I Can Hear All Things Shatter

Zhou Ye is 27 this year, a crowdsourced delivery rider.

While delivering his first order that day, the cup in his hand made a sound.

"Ding."

He heard it three times in all that day. Each time, something in front of him broke.

The milk tea spilled. A light fixture came crashing down. A glass door was about to fall on a boy of sixteen or seventeen.

He saved him. His entire right leg, from knee to ankle, went numb.

The next day, 2,000 yuan appeared in his account, with an eight-character note:

You haven't heard enough yet.

From that day on, he could hear it three times a day. Three times, no more.

There were plenty of things he had to save: a leaking ceiling, a sagging plasterboard panel, a riser pipe pried four centimeters out of place.

There was only one person he had to save.

The man who had gone downstairs three months ago: his father.

Before leaving, that man had said the same thing:

Something downstairs is about to break.

He had never been wrong.

Until the time he wasn't fast enough.