Aotu World: The Redemption of Hope

An Afternoon's Reflections on a Slipper It is an afternoon. Sunlight squeezes through the gap in the window, like a rather halfhearted snake, lazily sprawled across the wooden floor. I stare at that patch of sunlight for a long time, maybe three minutes or four, or perhaps only thirty seconds. I've never been very good at keeping track of time, much like how I can never tell whether the dog owned by the people downstairs is a golden retriever or a Labrador. But that's not the point. The point is that slipper. The slipper is blue. I couldn't say exactly what shade, not the blue of the sky or the blue of the ocean, but closer to... how should I put it... the kind of blue that slippers are. It lies quietly beside the coffee table, its toe pointed toward the sofa and its heel toward the TV stand. Is there any deeper meaning to that orientation? I don't know, and I don't plan to find out. It's been sitting there like that since I got up this morning, probably for six or seven hours, without moving an inch. Of course, slippers don't move on their own, unless someone puts one on or gives it a kick. Nobody has put it on, and nobody has kicked it. So it remains there, holding the same pose, like a blue slipper version of a thinker. I try to imagine the slipper's life. It was made in a factory, paired with another slipper, packed into a plastic bag, stuffed into a cardboard box, shipped to some wholesale market,