I quit because a pen ran out of ink.

The first day I walked into that building, the security guard asked me: "You're new?"

I said yes.

He gave me a look that's hard to describe. If I had to, it was like an old prison guard looking at a new inmate—a bit of professional sympathy, and a bit of "I'm off the clock anyway" detachment.

"Elevator's on the left," he said, "but the left one breaks down a lot. The right one doesn't break, but it's slow."

"How slow?"

"If you're going to the seventh floor, about long enough to finish reading the employee handbook."

I later found out he wasn't exaggerating. That elevator was so slow I suspected it was using some kind of rhetorical device. It wasn't uniformly slow—it had a rhythm. One floor, pause for two seconds, like it was catching its breath, or contemplating life.

I met my first colleague in the elevator. She was about thirty-five, wearing a beige cardigan, holding a thermos with "Grassroots Star" printed on it.

She glanced at me, said nothing.

The elevator continued its philosophical meditation.

At the fifth floor, she suddenly spoke: "New?"

I said yes.

"Which department?"

"General Affairs."

She nodded, her expression unchanged, but her hand tightened on the thermos. Just slightly, so light that if I hadn't been looking at "Grassroots Star," I wouldn't have noticed.

"General Affairs is good," she said, "close to the cafeteria."

Then the elevator reached the seventh floor, and she got off.

I later learned General Affairs was on the third floor. The farthest spot from the cafeteria.

The director's surname was Wang, fifty-three years old, born in the Year of the Snake.

I knew he was born in the Year of the Snake because there was a calligraphy piece in his office that read "The highest good is like water," dated "Spring of Guisi Year." Guisi was 2013, the Year of the Snake. A fifty-three-year-old man hung a piece of calligraphy ten years ago and let it sit on the wall for ten years without changing it.

What does that mean? I don't know. But I spent a long time staring at it, because when Director Wang spoke I needed somewhere to look, and looking at his face was too exhausting.

Not because there was anything wrong with his face. It was because when he spoke, there was a subtle desynchronization between his face and his words. His mouth moved, but his expression was static. Like his face was playing a video, but the audio track was a different file.

"Our department," he said, "does important work."

He paused.

"Very important."

Another pause.

"You could say it's the nerve center of the entire system."

I nodded. I noticed I was nodding, but I didn't remember deciding to nod. My neck moved on its own.

"You have a PhD?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Which school?"

"Blenheim University. In England."

His eyes moved slightly. Not toward me—toward something behind me.

"British," he said, not a question, a statement, "Good. International perspective. We need international perspective."

He paused again, then said something that puzzled me for a long time:

"But not too international."

I didn't know how to respond, so I nodded again.

This time I noticed. My nodding frequency matched his pausing frequency. About once every seven seconds.

I remembered reading a study that said people unconsciously synchronize their breathing rhythms during conversation. I had no desire to synchronize breathing with Director Wang, but my neck had already defected.

Lunch was at 11:45.

Not noon, 11:45. No one told me why it was 11:45, but at 11:45, everyone stood up, like someone pressed a button I couldn't see.

The cafeteria was in another building. You had to cross a courtyard with a tree, a big tree, supposedly planted in the 1950s. Under the tree was a stone bench, and on the bench sat the same old man, always.

The first time I saw him, he was reading a newspaper.

The second time, still reading a newspaper.

The third time, the same newspaper.

I started to suspect the newspaper was glued to his hands, or he was glued to the bench, or the whole scene was an art installation called "Waiting for Godot 2.0."

Later I asked a colleague who the old man was.

"Retired," the colleague said, "used to be one of us. Now he just comes to sit."

"Every day?"

"Every day."

"Why?"

The colleague gave me a look I would later see on many faces. A kind of "why would you ask such a question" confusion, mixed with a "I can't answer such a question" helplessness.

"He's used to it, I guess," the colleague said, "been coming for decades."

I wanted to say people can change habits, but I didn't. Because I realized I was already used to eating at 11:45. Only my third day.

What was the work?

Hard to say.

At my desk was a computer, in the computer was a system, in the system were many forms. Forms needed to be filled out, then submitted, then waited on, then revised, then resubmitted.

This was a cycle, but not the kind with an endpoint—a Möbius strip kind of cycle. You think you're moving forward, but you're actually moving backward, and because you're always on the same path, you can't tell forward from back.

I asked a colleague: "What happens after this form is filled out?"

"Someone will review it."

"Then what?"

"Then they'll ask you to revise it."

"After the revision?"

"After the revision someone will review it again."

"Then what?"

"Then maybe revise again."

"In the end?"

The colleague stopped and looked at me. He was about thirty, wore glasses, the arm taped with clear tape, wrapped very neatly, like he'd done it many times and developed a methodology.

"There is no end," he said, "forms aren't meant to be completed."

"Then what are they for?"

He thought for a moment, then said: "Have you heard of Schrödinger's cat?"

"Yes."

"The form is the box," he said, "as long as you don't open it, the work is simultaneously done and not done. The moment you open it, the wave function collapses, and you have to work overtime."

I thought he was joking.

Later I found out he wasn't.

About overtime.

No one tells you to work overtime. But when 5:30 quitting time arrives, no one stands up.

5:45, no one stands up.

6:00, Director Wang comes out of his office and sweeps his gaze across the room. That gaze lasts less than a second, but it's enough to make everyone lower their heads three centimeters.

6:15, someone starts packing up, but very slowly, like performing slow-motion art.

6:30, Director Wang leaves.

6:31, the entire office is like someone hit fast-forward.

The colleague next to me stood up so fast I suspected he practiced parkour. He grabbed his bag, nodded at me. The nodding frequency was completely different from his working nod—the former was about once every seven seconds, the latter about once every 0.3 seconds.

"Going," he said, "see you tomorrow."

"Is it like this every day?"

"Hm?"

"Wait for the director to leave before leaving?"

He stopped, seriously considered the question.

"Not every day," he said, "sometimes the director works until nine."

"Then you work until nine too?"

"Of course not," he said, his tone suggesting I'd asked a stupid question, "after nine you can sneak out—the director usually doesn't come out to use the bathroom."

I tried to understand the operating logic of this system.

Not the logic of the work content—I'd given up on that—but the logic of the people. Why was everyone doing things that seemed meaningless, but doing them seriously, dedicatedly, as if they were meaningful?

I had two hypotheses.

Hypothesis one: They knew something I didn't. Maybe these forms really were important, maybe this system really was running, I was just too new to understand. Like the first time you watch a Christopher Nolan movie, for the first thirty minutes you think the director is crazy, then you realize you just couldn't keep up.

Hypothesis two: They didn't know, but they pretended to know, and pretended for so long they forgot they were pretending. Like a lie told ten thousand times becomes true—not because it became true, but because the liar lost the ability to tell true from false.

I leaned toward hypothesis two.

But that raised a problem: if it was hypothesis two, what should I do?

I could keep pretending until I forgot too. Supposedly that takes about three years. After three years, my nodding frequency would be fixed at once every seven seconds, my lunch time fixed at 11:45, I'd buy a thermos with "Grassroots Star" or "Outstanding Employee" or "Stay True to the Mission" printed on it, I'd look at new people in the elevator with that old prison guard looking at new inmates expression.

Or I could not pretend.

But what was the cost of not pretending?

I started observing the "successful" people.

Success here had specific criteria: promotion. From staff to deputy section chief, from deputy to full section chief, from section chief to deputy director, from deputy director to full director, from director to somewhere higher. I'd never seen that place, but supposedly it existed, like heaven or Scandinavia—you've never been but you believe it's there.

Successful people had some common traits.

First, they all walked at the same pace. About seventy-two steps per minute. I counted. Not because I'm weird—I was just that bored. Seventy-two steps per minute, exactly the standard resting heart rate, and exactly the speed of that slow elevator. Seven floors, about three and a half minutes, about thirty seconds per floor, about thirty-six steps every thirty seconds, seventy-two steps for two floors. I don't know if this was coincidence or design, but I suspect the latter.

Second, they spoke in similar ways. Not similar accents—similar structures. Every sentence had three parts: a characterization ("this work is important"), a transition ("however"), and an abstraction ("requires further study/implementation/advancement"). These three parts could be infinitely recombined to produce countless variations, but they all meant the same thing: nothing.

Speaking wasn't for conveying information—it was for occupying time. The more you said, the more words, the harder it was for others to notice you'd said nothing. Like a squid spraying ink. The ink has no nutrition, but it helps you escape.

The first time I thought "should I quit" was in the third week, Tuesday.

I remember clearly, because something happened that day.

Director Wang held a meeting, spoke for an hour and a half. I don't remember what he said, but I remember he used "further" thirty-seven times. I counted. Not because I'm weird—well, maybe I am a bit weird, but I was forced into it.

After the meeting, he asked each of us to speak.

When it was my turn, I said: "I think we could simplify this process."

The room went quiet.

Not normal quiet—physically quiet. I felt the air thicken, like someone poured invisible gelatin into the room.

Director Wang looked at me. His expression didn't change, still that "highest good is like water" expression, but his eyes moved. Just once.

"Simplify?" he said.

"Yes," I said, "I looked at the process, there are some redundant steps, if we combined them..."

"Xiao Wu," he interrupted me, "how long have you been here?"

"Three weeks."

"Three weeks," he repeated, as if savoring the number, "three weeks."

Then he turned to the others and said: "Does anyone else have opinions?"

No one had opinions.

The meeting ended.

The colleague next to me whispered as we walked out: "Are you crazy?"

"What?"

"You can't say 'simplify.'"

"Why?"

"Because," he lowered his voice, "the director designed this process."

I spent about five seconds digesting this information. Then I realized something: I hadn't criticized the process—I'd criticized Director Wang. In this system, processes and the people who design them are one. Criticizing the process is criticizing the person, and criticizing the person is...

"You're done," the colleague said, his tone like reporting the weather, "no way you're getting the excellence award this year."

"I wasn't expecting excellence anyway."

He looked at me, the expression more complex than Director Wang's. A bit of sympathy, a bit of envy, and a bit of "you don't understand yet" compassion.

"Not this year's excellence," he said, "all future years' excellence."

On the subway home that night, I started thinking about a question:

How did I end up here?

Working backward: I entered this building because I passed an exam. I took the exam because I thought it was a "good job." I thought it was a good job because my parents thought it was a good job. My parents thought it was a good job because their parents thought it was a good job. This causal chain could be traced back indefinitely, back to some origin point I didn't know, where someone made a decision, and that decision rippled outward for decades, finally landing on me.

I don't know that person. That person doesn't know me. But we're connected by the same ripple.

What did Jung call this?

Oh right, synchronicity. Not because A caused B, but because A and B belong to the same pattern.

But this explanation has a problem: if I and that person from decades ago belong to the same pattern, can I break the pattern? Or will the pattern keep replicating, like that slow elevator, pausing two seconds at each floor, never reaching the top?

The subway arrived at my stop. I got off.

Then I saw him.

A middle-aged man in a gray down jacket, wearing wired earbuds, the cord tangled in a knot, with no intention of untangling it.

I didn't pay attention. Just an ordinary passenger.

The second time I saw him was a week later.

I was thinking about quitting again. Not because of that meeting—the consequences weren't as severe as my colleague said, Director Wang just skipped my turn to speak at every subsequent meeting, that's all. What made me want to quit was something else.

That day I discovered a document.

Not classified, just an ordinary internal notice about a system update. The notice said this system "will begin trial operation next month."

But when I joined, someone told me this system was "currently in trial operation."

I checked the date on the notice.

Three years ago.

This system had been in trial operation for three years, and was still in trial operation.

I told my colleague about this. He said: "You just noticed?"

"You knew already?"

"Of course," he said, "this is the third version. The first version was in trial operation for five years, the second for four years, this one's only been three years—that's fast."

"When will it officially launch?"

He looked at me like I'd asked "when will the sun rise in the west."

"What do you mean 'officially launch'?"

"Like... not trial operation anymore."

"Oh," he said, "that's impossible. Official launch means being responsible. Problems during trial operation can be called 'still debugging.' Problems during official operation are incidents. Who do you think wants to be responsible?"

I spent about ten seconds digesting this logic.

Then I understood.

It wasn't that one system had problems. It was the entire logic that had problems. Everything here was "trial operation": work was trial operation, processes were trial operation, even people were trial operation. You think you're officially living, but you're just trial-running your life, waiting for an "official launch" that will never come.

On the subway that night, I saw the gray down jacket man again.

Same position, same posture, same tangled earbuds.

This time I noticed what he was listening to.

I didn't know the specific song, but I saw his foot moving. Very light, very small amplitude, but rhythmic. About seventy-two beats per minute.

Same as my colleague's walking pace.

Same as that slow elevator's speed.

The third, fourth, fifth time... I stopped counting.

Every time I thought about quitting, I'd see him on the subway. Not the same train, not the same time, but definitely there.

This wasn't reasonable. Beijing has over twenty million people, the subway carries tens of millions of trips daily. The probability of repeatedly encountering the same person at random times in random cars? I calculated—about ten to the negative eighth power. Lower than getting struck by lightning.

But it happened.

I started wondering if this was a metaphor. Gray down jacket, tangled earbuds, seventy-two-beat footsteps. Was this my future? If I didn't quit, in twenty years, would I become him too, appearing in some young person's subway car, becoming a statistically impossible coincidence?

Or, a more terrifying possibility: he wasn't my future. He was me. Some version of me. The me from some parallel universe who didn't quit, crossing some fold in spacetime, appearing in my field of vision, not to warn me, just to exist.

Jung said synchronicity isn't causation—it's meaningful coincidence.

But what if the coincidence itself has no meaning?

What really made me decide to quit wasn't some big event—it was a pen.

It was a very ordinary ballpoint pen, black, printed with our department's name and logo. Everyone had them at their desks, about one yuan each, bulk purchased.

That day I was filling out a form—another form—and halfway through, the pen ran out of ink.

I went to get a new pen. The drawer had a whole box, a hundred pens, plastic packaging, production date five years ago.

I opened the packaging, took out a new pen, continued filling out the form.

Three lines in, it ran out again.

I switched to another. Two lines, out of ink.

I switched again. This time only one line.

I stared at that box of pens, a hundred of them, produced five years ago, lying neatly in the drawer, waiting to be used. When they were purchased they were new, had ink, could write. Then they sat in the drawer for five years, the ink dried up, the refills became useless, but they were still there, being counted as "office supplies," being managed as "assets."

No one noticed they were dead.

Or someone noticed, but no one cared. Because these pens existed not to write, but to fill in the "office supplies" column with a number. Number exists, pens exist. Whether the pens can actually write is another dimension's problem, not within the assessment scope.

I put down that dead pen, stood up, borrowed a working pen from a colleague, finished the form.

Then I opened my computer and started writing my resignation letter.

Wrote three versions. The first was too long, four thousand words, all my views on this system. The second was too short, two lines, "I quit because a pen ran out of ink." The third was just right, five hundred words, reason for leaving: "personal development needs."

I sent the third version.

But in my heart I knew the real reason was the second.

The resignation process required signatures from eleven departments.

I took that piece of paper and began my final pilgrimage through the building. From the third floor to the seventh, from the seventh to basement level one, from basement level one to the fourth floor of another building.

Everyone who saw my resignation application had similar reactions.

First, confusion: Resign?

Then, confirmation: You sure?

Finally, signature: Okay.

No one asked why. No one tried to keep me. No one showed any emotion. Not suppressed emotion—genuinely no emotion, like they'd always known this day would come, or like they didn't care whether it came.

Except one person.

At the eighth department—I don't remember what it was called, something long with "General" and "Coordination" in the name—in the corner of the office sat a young man, maybe two or three years younger than me. While I waited for a signature, he kept looking at me.

Not sneaking looks—directly looking.

Finally he came over, stood next to me, and said quietly: "How did you do it?"

"What?"

"Resign," he said, "how did you convince yourself?"

I looked at him. His glasses were also taped, but not as neatly as my colleague's, like it was his first time, no methodology formed yet.

"I didn't convince myself," I said, "I just wrote a resignation letter."

"But what about after? Where will you go?"

"Don't know."

"You don't know and you still dare to quit?"

"It's not about daring or not," I said, "the pens ran out of ink."

He obviously didn't understand. But he didn't press further. He just nodded, then went back to his desk and continued his work.

I got the signature and walked out of that office.

The corridor was long, lit by old fluorescent lights, one of them flickering. Not broken—some kind of energy-saving mode, flashing every few seconds, supposedly saves electricity.

I counted my footsteps. Seventy-two per minute.

Then I deliberately sped up. Eighty, ninety, a hundred.

No one stopped me. No one noticed. That light kept flickering, once every few seconds, no matter how fast I walked.

The first month after leaving, I did almost nothing.

Not lying flat—more like a "system reboot" state. You know how when a computer crashes and restarts, there's a period when the screen is black, the fan is running, the hard drive is humming, but nothing displays? That month I was in that state. Body running, but screen black.

Friends asked what I was doing, I said resting.

They said rest well.

No one asked what I'd do after resting enough. Maybe they thought asking was too cruel. Maybe they didn't know the answer either.

One night, maybe the third week after leaving, I was smoking on the balcony. I don't smoke much, but I smoked more during that time, because smoking gave me an excuse to stand on the balcony, and standing on the balcony gave me an excuse to think about nothing.

Downstairs a cat was meowing. Very regular, about once every ten seconds.

I started counting. Ten seconds, one meow. Ten seconds, one meow. Ten seconds, one meow.

At the twenty-third meow, I realized I was counting again.

I put out the cigarette, went back inside, sat on the couch. The TV was on, but I wasn't watching. Something was playing, someone was talking, the rhythm of speech about one pause every seven seconds.

I changed the channel.

Another show, another person talking, one pause every seven seconds.

I changed again.

Still every seven seconds.

I turned off the TV, the room went quiet. But not truly quiet. The fridge hummed, the AC hummed, the cat downstairs still meowed. All these sounds layered together into white noise, and beneath the white noise, there was a beat, faint but definitely there.

About seventy-two per minute.

The second month, I started job hunting.

Not for money—I had some savings, enough to live for a while—but because I found the state of not working also had a rhythm, and that rhythm was slowly pulling me back.

Wake up, eat, zone out, eat, zone out, sleep. This too was a cycle, no essential difference from the cycle in that building, just a different tempo. If I continued like this, I'd form a new inertia, and new inertia would become a new cage.

So I started sending resumes.

Sent many, most no response, a few rejection letters, even fewer interview invitations.

One interview left a deep impression. An internet company, doing fintech. The interviewer asked: "Why did you leave your last company?"

I thought about it and said: "Because the pens ran out of ink."

He paused, then laughed. "What does that mean?"

I told him the story of those pens. After I finished he was quiet for a moment, then said: "I understand what you mean."

Then he told me their office supplies were restocked weekly, pens that ran out of ink could be replaced anytime.

I didn't take that offer. Not because of the pens—pens were just a metaphor—but because I spent two hours in their office and found their speaking rhythm was also one pause every seven seconds, except during pauses they looked at their phones.

Seventy-two beats in different packaging.

In the end I chose a way of working without a "company."

Doing things for several different places, a bit for each, none full-time. Some call this a "portfolio career," some call it "gig work," I call it "escape."

But escape is also a choice.

One day I was working in a coffee shop. I was writing a paper on Bitcoin security, a topic completely unrelated to my previous work. Someone sat next to me.

He was reading a newspaper.

I glanced over. The newspaper was dated two years ago.

I looked at him, remembered the old man on the stone bench in that building. Then I realized he wasn't reading the newspaper—he was using it as a screen to block his laptop, which was showing...

"You mine too?" he suddenly asked.

I froze. "What?"

"You're writing about Bitcoin," he pointed at my screen, "I thought you were a miner."

"No, I do research."

"Research on what?"

"Bitcoin's security budget. Whether miners will still have enough incentive to maintain network security when block rewards halve to a certain point."

He put down the two-year-old newspaper and looked at me seriously.

"Do you know the answer?"

"No. Still looking."

"What if you can't find it?"

"Then keep looking."

He laughed. "I like your attitude. I've been mining for ten years, still don't know the answer. But I'm still mining."

"Why?"

"Because," he thought for a moment, "if I stop, I'd have to find something else to do. Finding something else means adapting to a new rhythm. I'm too old to adapt anymore."

I looked at him, probably in his fifties, gray down jacket, wired earbuds around his neck, the cord tangled.

Wait.

Gray down jacket. Wired earbuds. Tangled.

"I've seen you," I said, "on the subway."

He looked at me, expression unchanged.

"Lots of people have seen me," he said, "Beijing is big, but there are only so many subway lines."

"No," I said, "every time I thought about quitting, I'd see you on the subway."

He was silent for a moment.

Then he said: "Maybe you just take the subway at certain times, and I take it at those times too. That's not coincidence, that's commuting patterns."

This was a reasonable explanation.

But I didn't believe it.

"Then what are you always listening to?"

"What?"

"Your foot," I said, "every time I see you, your foot is moving, rhythmically, about seventy-two beats per minute. What are you listening to?"

He looked down at his feet, as if noticing them for the first time.

Then he pulled out his phone, opened an app, and handed me an earbud.

"Listen."

I took it, put it in my ear.

It was white noise.

Not the ocean waves, rain, forest sounds kind of white noise—something more fundamental. Like static when a TV has no signal, like the hum of an old fridge compressor, like all sounds mixed together and canceled into a kind of "nothing."

But within this "nothing," there was a beat.

I concentrated to hear it. About seventy-two per minute.

"You listen to this all the time?"

"Ten years," he said, "since I started mining."

"Why?"

"Bitcoin produces a block every ten minutes," he said, "ten minutes is six hundred seconds, seventy-two beats per minute, exactly seven thousand two hundred beats per block. I use this to keep time."

"Why not just look at a clock?"

"Looking at a clock is too tiring," he said, "listening to this, I know the world is still running. Don't need to look, don't need to think, just hear it still beating and know everything's normal."

I returned the earbud.

"But you listen even when you're not mining."

"Yes."

"Why?"

He put the earbud away, looked out the window. Outside the coffee shop was a street, people walking, all at different paces. Some fast, some slow, some stopping to check phones, some running to catch a bus.

"Because I'm used to it," he said, "after ten years of listening, I can't sleep without it. Just like after you spent time in that building, you still count beats after leaving."

"I don't—"

"You do," he interrupted, "you've been tapping the table with your finger, about once every seven seconds. You didn't notice."

I looked down at my hand. It was indeed resting on the table, in a position like it had just tapped something.

"What does this mean?" I asked.

"It means you didn't escape," he said, "you thought quitting meant escaping, but actually that rhythm is already in your body. You're not escaping—you just changed locations to keep dancing the same dance."

I wanted to argue, but I couldn't find the words.

"Then what do I do?"

He stood up, tucked the two-year-old newspaper under his arm.

"Don't ask me," he said, "I don't know either. But what I do know is, you can't solve this problem by escaping. You can only..."

He paused, as if searching for a word.

"Only what?"

"Only find another rhythm," he said, "and use it to overwrite the original one. Not stop dancing—change the song."

Then he left.

I watched his back disappear down the street, his pace was...

Forget it, I'm not counting anymore.