Tooth Decay

Life is like a cavity: rotten and painful. Chen Shu lives in an old apartment building in a room with no heating. The long winter is a dull, unrelenting ache deep in his tooth's nerve. There is no sudden, explosive disaster, only a torment that goes on day after day. Cold wind seeps through cracks in the walls, a thin blanket can't keep out the bone-deep chill, and the heating bill he can't pay and the money that barely covers his expenses are all parts of the cavity slowly decaying. Pain doesn't knock a person down all at once. It lurks in every ordinary day. The fingertips frozen stiff when he wakes, cold water that won't heat up, the polite but distant looks of others: every small humiliation is like pressing his tongue against a hollowed-out tooth without thinking. A light touch sends pain flooding through his nerves. He wants to get it fixed, but can't afford dental work. All he can do is wait as the decay spreads and learn to live with the constant ache. This is the life of an ordinary person, without grand legends or dramatic events, just days like a cavity: slowly rotting, hurting all the time. He can't bear to have the tooth pulled, can't afford to fill it, and can only grit his teeth and struggle through one day after another. Theme: Using cavities as a metaphor, this story portrays the drawn-out hardships ordinary people face in making a living, and the persistent, hard-to-cure pain of life in poverty.