Three-Ten

---

At 2:58 AM, Gao Qiao dropped the last bento box into the waste bin.

The fluorescent tubes overhead hummed against the silence. During the day you never noticed the sound; past midnight it became a fingernail dragging across the back of your skull. He walked around the shelves, flipped open the spoilage log, and put a check next to "Teriyaki Chicken Bento."

3:03 AM.

He looked up, squinting through the glass door at the intersection. The traffic light cycled through its colors for nobody. He watched the empty crosswalk for a few seconds, then went back to writing.

3:07 AM.

The door chime rang.

A woman walked in—early forties, dark gray trench coat, hair tucked neatly behind her ears. Her flat shoes made almost no sound on the white tile, like a cat crossing cotton. Gao Qiao didn't look up. He'd stopped looking up weeks ago. For three months now, she'd shown up at least four nights a week, right around 3:10.

He moved from the back of the counter to the register. Habit, not politeness.

She pulled a bottle of water from the cooler—Nongfu Spring, 550 ml. Then she walked to the household aisle and grabbed a pack of facial tissues—C&S, three-ply.

She had bought these exact two items no fewer than sixty times.

She set them on the counter. Gao Qiao scanned. Two beeps.

"Twelve-fifty."

She took a twenty-yuan note from her coat pocket and handed it over. Her fingers were thin, nails cut short, no polish.

He counted out seven-fifty in change, stacking the bills and coins neatly beside her hand. She picked them up—not pinching them, but lifting them flat with four fingers—and slipped them into her pocket.

"Thank you."

She always said it the same way: flat, measured, like someone reading a weather report off a teleprompter.

Then she took the water and the tissues, pushed through the glass door, and headed across the street. Sometimes Gao Qiao watched her all the way to the corner. She always came from the same direction, always went back the same way. That direction led into an old alley lined with apartment blocks from the eighties—no elevators, white bathroom tiles peeling off the facades in patches.

He first noticed her on his third night shift at the convenience store. He'd thought it was strange—a woman walking out alone at 3 AM to buy water and tissues. But he soon learned the neighborhood was full of people with scrambled body clocks: night-shift nurses, insomniac retirees, live-streamers who treated 4 AM like 4 PM. Buying water in the dead of night wasn't that strange.

What was strange was what she did with the things she bought.

The water bottle was never opened. He knew this because once she'd walked out and come back in two minutes later, and the plastic seal on the cap was still intact. The tissues too—corners sharp, packaging uncreased, as if they'd never left the shelf.

But the next night she'd be back, buying the same two things.

Sometimes, while restocking, Gao Qiao would glance at the security monitor during her visits. Enter, select, pay, exit. Never more than ninety seconds. No detours, no browsing, no calls, no conversation—and there was nobody to talk to anyway, not at 3 AM with just him in the store.

The only variable was the weather. Rain meant a black long-handled umbrella, its tip shaken dry on the doormat before she stepped inside. Snow meant a gray knitted scarf with thick, uneven stitches, the kind someone makes by hand.

Gao Qiao thought about asking. Then decided against it. Everyone had their habits. Buying water you never drank, tissues you never opened—maybe she was just stocking up. People were allowed their quirks.

Until that Thursday.

Thursday night—no, Friday morning, technically. Gao Qiao finished restocking by 3:10 and stood behind the counter, waiting. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.

By 3:30 the door chime still hadn't rung.

He pulled out the spoilage log and wrote two more lines, then crossed out the date and wrote it again. By 3:50 he was irritated—not worried, just irritated in the way you get when a bus is forty minutes late and you know you could walk but you refuse to, on principle.

At 4:00 a street-sweeping truck crawled past the window, hosing itself wet, pushing dust into the drains.

She didn't come.

She didn't come the next three nights either.

A hole opened up in Gao Qiao's shift. Not the kind that needs filling. The kind you discover after you've knocked through a wall and found an empty cavity you didn't know was there. At 2:50 he'd find himself rearranging the cooler so every Nongfu Spring label faced forward. At 2:55 he'd wipe down the counter, even the grime underneath the coin tray. Things he had never done before.

On the fourth night, 3:00 sharp, he stood behind the register staring at the door and felt ridiculous.

3:07. The chime rang.

It was a delivery driver. Two packs of cigarettes and a Red Bull.

3:12. The driver was gone. Gao Qiao wiped the coin tray again.

3:18. He decided to finish the spoilage log. Finish the log, wait for dawn, hand over to the morning shift, bike home, sleep, watch the afternoon match replays, come back. That was fine. That was a normal night shift.

3:22. The chime rang.

He was crouched in front of the cooler restocking milk when she walked in. He saw her in the reflection of the glass door. His hand slipped and a carton of milk hit the floor.

The thud was absurdly loud in the 3 AM silence.

He picked it up, returned it to the shelf, stood, walked back to the register. She was already at the cooler.

This time she didn't reach for water.

She bent down and took a can of Tsingtao beer from the bottom shelf—330 ml. Then she walked to the household aisle, and Gao Qiao expected her to grab tissues. She didn't. She picked up a bottle of mosquito repellent.

The combination threw him.

She walked to the counter and set down the beer and the repellent. Gao Qiao scanned. Two beeps.

"Eleven."

She reached into her coat pocket. This time it wasn't a note—she came out with a fistful of coins and laid them on the counter one by one, in a straight line. A fifty-fen piece, five one-yuan coins, another fifty-fen piece.

Exactly eleven yuan.

When she finished arranging the coins, she looked up at him.

In three months, it was the first time she'd ever looked at his face.

Her eyes were unremarkable—neither tired nor alert, neither sad nor happy. But he noticed a small bruise on her eyelid, bluish-purple, like makeup she hadn't quite washed off, or like she'd bumped into something.

"The water went up in price, didn't it."

She said it in the same flat voice, but something about it felt different. Not a question, but not quite a statement either.

"No," he said.

She nodded, stuffed the beer and the repellent into her coat pockets—the can bulged one side out, the spray nozzle poked from the other—and turned to leave.

At the door she paused, half a step.

"The building across the street," she said. "They're tearing it down."

Gao Qiao looked across the intersection. The old alley. There was a demolition notice posted at the entrance, put up last week, white paper with black type and a red government stamp. He walked past it every shift. He'd never once stopped to read it.

"So?"

He didn't know why he answered like that. Maybe because she said it without turning around, like she was talking to the automatic door.

She didn't reply.

She pushed through and stepped out. There was a June breeze, the kind that only shows up after 3 AM. It lifted the hem of her trench coat. The beer can shifted in her pocket.

Gao Qiao watched her cross the street. She didn't head toward the old alley.

She went the other way.

The other way led to the main road, and the main road ended at a river.

He never saw her again.

He worked the night shift through the whole summer, watching dozens of 3 AMs pass by the register. Summer ended, autumn ended. By the time he quit in winter, the mosquito repellent was still on the shelf. He bought it and took it home.

Last year he passed the old alley. The buildings were gone. A thin layer of grass had grown over the rubble, and a few stray cats were sprawled across it, sunning themselves.

It occurred to him that he'd never learned her name.

It also occurred to him that, from beginning to end, she had never once opened a bottle in front of him. Not the water. Not the beer. She always just carried them out.

As if the buying was enough. As if simply having it could quench something.