This Bizarre Dry Cleaner Really Is Bizarre

Song Buqi took a job at a dry cleaner. Front desk, 5,000 yuan a month, with five types of social insurance and a housing fund. The shop was in an urban village and didn't take walk-ins. On his first day, the manager laid down three rules: Don't touch the bags in the back room. Ignore any extra figures in the mirrors. If someone calls your name by the river, don't look back. He asked what would happen if he did. The manager wiped a cup without looking up. “Then you'll be the sixth.” Only then did he learn that four people had worked the front desk before him. Not one had lasted two years. Regulars came in and exchanged a password before locking away their phones, glasses, car keys, and anything else that could reflect light. Nothing reflective was allowed downstairs. There was no basement level on the elevator panel. Rows of vacuum-sealed bags hung in the back room. From a distance, they looked like freshly cleaned suits. He counted thirty-seven. The next day, there were thirty-six. That door stayed locked all night. After work, he took a detour to the river. A group of young people sat there, all very young, none willing to leave. Each held an unfinished sentence in their arms. They begged him to borrow a mirror and deliver the sentence to someone. “Just this once,” they said. “Once it's delivered, we'll leave.” Song Buqi believed them. Until that rainy night, when the cold light let him see a neat little square code printed on the corner of every bag, like a supermarket tracking code. He took out his phone and scanned one. The screen stayed black and spun twice. Nothing came up. That code was lit up for him alone.