I am the superintendent of this building. I have always been the superintendent. I remember the day I started, though the day keeps changing. Sometimes it was ten years ago. Sometimes it was twenty. Sometimes it was yesterday.

The building has thirty floors. I know every pipe, every valve, every meter. I know which floor's ventilation system needs extra attention on Tuesdays. I know which floor's water pressure drops in the afternoon. I know the sound each floor's elevator makes when it's about to break.

I also know that someone else owns this building.

I don't know who. I've seen him once, or I think I've seen him. A man in a dark suit, standing at the top of the stairwell on the thirtieth floor, looking down at me. He didn't speak. He just looked. His face was ordinary. That was the most disturbing thing about it.

I manage the resource distribution system. Each floor has a meter. Each tenant pays for their air, their water, their electricity. If they don't pay, I shut it off. I don't like this part. I don't like any part of it, but I do it because it's my job and I don't remember applying for it and I don't remember doing anything else in my life.

The tenants call me Mr. Mercer. Sometimes they call me sir. Sometimes, when they're angry, they call me nothing and just stare. I've learned to recognize the stare. It's the look of someone who has calculated the distance between themselves and freedom and found it wanting.

I have been finding things lately. Notes in my pocket that I don't remember writing. Words on the pad by my desk that look like my handwriting but say things I don't remember saying.

The latest note read: Floor 15, Unit 15C. Shut off the air. Today.

I don't live on the thirtieth floor. I live in the basement, in a room that is technically part of the building but functionally separate, like a seed that fell into a crack and decided to grow in the dark. My room has a bed, a desk, a small window that looks at a brick wall, and a mirror.

I have been avoiding the mirror.

It's not that I'm afraid of it. It's that sometimes, when I look into it, the man looking back at me seems to be looking at something behind me. Something I can't see. When I turn around, there's nothing. When I look back at the mirror, the man in the mirror is looking straight ahead again, like nothing happened.

But something happened. I can feel it. A gap. A space between one moment and the next where something took place that I didn't experience but somehow participated in.

Like the note. I don't remember writing it. But my handwriting doesn't lie. The note is in my handwriting. The words are mine. The decision is mine.

I went to Floor 15. I stood in front of Unit 15C. I put my hand on the ventilation switch. I hesitated.

A woman opened the door. She was maybe forty, with tired eyes and a child clinging to her leg.

"Mr. Mercer?" she said. "Is something wrong?"

"No," I said. "Just checking the meter."

I looked at the meter. The tenant was behind on payment. By a lot. If I shut off the air, the child would have maybe two hours of breathable air left before the system started pulling from reserves that didn't exist.

I looked at the woman. She was looking at me with the stare. The calculated distance. The found wanting.

"I'll... I'll extend the deadline," I said. "A few days."

She nodded. She didn't thank me. She didn't need to. The stare said everything.

I went back to the basement. I sat at my desk. I picked up the pen. I wrote on a fresh piece of paper: Who are you?

The handwriting that came back was mine. The words were not: You know.

I tore up the paper. I threw it in the trash. I sat in the dark and listened to the building breathe.

It was breathing. I could feel it. Not metaphorically. Literally. The ventilation system was humming, the pipes were clicking, the elevators were moving up and down like lungs expanding and contracting. The building was alive, and I was its nervous system, and someone else was its brain.

Or I was.

The thought came to me like a key turning in a lock I didn't know existed.

I am the superintendent. I manage the resource distribution. I shut off the air. I extend the deadlines. I am the one who decides who breathes and who doesn't.

But I'm not the owner. The owner lives on the thirtieth floor. The owner is the man in the dark suit.

Or am I?

I went to the thirtieth floor. The stairwell door was unlocked. It was always unlocked. I had never gone up here before, not really. I had always stopped at the twenty-ninth floor, which was where the legal boundary ended and the owner's private space began.

The thirtieth floor was empty. No furniture. No decorations. Just a long hallway with doors on either side, all of them closed, and a mirror at the end.

I walked down the hallway. The mirror grew larger with each step. When I reached it, it filled my entire field of vision.

I looked at myself.

The man in the mirror looked back.

I raised my hand. The man in the mirror raised his hand.

But I'm not sure who moved first.

I sat on the floor of the thirtieth floor and I closed my eyes and I tried to remember. I tried to remember the day I started. I tried to remember before the building. I tried to remember anything that wasn't this building and this job and this mirror.

I remembered nothing.

Or I remembered everything.

When I opened my eyes, the man in the mirror was still looking at me. He looked tired. He looked like a man who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time. He looked like me.

I went back to the basement. I sat at my desk. I picked up the pen. I wrote on a fresh piece of paper: Who owns this building?

The handwriting that came back was mine. The words were not: We do.

I put the pen down. I listened to the building breathe. I breathed with it.

I don't know if I am the superintendent or the owner or both or neither. I don't know if the man in the dark suit is real or a part of me that I've separated and projected onto an imaginary figure so I can pretend I'm not in control of everything.

I don't know if the tenants in the building below are breathing because I allow them to or because I'm allowing myself to breathe.

I don't know.

But I know this: tomorrow, I will go to Floor 15, Unit 15C. I will check the meter. I will look at the woman and the child. I will decide whether to shut off the air or extend the deadline.

And I will not know whether I am being kind or cruel, or whether kindness and cruelty are the same thing when you're the only one who gets to choose.

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OTMES v2 Objective Code: TI=68.90 (T2 幻灭级), M1=9.0, M3=6.0, M4=6.0, M6=8.0, M7=7.0, M8=5.0, N1=0.35, N2=0.65, K1=0.40, K2=0.60, V=0.90, I=1.0, C=0.50, S=0.70, R=0.0, theta=270°, T10-08+T10-10, Style: Psychological Thriller, Core tension: 自我分裂 vs 制度投射