Every day after work, walking down that hallway, I'd see the cleaning lady mopping.
Same spot. Same tile. Three years of it.
Until one day I finally asked her why.
She looked up and smiled. "There used to be a desk there. A young guy sat at it. Worked too late one night, went down right there."
A chill crawled up my back. "That desk... I'm the one sitting at it now."
She rested the mop, calm. "I know. It's been empty since he left. You're the first one to sit there."
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The company's called Cloudmap Tech. Sounds impressive. It's not. We do data outsourcing for clients, wedged into the seventh floor of an old office building on the edge of the CBD.
We're the only tenants on the whole floor. Desks packed in like sardines. The lights are that dead white that makes everyone look like paper effigies. Staying late is normal. Sometimes I stare at the Excel sheet on my screen and the numbers start to crawl.
The cleaning lady's name is Zhou. Fifties, short and round, face like a dinner plate, eyes folding into two slits when she smiles. Every evening at six thirty she shows up at the end of the hallway, pushing that squeaking cart, mop wrung half dry, going from the east end to the west.
But here's the thing. She always stops at the same spot and mops it over and over. Sometimes for fifteen minutes.
The tile looks like every other tile. Same size, same color, same wear. But when Zhou mops it she puts her whole weight in, arms tight, like she's fighting something. When she's done she crouches down and runs her fingers along the grout, checking it's clean before she moves on.
I've been at this company almost two years. I saw it almost every day. At first I didn't care. Then I thought it was strange. Then it started getting under my skin.
One night I came out around nine. The whole floor was dark except the emergency light at the end of the hall. Zhou was still there, crouched in front of that tile, muttering.
I got close enough to hear. She was counting. "...twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine..." At thirty she stood up, mopped it again, crouched back down, counted again.
That night I dreamed the tile was seeping. Black water, thick, welling up out of the grout. I crouched to look, and a face floated up. My own.
Next day I mentioned it to Old Zhao. Eight years at Cloudmap, one of the founding guys. Hair more than half white, eye bags hanging down to his cheekbones. He went quiet for a second and said, "Leave it alone."
"I'm just asking. What's the story with that tile?"
He stared at his screen, fingers paused on the keyboard. "There used to be a desk there," he said. "A young guy sat at it. About your age. Worked too late. Dropped dead."
My back went tight. "Dropped dead? At his desk?"
"Yeah. Past two in the morning. Security found him on rounds. Stiff already. Face down on the keyboard, code window still open." Zhao's voice was flat, like he was reading off some document nobody cared about.
"Later they tore the desk out, made it common area. But Zhou mops that spot every day. Says it's not clean. Says mopping it holds it down."
"Holds what down?"
"Don't know. Anyway, nobody's sat there since. New hires get put somewhere else. HR never even drew that spot into the floor plan."
I swallowed. "The guy who died... what was his name?"
Zhao shook his head. "Can't remember. Chen, I think. Chen something... forget it. Just don't go near there."
I said okay. Privately, I was sweating. Because that's where I sit.
Three months ago we landed a big project, not enough desks, admin threw in three temporary tables. One of them went at the corner of the hallway, next to the fire hydrant, right on top of that tile. I was the newest, so I didn't get a pick. That's where I ended up.
At first, nothing. New desk, the cheapest IKEA particleboard, wobbles if you lean on it. Old chair, squeaks every time. Hand-me-down desktop, three minutes to boot, fan loud enough to lift off.
But the tile. That tile was off. Every night when I packed up I'd see a dark patch on it, like spilled water, or like grease rubbed in. Wipe it with a tissue and the tissue comes away clean. Next morning, the patch is back.
I figured it was AC condensation. Then I checked. The whole hallway, only that one tile. Every other tile dry. That one, always wet.
That day I couldn't help it. Zhou was mopping when I left, the mop churning in the bucket. I walked over and tried to keep it light. "Zhou, can I ask you something?"
She looked up, eyes narrowing. "What?"
"This tile." I pointed down. "Why do you mop it every day? Everywhere else you go over it once. Here you go over it four or five times."
The mop stopped. The dirty water in the bucket rocked, the fluorescent tube overhead reflected in it, snapped in two. She looked at me a while. Then she smiled.
That smile put a knot in my stomach. Not a warm smile. Not a polite one. Her mouth was going up, but there was no temperature in her eyes, her pupils black and deep under the tube light.
"You don't know?" she said.
"Know what?"
She leaned the mop against the wall and took a step toward me. I wanted to back up. The tile was right behind me. She looked down at the floor, voice low, like she was telling me a secret. "There used to be a desk here."
"Yeah. I heard."
"A young guy sat here." She went on, flat, like reading a menu. "Worked too late. Went down right here. This exact spot." She tapped the tile with her toe.
"And then?"
"And then, every day at this hour, the floor dirties itself." She raised her eyes to me. "I've been mopping it for three years."
The hallway went quiet for a few seconds. The AC vent hummed overhead, and the air coming out smelled of mold. I could hear my own heart. Thud. Thud. Thud. Heavier each time.
"That young guy..." I cleared my throat. "What was his name?"
Zhou didn't answer. She tilted her head, like she was sizing me up. Then she bent, picked the mop back up, rinsed it in the bucket, and went on mopping. The sound of the mop dragging across the tile was harsh, like nails on a blackboard.
I stood there. Couldn't leave, couldn't stay. After maybe half a minute she said something. Very quiet, mixed into the water sound. But I heard it.
"I know," she said. "It's been empty since he left. You're the first one to sit there."
I didn't dare work late that night. Packed up at 6:40, three hours early. When I came out of the building the sky wasn't fully dark yet, a bruise of red in the west, like blood congealing.
On the way home I kept turning over what she'd said. The first one to sit there. So what about before? How long had it been empty? Why wouldn't anyone sit there? Zhao said HR never drew it into the floor plan. So why put me there?
At home I opened my laptop and logged into the company's OA system. Employee files needed clearance I didn't have. But I had Zhao's login. I'd written it down back when he asked me to pull data for him. I hesitated a few seconds and logged in anyway.
Search field: former employees. Filter: deceased. One record.
Chen Mo. Male, twenty-five. Hired March 2019, left November 2020. Reason for leaving: "Sudden illness, died during employment." A note underneath, in the HR director's hand: "Compensation negotiated with family. Desk retained until January 2021, then cleared."
I stared at the screen, fingers cold. November 2020. Almost three years ago. The desk sat empty for over two years, until I took it three months back.
I searched for more on Chen Mo. Photo field empty. Personal info page had a few basic lines. But under "emergency contact" I saw a name. Zhou Xiulan. Relationship: mother.
Zhou Xiulan.
Then it hit me. There was a cleaning staff schedule taped to the wall in the break room, and the first name on it was Zhou Xiulan.
Zhou. She was Chen Mo's mother.
I leaned back in my chair, head a mess. If Chen Mo was her son, then her mopping that tile every day... was she mopping up her own son's blood? Or something else?
Next morning I went out of my way to look at the tile. Nine a.m., sun coming in sideways through the window, the tile bright and shiny.
But when I crouched down and looked close, there was a ring of dark staining in the grout, like it had soaked in. I scraped at it with my fingernail and came up with a little gray-black powder. Held it to my nose. A faint smell of rust.
I was useless all morning. The numbers on the Excel sheet jumped around and none of them went in. At lunch Zhao sat across from me, looked at my face, asked what was wrong.
"Nothing. Didn't sleep."
He looked at me and didn't push. After a while he said, "Zhou didn't come in today."
My chopsticks stopped. "Didn't come in?"
"No. HR said she called in sick."
I looked down at my food and said nothing. But a voice in my head said: she's not sick. She knows you're looking.
At three in the afternoon, admin sent an all-staff email. The desk at the corner of the hallway had to be moved temporarily for "fire lane compliance." Whoever sat there should relocate to the empty spot in Zone B before four. I read the email twice, then turned my head, slowly, to look at the tile.
The tile gleamed faintly under the fluorescent light. Looked the same as always. But as I watched, the dark staining in the grout crept toward me. Slow. So slow you almost couldn't see it. But it was moving.
I rubbed my eyes. When I looked again, it was gone.
Moving my desk, I found a sticky note in the back of the drawer. Yellow, palm-sized, pressed under a stack of expired expense forms. One line on it, scrawled, like it was written in a hurry. It said: "Don't sit here."
On the back, smaller, worse, barely legible. I leaned in. It said: "After nine p.m., the keyboard lights up by itself."
I didn't take the note with me. I crumpled it and threw it in the trash. But that night I lay in bed, rolling over, couldn't sleep, the line running through my head. The keyboard lights up by itself. What does that mean? The computer's off. How does a keyboard light up?
At two in the morning I got up, called a cab, and went to the office.
The security guy in the lobby knew me, said hello, let me in. Elevator to seven. The whole floor was black except the emergency light at the end of the hall, putting out a sick green glow. I turned on my phone flashlight and walked to the corner.
The tile stood out in the dark. When the flashlight hit it I saw a thin film of mist on the surface, like a glass just out of the fridge. I stopped three meters away. Didn't dare go closer.
Then I heard it.
Very light, very fine, like someone typing. Tk. Tk. Tk. Slow rhythm, like a person hesitating over whether to type. The sound came from inside the corner, but I could see there was nothing there but the fire hydrant and the empty desk.
I stood there maybe two minutes. The sound cut off. Then the flashlight flickered, and I saw the mist on the tile rising. Not evaporating. Like someone breathed out from underneath. The mist welled up to about a foot high, then scattered.
When it scattered I smelled it. Rust, so thick it was like somebody jammed a fistful of rusted nails up my nose. I covered my face and backed up. My heel caught the fire hydrant. A loud clang.
The sound stopped. The mist stopped. The whole hallway went quiet except for my breathing.
I turned and ran. At the elevator I looked back. The tile glowed faintly in the tail of my flashlight, like an open eye.
Next day I didn't go in. Called in sick, lay in bed all day. In the afternoon Zhao messaged me. "You went back to the office last night?"
"How do you know?"
"Security told me. What were you doing there in the middle of the night?"
I thought about it and typed: "Grabbing something."
His "typing..." went on for a long time. Then: "Zhou quit today. Came in this morning to process it. I saw her clearing out her stuff."
"Did she say anything?"
"Not really. She stood at that corner for a while and said something to the tile."
"What did she say?"
"She said: 'Mom's leaving. You take care of yourself.'"
I stared at my phone screen and my back went cold again. Outside was four o'clock sun, bright, the whole room lit up. And I was still cold.
That night I had a dream. I was sitting at that desk, the monitor on in front of me, a half-written resignation letter on the screen. It said: "I'm done. Something's wrong with this place." But halfway through the sentence the keyboard moved on its own. The enter key went down. The cursor jumped to the next line. Then the screen started typing by itself.
What it typed was: "You leave, who keeps me company?"
I woke up when the sky was just going gray. My phone was buzzing by the pillow. Zhao.
"Get to the office. Now."
"What is it?"
"That corner... just come look."
By the time my cab pulled up there was an ambulance downstairs. A few people in white coats wheeled a stretcher out of the building. Someone was on it, face covered with a white cloth.
Zhao stood in the doorway smoking, face gray. "The new girl from admin," he said. "She moved to that spot yesterday. Security found her this morning, face down on the desk. Gone."
I stood there and watched the ambulance doors close and pull away. People were going in and out of the building, heads together, someone crying, someone on the phone. But my ears were ringing and I couldn't hear any of it.
Zhao stubbed out his cigarette and looked at me. "You dream something last night?"
I opened my mouth to say no. Then swallowed it. Because I remembered what the keyboard typed in the dream. "You leave, who keeps me company?"
Now I know.
That desk is waiting. For someone to sit down at it. For someone who, when they leave, leaves something behind.
Chen Mo left, and Zhou was left behind. Zhou left, and the new girl was left behind.
The new girl left. So whose turn is it now?