Arthur sold his shadow for the first time on a rainy Monday morning.
The well-dressed stranger sat in the corner of the café, fingering a heavy gold coin. “Just a little bit of darkness,” the stranger said with a smile, “and you’ll get the promotion you’ve been longing for.”
Arthur agreed without hesitation. As a programmer struggling to survive in a big tech company, he desperately needed that Team Leader position. After the deal was done, he looked down and saw that the floor beneath his feet was spotless, with only the crisp sound of his leather shoes tapping against the tiles.
That afternoon, he received his letter of appointment just as he’d hoped. His colleagues looked at him with envy, and his boss patted him on the shoulder, saying, “Arthur, you look much more capable than before—as if you’ve shed a heavy burden.”
Arthur smiled; he thought his boss was right. Without the shadow, he did indeed feel lighter on his feet, and even the exhaustion from working late into the night had eased considerably.
Half a year later, Arthur sought out the stranger once more. This time, he wanted a spacious penthouse in the city center and a limited-edition sports car.
“The price will double,” the stranger said, spreading his hands wide as a strange light danced around his fingertips. “And you’ll lose some ‘weight.’”
Arthur looked out the window at the congested traffic and clenched his teeth. “Deal.”
After the second deal, Arthur moved into a luxury mansion. He sped along the elevated highway late at night in his sports car; the wind rushed in through the windows, yet it stirred no emotion within him. He found it increasingly difficult to feel anything. Watching a touching movie, he couldn’t shed a tear; hearing the good news of a colleague’s promotion, he couldn’t muster a smile. He was like a precision instrument—efficient, calm, yet hollow.
That was until that weekend, when he returned to his hometown to visit his mother.
His mother was getting old, her back severely hunched, and she was laboring to wrap dumplings in the kitchen. Arthur walked over to help, but his mother waved him off: “No need for you to help. Go rest. You’re so busy with work—it’s rare for you to come back.”
Arthur sat on the living room sofa, watching the boisterous variety show on TV, with the sound of chopping filling the air from the kitchen and his mother’s occasional coughs reaching his ears. Sunlight streamed through the window, casting a long streak of light across the floor.
He suddenly felt a chill.
He instinctively looked down at his feet. There was still a blinding void—no shadow, no outline—as if he were a ghost floating in mid-air.
From the kitchen, his mother emerged carrying a plate of steaming dumplings. The sunlight fell on her hunched back, casting a shadow that was mottled yet substantial, shifting between light and dark. The shadow swayed gently with her movements, as if bearing the weight of decades of toil and love, clinging heavily to the floor, refusing to move even a step.
Arthur froze.
He looked at his mother’s shadow, so full of “weight,” then down at the emptiness beneath his own feet. An unprecedented sense of panic gripped him. He had always believed that selling his shadow meant shedding a burden, pursuing the freedom of lightness, but only now did he realize that the darkness he had cast off was, in fact, the anchor that rooted his soul to the world.
Without a shadow, he was no longer a whole person, but merely a symbol adrift in a torrent of desire.
“Mom,” Arthur said suddenly, his voice a little hoarse, “take a picture of me.”
His mother was a little surprised, but she smiled and pulled out her phone.
Arthur stepped into the sunlight and struck a pose. He knew his shadow still wouldn’t appear in the photo, but he wanted to see if, without a shadow, he could still be considered “existing.”
The moment the shutter clicked, Arthur looked at the warm shadow behind his mother, and a thought suddenly crossed his mind: If one day he sold off his very last bit of shadow, would he still remember who he was?
Or would he even remember that he had ever had a shadow at all?
