned off the heat.
I told myself—just this once. Tomorrow night I'll reheat it and drink it myself as a midnight snack. This wasn't about saving money. It was about not wasting.
The next night, when I came in for my shift, Old Zhou had already left. The handover notebook only had one line: Stock refilled, floor not mopped, handover by Old Zhou.
I changed into my uniform and did the first thing—walked to the oden machine and pressed the heating button.
The broth heated up quickly, bubbling and steaming. I stirred it with long chopsticks. The smell was the same as always, maybe even richer. I grabbed a piece of seaweed with my chopsticks and tasted it—the salt was fine, though the seaweed seemed softer than usual. I didn't think much of it.
Business was slow that night. Around two AM, rain started, and not a soul was on the street. I was bored, scrolling my phone when I suddenly felt cold.
A strange sensation. The convenience store AC was on heating mode, set at twenty-six degrees, but this chill wasn't coming from outside. It seeped up from behind me, from beneath my feet. I shivered and zipped my jacket all the way to the top.
That's when the automatic door opened.
With a mechanical "Welcome," a gust of damp, cold wind blew in.
Instinctively, I looked up and said, "Hello, welcome."
No response.
I thought maybe my voice was too soft, or the customer didn't hear. It happened often. Many late-night shoppers carried this exhaustion that made them不想和任何人交流. I stood up from behind the cashier counter and looked toward the door.
He came in.
A man wearing a dark gray hoodie, the hood pulled low. Once inside, he didn't head to the shelves like other customers. He walked straight to the oden, then stopped.
He just stood there, motionless, facing the heating oden pot.
From where I stood at the register, I could only see his back. He wasn't tall, slightly hunched, like something was pressing down on him. He stood there, statue-like.
Minutes passed. One minute, two minutes, five.
He still didn't move.
I started feeling something was off.
The last thing you wanted to encounter on night shift wasn't robbery—it was people with mental health issues. Some would pace the store, others talk to air, and some would suddenly start undressing. I didn't know which category this customer fell into.
I cleared my throat, trying to sound normal.
"Sir, can I help you find something?"
He ignored me.
I asked again, louder this time.
"Sir, the oden is self-serve. Cups and tongs are by the pot. Help yourself to whatever you need."
Still nothing.
An inexplicable irritation rose in me. Maybe it was night shift exhaustion, maybe that lingering chill wearing thin my patience. I stepped out from behind the counter and walked toward him.
"Sir, you—"
The words lodged in my throat.
I walked to his side and saw his face.
He had no face.
Where eyes, nose, and mouth should have been—smooth, grayish-white skin. That skin looked wet and cold, like... like something that had been soaking too long.
I thought I was seeing things. I blinked hard, hoping it was just exhaustion playing tricks.
But no.
He just "looked" at the oden in front of him. Then he raised his right hand.
His fingers were that same grayish-white, swollen, like wearing ill-fitting rubber gloves. He pointed with one of those fingers at the bubbling oden pot.
Then I heard a sound.
"Glug... glug..."
It wasn't coming from somewhere nearby. It was coming from his direction, from where his face should have been. Like something bubbling underwater—muffled, yet perfectly clear.
My heart stopped a beat. My mind went blank, every thought shattered by overwhelming fear. Only one voice screamed: Run! Run!
But I couldn't move. My legs felt like they'd been filled with lead, rooted to the spot.
My gaze was pulled—against my will—toward where his finger was pointing. At the oden pot.
The broth was boiling.
But I remembered—the heating indicator light was off.
I'd just turned it off. Just before I walked over. I'd turned the heat to minimum to keep the soup from being too hot. It shouldn't have been boiling. Yet the dark brown liquid churned violently, like something trying to claw its way up from the bottom of the pot.
In that instant, that faint, lingering chill around me became unbearably tangible.
It was an odor.
A mix of meaty smell and something indescribably, sickly sweet and rotten. That smell was thick, aggressive, filling my nostrils, my lungs, coating every pore on my body.
That wasn't what oden broth should smell like. It was stale, like something locked away in an enclosed space for far too long—nauseating. This smell was a key turning in a lock that should've stayed sealed, sending me plummeting into an ice cellar.
My stomach convulsed violently.
Finally, I could move. I lunged backward, my back slamming into the beverage refrigerator behind me. Cold instantly seeped through my uniform jacket. Bottles and cans clattered noisily.
I ducked instinctively, hiding from the boiling pot and that thing. When I looked up again, the man in the gray hoodie was gone.
No one at the door. The street was empty, only the streetlights glowed.
He vanished the same way he appeared—without warning.
The convenience store fell into deathly silence. The automatic door had long since closed. Only the residual warmth from the oden machine lingered, that诡异的恶臭 seemed to still hang凝固在空气里,黏在我的皮肤上.
I slumped against the ice-cold beverage cabinet, gasping, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it would burst from my throat. My whole body trembled—not from cold, but from a fear that seeped from the marrow of my bones.
What was that?
I told myself it was an illusion, that I was too tired, that I'd fallen asleep at the register and dreamed it. Yes, definitely a dream. What kind of world has those kind of things?
But my reason told me this wasn't a dream. I was still clutching those long chopsticks I'd used to grab the seaweed. My back ached where it hit the refrigerator.
And the pot of soup.
It was still there, slowly, slowly settling, as if that violent boiling had only been my imagination.
It took me about ten minutes to勉强镇定下来. The first thing I did was unplug the oden machine. Then I grabbed the pot and walked to the back storage's sink.
I dumped the broth.
The dark brown liquid rushed down the drain, that诡异的甜腻气味又浓郁了一下, then quickly washed away by the water. I put the pot under the faucet and, with a steel wool scrubber and detergent, scrubbed it vigorously. Inside and out. Once, twice, three times. Then I scrubbed it a fourth time, a fifth.
Until my hands felt like the skin would come off, until the inside of that stainless steel pot gleamed and there was not even a trace of that smell left, I finally stopped.
The rest of the night, I sat behind the register with every light in the store turned on. The place was bright as day. I clutched a cup of boiling hot water and stared at the door, second by second, waiting for dawn.
At six in the morning, Old Zhou arrived for his shift.
When he pushed the door open and walked in, I only glanced up at him. I didn't speak. Couldn't speak. How could I tell him I didn't dump the soup and saw a ghost in the store?
Old Zhou didn't say anything either. He checked the register first, then began his usual inspection tour. When he reached the oden machine, he stopped.
He didn't look at anything else. He just stared at that pot.
The stainless steel pot I'd scrubbed until it gleamed, now completely empty.
Then he turned and looked at me.
His expression was calm—calm in a way that frightened me.
"Someone came by last night, didn't they?"
My mind exploded. I nearly dropped the cup in my hand.
From my reaction, he understood everything. He didn't press further, just sighed softly. That sigh carried no blame—only a deep, inexpressible weariness.
"Xiao Chen," he said, "do you know why I made that rule?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't answer.
Old Zhou walked to the register, poured himself some water, took a sip, then spoke slowly.
"This rule wasn't made by me. It was made by the last night shift guy, Old Sun."
Old Sun? When I interviewed, Old Zhou mentioned him once. The previous night shift clerk, surname Sun. Apparently he didn't last long before quitting—didn't even collect his wages for that month, just left in a hurry. Old Zhou said it was family stuff, but right now, it sounded far more complicated than that.
"This Old Sun, he was like you—young, didn't believe in superstition." Old Zhou stared out the window, his gaze seeming to pierce through time back to a few years ago. "That was about two years ago. Winter, close to Chinese New Year.
That night, Old Sun also thought it was a waste to dump a pot of soup, so he kept it. Then the next day, at about this same time, when I came in for my shift, I saw him sitting there, his face as white as paper. Just like you right now."
"Did he..." I forced the words out, my voice rough like sandpaper, "did he see something too?"
"He didn't say what he saw." Old Zhou shook his head. "He only asked me, if anything had happened around here before."
Old Zhou put down his cup, looked at the sky gradually brightening outside, and began telling me a story.
At the end of this street, there used to be a bathhouse. Business was booming—in winter, you could see steam rising from that store up and down the entire block.
A few years ago, that bathhouse had a serious carbon monoxide poisoning incident. A young mother who had brought her child for a bath had an accident in a private sauna room. Because it was late night, the staff's negligence meant no one noticed in time.
It wasn't until the next day's cleaner went to clean that they discovered the mother and child already dead.
"They say the temperature inside that sauna was extremely high, and the boiler outside never stopped..." Old Zhou's voice was low, like he was telling a bedtime story that had nothing to do with him. "Later, that bathhouse closed down. And then, this convenience store opened here."
I understood every word Old Zhou said. But combined together, they were like a cold knife, leisurely dissecting my sanity. It hit me suddenly—the smell, that sickly sweet stench I'd thought was spoiled soup overnight, wasn't the smell of food going bad at all.
It was the smell of the bathhouse—the cheap shampoo and bath salts mixed with steam! Only something else was in there too, something I didn't want to think too deeply about.
"That pot of soup," I felt my teeth chattering, "what does it have to do with them?"
"I don't know." Old Zhou said directly. "No one knows. Maybe it's that steaming-hot feeling, maybe it's that sense of waiting, maybe something else. After what happened with Old Sun, I started asking around. Later, an old-timer on this street told me a saying."
He looked at me and spoke word by word: "They say those things that couldn't get out of that sauna room, they've been searching all along—searching for a place just as warm, just as steamy. Our oden pot, with the heat on all night, steam rising... it might feel a bit like that place."
Every hair on my body stood on end. I finally understood why Old Zhou would rather waste it than keep the soup overnight. He wasn't afraid of waste—he was afraid of this broth becoming a bridge between two worlds, a container of warmth and steam, a lure that could attract certain things.
The oden broth wasn't something to be kept. These things—they want a little "human warmth," a little warmth. And overnight soup, that state between fresh and spoiled? That's exactly what they love most.
"So it must be dumped the same day," Old Zhou finally said. "Dump it, and there's nothing left. They can't stay. We sell food here, but we can't let other things come 'eat' too."
Old Zhou left, leaving me alone in the empty convenience store. I didn't speak, just stared at that pot I'd scrubbed until it shone. That bone-deep chill lingered and wouldn't fade.
From then on, I became the most obedient clerk.
Every night, at five fifty, whether the pot had much or little, I'd dutifully, meticulously carry it to the back storage and dump it. Then wash the pot clean. Three times—not one less. After washing, I'd dry the pot and flip it upside down on the table, making sure not a single drop of water remained inside.
I never kept overnight soup again.
But things didn't end there.
About a week later, another rainy night. That evening, a woman came into the store.
She wore a white down jacket and a mask, showing only her eyes. When she pushed the door open, I didn't think much of it. Like any other customer, she walked to the oden, picked up a paper cup and tongs.
I went back to reading. But after a while, I suddenly felt something was off.
Too quiet.
She made no sound. No rustling of paper cups, no clink of tongs against the pot. Nothing.
I looked up.
She stood there, back to me, perfectly still, facing that steaming oden pot. That posture was exactly the same as what I'd seen that night with that "person."
My heart jumped into my throat. My first reaction was fear, but immediately after, a surge of anger rose up. I'd dumped the soup! I dump it every day! Why is this happening again? What does it take?
I jumped up abruptly—the chair behind me scraped loudly against the floor. I stared hard at her and shouted, "What are you doing?"
She didn't move.
I gripped my fists, my palms slick with sweat. I stepped around the counter and walked toward her, one step at a time. With each step, I could hear my own heavy heartbeat. When I reached behind her, only a step away, that faint, telltale damp smell—that smell belonging to a bathroom—appeared again.
My fear peaked, but so did my anger. I raised my hand to pat her shoulder, but halfway through, it stopped in mid-air. I didn't dare.
At that moment, she moved.
She turned and looked at me.
She wore a mask, showing only her eyes and forehead. They were ordinary eyes, even somewhat pretty, but at this moment, those eyes held no emotion—empty like a mannequin's. There were fine beads of sweat on her forehead, like she'd just come from somewhere very hot.
Then she spoke. Her voice was soft, slightly muffled, but I heard every word clearly.
"Excuse me..." she said, "when was this soup changed?"
I froze. I'd imagined countless possibilities—she might make a "glug" sound, might have no face, might be some horrific sight—but never in a million years did I expect her to ask something so normal.
"Today... changed just today." I heard my own voice trembling.
"Oh." She seemed disappointed. She lowered her head and stared at the steaming pot of soup, like she was looking at something precious. After a while, she looked up and asked again, "Then... do you have yesterday's?"
Yesterday's?
This sentence struck me like lightning. I thought I'd misheard and reflexively asked, "What?"
"Yesterday's soup," she repeated, her tone carrying a matter-of-fact calm, "I like drinking soup that's been sitting overnight. The flavor is richer."
I looked at her—at those empty but earnest eyes—and couldn't say a word. My mind was in chaos. She was just here to buy soup? She just liked drinking overnight soup?
"None left." I heard myself answering in a mechanical voice. "Overnight soup is dumped. We have a rule. Can't keep it."
She looked at me, silent for several seconds. Those eyes seemed to no longer be empty—something flickered in them that I couldn't read. Like disappointment, like sorrow, or something else.
Then she nodded, didn't say anything, didn't buy anything, just turned and left. The automatic door opened, then closed, her white figure disappearing into the rain outside.
I stood alone in the store, body stiff. That damp smell faded as she left, slowly dissipating. It took me a long time to calm down, telling myself it was just a coincidence. Just a customer with an unusual preference.
The next day, I told Old Zhou about this. Old Zhou was organizing goods on a shelf; after hearing my story, his hand paused mid-motion.
"A woman?" he asked.
"Yeah, wore a mask."
"Asked if the soup was overnight?"
"Yeah."
Old Zhou was quiet for a long time. He put the bag of chips on the shelf, then slowly said, "Xiao Chen, remember—whenever you see her again, don't acknowledge her, don't talk to her."
"Why?" I looked at him, confused.
Old Zhou didn't answer directly. He just said, "That incident—I only heard about it secondhand. That mother who had the accident at the bathhouse, before she went there, apparently she'd been at home first, cooking a pot of overnight pork rib soup for her child."
My blood ran cold.