"Bureau of Emotional Enforcement" – Chapter One: The Day the Emotion Tax Arrived
New New York Ω, June 12th, 2175, 3:30 a.m.
The city slept; the ads did not.
Cubic screens floated in the sky, burning all through the night. Blue light spilled down the faces of skyscrapers, dyeing every face behind every curtain in a cold tint. That light wasn't natural—it had been precisely calculated: wavelength 472 nanometers, supposedly the best at evoking "a sense of safety" and "compliance."
The light flowed like water, sliding from the hundredth floor down to the street, leaving glowing streaks on glass facades. Each streak looked like one of the city's blood vessels, pumping some invisible form of control.
A broadcast echoed through layer upon layer of air:
> "Effective from midnight tomorrow, all residents must complete E-Flux tax declaration in their personal emotion accounts. Your sadness, anger, and desire will be counted into the energy index. Those who exceed the quota will be subject to retuning and review by the Bureau of Emotional Enforcement.
Thank you for your cooperation, and may you remain happy."
The voice was gentle and rational, a woman's tone with a faint synthetic echo, like a tireless angel offering endless blessings—yet it wrapped around the heart like a soft wire, slowly tightening.
Every three minutes, it repeated. The volume crept upward—from a whisper, to a murmur, to an announcement—until it became an inescapable presence, seeping through every shut window, into every dream that tried to stay asleep.
Some people were used to it. They fell asleep to that voice, woke up to it, treated it as background noise of life—like a heartbeat, like breathing—no longer reacting at all.
Some still resisted. They pressed pillows over their ears, turned the volume on devices to the lowest setting, curled up under their blankets and prayed for dawn. But the voice always found a crack to slip through, reminding them: Your emotions are not yours. They belong to the system, to the city, to that vast, unseen machine.
Li Zhe was awake.
He hadn't slept.
Not that he didn't want to, but he couldn't. It had been many years now—ever since that night his kitchen was shut down—since he'd slept through an entire night. Every time he closed his eyes, the images came back: the white-clad agents pouring in, the blue beams from the scanners, the pots and bowls being packed into metal crates, the girl's terrified face. Her tears were still on the rim of the bowl when they took her away.
He didn't know what became of her. The system wouldn't tell him. Maybe she'd been "retuned." Maybe she'd forgotten that bowl of soup. Maybe, somewhere right now, she was smiling with empty eyes, no longer remembering that she had ever cried.
In the less-than-ten-square-meter room on 49 Energy Street, light and shadow drifted like broken fragments of images. The walls were gray-white, with flaking paint exposing rusted metal bones beneath—this building was eighty years old, from before the Emotion Tax, still bearing traces of the "old era": cracks in the walls, floorboards that creaked, water pipes that sometimes leaked.
Precisely because of these flaws, the rent was low, the surveillance thin. A good place for someone like him to hide.
On the ceiling, a crack ran like lightning. He had stared at that crack for a long time—from two in the morning until now—lying on the bed, eyes open, watching the plaster, listening to footsteps from the floor above. Every time someone walked upstairs, fine dust would drift down like snow in the dark.
At last, he got up.
He crouched by the stove and put on a pot of soup. His knees pressed against the icy floor tiles; he could feel the faint tremor rising from underground—the pulse of the city's subway system, never stopping. Line 2, one train every four minutes, as punctual as a clock. He was used to this vibration now. Sometimes he even felt it was the only thing in the city that still had warmth—at least it moved, at least it proved that beneath all this steel and concrete, something was still flowing.
The liquid boiling in the pot wasn't water, but a faintly blue glowing fluid—E-soup, blended from the emotional bands of joy, sorrow, and desire.
The recipe had taken him three years to perfect.
Emotions never arise out of thin air. After the "Emotional Revolution" of 2087, scientists discovered that human feelings could be converted into an energy wave—E-Flux. Every emotion had its own frequency: joy was high-frequency, like birdsong; sorrow low-frequency, like a cello; anger sharp, like a siren; desire long and rolling, like a tide.
Those frequencies could be captured, stored, transmitted—and even infused into matter.
E-soup was such a product. It wasn't food, not entirely. It was a medium—a carrier that made emotions "tasteable." When you drank it, those refined feelings went straight into your sensory system, bypassing the rational brain and heading directly for the core of your emotional self.
That was exactly why it had been classified as an "illegal retuning substance."
What the system needed were predictable, controllable emotions.
E-soup offered the real thing—uncontrollable and raw.
From the pot came a faint sss sss, like someone sighing under their breath. Bubbles rose to the surface and popped into tiny pinpoints of light, flickering for a moment in the darkness before they vanished.
Those lights weren't a physical phenomenon, but the afterimage of emotional energy—when sorrow and joy met within the liquid, they produced that brief luminescence, like two souls brushing past each other in the dark.
He reached out to adjust the temperature; his fingertips brushed the stove's sensor strip, and a small electric tingle ran through his skin. It didn't hurt, but it was unmistakable—like a reminder: You're still alive. Your nerves still work. You can still feel something.
Characters flashed on the stove's display: Low-frequency sorrow detected. Current emotion: Sadness.
Li Zhe smiled.
The smile was bitter and short-lived, like a flower blooming in winter—a brief flare, then gone.
Now sadness gets taxed too?
His voice was swallowed by the bubbling in the pot. No one heard it—not even himself. His breath turned into white mist in the cold air, only to be swept away at once by the rising steam. The mist existed for just a few seconds before disappearing, like his words, like his questions—no reply, no meaning, just an instinctive, useless protest.
He thought of a philosophy professor who'd once come to his kitchen, long ago when it was still open. The man was retired but still kept a scholar's habits—speaking slowly, weighing each word.
He had sat at one of the tables, watching Li Zhe cook, and suddenly asked:
"Do you know? In ancient Greece, Aristotle said man is a rational animal. But I think he was wrong. Man is not a rational animal. Man is a feeling animal. It's because we feel that we are human."
The professor took a sip of soup and his eyes grew wet.
"If one day, even our feelings are taxed—are we still human?"
Li Zhe hadn't answered then.
Now, he knew the answer:
No.
This was an illegal kitchen.
"Illegal" was a curious word. It didn't mean the kitchen violated food safety laws. It didn't mean the food was poisonous. It meant that what he offered here—the real experience of emotion—was not permitted.
There were a dozen ingredients laid out on the table, each acquired on the black market, each with its own story.
Fungal salt sat in a transparent vial, its grains silver under the dim light. It came from an underground farm and was said to heighten the sensitivity of taste buds. There was no label on the bottle, just a hand-drawn symbol—two wavy lines, representing "sorrow."
Synthetic scallions were sliced into thin rings, pale green liquid seeping from their cut edges. That liquid wasn't ordinary juice, but a medium carrying the frequency of "longing." People said if you ate these scallions, you might suddenly remember someone you'd forgotten, or some moment you thought was gone.
The artificial protein sat in neat cubes, surfaces marked with a grid pattern. Standard rations—high in all required nutrients and completely devoid of flavor. But Li Zhe treated them in his own way—soaking them in low-frequency sorrow until they absorbed the emotion. Then they were no longer just protein, but something through which you could taste loneliness.
Dehydrated onions were thin as paper, crumbling at a touch. They were the hardest ingredient to obtain. Real onions had gone extinct fifty years ago; everything on the market now was genetically re-engineered imitation. But some old folks had preserved the drying techniques and turned the last real onions into dried chips, hoarding them away.
It had taken Li Zhe two years to find someone willing to sell. The man had said: "These were my mother's. She said onions make people cry, and crying is the last freedom we have."
Frozen lemons were sealed in vacuum packs; they made a crisp, clear sound when tapped. Lemons were carriers of "joy"—their sourness stimulated dopamine. But real lemons were still different from synthetic ones. Real lemons had a faint, lingering bitterness hidden in the aftertaste—a memory of sunlight, of leaves breathing, of something about being alive that refused to be turned into data.
An old-fashioned radio was set into the wall, its casing stained dark with grease. Half the digital display was broken; all that remained were a few flickering red dots.
It had been his father's.
His father had taken his own life in the first year of the Emotion Tax. No note. Just this radio.
Sometimes, Li Zhe thought maybe what his father had meant was: Keep listening. Keep receiving. Don't let silence swallow everything.
At dawn the radio kicked on by itself, broadcasting citizen behavior guidelines:
> "Your smiling duration must not fall below fifteen minutes per hour.
If you show signs of depression, please immediately take the standard dose of Joy Capsules.
Remember: emotional stability is a citizen's duty."
Coming out of the speaker, the voice carried static, like someone sanding metal in the distance.
The distortion made the words sound less absolute, less smooth—gave them a rough edge of reality, like a lie told too many times, starting to crack.
Li Zhe didn't turn it off.
Not because he wanted to hear it, but because he needed to. He needed to remember what the world was saying to him—these rules, these orders, these gentle threats. He had to remember them to stay clear-headed; and only by staying clear-headed could he resist.
He chopped while listening. The rhythm of the knife hitting the board was like a heartbeat—steady, slow, ritualistic.
Cutting wasn't mere prep to him; it was meditation, a way to anchor himself in the present. Every stroke had to be precise, every slice even, every motion conscious.
In a world where everything else was automated, standardized, mechanized, handcraft itself was an act of rebellion.
The blade's contact with the board was soft, almost drowned out by the radio, but he could hear it.
He heard the fibers parting, the juices seeping, the faint sighing of ingredients being transformed—that sound wasn't physical, but what he perceived as a resonator: "emotional echoes."
Every ingredient carried emotion. The people who grew it, picked it, transported it, sold it on the black market—their feelings left traces, like fingerprints on matter.
His fingers were steady, but his eyes were tired. It was the look of someone who had "felt too much" for too long—the common aftermath for a high-level empath.
Empathy coefficient: 9.7.
That number meant the emotional intensity he perceived was nearly ten times that of a regular person. Where others felt "a little sad," he felt "heart tearing apart." Where others felt "kind of happy," he felt "dizzy with joy."
Once, this had been a gift. Before the Emotion Tax, empaths were seen as artists, healers, spiritual guides—they understood pains others couldn't grasp, and could offer comfort others couldn't give.
After the tax, they became dangerous.
Because they could sense all the things the system was trying to suppress. They could hear the cries that had been deleted, see the cracks that had been hidden.
His eyes were dark brown, a faint golden halo circling his pupils. That color wasn't natural; it was the mark of prolonged exposure to emotional energy—over time, the iris absorbed certain frequencies of light, leaving this particular glow.
In the black market, such eyes were called "True-Sight Eyes," because people with them could see through fake smiles and hear genuine grief.
Right now, the glow was very dim, like a candle about to go out.
It wasn't that his ability was fading—he was suppressing it.
Feeling too much drove you mad.
Walk down the street and hear every passerby's inner screaming, feel the despair beneath every smile, see the tears behind every lit window—it makes you want to run, to shut it all down, to numb yourself.
He had once owned a small underground diner.
Its name: Li Zhe's Kitchen.
It had been everything to him—not a business, not a source of income, but his reason for existing, his reason to stay alive.
It sat on Basement Level 2 of 39 Energy Street. No sign at the door, just a single warm, yellow lamp. He'd installed it himself—a 60-watt tungsten bulb, the light as soft as sunset.
He hadn't chosen it to save power, but because that kind of light made people relax, feel safe, willing to take off their masks.
There was no menu, no prices.
Not a gimmick, but necessity. He didn't make standardized meals, not "Set A" or "Set B."
He made "whatever this person needed to stay alive tonight."
People came in carrying anger—he used spice, let that fury burn until it exhausted itself and burned out.
People came in numb—he used sourness to jolt their taste buds, wake their senses, remind them they could still taste something.
People came in with despair—he served sweetness, not cloying or excessive, but faint, the kind that felt like a distant hope: too far to touch, but visible.
On the glass of the door he had carved a single slogan:
> Tell me how you feel, and I'll cook you a meal you can live on.
He'd carved it himself with a knife tip, stroke by stroke, three hours of work. The lines cut deep and strong, like an oath, like a contract—not with the customers, but with himself.
Most who came were system-tired—emotionally overdrawn, mentally depleted.
They were everywhere in the city: smiling themselves into stiffness in office towers, pretending to sleep on the subway to avoid conversation, standing before mirrors at home practicing standard expressions, laying awake through the night with their eyes open until morning.
They all reached his place in similar ways: someone had told them there was a place where you didn't have to smile, didn't have to pretend, where for a moment you could be a person again.
They sat at the tables and didn't speak, just watched him cook.
Some were too exhausted to talk. Some no longer knew how to describe what they felt—in a world where emotions had been reduced to numbers, language had lost its power to express an inner life.
So they just watched.
Watched him wash the vegetables—water running over leaves, carrying dirt away, the sound soft, like some kind of cleansing ritual.
Watched him chop—blade up, blade down, ingredients broken down into something cookable.
Watched him season—salt, sugar, vinegar, oil. Each measured precisely, but the precision came not from a recipe, but from intuition, from empathy, from how well he understood the person sitting before him.
Watched him put things in the pan—flames rising, ingredients changing under heat, hissing, releasing aroma.
Watched the steam rise and dissipate. Steam like clouds, like mist, like something transient and beautiful that would soon be gone.
The movements alone were healing.
Not because they were flashy or expert, but because they were real.
Because here was a person, using his own hands, his own time, his full attention, doing something for another person.
In a world where everything else was industrially produced, mass-manufactured, devoid of warmth, this simple "done for you" was a miracle.
When a girl once came in carrying goodbye in her bones, he said:
"Soup first."
She had arrived at three in the morning. Hair disheveled, eyes swollen, a ticket clenched in her fist. She stood at the doorway, hesitated for a long time, then finally stepped inside.
She sat without a word.
But Li Zhe heard it all—heard the crying in her heart, the words she never spoke, the thing she was parting from.
A lover? Family? Or some place she would never return to?
He didn't ask.
Questions would have been pointless. Some wounds couldn't be put into words; language only shrank them, made them lighter, less real.
So he said only: "Soup first."
It was a clear bowl of Tears Soup.
The recipe was simple: pure water, a pinch of salt, three drops of lemon juice, a single mint leaf. Then bathed in low-frequency sorrow for three minutes, till the liquid absorbed the flavor of sadness.
It tasted of almost nothing. Only at the moment of swallowing did a faint bitterness bloom—like salt, like tears.
The temperature was just right, neither hot nor cold. When you held the bowl, you felt the warmth of porcelain, the warmth traveling into your palms and then into your body, like a gentle embrace.
She took one sip.
Then another.
Then finished the bowl.
She set it down and sat still.
Li Zhe thought she hadn't liked it and was about to say something when she began to cry.
Softly, silently.
Tears slid from her eyes, traced down her cheeks, dripped onto the table—one, two, three drops.
No sobbing. No shaking. She just quietly cried, as naturally as rain falling.
The moment the tear fell on the rim of the bowl, the monitor light on the wall flashed red—Illegal emotional fluctuation.
The red was small but piercing. It started blinking, accompanied by a low, pulsing alarm, like an electronic heartbeat. The sound wasn't loud, but in the quiet kitchen, it was stark.
Li Zhe glanced up at the sensor. He knew what it meant—the system had detected "abnormal emotion" and was recording, analyzing, deciding whether to intervene.
He had about five minutes.
"Go," he told the girl. "Now."
She shook her head. Her tears were still flowing, but a smile appeared on her face—not a forced smile, but a light, grateful smile, the kind that comes when something heavy has finally been set down.
"Thank you," she said. "I haven't cried in a long time."
Then she stood, wiped her cheeks, picked up her ticket, and left.
Five minutes later, the kitchen was shut down.
The white-clad agents flooded in—about a dozen of them in protective suits, masked like sterile surgeons. Their faces were indistinct behind the clear shields; he could only see blurred outlines.
They scanned everything with handheld devices. Blue beams broomed across each object, a number flashing where they passed—emotional residue concentration.
If the number exceeded the safety threshold, the item was tagged a "contamination source."
Table: sorrow residue 47%. Tagged.
Chair: sorrow residue 23%. Tagged.
Bowl: sorrow residue 89%. High risk. Immediate isolation.
Pot: mixed multi-band fluctuations, unclassifiable. Recommended destruction.
They packed every pot and bowl into metal crates—airtight, coated inside with emotional isolation material to prevent any wave from leaking.
The ingredients were labeled "emotional contaminants" and taken away along with the stove.
The entire process was fast, quiet, efficient. Like garbage collection—no explanation, no debate, no chance for him to speak.
Li Zhe stood at the doorway, watching his kitchen being dismantled, packed, and hauled away.
He wanted to say something, but his throat felt clogged. No sound came out.
He just stood, watching, feeling something shatter inside him—like glass, like ice, some part of him that would never be whole again.
That night, they took him to a BEE interrogation room for the first time.
The room was pure white. The four walls were smooth, without windows, without the slightest imperfection.
It wasn't a natural white, but specifically engineered—reflective across all wavelengths, making it impossible to judge distance or direction, creating the illusion of floating in a void.
Light poured from the ceiling, so strong he could barely keep his eyes open. That light wasn't for illumination—it was for suppression.
High-intensity light inhibited the pineal gland from secreting melatonin, making it impossible to relax, impossible to think clearly, leaving you able only to passively receive.
He sat in a metal chair, wrists bound with soft but unbreakable straps. The straps were white, like silk in texture but impossibly strong.
They wouldn't leave marks, wouldn't cause physical injury—but they could not be escaped.
That was New New York Ω's style—gentle violence, elegant control.
Three expressionless interrogators faced him.
They wore identical dark-blue uniforms and sat straight as statues. Under the flood of light, their faces had no shadows at all—just three pale masks.
They asked: "Do you know what you're doing?"
Li Zhe looked at them and said nothing for a few seconds.
He was thinking how to answer. Tell the truth, or lie? What would happen if he told the truth? What would happen if he lied?
In the end, he chose the truth.
Not because honesty was a virtue, but because he was too tired. Too tired to invent anything.
"I'm cooking," he said.
His voice was calm, without emotion, as if stating a simple fact.
"You're interfering with citizens' emotional stability system," they said.
Li Zhe wanted to laugh.
Interfering?
He'd given that girl a bowl of soup and let her cry—that was interference?
Then what did you call forcing her to hold it in for the rest of her life, only to finally break down alone in some quiet night?
But he didn't laugh.
Laughter was dangerous here. Any emotion could be interpreted as "instability."
He was silent for a long time, then said:
"I just want them to remember that crying can be a kind of healing too."
After that, the room was quiet for about ten seconds.
The three interrogators glanced at each other. One of them wrote something on his tablet.
They didn't refute him. Didn't agree either.
They just recorded it.
Then they released him.
Not because he was innocent, but because of "insufficient evidence."
The system needed clear, quantifiable violations.
"Making someone cry" wasn't a crime. "Crying" wasn't a crime.
The crime was "illegal emotional retuning"—but proving that required more data.
So they let him go, but marked his file with a line: High-risk resonator. Continuous monitoring required.
From that day on, he was on a watch list.
Now, the soup was done.
He lifted a spoonful and slowly brought it to his lips, inhaling first—faint salt, and a trace of elusive sweetness.
The sweetness didn't come from sugar, but from the frequency of "desire." Desire was inherently sweet, because it was a reaching toward the future, a projection of something good.
He took a sip, let the liquid rest on his tongue, then swallowed slowly.
Bitterness under sweetness.
Sorrow and desire blended together—yearning inside sadness, hope inside despair. Just like this city: glittering on the surface, but hiding tears in every corner.
He sighed, lightly. Almost inaudibly, more like a reflex—like breathing, like a heartbeat, an unconscious release.
The radio's blue light flared again, this time harsher.
Not an ordinary indicator, but a "personal alert"—triggered whenever the system detected abnormal emotional data and pushed a warning to an individual's device.
> "Li Zhe, you have been placed on BEE's observation list. Please immediately cease all unauthorized emotional retuning activity.
If you fail to submit your E-curve before midnight, it will be considered emotional tax evasion."
The voice had changed. No longer the gentle woman, but a mechanical synth voice, each word edged with metal.
He didn't answer.
What was the point? Say "I understand"? Say "I'll comply"?
What difference would it make?
The system didn't care what he said. It cared what he did—his emotional data, whether he stayed within the boundaries.
He simply wiped the rim of the pot.
The rag was gray, washed so many times it had turned pale, the edges frayed with a few small holes. It had been with him five years, from the day the kitchen opened until now.
His movements were slow, like completing a ritual.
He wasn't really cleaning—the pot was already spotless.
He was prolonging the moment. Prolonging this brief time of being in conversation with food, with emotions, with himself.
His tone was flat:
"I don't want to file.
I just want to sit down and eat a proper meal."
He spoke without looking at the radio, only watching the soup steaming in the pot. His gaze was hollow and intent, as if fixed on some distant place—some place that no longer existed.
Dawn came slowly.
The sky over New New York Ω was gray-white, like an uncalibrated screen.
No gradation, no dawn glow, no transition from dark to light—only a certain moment at which the sky abruptly brightened, as if someone had thrown a switch.
No clouds. No birds.
Clouds had vanished thirty years ago. Once the climate control system was activated, the sky became a giant screen, always set to the lighting and temperature "most conducive to emotional stability."
Birds had gone extinct fifty years ago. The last sparrows died in the winter of 2125. Some said it was air pollution; others said emotional wave radiation had disrupted their navigation.
No one knew the truth, because no one cared.
Only the floating ad-cubes still turned slowly in the air.
They were the city's emblem—and its eyes.
They didn't just run ads; they continuously monitored emotional fluctuations on the ground, logging behaviors, analyzing deviations.
From the street came mechanical footsteps—that was the patrol of the Emotion Tax Collectors.
The footsteps were perfectly regular; every step matched the last in force and timing, like a metronome.
They weren't human steps. Human walking always had minor irregularities; slowed by fatigue, sped up by emotion. These steps never changed, always at the same tempo, the same weight, like a machine that could never tire.
They wore white protective suits made of reflective synthetic fiber that shimmered like pearl in the morning light—beautiful, but unsettling, too perfect, too free of any trace of human wear.
On their chests they wore a badge: a smiley face.
Yellow circle, two black dots for eyes, a curved line for a mouth—standardized, emotionless cheer.
When it had been designed over a hundred years ago, it was meant to "convey friendliness and safety."
But look long enough, and you saw something eerie.
It smiled no matter what happened, no matter who it faced, with the same curve, the same expression—like an eye that never blinked, always watching.
They went door to door, scanning citizens' E-frequencies.
Their handheld scanners emitted fine blue beams—thin as laser pointers, penetrating walls and doors to read the emotional data of everyone inside.
They didn't knock. Didn't ask permission. Didn't need to.
Privacy had been redefined in the Emotion Tax Act:
"Personal emotional data is a public resource. For the stability and safety of the city, the government retains the right to read it at any time."
Anyone who stayed sad too long was taken for "retuning."
"Too long" was defined as: sorrow index 30% above baseline for more than four consecutive hours.
Four hours.
You could cry for someone lost for three hours and fifty-nine minutes, but not four hours.
You could mourn a shattered dream for half a day, but not a full one.
Beyond that, it was "abnormal"—and required "treatment."
Li Zhe stood by the window watching.
He'd been there twenty minutes, watching those white figures move along the street, watching blue beams slide under door after door, watching people being led out.
A thin fog had formed on the glass from his breathing.
He breathed lightly, slowly, trying to control it—breath frequency affected emotional wave readings, and those were being scanned.
With his fingertip he drew a circle on the glass and looked at the street through that circle.
Why a circle?
He wasn't sure.
Maybe because circles were whole and closed, symbolizing "no gaps."
Maybe because he needed a frame—to frame the outside world, to turn it into a picture, so it would feel less real.
Fine burn marks traced his hands—the scars of years spent handling energy flames.
Converting emotional energy released heat.
When you cooked with high-concentration sorrow waves, the flame burned blue—cooler than ordinary fire but long-lasting.
Desire burned orange—extremely hot and unstable.
Every dish meant dealing with these different flames, and each time risked a burn.
The marks branched over his skin like twigs, from wrist to fingertips. At some angles they glimmered faintly in the dark—the permanent imprint of emotional energy, halfway between scars and medals.
Downstairs, the bread-stall owner was being questioned.
Li Zhe knew him.
Chen, fifty-four, baking bread for thirty years.
His bread wasn't the most delicious, but it was honest—heavy in the hand, fairly priced, never skimping on ingredients.
He was a man in his early fifties, sparse hair, apron dusted with flour. The apron's original color was unknowable now—white, maybe beige—reduced to a mottled gray.
He stammered: "I'm just… a little tired."
His voice was low, tinged with pleading.
He didn't dare meet the tax collector's eyes; his gaze skittered, his fingers twisted the corner of his apron so tightly the knuckles went white, fingertips trembling.
The scanner shrieked—a sound like a cross between an alarm and some trapped animal's scream.
In the quiet street, it was jarringly loud.
A few pedestrians turned to look, then quickly looked away and hurried off—no one wanted to be associated with an "abnormal."
Sorrow anomaly detected.
Red numbers rolled fast across the device's display:
Sorrow Index: 68% (Baseline: 30%)
Duration: 7 h 42 min (Warning threshold: 4 h)
Verdict: Emotional tax evasion. Immediate retuning recommended.
"Please come with us," the patrol unit said.
The tone was flat, as if talking about the weather. Not threatening, not commanding—just stating a fact: You broke the rule. Therefore you must come. That's all.
The man fell silent.
He wanted to say something—maybe that he was just worried about his sick wife; maybe that he'd slept badly and was off balance; maybe that he could adjust on his own, that he'd be fine, that he didn't need "retuning."
But he said nothing.
He knew it was useless. The system did not care why. It cared about the numbers.
He turned and looked at his stall—the batch of bread still in the oven. Through the glass he could see them swelling, their crusts turning golden.
Their fate?
Would they burn?
Would some passerby take them?
Would the city's cleaning system classify them as garbage and destroy them?
He didn't know.
He only knew that by the time he returned—if he ever did—the stall might not be his anymore.
He took off his apron, folding it neatly and laying it on the counter.
The movement was slow, careful, like a farewell ceremony.
Then he left with the patrol.
His back was hunched, his steps heavy, each stride seeming to cost effort.
He didn't look back.
Why would he? Looking back would only make leaving harder.
He left behind a single batch of bread.
The air smelled of caramel, with a faint bitterness—that was sugar beginning to burn. Sweet, but edged with sting, like some pleasant thing on fire.
After ten minutes, the oven shut off on its own—the safety feature. Beyond the set time, the system cut power to prevent fires.
The aroma slowly thinned, carried by the morning breeze down the street.
A few passersby caught the scent and paused, glancing toward the stall.
No one stepped closer.
No one dared touch that bread—it belonged to an "abnormal."
It might be "contaminated."
Li Zhe closed the window.
The metal frame snapped shut with a soft click that rang loud in the quiet room.
He stayed where he was, looking at the circle he'd drawn.
The mist on the glass was already evaporating, blurring the circle's edges, like the boundary of something being erased.
Soon, the circle would be gone and the glass clear again.
The world outside would come back into sharp focus.
But for those few minutes, while the circle existed, he had a frame—a boundary he could choose to look through or not.
Now it was gone.
He had no choice left but to face the world as it was.
(to be continued)