The Seventh-Floor Light

The complex was called Cuizhuyuan—Green Bamboo Gardens—a name that sounded far nicer than the place deserved. Built in the early nineties, it was seven floors of walk-up concrete, its walls shedding paint every spring like old snakeskin. The property management would patch it up with cheap white plaster, and from a distance the building looked like a worn-out shirt covered in mismatched buttons.

Old Zhou had worked the night shift here for eleven years. Eleven years was long enough to memorize every resident's rhythm: the couple on the third floor who fought every Wednesday, the kid on the fifth who practiced piano until nine-thirty, the man on the second who flushed his toilet twice without fail every time he got up in the middle of the night. He kept a mental ledger, and nothing in it surprised him anymore.

But the light on the seventh floor did.

Apartment 701 belonged to an old woman named Wu, in her seventies, who lived alone. Zhou remembered her because every time she came back from grocery shopping, she would stop at the security booth, rest for a moment, and pull an orange or a few pieces of candy out of her cloth bag. She would place them on the desk without a word and walk away. Three months ago, Old Mrs. Wu passed away. Her son came back from Shenzhen for the funeral—early thirties, glasses, quiet. He took care of things and left.

701 had been empty ever since.

Except last month, during his rounds, Zhou noticed the light in 701 turn on at exactly three in the morning. A warm yellow glow leaked through the gap in the curtains, stark against the pre-dawn darkness.

His first thought was a break-in. He grabbed his flashlight and climbed to the seventh floor. The door to 701 was intact, the lock untouched. Light seeped from under the door. He leaned in and listened—no sound of rummaging, no footsteps. It was so quiet you'd think the light had turned itself on.

He stood outside for three minutes. In the end, he didn't knock.

The next day he mentioned it to Sister Li on the day shift. She was halfway through her breakfast, cheeks puffed out. "Why do you care?" she said. "It's not like there's a fire." Zhou thought about it and figured she had a point.

But the third night, and the fourth, and every night after that—at exactly three in the morning, the light in 701 came on. At four, it went off. Never missed a day.

Zhou started checking the building's entry records. No strangers. No moving trucks. No sign that anyone had moved into 701. He began to wonder if it was a timer—maybe the old woman had set an outlet timer to three in the morning. But for three months, with no one there to mind it?

On the tenth night, he decided to stop guessing.

He ate his midnight meal early. By two-thirty, he was watching the seventh floor. At two fifty-eight, the building's entry buzzer sounded. A figure swiped a key card and came through—thin, carrying a backpack, walking without hurry straight toward the stairwell.

Zhou recognized him. It was Old Mrs. Wu's son.

He stepped out and stopped the man.

"Excuse me," Zhou said, trying to sound like he was doing routine duty. "Are you a relative of 701?"

The man looked up. His glasses caught the glow of the streetlight. He was even thinner than three months ago. His eyes were sunken, his jaw covered in stubble. He looked at Zhou and nodded.

"It's just... I've been seeing the light on in 701 every night," Zhou said. "Wanted to make sure nothing was wrong."

The man was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I get off work and come up here. Just sit for a while. Then I leave."

"You work in Shenzhen?"

"Yeah."

"Then how do you—"

"High-speed rail." The man cut him off, his voice flat as still water. "Get off work at eleven. Catch the last train, get here around one-thirty. Sit for a bit. Leave at four, catch the earliest train back to Shenzhen. Don't miss my shift."

Zhou stood frozen.

He swallowed, trying to lighten his tone. "You do this... every day?"

"Not every day. If there's overtime, I skip it. Maybe four or five nights a week."

Zhou opened his mouth. He wanted to say something. Your mother is gone. The apartment is empty. What are you running back and forth for?

But he didn't.

He had worked the night shift in this complex for eleven years. He had seen a drunk man collapse into the flower bed at three in the morning. He had seen a husband and wife haul a cartload of vegetables to the market at four. He had seen a student reciting vocabulary through yawns at five. He thought he had seen every face the small hours had to offer.

But this man—this thin, silent man—spent four or five nights a week commuting four hours round-trip on a high-speed train, just to sit alone in an empty old apartment for a single hour, between three and four in the morning.

Zhou didn't know what the man did inside 701 during that hour. Maybe he sat in the rattan chair where his mother used to sit and stared at the wall. Maybe he talked to the empty room. Maybe he just needed a light—a light that, in the hour that once belonged to him and his mother, still burned for him.

"All right," Zhou said. "Go on up."

The man nodded and turned toward the stairwell. After a few steps, he stopped and looked back.

"The switch for that light still has the little nightlight my mom stuck on it," he said. "It's got a rabbit on it. I'm always afraid the bulb will burn out and no one will be around to change it. So I come to check."

Zhou said nothing. He just raised a hand and waved.

The man went upstairs. Two minutes later, the warm yellow light appeared behind the seventh-floor window. Zhou returned to the security booth, poured himself a strong cup of tea, and watched the gray building on the monitor. He stayed there until the light went off sometime past four, until he saw the thin figure emerge from the building and disappear into a street that had not yet seen daylight.

The next night, at three in the morning, the light came on again.

Zhou didn't go up anymore.

He knew it wasn't a timer.

— End —