Day 361 in the Elevator

Zhou Ye, 26 years old, is a veteran who retired due to a leg injury and works as a night shift security guard in an office building. At 1:42 a. M. Every day, he pressed the elevator button for a girl who was working overtime and said, "Slow down." He didn't know her name, but he remembered what kind of coffee she drank, what kind of shoes she liked to wear, and how many times she cried. He recorded three hundred and sixty days in his duty diary, like guarding a lamp that would never go out. The girl's name is Gu Xiao, an advertising planner, broken in love, and planning to go to Beijing. On the day she left her job, she handed him a piece of egg fried rice and said, "I thought you would be hungry on the night shift." He couldn't bear to eat it and left it on the radiator all night. The rice is sour. He didn't throw it. On the 361st day, Gu Xiao was gone. At one o'clock in the morning, the elevator moved by itself. The door opened and she stood inside, exactly as she had on the first day. She asked: "You haven't told me who you are waiting for yet." Not all encounters need to be grand. For some, it's the three hundred and sixty-one days between a slow walk and good night.