The Year I Turned Thirty-Five, the Weights Went Missing

At thirty-five, Fang Xumo personally laid off a subordinate who had worked for him for five years.

The man left behind a company-branded mug that had cost 9.9 yuan with free shipping, and a parting remark: “You’re in the cage too, sir.”

From that day on, the internet product director’s hands began to tremble. He started having panic attacks in conference rooms and waking naturally at three in the morning: a heart rate of 127, black spots in his vision, his left hand going numb.

He thought all that remained of his life was a long, slow fall.

Then he met Gu Xiaowei in a convenience store. She had set seventeen alarms, yet always woke at three thirty. Her phone lay face down on the table, its screen crowded with green toggles, like a prison she had built for herself.

“Wake up at three? We tell each other.”

Two people whose inner compasses had gone awry shared warmth in a convenience store at three in the morning, sat side by side on plastic chairs in the emergency room and watched their hands shake, and sent each other “the window’s open” from rooftops late at night.

In his pocket lay the brass weight from his father’s old scale, worn with dents, its red cord faded. It hadn’t measured accurately in years.

But his father had said, “Even if it’s off, you still have to weigh it.”

This is a novel about the collapse and rebuilding of self-worth. It avoids lyrical prose and focuses on the senses: the weight’s cool surface slowly warming, the smell of disinfectant in the emergency room before dawn, the dents in a 9.9-yuan mug, the sound of soup simmering in an earthenware pot.

Dedicated to everyone who wakes at three in the morning but keeps trying to breathe.