At 2:00 a.m., as Arthur clicked “send” on the final quarterly report, the only sound left in the entire office building was the low hum of the central air conditioning.
He rubbed his throbbing temples and got up to head toward the break room. As he passed the front desk, he habitually glanced at that corner—where a dusty vintage globe sat, its base engraved with a line of faint, small letters: “To the wanderer who stays.”
This was the only thing that had remained unchanged in the three years since Arthur joined the company.
Arthur was an extremely rational man. In his world, efficiency was everything, while emotions were redundant code that needed to be cut out. He remembered every client’s preferences and every project’s deadline, yet he couldn’t recall the last time he’d had dinner with his family. He was like a precision screw, tightly fastened deep within this concrete jungle.
The night sky was deep and dark tonight, and the city lights outside the window resembled a flowing river of stars. Holding his now-cold coffee, Arthur found himself walking back to the front desk as if by some unseen force, his fingers gently brushing against the globe.
For some reason, the globe felt slightly warm to the touch tonight.
“Haven’t you left yet?”
A voice rang out abruptly in the empty lobby. Arthur spun around, his heart skipping a beat.
It was Lily—the receptionist who always wore a gray cardigan and spoke in a soft, gentle voice. Arthur remembered her, but his impression of her was vague. She was like a potted plant in the office: present, but never noticed.
“Sorry, I startled you,” Lily said, holding a thermos and looking slightly apologetic. “I’m working late tonight to organize the visitor logs, and I saw you hadn’t come out yet.”
Arthur furrowed his brow, his professional defense mechanisms kicking in instantly: “I’m done with work and just about to leave.”
“You look tired.” Instead of making the usual polite small talk like others did, Lily pointed directly at the globe. “Did you know? This globe is actually an antique. It’s not for showing directions—it’s for ‘hiding’ things.”
Arthur paused in surprise. “Hide things?”
“Mm-hmm.” Lily stepped forward and gently turned the globe. The base emitted a faint click, and to his surprise, a tiny hidden compartment popped open.
Arthur leaned in to take a closer look; it was completely empty, except for a yellowed sticky note.
“There used to be lots of notes in here,” Lily’s voice sounded especially gentle in the night air. “Some people wrote, ‘I want to quit my job’; others wrote, ‘I just got dumped’; and still others wrote, ‘I really want to eat Mom’s braised pork today.’ Everyone hid the vulnerabilities they couldn’t voice during the day inside this globe. Then the next day, someone else would see it, take it away, or leave a new one in its place.”
Arthur looked at the blank sticky note and suddenly felt a tightness in his throat.
“What about now?” he asked.
“No one writes on them anymore,” Lily smiled, though a hint of melancholy shone in her eyes. “Everyone’s just like you—they walk by so quickly that their emotions don’t even have time to be hidden before they’re blown away by the wind.”
Arthur fell silent. He looked at Lily, truly taking in the girl for the first time. There were faint fine lines at the corners of her eyes—traces of long nights; the cuffs of her cardigan were slightly worn—evidence of a tight budget. She was just like him, a night watcher in this city, except she had chosen to combat loneliness with gentleness, while he had chosen to shield himself from it with indifference.
“Do you want to write something?” Lily handed him a pen. “No one’s going to read it anyway. If you hide it in the night, it’ll be safe.”
Arthur took the pen and held it over the sticky note. He wanted to write “I’m so tired,” “I want to go home,” and “I’m actually terrified of being abandoned by this world.”
But in the end, he wrote nothing. He put the pen back.
“No,” Arthur said softly, “Some things are better left unsaid.”
Lily didn’t seem surprised. She nodded and turned toward the elevator: “I’ll be going now. Arthur, be careful on your way home.”
The elevator doors closed, and the lobby fell silent once more.
Arthur stood alone at the front desk, staring at the globe. He reached out, intending to close the hidden compartment.
Just as his fingertips touched the sticky note, he paused.
By the faint glow of the streetlights streaming in through the window, he could make out the writing on the yellowed sticky note. It wasn’t old—the ink was still fresh, even carrying a slightly damp sheen.
The handwriting was elegant, yet it carried an unsettling sense of familiarity.
It read: “If Arthur hasn’t written anything tonight, it means he’s finally learned to let himself off the hook. —Lily”
Arthur’s fingers froze mid-air as a chill crept up his spine, but it quickly gave way to an indescribable pang of sadness.
He jerked his head up toward the elevator entrance, but it was empty.
Lily had just said she was working late tonight to organize the visitor log. Yet, in the visitor log at the front desk, Arthur’s name was the only one listed for tonight.
He looked at the globe once more. The line of text on its base—“To the wanderer who stays”—seemed to come alive in the darkness of the night.
Arthur suddenly realized that Lily wasn’t sorting through visitor records. She was waiting for him. Or rather, she was waiting for someone like him—someone trapped in a rift in time.
He picked up the note, folded it, and slipped it into his suit pocket.
As he walked out of the office building, Arthur didn’t hail a cab right away, as he usually did. He stood by the roadside and took a deep breath of the crisp, early-morning air.
He didn’t know who Lily was—a ghost, a hallucination, or perhaps another lonely soul. But he knew that from this moment on, the secret hidden inside the globe no longer belonged to the night.
It belonged to him.
Arthur looked up and saw a faint streak of dawn breaking on the horizon.
“Good morning,” he whispered softly to the empty street.
