The talent market occupied the second floor of a gray building. I smoothed my skirt.
Dianzi stood up and patted the sheer fabric of her own.
Dozens of booths filled the hall, each one a table and two chairs.
Resumes were stacked on every surface—some thick, some thin. The crowd moved slowly between the booths.
Some people clutched their resumes in line, whispering to themselves.
Others sat on plastic chairs in the corners, staring blankly at phone screens.
A boy in a blue shirt stepped out of a line, his resume rolled into a tube.
As he passed us, the tube opening faced down, the paper edges brushing against his trousers.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed faintly, one tube flickering—bright, dim, bright—slicing the shadows on the floor into broken segments.
We took a spot against the wall. I brushed my fingertips across the armlet. The floating interface lit up.
"Darlings, this girl here is at a talent market in Modu. Not here to look for work. Just here to see."
[chat] Here we are
[chat] Daughter's sailor outfit is so pretty today
[chat] The talent market looks so real 😭
[chat] What is wifey doing there
I slowly panned the camera across the hall. Recruitment posters hung above the booths—some advertising high salaries, others promising excellent benefits.
A middle-aged man in a gray suit sat behind his booth, a thick stack of resumes in front of him, but he wasn't reading them.
He just stared blankly at his phone on the table.
At the next booth, a young woman was stuffing certificate copies into a document folder, one by one.
Halfway through, she stopped and stared at the company name on the folder for a long time.
The seat beside her was empty, a folded jacket draped over the back of the chair, its cuffs worn shiny.
On the corner of her desk sat a cup of coffee long gone cold, a brown ring dried on the inner wall.
I turned the camera back to myself. "Alright. Let's take a look around first. We'll talk after."
I brushed my fingertips across the armlet. The floating interface dimmed.
We walked slowly down the aisles between booths. Passing the third one, I noticed an HR manager revising a recruitment poster.
A middle-aged woman in a dark blue jacket, her hair pinned behind her ears with black clips.
The poster in front of her listed the recruitment 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 the word Associate's for several seconds, crossed it out too, 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.
Three booths away, a young HR rep was repeating the words "major mismatch" into a phone, her voice kept so low she seemed afraid of being overheard.
He had wedged the receiver between his ear and shoulder, freeing both hands to shuffle through the papers on his desk, then stopped, just listening to the silence on the other end.
I walked up to that booth. She looked up. 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."
"What position?"
"Mechanical engineer." She pointed at the stack of resumes on her desk. "All of them are computer science. I need someone who can read blueprints and understand manufacturing processes."
"What I get are coders. The major doesn't match. I don't even bother scheduling interviews."
The pile of resumes in front of her was taller than at other booths, but every single one had been flipped through, the edges no longer neat.
Some pages had sticky notes tucked in the middle with the words not suitable written on them.
She flipped the top resume over and set it face down. The back of the page was blank, but she stared at that blankness for several seconds.
"Little miss, do you know anyone?" She looked up at me. I shook my head.
She set the pen down and leaned back. "Forget it. Keep the posting up. However long it takes."
I turned and left. She picked up the pen and crossed out No restriction. The strokes were slow, the horizontal line dragging from left to right.
The sound of the pen tip scraping the paper carried across several rows of booths.
After crossing it out, she paused, then wrote Negotiable in its place. She wrote slowly, the strokes heavy and dragging.
The pen tip paused on the paper, leaking a tiny drop of ink.
She set the pen down and stared at the black dot for two seconds. She did not wipe it away.
She hung the poster back and sat down. The top resume on the pile poked out at one corner. The major column read: Computer Science and Technology.
——However long it takes. That day never comes.
Dianzi slipped her hand into the crook of my arm.
She said nothing, just watched as the HR set the pen down and picked it up again, her thumb rubbing back and forth across the bite marks on the pen cap.
At the end of the hallway, a patch of white light spread across the floor.
A thin shadow cut across its edge—the shadow of a hallway pillar, dividing the light in half, one half on tile, one half on carpet.
When we stepped out of the talent market, the street outside was already filling with people.
I looked back at the gray building. Shadows moved behind the second-floor windows. I couldn't tell which one was hers.
That marker with the chewed-up cap was still on her desk, the ink from the leaked dot already dry.
She had taken the recruitment poster down from above her booth, rolled it into a tube, and stuffed it into the cardboard box at her feet.
The box already held several old posters, their edges frayed.
One rolled-up poster had slipped over the edge of the box and rolled to the leg of the desk.
She bent down, picked it up, dusted it off, and tucked it back inside.
"Not coming back. On to the next."
Our two shadows folded into one.