SEVEN DAYS OF LISTENING Written by 赤睦 1. The town and the river The town is called Wuzhen. It is not named for real fog, but for the fine, vapour-like light that rises from the river at its centre. Local people say old mineral dust on the riverbed is stirred by the current and scatters when sunlight reaches it. Visitors often stand looking at the water, convinced they have seen something they cannot quite describe. Wuzhen is small enough to cross on foot in forty minutes. It has a library, a theatre, one record shop, two cafés, a produce market, an abandoned clock tower and a small restaurant called Open Late. One hundred residents live here. Most are permanent; a few, like A and B, are applicants. The residency process is an old local rule. Applicants must live in town for seven days, complete a record of daily life and receive recognition from at least twelve permanent residents. Recognition is neither a vote nor a recommendation. It means only: “I know this person.” The rule is meant to ensure that newcomers genuinely enter the life of the town. A and B arrive at almost the same time. They stay on different streets and do not know one another. Yet both know the same person: someone who left Wuzhen seven days earlier, leaving a letter, a cassette and an unfinished story. 2. Chen Yuan Chen Yuan is around thirty. He lived in Wuzhen for more than two years, visited the record shop regularly, sometimes served tables at Open Late and often sat beside the river. Residents remember him differently. Some say he was excessively quiet; others say he could talk for hours. Some believe he was hiding from someone. Others think he was looking for something. When his landlord cleared the room, the walls were covered with photographs of Wuzhen: streets, the river, windows and bus stops in the rain. On the desk was an unsent letter with no named recipient. It began, “If you are reading this—” Chen Yuan wrote that he had been trying to “return the sounds.” Recordings had lain beneath the river for years. Nobody knew who put them there or why. After recording for two years, he finally captured one complete, intelligible passage. He had to take it away and confirm something. If he did not return within seven days, the person reading the letter should continue. He mentioned two women without naming them: one who cooked very well, and one who always carried a notebook. Nobody else connected those descriptions to A and B. They alone knew that both had met Chen Yuan, in different cities and at different times. A knew him through a chance meeting two years earlier. B knew him through an older email exchange. Both connections had ended. Only after reaching Wuzhen did they learn that he had lived there and had just left. Their residency applications were personal decisions, but his name had influenced the choice of town. 3. The seven-day main story DAY 1 · ARRIVAL A enters town with a suitcase. She had only met Chen Yuan twice, for less than four hours in total, but before leaving he sent her one message: “I am somewhere called Wuzhen. If you ever pass through, look at the river in the centre of town.” B arrives on the night bus. An old printout is tucked inside her notebook: an address Chen Yuan sent years ago. She has never visited, but she has kept it ever since. Residency staff give each woman a document checklist and a residents’ map. The requirement for twelve recognitions appears for the first time. A glances at it and puts it away. B copies the deadline onto the first page of her notebook. DAY 2 · FIRST CONTACT A wanders without a plan and reaches the record shop beside the river. The owner tells her that a young man who used to visit has just left, but asked for something to be given to anyone looking for him. It is an unlabelled cassette. B first confirms the document counter at the town office, then checks prices at the market. When she passes the record shop, the owner gives her another cassette. The tapes are different. A hears Chen Yuan’s recording of the riverbed: water, rolling stones and a vibration almost like a human voice. B hears Chen Yuan speaking: “If you are listening, you have reached Wuzhen. Find one recording within seven days. I do not have it. Someone in town does. If you find it, you will probably understand why I left.” DAY 3 · THE FIRST LAYER Through work at Open Late, A meets the owner. Chen Yuan had eaten there every day during his final week and once said, after drinking too much, “There is something under the river. It is not mineral dust. Someone put it there years ago.” Walking by the river, A meets Xia Touming, who asks whether she hears anything when she looks at the water. When A says no, Xia replies, “Perhaps it is not time for you to hear it yet.” B finds Chen Yuan’s former room. The landlord gives her the photographs and the letter. After more than an hour sorting the photographs by location, B notices that three places recur: the central river, the top of the clock tower and old shelving in the record shop basement. She marks all three in her notebook. DAY 4 · THE CENTRAL DISCOVERY A follows a chain of relationships. The restaurant owner introduces her to the clock-tower keeper, who takes her upstairs. An old recorder holds half a tape containing a full day of Wuzhen: birds before dawn, the morning market, light on the river at noon, dogs at dusk and insects after midnight. At the end, Chen Yuan says, “This is the third year. I finally know who left the sounds.” B follows a plan. She confirms when the record-shop basement is open and visits during its quietest hour. On an old shelf she finds a handmade ledger documenting riverbed recordings found over nearly twenty years. An anonymous person began placing recording devices in the river once a year. Chen Yuan’s final note says the person has died, leaving one explanation: “These sounds are for someone who may pass this place in the future.” He also writes that one recording contains a conversation between two people who are now in town, and that he has gone to find them and play it in person. DAY 5 · CONVERGENCE WITHOUT MEETING At the record shop, A plays the half tape from the clock tower. Beyond Chen Yuan’s voice is a faint conversation between a young woman and an older one about leaving and staying. One voice sounds like A’s mother. B finds a transcript of the same recording. It describes a family decision made twenty years earlier: to leave one place for another and never return. One speaker appears connected to a relative B remembers only vaguely. That afternoon, both women go to the river. One stands on the south bank and one on the north. If either looked up, she might see the other. Neither does. DAY 6 · CHOICE AND REVELATION Both women are close to completing their twelve recognitions. Chen Yuan’s evidence now points to one fact: the “two people” named in the river recording are A and B. Chen Yuan encountered the conversation by chance two years earlier. He did not know who the women were, then traced enough information to learn that they were connected to Wuzhen’s residency process. He waited until he knew they would really come, left the material and departed first. His final line reads: “I did not leave because I did not want to meet you. I left because the recording contains this sentence: ‘If someone plays this for us one day, we may not be ready.’ I wanted you to search for it yourselves. Once you have, you can decide whether to listen.” That night, A sits in the record-shop listening room before the cassette. B sits at her lodging before a photograph of the ledger page. Either may listen or refuse. Listening opens the complete twenty-minute recording: a conversation between A’s mother and another female relative twenty years earlier about migration, regret and the lives that followed. Refusing leaves the recording sealed, and both women depart with only the fragments they found. DAY 7 · RESIDENCY The final day requires submission, recognition interviews and a choice to accept residency or withdraw. If either woman heard the recording, an elderly interviewer with a connection to the anonymous recorder asks: “What you heard—does it belong to you, or to someone else?” There is no correct answer, and it does not decide residency. The question simply remains. That afternoon, light scatters across the river as usual. A and B may enter the same café at different times, pass on the same street, or see one another without knowing who the other is. The river continues. The cassette and ledger return to their places. A new playthrough from the other perspective reveals what was missed, misread or assumed to be understood. 4. A and B A comes because Chen Yuan wrote, “if you ever pass through.” She tends to act first and search for the reason later. She has not researched Wuzhen or planned how to find him. Her route resembles salvage: she walks, listens, meets people and gradually assembles what she finds. B comes because the address has remained in her notebook for years. She already knew Wuzhen and knew Chen Yuan had lived there, but had never decided to visit. The residency application gives her a reason. Her route resembles editing: she classifies fragments, marks time and checks logic before assembling them. Both finally construct the same story. The different ways they reach it reveal how the same experience can carry different weight depending on where a person enters it. 5. Connection to systems Time is a hard seven-day limit. A’s spontaneity can send her to a clue at the wrong hour; B avoids some wasted journeys, but planning itself costs time. When Day 7 begins, unfinished work remains unfinished. Money changes routes. A can buy faster transport. B relies more on planning and relationships, while her notebook protects each step from being wasted. Both can reach the ending, but the cost and texture differ. The twelve recognitions advance the mystery. People A meets may own locations Chen Yuan photographed. People B knows may have witnessed events named in the ledger. Becoming known by twelve residents is itself a method of investigation. Creative work remains in Wuzhen. Food A contributes, collage poetry B makes and music arranged at the record shop can appear in later playthroughs. The second route therefore encounters traces left by the first.