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The All-Night Laundromat
Lao Lin took over the round-the-clock laundromat by the university town. Every night at 3:07, machine three starts on its own, empty, while a thin shadow passes the door. A neighbor says it is the night-shift worker who died of gas two winters back, his blue jacket still soaking in the drum.
The Night Freight Yard
Lao Zheng has worked night dispatch at the suburban marshaling yard for thirty years. Every night at 2:07, a dark green train with no number sits at the end of track three; he later learns it is an old slow train that crashed in the tunnel and never reached its station.
The Last Metro Platform
Lao Zhou cleans the terminal platform after the last train. Once the shutters fall, a station attendant in an old dark-blue uniform paces the empty platform in the camera's blind spot. He later learns of a young attendant who died saving a passenger who fell.
The Last Order
A delivery rider takes an order to a mountain villa on a stormy night. When he arrives, there is no villa, only a graveyard.
The Cold Ward
A nurse on the night shift hears a call bell ringing from a ward that has been locked for twenty years.
Lao Yan's Needle
Old Yan is the last mortician beyond the North Gate. With warm water, fine needles, and a box of powder he rebuilds ruined faces, and with his eyes alone reads a dead man's whole life from his hands. His iron rule: the wrongfully dead keep their wounds. When the richest man's son tramples a blind tofu seller, he refuses silver to hide the truth, leaving the bruise as the dead man's last plaint.
The Empty Room in the Urban Village
Xiao Wu rents a room in the urban village astonishingly cheap. At night he hears a neighbor's chair dragged and a tap dripping — but the wall is solid, and the room has stood empty for years since a lonely old man died in it. He begins leaving a bowl of hot food by the wall.
The Night Shift at the Funeral Home
Lao He has worked the night shift at the north-end funeral home for six years. On the first and fifteenth of every lunar month, the third cold-storage cabinet taps from within — three soft knocks. He later learns of an old man who died alone, and a daughter who comes every Qingming to paste a note on that very cabinet.