New Liaozhai: The Eleventh Floor
A food delivery rider keeps getting orders for Apartment 02 on the eleventh floor of a ten-floor building — the old woman who waits there died years ago, but her hot meal still needs delivering.
New Liaozhai: The Eleventh Floor
Xiao Du had been delivering food for two years, and he dreaded the old walk-up blocks most. Half the corridor lights were dead, and the stairs creaked as if someone trailed behind.
The odd order was at Number 17 Huai'an Lane. The map said "Yihe Apartments," but the building plainly had only ten floors. The delivery address read: 11th Floor, Apartment 02.
Xiao Du called from downstairs. No answer. He marked it delivered and tried to leave, but the system popped up: please verify at the door, or your service score drops.
He swore, took the two boxes of braised chicken, and went up.
Tenth floor. The elevator opened onto a locked rooftop door. No eleventh floor — where was it?
Yet his phone still glowed: ten meters ahead, turn right. He climbed the emergency stair and found another flight, the cement freshly patched, the light on.
Apartment 02 on the eleventh floor stood open a crack. Inside, the smell of mothballs.
An old woman sat on the sofa before a television of static. She took the food, fished three coins from a tin, and handed them over. "Xiao Du, troubling you again. Will my son be back tonight?"
Xiao Du froze. The order name was Zhou Shulan; no son in the notes. Yet she knew his surname.
"Not sure, ma'am. Eat while it's hot."
He fled downstairs, the three coins pressing his palm — one an old five-jiao piece, a plum-blossom design long out of circulation.
The next day he told his dispatcher, who checked the system: Number 17, Yihe Apartments, ten floors, no Apartment 02 on the eleventh.
Xiao Du went to the neighborhood committee. The clerk dug through records and looked up. "The eleventh floor? That was the old numbering before the '98 renovation folded it into ten. Old Mrs. Zhou lived there alone; her son was away and never came back, seven or eight years gone. The place stood empty till they tore it down last year."
"She's waiting for her son," the clerk sighed. "Right up to the move, she'd sit by the door every day, saying he'd return."
Xiao Du slid the plum-blossom coin into a hidden compartment of his cash box. He kept delivering, and never went to the eleventh floor again.
Yet now and then his phone still rings: Number 17 Huai'an Lane, 11th Floor, Apartment 02, two boxes of braised chicken.
He no longer declines. He carries the bags up the creaking stairs, knocks, the door opens a crack, and the mothballs drift out.
"Xiao Du, will my son be back tonight?"
"Soon, ma'am. Eat while it's hot."
He knows the son won't return. But someone has to bring the old woman her hot meal.