The Cloud Watcher
Sixty thousand yuan a month, thirty days alone on a mountain peak, just watching clouds. The previous watcher lasted less than a week. He never told anyone why.
The last stretch of stone steps leading to the Golden Summit left Chen Yu winded. He stopped to catch his breath.
Two thousand two hundred meters above sea level, and the July mountain wind carried an unexpected chill. He pulled out the crumpled job posting from his backpack and read it again: "Laojun Mountain Scenic Area seeks one Cloud Observation Officer. Thirty days of solo residence at the summit. Duties: daily observation and documentation of sea-of-clouds formations. Compensation: 60,000 RMB per month, room and board included."
Sixty thousand. Enough to clear his credit card debt, cover his mother's dialysis for the next six months, with a little left over.
He hadn't really believed it. But during the video interview, the park manager — a slow-talking middle-aged man with silver-rimmed glasses — asked if he had high blood pressure, if he was afraid of thunder, how he handled solitude. Chen Yu answered each question. The man grunted, said come tomorrow.
That was it.
At the summit, Chen Yu found the so-called "observation station." A stone hut of maybe twenty square meters, wedged into the cliff on the western side of the Golden Summit. Dark green moss crawled up its outer walls. Inside: a bed, a desk, a chair, a hotplate, an aging DSLR camera. A logbook with a kraft-paper cover sat on the desk, several pages already filled. The window faced the direction where the clouds rolled in, offering a view so vast it felt indecent.
The park manager — his surname was Cui — stood at the doorway without stepping inside. He handed over the key. "Water and electricity work. Cell signal is spotty. Use the landline for emergencies. Take photos of the clouds every day — shape, color, altitude — and record them in the logbook." He paused. "Don't go out at night. The wind gets strong up here."
Chen Yu nodded. Manager Cui turned and walked a few steps, then stopped without looking back.
"One more thing. The previous observer lasted less than a week. Never told me why."
Chen Yu wanted to ask something, but Cui was already descending the stone steps.
The first day went smoothly. At sunrise, the sea of clouds rose from the valley like someone pouring milk. Chen Yu clicked the shutter until his hand cramped and wrote in the logbook: "July 14, clear. Cloud altitude approximately 1700m, milky white, uniform density, sharp boundaries. Pale gold in the sunrise direction."
On the second day, he began to notice details.
The base of one wall, for instance, was covered in scratches. Not the kind furniture makes — these looked like marks left by fingernails dragged repeatedly across stone. Four parallel grooves, the width of a spread hand. They clustered near the corner by the head of the bed, at a height an adult lying on the floor could reach.
And the handwriting in the logbook's earlier pages grew progressively worse. The first entry was neat, almost calligraphic. By the last filled page, the script had warped into something barely legible. The final entry read:
"July 9, overcast. Cloud altitude indeterminable. They are not water vapor. They are not."
Chen Yu stared at that sentence for a long time. Then he closed the logbook.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, he started hearing the sound.
It was the wind, but not quite. It sounded like someone singing far away — the words unintelligible, the melody wrong somehow. It didn't rise or fall the way a tune should. It lurched, like a broken piano.
He stood at the cliff's edge and looked down. The sea of clouds churned below, a white expanse that revealed nothing. The sound seemed to come from beneath the cloud layer.
He didn't leave the hut that night. He double-locked the door and lay on the bed. The scratches on the wall were directly in his line of sight. Four grooves. He raised his hand and pressed his fingers against them. The fit was almost exact.
He yanked his hand back, rolled over, and stared at the moonlight through the window until sleep finally took him.
On the sixth day, it rained.
Mountain storms arrive without warning. At three in the afternoon the sun was blazing; by four the sky had gone dark, and rain came down as if someone had overturned a basin. Chen Yu shut the windows, locked the door, and huddled on the bed scrolling his phone. The signal came and went. After several minutes of trying, one blurred image finally loaded: a visitor information sign from the Laojun Mountain scenic area. One line read: "Visitors are prohibited from entering undeveloped zones, including but not limited to: Dream-Seeking Valley, West of Self-Sacrifice Cliff, and the former Cloud Observation Station."
Former Cloud Observation Station.
Chen Yu zoomed in, but the signal dropped. He walked to the window. Through the rain and mist, he could just barely make out what looked like another structure on the western cliff face — larger than his stone hut, its roof partially collapsed.
He picked up the landline and called Manager Cui. It rang more than a dozen times. No one answered.
On the evening of the seventh day, he decided to take a look.
Not out of curiosity, he told himself. The hut had become suffocating. He needed to move his legs. He grabbed a flashlight and the camera, climbed over the "No Visitors" sign, and followed a weed-choked path westward. The trail was rough — several sections of steps had crumbled — and he had to scramble on hands and knees in places.
The old station was a two-story building, considerably larger than his stone hut, but clearly abandoned for years. The wooden door hung half-open. He shone his flashlight inside: old desks and chairs piled haphazardly, a faded pennant on the wall that read "Laojun Mountain Weather Observatory."
Not a cloud observation station. A weather observatory.
On the second floor he found what looked like a duty room. A radio unit sat on the desk under a thick layer of dust. Beside it lay a duty logbook, its cover printed with "Laojun Mountain Weather Station — Duty Record," dated July 2007.
2007.
Chen Yu opened it. The early entries were standard meteorological data — temperature, air pressure, wind speed, cloud cover. Around mid-July, the records grew terse.
"July 12. Duty officer Wang reports abnormal sounds. Suspected rockfall. Inspection conducted, nothing found."
"July 13. Wang reports again: human-like vocalizations heard at night. Assessed as wind. Wang has been reassured."
"July 14. Wang emotionally unstable. Requests reassignment. Denied."
"July 15. Wang left the station without authorization after leaving this final entry. Has not returned."
The last entry's handwriting had completely lost control. It read:
"They hide in the clouds. When you watch the clouds, the clouds watch you back."
The rain had stopped without Chen Yu noticing. His hands were trembling slightly. He set the logbook down and walked to the window.
Outside, the sea of clouds was breaking apart. In the moonlight, a crack opened in the cloud layer, revealing the valley below. And in that valley was a shape — an enormous outline, too vast to process immediately. Not a building, not a rock formation. Something massive, shifting slowly, its surface catching the moonlight like wet skin.
Chen Yu took a step back.
Then he saw the outline move. Not the wind pushing clouds — it was moving. Unfurling. Slow and ponderous, like something that had been asleep for a very long time turning over for the first time.
The clouds closed. The moonlight was swallowed. The valley returned to darkness.
Chen Yu stood at the window for what felt like a very long time. Then he turned, walked back to the stone hut, and wrote in his logbook.
"July 20, clear. Cloud altitude approximately 1700m, milky white, uniform density, sharp boundaries. Pale gold in the sunrise direction."
Exactly the same as the first day.
He closed the logbook, placed it on the desk, and took out his phone. One bar of signal had returned. He typed into the search bar: Laojun Mountain cloud sea disappearance.
The browser spun for five seconds and returned one result. A local news item from July 2007. The headline was a single line:
"Meteorologist at Laojun Mountain Scenic Area Disappears Late at Night. Month-Long Search Yields Nothing. Park Responds: 'An Individual Matter.'"
Chen Yu turned off his phone and lay back on the bed. The scratches in the corner were right beside his face. Four grooves. Almost without thinking, he pressed his fingers into them again. This time he didn't pull away. He kept them there for a long time.
Outside, the wind began to sing again. Like someone far away, the melody strange — neither rising nor falling, just lurching.
The next morning, Manager Cui came up the mountain with supplies.
He knocked. No answer. He pushed the door open.
The stone hut was immaculate. The blanket was folded into a perfect square. The logbook lay open on the desk. All of the photos had been transferred to the computer — every single one accounted for. Chen Yu's backpack was still under the bed. His phone sat beside the pillow.
Cui stood in the middle of the room for half a minute, then picked up the landline.
"He's gone again."
The voice on the other end was quiet. "How many is that now?"
"Three."
Cui hung up and walked to the window. The sea of clouds was rising, swallowing the valley and the cliff where the old weather station stood.
He watched the clouds for a moment, then reached out and drew the curtains.