Tuesday. Eight forty-six, and the air conditioning on the eleventh floor was heating.
The vent sat directly above the back of Liang Cheng's neck, blowing hot air. The AC on this floor only heats—the property office says the ductwork can't be changed—so all year round the eleventh floor sits above twenty-six degrees. Seven years, and he sweats on this floor.
Morning meeting was already on. Feng Tuo stood at the whiteboard reading yesterday's numbers and looked up halfway through.
"Liang Cheng."
"Here."
"Zero closings."
Nobody turned around. Door days that close nothing—routine. Yesterday he'd run three doors: one with nobody home, one where someone cursed at him through the door for six minutes, and one where the son answered and said wait till my brother's back. He left a card. It wasn't taken. The cards were newly printed last week, a box of a hundred; he goes through two boxes a year.
Feng Tuo turned the page and went on to conversion rates.
Liang Cheng went back to his desk. His mother's work order was still open on the screen. TL-0417, the red unchanged; what changed was a new line at the top, black on yellow:
[Broadcast-period clock: suspended] Reason: employee-care pilot pending approval (HR, submitted Monday).
Under the yellow, a line two sizes smaller, gray:
While suspended, the terminal-queue occupancy fee continues to accrue: 15.00/day.
Fifteen a day. Four hundred fifty a month.
He read the line twice. It wasn't a long sentence, and there was no exclamation mark. Whoever wrote it had probably only filled a number into a template. He closed the work order, opened the banking app: balance 3,417.62. Then he opened his memos.
The four words he'd typed after midnight were still there: Pay the first tier first.
He looked at them for three seconds. He could read them fine. The words just looked faintly strange, as if someone else had sat down in his absence and typed them.
At 9:05 a post pinned itself to the front page of the intranet: The "Peace of Mind Companion: Employee Family Terminal-Care Pilot" officially launches. Two photos: one of the red silk banner by the eleventh-floor elevators, one of the banner in the HR meeting room, PEACE OF MIND COMPANION in machine-cut vinyl, stuck up a little crooked. The text ran three hundred characters or so and ended on: so that every colleague can send off their nearest kin with dignity. Thirty-four likes; half the people who'd tapped one were strangers to him. Comments were disabled.
Feng Tuo called across the floor: "Add one item to the weekly report. Due Friday, two hundred words, title it 'Care Case Progress.'"
He said okay.
At 9:20 the training notice popped up: ten o'clock, Meeting Room 3, Terminal-Queue Disposition Standards—Quarterly Review. Required: all certified specialists. Note: sign-in mandatory, counts toward compliance hours.
In the whole team, two people held the terminal certificate.
Meeting Room 3 sat at the end of the corridor, windowless. The projector was an old model; it needed thirty seconds to boot, and in those thirty seconds you could hear the fan turning inside. There was one chair short. The newest hire, last one in, stood—his badge lanyard still new, not yet fuzzy.
Su Man sat in the last row by the door. In front of her lay an A3 collections ledger, red pen out, being corrected. One name per line, and after each name a percentage. She crossed out three of them and rewrote smaller numbers beside them.
Liang Cheng sat down next to her.
"Shifu."
"Mm." Su Man didn't look up. "Your mother's order. I heard."
"Everybody's heard."
"It's on the intranet." She turned a page. "The employee-care pilot. With photos. They photographed your department's red banner."
Liang Cheng didn't pick that up.
Su Man had trained him for ninety days. His first month on the job he trailed her through nineteen households, and what he learned there wasn't scripts. It was how to read bills. Her exact words, seven years in his memory: don't listen to what they say, listen to their bills.
The projector lit. A title card, white on blue:
No. TRAIN-2021-04 Recorded: November 9, 2021 Runtime: 10 min 12 s Featuring: Su Man (retention specialist, employee no. L-0137)
A red line sat beneath: this material contains client facial data. Do not distribute.
The instructor came from Training, surname Jiang, early thirties, shirt cuffs buttoned to the wristbone. He put up the first slide, a screenshot of the Retention Specialist Handbook's first page, one line in bold:
Rule one: an account is a data asset, not a person.
Somebody laughed. A new hire.
Jiang Li didn't. "I read this one out every year, and every year somebody trips on it." He said, "The easiest mistake out in the field is treating the account as a person. An account won't beg you and won't thank you. It's a storage unit billed by the day. You go out to negotiate a debt. End-of-life care belongs to the hospitals."
He pressed the remote. The video started.
The image jolted twice and settled. A living room in an old workers' block: cement floor, a red-white-blue plastic tarp spread over it. A three-seat sofa; a work jacket over the armrest, one ring of grease at the cuff.
Somebody off camera said something, inaudible. Then Su Man's voice:
"Don't say anything yet. Let me watch the clock for two minutes."
Liang Cheng turned his head toward the last row. Su Man's red pen had stopped.
On screen, a man in his forties sat on the edge of the sofa, both hands braced on his knees. He opened his mouth, then closed it.
The room held nothing but the sound of paper turning.
Two minutes. A full two minutes. The video wasn't cut.
"Three days ago you made a call," Su Man said. "One minute six seconds."
"I called." The man said. "Nothing to say."
"You called. That means it isn't finished for you yet."
The man looked up at her once.
Su Man spread the folder across her knees. "Let me read you the bill. Your father, Zheng Dehai. Standard tier, 129 a month. One hundred eighteen days in arrears. Storage principal 516, late fees 1,624.66, downgrade processing fee 1,200. Total: 3,340.66."
"I don't want that number."
"Then hear it once. Below this number, the next stop is downgrade."
"Already downgraded."
"One level." Su Man said. "The sensory library—smell and taste. He can't smell anything now. Last time you visited, he said the food had no taste. You thought it was the kitchen here slacking."
The man's hands tightened on his knees.
"The second level is secondary ties." She turned the page. "The thirty-four people from his factory, five years of zero calls, all on the pending-deletion list. Your seventeen distant relatives too. When those are gone, the people he knows will be the handful of you."
"When my father was alive," the man said, "he never had it good either."
The sentence didn't attach to anything before it. Su Man stopped for one second.
"I've noted that down for you." She said.
Jiang Li hit pause. The frame froze on the man's profile.
"Stop here." Jiang Li said. "Why doesn't Ms. Su stop on this sentence?"
A new hire raised a hand: "The client's getting emotional."
"The client is changing the subject." Jiang Li said. "When a client says 'never had it good,' what he means is 'I can't afford it, and I don't want to say I can't afford it.' If you pick up 'never had it good,' you have to grieve with him, and after the grieving the deal is gone. Ms. Su doesn't pick it up. She writes it down. What the client wants is to be heard, not comforted. Write down one line for him and he feels heard. Then you go back to the money."
Second half.
Su Man's finger rested on the quote column. "Standard to Basic, 45 a month. Downgrade processing fee 88, one time. Late fees at ninety-five percent. Today, two hundred to start."
"Two hundred."
"Two hundred."
"And the three-thousand-something that's left."
"Twelve installments, 186 each." Su Man said. "Here's another number for you. Basic tier, 45 a month. That's a yuan and a half a day. What do you spend a day on cigarettes?"
The man didn't answer.
"I don't smoke." He said.
"Then you save even more." Su Man held out the signature pad.
The man stamped his thumb on it. The video ended at 10 minutes 12 seconds.
Jiang Li killed the projector. "This deal closed at two hundred. The account stayed. Fourteen months of continuous payments after, eight hundred thirty recovered in all. Client still on the network today, downgraded to Level 2."
He turned the page. The new title read Emotional Management in Terminal Disposition. One slide covered the Level-4 frozen tier, illustrated with a gray waveform, one line beneath: A DIGNIFIED END.
From the last row, Su Man said one line.
"Deleted is the only dignified end."
Not loud. Somebody in front turned around.
Jiang Li laughed. "Ms. Su is joking."
Su Man didn't answer. She bent back over her ledger; the red pen drew one stroke across the paper.
Before the meeting broke up, Jiang Li asked: "Anything to add, Ms. Su?"
Su Man raised her head.
"Don't listen to what they say. Listen to their bills."
That was all. She lowered her head and kept correcting.
The meeting let out at 10:40. Chairs shrieked across the floor tiles, a whole wall of sound. Liang Cheng didn't move. Su Man closed the ledger, folded it in half, folded it again, and pushed it into her bag.
"Noticed it?" She said.
"Noticed what."
"In the video I let one slip." Su Man stood up. "I said 'the thirty-four people from his factory.' I never counted. I guessed. Thirty-four was extrapolated from years in the trade—textile-mill weaving sheds, thirty to forty workers a shift. I guessed right."
"You could have guessed wrong."
"If I'd guessed wrong, the client wouldn't have known." She twisted open her thermos; the lid wore a ring of tea scale, the kind that never washes off. "All he remembers is that I knew how many people worked in his father's factory."
Someone down the corridor was on the phone working an installment plan, voice pressed low. Liang Cheng walked out with Su Man.
"Your mother's order." Su Man said. "What's the plan."
"Pay the first tier first."
"Eight thousand."
He didn't answer.
"Eight thousand for seventy-two hours." Su Man said. "You pay the first installment, the account leaves the queue. Next month you don't pay, it goes back in. What do you clear in a month?"
"Nine forty."
"Eight months." She said. "Eight months of saved-up money, for three days."
There were people waiting at the elevators. They didn't get in; they stood by the window instead. The eleventh-floor glass was wiped very clean. Outside lay the backs of office towers, a field of gray AC compressor units.
"You could also not pay." Su Man said.
"I'm the executor."
"The executor is the one who signs. The decision is not the executor's." Su Man said. "Stay in this trade long enough and you'll understand: the two are not the same thing."
"Then whose is it."
"The system's." She said. "The system counts by the day, and when it reaches the day, it schedules, it overwrites. All you do that day is sign. The signature pad is smaller than a delivery tablet, and the stylus drifts a little—you'll sign twice."
Liang Cheng looked out the window.
"Deleted is the only dignified end." He said. "You said that in there once already."
"I said it for the new hires."
"Doesn't sound like it."
Su Man glanced at him and let it go.
Six forty, sky not fully dark. Ma Ji on the back street, the banmian noodle shop: six tables, plastic stools, a layer of grease on the tabletops that never washed off. The price list was pasted on the wall, laminated, corners curled: small bowl 11, large bowl 13, egg 2, beef 8. The boss fished noodles behind the stove; a TV hung on the wall running the local news, volume very low, subtitles running ahead of the sound.
Su Man was there first, holding the table at the back.
"Small bowl, no cilantro." She looked up. "You."
"Large bowl, egg."
"Twenty-seven." She scanned the code.
The noodles came. She pushed the vinegar pot to his side and poured none for herself. She ate without talking, one strand at a time, slow.
This year she was carrying an audit watch, seven months and counting. The reason had never been made public; two versions circulated in the team—one, she'd run an order off the books; the other, she'd fronted money for a client. Liang Cheng had asked once. She hadn't answered.
"The Shao family order." She said. "First payment three hundred. What recovery probability did you write."
"Seventy-eight."
"Too high." Su Man said. "I'd write sixty. You're soft."
"Soft doesn't hurt collections."
"It hurts you."
Liang Cheng looked down at his noodles.
Liang Cheng ate two bites.
The phone buzzed on the table, first time.
The screen lit: an old opera number, clapper style, Henan opera, mid-verse at "three cannon booms outside the camp gate." Four seconds in, it stopped. On the screen, a push notice, small print across the top: Retention Assistant · Account Activity. Below: Zheng*hai · account response completed (00:47).
Su Man didn't look. She was picking cilantro out of her bowl, one strand at a time, laying them in a row on the napkin.
Second time, about twenty seconds later. This one was the four opening notes of the national evening news. Wang*ying · account response completed (01:12).
Third, sooner still. An old telephone bell, the metal kind, urgent—two rings, a stop, two rings, a stop. Li*gui · account response completed (00:23).
Liang Cheng recognized it. Retention Assistant is an internal app: every time an account completes a response, the linked employee gets a push. Whether to push is a toggle. The ringtone is whatever the phone is set to. She had set one for each number.
Fourth, a child's voice. Two recorded calls: first "Mama——," shrill; then "Ay——," muffled, dubbed in by an adult. The two tracks were joined crudely, one visible splice between them.
Liang Cheng looked at the screen: Su* · account response completed (00:31).
Su*.
He looked up at Su Man. She was nudging a strand of cilantro off the rim of her bowl.
Fifth, an erhu. Synthesized timbre, music-box thin, out of tune—badly out. Gao*lan · account response completed (00:58).
Sixth, a keyboard. "The East Is Red," first six notes. Zhang*tian · account response completed (00:16).
Liang Cheng counted in his head. Seven. He hadn't miscounted—he was hearing these seven ringtones for the first time tonight, but he knew at once it was seven, not five, not six. People in this trade can hear the difference.
Su Man kept eating. When the cilantro was done she started on the soup, spoon against the bowl's rim, one tap, another.
Seventh.
Radio Calisthenics Set Eight, "The Times Are Calling," the playground-loudspeaker version, with the echo. It got to ten seconds.
Chen*zhi · account response completed (02:04).
When it finished, the table shivered; the phone turned a small half circle on the tabletop and stopped. The screen stayed lit, the last notice parked on 02:04.
On the seventh ring she looked two seconds longer. Liang Cheng saw it. Two seconds, that was all.
Su Man set down the bowl. She pulled a napkin and wiped the edge of the phone—there was a small puddle of vinegar on the table, and the phone had pressed into it a little. Wiped, she turned the phone over, screen down, and laid it on the table.
"Seven." Liang Cheng said.
"Mm."
"You don't answer."
"Answer what."
"Answer and you can talk."
"Talk about what." She picked up her chopsticks. "Have you eaten, are you dressed warm enough, is the money enough. And when you're done asking, you hang up."
Her noodles had gone clumped. A layer of oil floated on the soup, and as it cooled the oil set into patches. She lifted the noodles, put them back.
Most of Liang Cheng's bowl was still full. His chopsticks didn't move.
Su Man pushed the phone a little farther in, over by the vinegar pot, screen still down.
"Eat your noodles." She said.