**1. The Clasp He Snapped Open**
Sunday afternoon, the secondhand market hid in the alleys of the old district. Rows of gray apartment buildings on both sides, every ground-floor storefront turned into a stall. They sold a bit of everything.
Old books and cassettes. Plastic mannequins missing arms and legs. Baskets of ancient phone chargers. Door handles scavenged from God knows which condemned building—brass, gone green with rust.
Chen Mo hadn't wanted to come here at all. His rental was on the south side of town, balcony facing north. Socks hung three days still came down damp.
When he'd moved in last week, the landlord told him he'd have to install his own drying rack on the balcony—the kind you drill into the wall. He'd put it off for a week. If he didn't come buy one today, next week he genuinely wouldn't have a dry pair of socks.
He walked deeper into the alley, stalls pressed against each other. The sellers were mostly old men and women—some sitting on folding stools scrolling their phones, others leaning against the walls dozing outright.
Midway down he stopped. An old man had spread out something different from the rest. The others sold things that still worked. This old man sold pure relics—enamel mugs, tin thermoses, and one brown leather suitcase.
The suitcase sat flat on the ground, its corners wrapped in worn brass. The surface was dented and scratched. Its clasp was the old spring kind—snapped shut, but not locked.
Chen Mo squatted for a look. The case wasn't big—roughly room for something the size of an old TV. He reached out to flick the clasp open and see inside.
"That one's not for sale."
The old man's voice rasped like sandpaper on tin. Chen Mo looked up. The old man was squinting at him, wrinkles stacked deep, a white porcelain teacup in his hand. "Look at the other things."
Chen Mo blinked and pulled his hand back. "What's inside?"
"Something not for sale." The old man's tone was flat. "Look around. Old alarm clocks, old radios—those sell."
It struck Chen Mo as odd, but he didn't dwell on it. He stood and swept his gaze across the stall—yes, there were old alarm clocks, their plastic shells yellowed. But no drying rack, which was what he actually needed. He turned to leave. His heel brushed the corner of the suitcase. He glanced down without thinking.
The clasp was right by his hand.
He didn't think about it. He just bent down and hooked the spring clasp with his index finger. It sprang open with a *click*, the lid lifting a crack—about two fingers wide.
Inside, the case was lined with gray-green felt. On the felt lay a photograph, the paper yellowed, corners curling. In the photo a woman stood on a balcony, hung laundry and aluminum window frames behind her.
Chen Mo's pupils shrank.
The woman wore a gray-blue crew-neck pajama set, with a small washed-out patch on the left shoulder. The balcony security grille was the old diamond-lattice kind. The floor tiles were cream with dark stripes.
Exactly like his.
When he'd moved in, the previous tenant had left a gray-blue pajama top forgotten on the balcony. The left shoulder was faded, like it had been soaked in bleach.
He'd thrown it away, but he remembered it clearly. Diamond-lattice grille. Cream tiles with dark stripes. He stood on that balcony every morning brushing his teeth. He couldn't mistake it.
The woman in the photo stood at the balcony railing with her back to the camera, hair loose.
Chen Mo stared at the crack for three seconds. He wanted to open the lid wider. But the moment he applied pressure, the old man's voice cut in again: "Seen enough? Close it."
The voice was harder this time.
Chen Mo's hand twitched. The clasp snapped back with a *click*, exactly as before. He straightened up, heart beating a little fast, ears ringing. He didn't look at the old man again. He turned and headed for the mouth of the alley, walking faster than he'd come in.
At the corner by the alley mouth he glanced back. The old man still sat there, teacup on his knee, not looking at him, head down, staring at something.
Chen Mo rounded the corner, pulled out his phone to call a friend, thought better of it, and put it away. Say what? That he'd seen a photo at a secondhand stall, and the woman in it wore the same pajamas he'd thrown away, standing in a place that matched his balcony? Who'd believe that.
He pedaled a shared bike home. The evening wind was cool, tightening the skin on the back of his neck.
That night he got home and examined the balcony carefully first. Diamond-lattice grille. Cream tiles with dark stripes. The drying rack still wasn't installed—a few bare wires strung across.
He turned on every light in the living room and bedroom and walked through each room, even the bathroom. Nothing.
A normal apartment. Sixty square meters, one bedroom one living room. The living room sofa was a fabric one the landlord had left, cushions long sagged. The bedroom nightstand drawer slid out empty.
He let out a breath. The figure in the photo had her back turned. Plenty of women had hair that length. Gray-blue pajamas were sold on every street. And balcony layouts—every old complex was the same, grilles stamped from one mold.
He showered, lay in bed scrolling his phone until nearly eleven-thirty, set the phone on the nightstand, turned off the light, and went to sleep.
In the dark he heard footsteps in the stairwell outside. Dragging, unhurried, like someone in slippers. They passed his door, didn't stop, went up. A while later they came back down, passed his door, went down. Back and forth three or four times. Then silence.
Chen Mo turned over, pulled the blanket higher, and drifted into a foggy sleep.
**2. The Scratch on the Doorframe**
The next day. Monday.
When the alarm went off, Chen Mo's head felt full of lead, his eyelids too heavy to open. He dragged himself up to brush his teeth and wash his face. Passing the living room he glanced at the balcony out of habit. Sunlight filtered through the grille. A few shadows lay across the tiles—the quilt airing upstairs blocking the light.
Toothbrush in mouth, he went to the door to change shoes. Bending to tie his laces, the corner of his eye caught a mark on the inside of the doorframe.
He stopped. The mark was in the wood of the frame, running diagonally downward from about a meter twenty off the ground. Roughly ten centimeters long. Like something sharp had been dragged across it.
The paint had been cut through, exposing the pale wood beneath. The gouge was fresh, tiny splinters standing up along its edges.
Chen Mo crouched for a closer look. He was certain the scratch hadn't been there when he left yesterday. He'd rented the place a week, in and out every day. The doorframe had been clean, barely even dusty.
The scratch was new. He hadn't seen it when he came home and closed the door last night. It had appeared today.
He stood and ran a finger over the scratch. A splinter pricked his fingertip. Definitely new.
He whipped around to look into the apartment. The living room was empty. His backpack still sat on the sofa. A half-drunk water bottle stood on the coffee table from last night. The bedroom door was open, blanket still spread on the bed. Everything was exactly as it had been when he got up.
But there was a new scratch on the doorframe.
He thought of the photo from yesterday. The woman had stood on the balcony with her back to the camera, and in her hand—she'd been holding something? He hadn't seen clearly. He'd only had one glance before the old man barked at him.
Now, straining to remember: her right hand hung at her side, gripping something long and thin. Black. Like a piece of wire. Or a key?
Or something else sharp.
Chen Mo stood at the door for a long while, until the phone alarm went off again, warning him he had twenty minutes before he'd be late. He gritted his teeth, locked the door, and left.
All day at work he couldn't settle. He was a copywriter at an ad agency. He sat at his desk staring at the screen, his mind stuck on the scratch.
At lunch he thought about telling a coworker. He opened his mouth, then found he couldn't. How? "A scratch showed up on my doorframe—might be connected to a photo I saw at a secondhand market yesterday, of someone standing on my balcony"?
They'd just think he'd stayed up too late and was seeing things.
It was dark when he got off work. He deliberately took the long way, avoiding the alley where the market was. At his door, his hands shook as he dug for the keys. It took two tries to get the key in the lock.
Pushed the door open. Turned on the light. The living room was the same living room. The sofa, the same sofa.
First he checked the inside of the doorframe. The scratch was still there. Same as before, no longer, no shorter. He relaxed, changed into slippers, and walked in. Halfway across the living room, he stopped.
The balcony door was open.
Had he shut the balcony door when he left that morning? He couldn't remember. He never paid much attention to the balcony door when leaving—sometimes shut, sometimes not. But when he walked over and looked in, it was like a bucket of cold water down his spine.
There was a pair of shoes on the balcony floor.
Women's cloth shoes. Black fabric uppers, white plastic soles. Around size 37 or 38. Toes pointing into the apartment, set side by side, neatly, like someone had taken them off before stepping inside.
Chen Mo stepped back. He'd stood on the balcony yesterday. The only shoes there had been his own slippers, still tossed by the washing machine. Where had this pair come from?
He stood in the living room staring at the shoes, heart racing. The balcony light was off; only the living room glow reached them. The shoes lay there half in shadow, the black cloth seeming to drink the light, not a single glint off them.
He grabbed his phone, meaning to call the police. His thumb hovered over the keypad for a long time, then lowered. Tell them what? A pair of shoes appeared on my balcony? The police come, ask whose shoes they are, he says he doesn't know? That wasn't even a case.
He texted his friend: "You know those secondhand stalls? The ones that sell old trunks?"
Ten minutes later the friend replied: "Why? Digging for antiques?"
Chen Mo typed: "I saw a photo in a trunk. The person in it was standing on my balcony, wearing the same pajamas as me."
His friend replied with a string of question marks.
Chen Mo said: "Today a scratch showed up on my doorframe, and a pair of shoes on my balcony."
His friend sent a voice message, half joking, half not: "Did you rent a haunted house or something? Ask the landlord who lived there before."
Chen Mo closed the voice message and stood looking at the balcony a long time. The shoes were still there. He didn't dare touch them. He shut the balcony door and locked it, then pulled the sliding door between the living room and balcony shut too, latching both sides. Then he went to the bedroom and closed that door as well.
He barely slept that night. Footsteps again in the stairwell, dragging, going up and down several times.
**3. The Stallkeeper's Eyes**
On the third day, Chen Mo took leave.
He messaged his team lead saying he had a fever. The lead replied "rest up"—not one word more. He sat on the bed in a daze for a while, then decided to go find the old man at the market.
He had to find out what that photo in the trunk was about.
He reached the alley mouth at ten in the morning. The market on a Tuesday was far quieter than on Sunday. Half the stalls weren't even set up, gray rolling shutters pulled down.
He walked in. At the spot midway down, the old man was still there. Same as the other day—folding stool, white porcelain cup, a spread of old goods in front of him. But the brown leather suitcase was gone.
As Chen Mo approached, the old man glanced up. His eyes didn't change. Like he didn't recognize him.
"Where's the trunk?" Chen Mo got straight to it.
The old man took a sip of tea. "What trunk?"
"The brown one. Leather. I saw it here the day before yesterday." Chen Mo said. "Clasp shut, not locked. You said it wasn't for sale."
The old man set his cup on his knee. "Sold."
"Sold to who?"
"A woman." The old man's tone stayed flat and even. "Came yesterday morning. Paid and took it."
Chen Mo's throat tightened. "You know her name?"
"How would I know?" The old man waved a hand. "Secondhand business. Money and goods change hands, that's it. No names."
Chen Mo squatted down to meet the old man's eye level. The old man's eyes were murky, the whites yellowed, but his pupils were black—black as two holes. "You told me it wasn't for sale that day. Why'd you sell it later?"
The old man was silent a moment, then said: "The trunk was always for sale. That day you said you were buying a drying rack. I didn't stop you. You walked away yourself."
"Before I left, I snapped the clasp open and took a look." Chen Mo said. "There was a photo inside."
The old man's expression didn't move. "Photos in trunks aren't strange. Old trunks hold anything."
"The person in the photo was standing on my balcony."
This time the old man didn't answer. He picked up his cup and took another slow sip, set it down, and only then looked at Chen Mo. "How long have you lived there?"
"A week."
"Renting?"
"Renting."
The old man nodded and said nothing more. Chen Mo waited, then couldn't hold back: "Do you know what the photo was about? Where did you get the trunk?"
"From a man." The old man said. "He's dead."
Chen Mo froze. The old man went on: "Got it last winter. An old woman's son brought it. Said his mother had passed, the stuff in the house was unwanted, told me to take it for whatever money I saw fit.
"I took the trunk and left it sitting, never touched it. A few days back a woman came asking about it, said she wanted to buy. I didn't sell. Then you came and snapped it open for a look. Later the woman came again, offered more money. I sold it."
"What did the woman look like?"
"Thin. Long hair. Wearing gray." The old man thought a moment. "About your height."
A chill ran down Chen Mo's spine. "How many times did she come look at the trunk?"
"Twice." The old man held up two fingers. "Once two days before you came. Once the day after you came."
Chen Mo stood up, his mind churning over all of it. The old woman dead. Her son selling the trunk. A thin, long-haired woman who'd come to look, about his height. The woman in the photo wearing his pajamas on his balcony. The scratch on the doorframe. The shoes on the balcony.
"Where did the old woman live?" he asked.
The old man gave him a look. "You going to find her?"
"Just asking."
The old man took another sip of tea, and only after a long while said: "Dongguan Street, Building 7, top floor. The building's due for demolition. No one lives there anymore." He paused, then added: "Won't do you any good to go. The place has been stripped."
Chen Mo thanked him, turned, and left. Two steps later he stopped and looked back: "Do you know those shoes? Black cloth shoes, white plastic soles?"
The old man's brow creased. "Shoes?"
"Women's. Size 37 or 38."
The old man looked into his eyes. His mouth opened, then closed. Finally he said: "The old woman used to wear shoes like that in life. Black cloth. White plastic soles."
Chen Mo stood in the alley. Morning sun slanted down between the buildings, warm on his back. But he felt no warmth at all.
He didn't go straight to Dongguan Street after leaving the alley. First he went home. The shoes were still on the balcony, exactly as when he'd left that morning—toes pointing into the apartment, side by side.
He stood outside the sliding door looking in, still not daring to go touch them. He took a photo with his phone, then one of the scratch on the doorframe, and took the subway to Dongguan Street.
Dongguan Street was on the east edge of the old district. It used to be a factory family compound. The factory moved out, and the buildings aged.
Building 7 was an old six-story walkup, its facade tiled in white mosaic, most of it fallen off to expose gray concrete beneath. Every window in the building was a black hole—some panes shattered, some frames gone entirely. Like a row of hollow eyes.
Chen Mo stood at the base of the building and looked up. The top floor was the sixth. The east unit's balcony grille was the diamond-lattice kind. Cream-colored tiles peeked out below the railing.
Exactly like his.
He entered the stairwell. The stairs were terrazzo, the railing an iron pipe painted green, the paint curling off. The sound-activated lights on every floor were dead. He climbed with his phone lighting the way, his own footsteps echoing in the empty shaft.
At the landing between the fifth and sixth floors, he heard something above.
Like someone dragging something. Faint. *Scrape. Scrape.* One pull at a time.
He stayed still at the landing, phone raised, shining upward. A door stood at the end of the sixth-floor hallway, shut, a yellowed Spring Festival couplet on it faded to white. The sound seemed to come from behind that door.
He climbed the last flight and stood before the door. Old wooden door, paint chipped and mottled, a layer of dust on the handle. He leaned close to listen. The sound inside stopped.
He reached out to knock. His fingers had barely touched the wood when the door swung open a crack on its own with a *creak*. A musty smell rushed out—dust and old cotton wadding.
Inside was dark, but he could make out rags and old newspapers piled on the living room floor. On the radiator in the corner hung a gray-blue garment.
Chen Mo's breath caught. The cut of that garment was identical to the pajamas he'd thrown away.
He pushed the door open and stepped in. The place was empty—furniture gone, only the junk nobody could be bothered to haul away. The gray-blue pajamas hung on the radiator, a patch on the shoulder faded like it had been washed too many times.
He walked over, picked it up, and examined it. Fabric, stitching, the position of the care label—no different from the one he'd thrown away.
He set the clothes down and went toward the bedroom. Its door hung half open. Inside was only a bare bed frame with a few old newspapers spread on it. He was about to back out when his eye caught something on the wall above the headboard.
A nail was driven into the wall. Hanging from it was a thin black wire, about ten centimeters long, one end ground to a point.
He thought of the scratch on his doorframe—also running diagonal, ten centimeters down from a height of a meter twenty. If you held this wire in your hand with your arm hanging naturally, the tip would fall exactly at that spot.
Chen Mo stood in the empty bedroom, phone light on the wire. The point glinted faintly in the glow.
Then he heard breathing behind him.
Faint. At the back of his head.
He spun around, phone light sweeping. Empty living room. Empty hallway. The door still held the crack he'd pushed open when he came in. Nothing.
But he clearly remembered pushing the door open when he entered. Now it was only open a crack.
He crossed the room in three strides, wrenched the door open. The hallway was pitch black, the sound-activated light still dead. He didn't stop to look. He ran downstairs, leather shoes hammering the terrazzo, the sound echoing through the whole building.
Reaching the third floor, he heard footsteps above him—in the exact same rhythm as his own. Like someone was imitating him, matching every step, same beat.
He ran faster. Out the building door, standing in the sunlight, he bent over gasping, his back soaked. He looked up at the sixth-floor unit's window. Behind the balcony railing, a figure seemed to flicker and vanish. Gray-blue.
**4. The Woman in the Photo**
Chen Mo didn't dare go back to Dongguan Street.
He sat on the curb across from Building 7 for twenty minutes, smoking two cigarettes, hands still shaking. He pulled out his phone, scrolled the gallery to the photo of the shoes he'd taken, and zoomed in.
The shoes were placed with care—toes toward the room, side by side, evenly spaced. He'd heard something somewhere once: shoes pointing inward are laid out for the dead, so they can step right into them when they come back.
He texted the friend again: "You know anyone who knows about this kind of thing?"
The friend replied: "What thing?"
"You know... the kind where old things carry something with them."
A while later, the friend called back. "You serious?"
Chen Mo told him everything from the past two days, start to finish. The trunk. The photo. The scratch. The shoes. The empty apartment on Dongguan Street.
The friend was silent for a long time on the line. Then: "My aunt used to deal in old furniture. She told me a rule. At a secondhand stall, if there's a locked trunk, you can buy it—but you don't open it in front of the seller. And if you do open it, you have to take what's inside."
"The trunk wasn't locked then." Chen Mo said. "The clasp was just shut."
"Not locked?" The friend's voice went tight. "That's worse. Unlocked means it was put out for people to look at. Once you look, you have to take it."
"Take what?"
"Take the thing." The friend said. "My aunt said some trunks are packed with something, waiting for someone to claim it. Once you claim it, you've taken it on. That person in the photo—that's you, isn't it?"
Chen Mo wanted to say no, but the words died in his throat. The woman in the photo had her back turned, wore the same clothes as him, stood in a place identical to his apartment. Whether it was actually him—he couldn't be sure anymore himself.
He hung up and took a cab home. It was nearly dark when he arrived. One of the sound-activated lights in the stairwell came on. He opened the door and went in; the living room was dark. Without turning on a light he looked toward the balcony first. The sliding door was shut as he'd left it. But the shoes were gone.
He turned on the light and rushed to the balcony door. The floor was spotless. The black cloth shoes had vanished without even a trace. He slid the door open, stepped out, and looked around.
Not a mark on the tiles. Nothing in the gap between the washing machine and the mop sink. The shoes were like they'd never existed.
He stepped back in, shut the sliding door, locked it, and returned to the living room.
Then he saw there was something new on the coffee table.
Beside his phone lay a photograph, paper yellowed, corners curling. The same one he'd seen in the trunk that day. In it, a woman stood on a balcony, back to the camera, in gray-blue pajamas, hair loose.
But this time, the woman in the photo had turned her head.
The face was his.
Same brows and eyes. Same line of the jaw. Even the small mole at the end of the left eyebrow, identical. She stood on the balcony, gripping a thin black wire in her hand, face expressionless, eyes open, staring straight into the lens.
Chen Mo stumbled back, his lower back hitting the armrest of the sofa. He stared at the photo. The "him" in it was staring back. The balcony behind matched his own down to the last detail—the grille, the tiles, the shadow of the quilt airing upstairs.
He flipped the photo over. On the back, in ballpoint pen, a line of writing pressed so hard the paper was gouged:
"You took my place."
Chen Mo threw the photo onto the table and retreated to the bedroom door. His heartbeat pounded like a drum inside his ears.
Outside the balcony, it was fully dark. The living room light glared white over the photo. The person in it was still watching him.
He grabbed his phone to call 110. The instant his thumb unlocked the screen, a text message popped up on its own. Sender: an unknown number. The message was four words:
"Don't bother. No use."
He called the number back. It was switched off.
He didn't sleep that night. He locked the bedroom door, shoved the nightstand against it, and huddled on the bed staring at the line of light under the door.
In the living room outside, there was a sound. Faint. Like someone walking barefoot across the floor. Two steps, pause. Two steps, pause. It reached the bedroom door and stopped. The light under the gap was blocked.
Someone was standing at the door.
Chen Mo gripped his phone, not daring to make a sound. The thing at the door stood there a long time—ten-odd minutes—then the light under the gap returned. The footsteps went toward the balcony. The sliding door was pulled open, then shut. The latch clicked.
Chen Mo's nails dug into his palms. He'd locked that sliding door himself, latched from both sides.
A sliding door can be pulled open from outside. The latch only locks from inside.
The footsteps on the balcony stopped. After a moment, he heard a woman's voice—soft, like she was speaking right against the wall of his bedroom.
"Go to sleep," the voice said. "The balcony will be clean by tomorrow."
Chen Mo didn't close his eyes all night.
**5. Epilogue**
After dawn the next day, when Chen Mo came out of the bedroom, the living room was perfectly normal. The sliding door was shut. The balcony floor was empty. He walked over and looked—the tiles clean, and on the coffee table where the photo had sat last night, nothing. Nothing beside his phone either.
He called the landlord and said he wanted to break the lease.
The landlord was a woman in her forties. She sounded surprised: "Only a week and you want out? Deposit's not refundable."
"Keep it." Chen Mo said. "I'm moving today."
The landlord made an "oh" and said he could just leave the keys in the mailbox. Chen Mo hung up and started packing. He didn't own much—a backpack and one suitcase. Done in twenty minutes.
He wheeled the suitcase to the door and took one last look at the place he'd lived for a week.
The scratch on the inside of the doorframe was still there. He reached out and touched it, his fingertip tracing the groove. A splinter pricked him.
He pulled the door open and walked out.
Going downstairs he ran into a neighbor from upstairs—a middle-aged woman with permed curls, carrying a shopping basket up. As they passed, she glanced at him and said out of nowhere: "Young man, you're moving out?"
"Mm."
"Couldn't get used to it?" The woman smiled. "The last tenant was the same. Stayed two weeks and left. Said the place felt wrong."
Chen Mo stopped. "What was the last tenant like?"
"A woman. Thin. Long hair." The woman thought. "Been gone... two months now, I'd say. She didn't say much when she left. Just that she wasn't renting anymore."
Chen Mo didn't ask anything else. He wheeled his suitcase out of the building entrance. Sunlight fell on his face, warm. He looked up at the balcony of the floor he'd lived on. The aluminum window frames caught the light. The cream tiles were spotless.
But on the balcony railing hung a gray-blue pajama top, swaying gently in the wind.
The one he'd thrown away.
Chen Mo lowered his head and walked toward the compound gate, pulling his suitcase. He pulled out his phone to delete the backup of that photo. Scrolling the gallery to the bottom, he saw a thumbnail he didn't remember taking.
He tapped it.
The photo was taken from inside, the lens aimed at the balcony outside. A person stood on the balcony, back to the camera, in a black jacket, pulling a suitcase, walking out.
It was him, this morning.
In the bottom-right corner of the photo was a line of small text, like someone had scratched it into the screen protector with a fingernail:
"You leave. I come back."