Every morning at eight o’clock sharp, Arthur stands at the intersection, waiting for that interminable red light.
He’s an accountant, and his life is just like the financial statements he prepares: precise, monotonous, and with no room for even the slightest error. The red light at this intersection is exceptionally long—a full ninety-nine seconds. In the past, Arthur could only stare blankly at the glass curtain wall of the building across the street or silently curse the city planning department’s inefficiency.
That was until last week, when the municipal authorities installed a high-definition LED countdown display on the traffic light here.
It was a black screen with red numbers flashing in the center: 99, 98, 97…
On the first day, as Arthur watched those numbers, a long-lost sense of security welled up inside him. Before, he never knew how long he’d have to wait; every second felt like groping in the darkness of the unknown. Now, he could see time passing and precisely predict the moment when “freedom” would arrive.
99, 98, 97…
The numbers ticked along at a steady rhythm, like some kind of hypnotic metronome. Arthur stared at it and noticed that the world around him seemed to have slowed down. The woman in the yellow trench coat next to him was looking down at her phone; her finger hovered over the screen, hesitating to touch it. The white smoke billowing from the exhaust pipe of that red sedan in the distance froze mid-air, like a stationary wisp of cotton.
Only that red number was moving.
Arthur felt a sense of control unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. As long as he watched the number count down to zero, he could take a step. No need to watch for traffic, no need to judge the timing—the number would tell him everything. He no longer needed to think; he just had to obey.
The next day, Arthur found himself beginning to rely on that countdown.
When crossing the street, he no longer looked left and right. He only watched the green light countdown on the opposite side of the sidewalk: 45, 44, 43… He calculated his stride precisely, ensuring that the moment the number hit zero, he would step onto the curb on the other side.
If the number hit zero while he was still standing in the middle of the street, he would feel a wave of inexplicable panic, as if some invisible force had abandoned him in a crack in time.
On the third day, Arthur was late.
Because the countdown was broken. The screen was black, with only the red and green lights mechanically alternating. Arthur stood by the roadside, his hands and feet ice-cold. He didn’t know when to take a step. Without the numbers to guide him, the traffic seemed menacing; every car looked like a wild beast ready to charge at any moment.
He stood there for a full ten minutes until a kind traffic officer pulled him across the street.
“Sir, the light has been green for quite a while,” the officer said, looking at him in puzzlement.
Arthur wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and ran into the office building as if fleeing.
That night, Arthur worked late. When he stepped out of the office building, the streets were deserted. Out of habit, he walked to that intersection.
Red light.
He looked up at the screen.
The screen lit up. Red numbers began to flash.
99, 98, 97…
Arthur breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness—it had been fixed.
He stared at the numbers, preparing to wait as usual. But this time, he noticed something was off.
The numbers were flashing too fast.
99, 98, 97… In the blink of an eye, the number had jumped to 50.
Arthur froze. He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was seeing things from working too hard. But the numbers continued to race by.
40, 30, 20…
The world around him began to blur. The halos of the streetlights stretched into long streaks, and the buildings in the distance warped like melting wax. Arthur felt a wave of intense dizziness and instinctively grabbed the railing beside him.
10, 9, 8…
The number turned a blinding crimson, like a bloodshot eye staring intently at him.
Arthur suddenly realized this wasn’t a traffic light countdown.
It was his own countdown.
He recalled the sudden stabbing pain in his chest when he left home that morning; he remembered the doctor’s hesitant expression last week as he held the medical report; he thought of how he’d been feeling inexplicably exhausted lately, as if some kind of energy inside his body were being drained bit by bit.
5, 4, 3…
Arthur wanted to scream, wanted to run away, but his legs felt as heavy as if they were filled with lead. He could only watch helplessly as the number approached zero.
2, 1, 0.
The moment the number hit zero, the screen went dark.
The world was plunged into a deathly, pitch-black silence.
Arthur closed his eyes, waiting for the end he had anticipated.
However, nothing happened.
After a long while, he tentatively opened his eyes.
The streetlights were still on, and the buildings in the distance had returned to normal. The traffic lights at the intersection were still standing there, but the countdown screen had gone completely dark, emitting no light at all.
Arthur stood where he was, gasping for breath.
The green light came on.
He hesitated for a moment, then stepped onto the crosswalk.
This time, he didn’t look at the countdown screen across the street. He raised his head and gazed up at the night sky.
Tonight’s moon was full and bright.
Arthur suddenly felt that life without the countdown didn’t seem so scary after all.
However, when he reached the other side of the street and looked back at the intersection, he noticed that deep within the blackened screen, a row of extremely tiny green numbers seemed to be faintly visible.
That row of numbers wasn’t a countdown.
It was a count that was slowly increasing.
+1.
