The first call didn't come until around midnight.
Before that, I waited for nearly two hours. No air conditioning, no electric fan. The room was stuffy as a steamer. I stood leaning against the wall until my legs went numb.
Old Zhao, on the other hand, sat perfectly still. He leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed, looking like he'd fallen asleep. But the moment the phone rang, his eyes snapped open. He was fully alert in an instant.
I'd learn later—people who've been at this job long enough develop one skill above all others: answering the phone instantly, no matter what state you're in.
The ringtone was identical to a regular landline. A soft trilling sound, nothing loud. But in the dead silence of the early morning hours, it cut through like a blade. Old Zhao pressed the speakerphone button.
"Hello. My surname is Li. May I ask yours?"
Static crackled through the line first—hissing and buzzing. Then a young man's voice came through. It sounded muffled, like someone talking through a thick quilt, every word blurry and indistinct.
"My surname is Wang."
"Mr. Wang, hello. I regret to inform you—I am the contact for your last phone call. You have passed away."
Silence on the other end. I stood by the door, staring at that black telephone. Cold sweat ran down my back, but goosebumps rose all over my arms.
The silence lasted about ten seconds. Those ten seconds felt like a century.
"What? Impossible. I just got off work. I'm riding my bike. I—" The voice started accelerating. No more pauses between words. Like a cassette tape being fast-forwarded. "Impossible impossible impossible. I was just riding my bike on Hunan Road. That intersection, I go through it every day. That taxi, how could—"
Old Zhao cut him off. "Mr. Wang, time is limited. Do you have any bank passwords or important information you need to leave for your family?"
"Let me think, let me think—" His voice cracked, tears bleeding in. "My salary card. ICBC. The password is my mom's birthday. 0423. I also have a savings book at home. Bottom of the wardrobe. Wrapped in a pair of long johns."
"Good. Continue."
"And—and tell my girlfriend. The engagement ring. I bought it. It's at the Central Mall counter. Haven't picked it up yet. The pickup slip is in my—in my—" His voice cut off.
A busy tone. That piercing, mechanical drone filled the entire room.
Old Zhao calmly picked up his pen and wrote on a registration form: Wang, ICBC card password 0423. Savings book in wardrobe long johns. Ring pickup slip. He set the pen down and turned to look at me.
"Sixty seconds. Every time. Starts counting the moment they make a sound. When time's up, the line goes dead. Not a second more, not a second less. So you have to get them to say the most important things within those sixty seconds.
"As for 'tell my wife I love her' or 'tell my mom I'm sorry'—those can't be delivered. Don't promise them. Write it down if you want, but don't pass it on."
"Why did you say your surname was Li just now?"
Old Zhao glanced at me. It was a strange look. Like something flickered in his eyes and then immediately died out.
"Something happened last year. After that, I stopped using my real name."
I waited a few seconds for him to tell me what that "something" was. He didn't. He turned back to his computer screen and started typing into an ancient DOS system.
The interface was black with white text. All in English. The cursor blinked on and off.
"You'll find out eventually," he said. "In this line of work, you'll know things when it's time to know them."
The second call took over three hours to arrive.
In between, Old Zhao went to the break room and made two bowls of Master Kong braised beef instant noodles. One for each of us. We ate them alongside the egg fried rice my mom had packed for me in an aluminum lunch box.
He ate fast. Barely chewed. Just shoveled noodles into his mouth, slurping loudly. When he finished, he tossed the paper bowl into the trash, wiped his mouth. He wasn't much of a talker, and I didn't feel right asking too many questions. So we just sat there.
By three in the morning, I was starting to doze off. My eyelids felt like they'd been filled with lead. My head kept dipping forward. That's when the phone rang again.
Old Zhao picked up. "Hello. My surname is Zhang. May I ask yours?"
This time, the response came instantly. The voice was completely different from the young man surnamed Wang. Not confused. Not blurry. The enunciation was unnaturally crisp. Every syllable was bitten off with precision, like it was being pulled out with teeth. Meticulous.
"Am I already dead?"
"Yes. What is your name?"
The voice didn't answer. It laughed. A very short laugh, like a soft exhale.
"I see the door."
Old Zhao moved faster than anyone I'd ever seen react. The last syllable hadn't even fully landed before he'd already slammed his hand down on the hang-up button.
Then he bent down and pulled out another phone from under the desk. A red landline. The receiver and base were wrapped together with black electrical tape—tape covered in dust and blackened fingerprints.
Without a word, he started dialing a handwritten number taped to the side of the red phone.
"What's happening?" My voice came out louder than I'd intended. I didn't mean to shout. It just came out that way.
"You'll find out right now." Old Zhao didn't even lift his head to answer.
He pressed the red receiver to his ear. I could only hear his side of the conversation.
"Yeah. It's me. Old Zhao. Got another one. Says he sees the door."
A pause.
"Mm. Mm. Got it."
He hung up. Exhaled. A long breath, like he'd been holding it in forever. Then he turned around, his face wearing a smile I was one hundred percent sure was fake.
That smile on his exhausted face was more unsettling than any grieving expression I'd ever seen.
"Come on. Let's go make some tea."
The break room. Old Zhao walked over to the water boiler, pulled two packets of Yuhua tea from his pocket, tore them open, and dumped them into an enamel mug. He had his back to me. The tea leaves slowly unfurled in the hot water.
I stood by the window, holding my enamel mug. I glanced outside without thinking. The railway tracks gleamed cold under the moonlight. On the other side of the tracks, in that dark empty lot, something was standing there.
It was human-shaped. But absolutely not human.
It stood about two meters tall. Its outline was blurred, edges warping faintly in the darkness, like looking at it through a layer of constantly flowing water.
I couldn't make out its face—if it even had a face. But its entire body was oriented toward the window. Toward me.
A line of cold shot from my tailbone straight up to the back of my skull.
"Old Zhao. Across the tracks. There's someone standing there. No—there's something."
Old Zhao spun around. The enamel mug clattered to the floor, tea splashing everywhere. He crossed the distance in a few strides, grabbed my shoulder. His grip was shockingly strong—nothing like what his thin frame should've been capable of.
"Don't look at it." His voice dropped to barely above a whisper, like he was afraid the thing outside might hear. "It always shows up after a 'door' appears. Don't look at it. Turn around. Now."
He practically wrenched my whole body around. I found myself facing the break room wall, back to that huge window.
The wall was plastered with a faded workplace safety poster from the nineties. A cartoon worker in a hard hat giving a thumbs-up. The caption read: Safety First—Everyone's Responsibility.
The colors had bleached badly over the years. You could barely make out the worker's face anymore. Old Zhao stood beside me. His hand was still clamped on my shoulder. He hadn't let go.
"Don't move. Don't look," he whispered. "Just endure it."
Behind me was that huge window. I didn't need to turn around to feel it out there.
That sensation is impossible to describe. Not sight. Not sound. It's a primal, bodily awareness that something is watching you from very close by.
Like when you were a kid, lights off, convinced something in the closet was staring at you. But a hundred times stronger.
Then I heard it.
From behind me came a very faint sound. Tap. Tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap. Like fingernails tapping against glass. One at a time. Not random—rhythmic. Like it was keeping a beat.
Tap tap tap tap tap. Tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap tap.
The sound went on for about two minutes. Two minutes isn't long. But in those two minutes, I experienced for the first time what it truly means for every second to stretch into an hour.
Sweat dripped from my forehead into my eyes. It stung like hell. I didn't dare wipe it. I didn't dare move. I was afraid that any tiny motion might turn the tapping into something else.
Then it stopped.
Old Zhao let out a breath. His hand slid off my shoulder. "It's gone. Taps and then leaves."
We turned around.
That huge window—about three meters wide, two meters tall—was covered from left to right, top to bottom, in a dense layer of white frost. Thick frost. The kind you find on a car windshield on a winter morning.
It was the beginning of August. Three-something in the morning. The indoor temperature was at least twenty-seven, twenty-eight degrees Celsius.
The window was covered in frost.
And scattered through the frost layer were more than a dozen clear, fingertip-sized dots. As if someone had gently pressed their fingertips against the frosted surface.
"What is—"
"Part of the job," Old Zhao said. He bent down and picked up the enamel mug from the floor. One corner was dented in. He wiped the bottom with his sleeve and went back to the water boiler.
"Remember from now on. Don't look at it. The faster you react, the sooner you turn away, the shorter it stays. Today you stared for several seconds before telling me. That's why it tapped for so long. Next time, if you react fast enough, it might not even tap."
He filled the mug, leaned against the sink, didn't drink. His hands were still shaking. Twelve years on the job. And his hands were still shaking.
"Come on. Back to work."
As we headed back to our stations, Old Zhao walked ahead of me. He suddenly stopped and turned around. In the hallway, that dying fluorescent light threw half his face into light and half into shadow.
"Chen Wang. This job is not a joke. You might have already sensed that. But it's also important. And the pay is genuinely not low. So remember what I'm about to tell you: Follow the rules. Stay alive. That's it."
Back at the station, Old Zhao handed me a kraft paper envelope. Older than the one the contract had come in. The corners were worn white.
"Your sign-on bonus is inside. And a rule sheet. Take it home and read it. Starting tomorrow night, you answer the calls yourself."
Only one call came in the rest of that night. A young girl. Sleeping pills. Her voice was soft and wispy, like it could vanish at any moment.
She said there was a letter under her pillow. Told her mom to go find it. Then she gave a QQ number and password. Asked her friend to log in and post a status: "Just say I've gone somewhere far away. Don't come looking for me."
Old Zhao wrote it all down, his expression blank, fingers tapping the keyboard mechanically.
I watched from the side, wondering whether any of this information ever actually reached their families. Judging by Old Zhao's face—probably not.
Around six in the morning, the sky was getting light. Old Zhao said that was it for tonight, told me to go home. He walked me to the door, lit a Hongmei cigarette, stood on the steps. Didn't come down.
"In this line of work," he said, "you'll find out the hardest part isn't the scary things. Scary things, you get used to. The hardest part is—"
He paused. Smoke drifted slowly from his nostrils, scattering in the morning breeze.
"Forget it. Head on home."
I got on my bicycle and retraced the route I'd come by. Early morning Nanjing was waking up. Breakfast stalls were opening. The giant wok for frying youtiao sent up plumes of white smoke. The sweet scent of soy milk drifted through the air.
Old folks doing their morning exercises lined the streets—white tai chi outfits, birdcages or radios in hand. I blended into all this steaming, noisy everyday life, feeling like I'd just come back from another world.
At home, my mom had already left for work.
On the kitchen table sat a bowl of soy milk and two youtiao, covered with a mesh food tent. Beside it, a note: There's congee in the rice cooker. Just microwave it. —Mom. How was last night? Tell me about it when you get back.
I stood in the kitchen and ate the youtiao. Didn't touch the soy milk. Went straight to my bedroom. Shut the door. Opened the old envelope.
Inside was a stack of renminbi. Brand new, bright red hundred-yuan bills. Twenty of them. Two thousand yuan total. Two thousand yuan in the year 2000—a decently thick little pile.
I spread the money out on my bed and examined it bill by bill. Watermarks were there. Metallic threads were there. No trace of counterfeiting.
Also in the envelope: a sheet of paper. Folded in half. I opened it.
Several lines were printed on it from a dot-matrix printer. The ink density varied. A few characters were crooked.
Operator Regulations:
1. If a caller begins describing the room you are in, hang up immediately. Leave your post and do not return for fifteen minutes. The deceased should not see the living's space.
2. If you hear breathing before the caller speaks, hang up immediately. The deceased have no need to breathe.
3. If a caller claims "I see the door," hang up and immediately notify the supervisor using the red dedicated line.
4. If a caller's voice sounds familiar to you, maintain a professional attitude and proceed according to standard protocol. In this line of work, receiving a call from someone you know is only a matter of time.
5. Under no circumstances answer a call that comes in exactly one minute after the previous call was disconnected. Such calls do not originate from the deceased.
6. If a caller asks to speak with "Old Zhao," inform them that Old Zhao was transferred from this unit many years ago. Do not, under any circumstances, mention that Old Zhao is in the third room next to yours.
7. If a caller begs you to send someone to save them, transfer the call to extension 007. Do not inquire about the follow-up.
I laid the sheet of paper on the bed, side by side with the stack of cash. The sun was fully up now. Sunlight filtered through the curtains, casting warm golden patches across that yellowed page.
Outside: breakfast vendors calling out. Bicycle bells ringing. The neighbor's radio playing "Heart Too Soft." Everything was normal. Couldn't have been more normal.
I stared at the seven rules. The deceased have no need to breathe. Such calls do not originate from the deceased. Do not, under any circumstances, mention that Old Zhao is in the third room next to yours.
I folded the paper, put it back in the envelope. Stuffed the money under my pillow. Lay down. Closed my eyes.
That sleep was especially deep. Deep like falling into a well.
I dreamed, but forgot everything the moment I woke up. All I remembered was that in the dream, someone kept calling. I ran desperately to answer, but every time I picked up, there was no sound on the other end.
Then I discovered the phone cord was cut. Then I discovered all the phone cords were cut.
I woke up past two in the afternoon. The room was hot and stuffy. The electric fan was still whirring. I fished the two thousand yuan out from under the pillow and looked at it again. The money was still there. Not a dream.
I crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom for a cold shower. The water pressure was weak. The showerhead spat out a thin, sputtering stream. But the cold water against my skin woke me up considerably.
Dried off. Stood in front of the mirror. Eighteen years old. Skinny. Sun-darkened. Already dark circles under my eyes. One night shift and I looked like this. Five years. How many night shifts was five years?
Downstairs, my mom still wasn't back. I heated up the congee, drank it, and rode my bike to the ICBC branch. Deposited the money.
The teller was a woman in her forties. She gave me an extra look—I was just a kid to her—but didn't say anything. Counted the bills twice. Handed me a savings book.
The number in the book went from two digits to over two thousand. I stared at that number. Couldn't name what I felt.
After the bank, I went to Dazhong Bookstore. It was next to the old Nanjing Library site. A place I'd loved since I was little. I figured if the night shifts had downtime, I could read.
Stood in the literature section for over ten minutes. Let my fingers trail across rows of book spines. Ended up grabbing a copy of Fortress Besieged and the third volume of Jin Yong's Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.
Waiting in line to pay, the girl ahead of me was about my age. She was holding a copy of First Intimate Contact.
She glanced back at me. Then at the Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils in my hand. Smiled. "You read Jin Yong too?" I said yeah. She said, "Guys always seem to like him."
I didn't know how to respond. Just smiled.
As she left, she looked back at me one more time. I wanted to tell her—it's not because I like it. I got a strange job. Answering calls from dead people. I need something to distract myself during night shifts.
But who would believe that?
At six in the evening, I got on my bike and set off again. Before I left, my mom made me green pepper and shredded pork rice. Packed it in my lunch box. Stuffed it into my canvas bag along with two bottles of mineral water and a pack of soda crackers.
"Be careful tonight," she said. "Call home if anything happens." There was something in her eyes I couldn't place. That look a mother gets when her son is heading off to a job she doesn't understand at all.
But she didn't press. She knew that things I wouldn't talk about, asking was useless. I got that from my dad.
I kissed her on the forehead. After I turned eighteen, I'd pretty much stopped doing that. But that night, for some reason, I did.
At nine sharp, I rode up to the gray building. The Santana was still there. The bread van was still there. The streetlight was still flickering. I'd barely parked when Old Zhao came out, a key dangling from his hand.
"Got this made for you." He tossed it over. "So you don't have to wait outside."
It was an old-style brass key. A strip of medical adhesive tape was stuck to the handle, with "107" written on it in ballpoint pen.
I threaded it onto my keyring. Alongside my house key. My bike key.
The keyring was now slightly heavier. Just that little bit of weight made me feel like I'd actually become part of this building.
"Tonight, you're up," Old Zhao said. "I'll sit beside you."
I nodded. Pushed open the iron door. Walked into the depths of the corridor.
The second night. Officially taking calls.
At ten-twenty, the first call came in. I took a deep breath and pressed speakerphone. Old Zhao sat beside me, legs crossed, enamel mug in hand, eyes half-closed.
"Hello. My surname is Chen. May I ask yours?"
Silence on the other end. Then a middle-aged man's voice. Deep. Slow.
"My surname is Liu."
"Mr. Liu, hello. I regret to inform you—I am the contact for your last phone call. You have—" I paused. "You have passed away."
The voice was silent for a moment. Then it said something that turned my fingers cold.
"I know. I know I'm dead. I've been waiting a long time. Why is someone only answering now?"
Old Zhao's eyes flew wide open. He set down the enamel mug. Leaned forward slightly. He gestured at me: Don't panic. Keep going.
"Mr. Liu, do you have any information you need to leave for your family?"
The man surnamed Liu suddenly laughed. A very soft laugh. But an odd one.
"Information? You don't need my information. I just want to confirm one thing."
"What is it?"
"Are the railway tracks still behind the building?"
Old Zhao shot up from his chair. He crossed the distance in one stride, his mouth practically pressed against my ear. He whispered, his voice barely audible: "Answer him: Yes. Then hang up. Then close the curtains."
My heart rate must have hit at least a hundred and eighty in those two seconds. But I kept my voice under control. As calm as I could manage. "Yes."
Then, just as Old Zhao had said, I hung up. I stood and reached for the venetian blinds. That's when I noticed my hands were shaking.
I pulled the blinds down. The aluminum slats clattered together, one by one.
"Do it now," Old Zhao's voice came from behind me. "If he asked, it means he's looking this way."
"Looking at what?"
"Looking at our building."
The rest of that night, no more calls came in. I sat at my station. My palms stayed damp the entire time.
I read half of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils. Didn't absorb a single word. My head was filled with that man surnamed Liu. The way he'd asked: Are the railway tracks still there?
At six-thirty in the morning, the sky was already bright. Old Zhao glanced at the wall clock—the one permanently stuck at eleven forty-seven, never having moved once—and said that was it for tonight.
We walked through the corridor in silence. Through the lobby in silence. Stood in the parking lot in silence.
In the morning light, that gray building just looked like an ordinary old structure. Beige mosaic tiles. Rusted iron window bars. Foxtail weeds growing at the base of the walls. You'd walk past it without a second glance.
But I knew what was inside it now.
Old Zhao stood next to his Santana and lit another Hongmei. He blew smoke toward the east. The sun reflected off his glasses, two tiny white dots.
"Do this job long enough," he said, his voice softer than it had ever been, "and you'll find out—the scariest thing isn't the dead people making calls.
"The dead just want someone to talk to. Someone to help them. Someone to tell them what happened. They're not the scary ones. The scary ones are those who don't call."
He dropped the cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it under his toe.
"See you tomorrow night."
He climbed into the Santana. The engine turned over. The taillights glowed briefly in the dust, then he turned the corner and was gone.
I rode my bike home. Passed a breakfast stall along the way. Youtiao sizzling in the wok. Soy milk steam rising in the dawn air.
People queuing for breakfast in pajamas and slippers. Yawning. Chatting about the weather. A mother crouching down to tie her kid's shoelaces. Two old men playing chess, a crowd gathered around the board.
Everyone living their normal lives. No one knew that last night, at three in the morning, a dead man surnamed Liu had called in. Asked whether the railway tracks were still behind the building.
No one needed to know.
But I knew.
I'm Chen Wang. Yin-Yang Operator. This was my second day on the job.
Five more years to go.