2025年5月4日 晚觉May 4, 2025 · Night

重返父亲单位的午后，目睹一场荒诞的坠楼爆炸被瞬间抹去，让我惊觉秩序维护者实则是高效清扫不安真实的"现实保洁员"。

中午时分，吃完午饭，休息一会后，父亲如我小时的往常一般，将我带至他的单位。上班时间，我在他那间办公室里独自伏案，和小时候一样，而他则投身于一场或长或短的会议，留下无需等待的嘱托。

当指针划向下班的界限，座机响了，父亲的电话传来，宣告他将直接返家，而我则被指引着独自踏上归途。轻轻合上办公室的门，我步入单位的廊道，周遭是那些新近加入的年轻面孔，有很多漂亮的女生，我带着某种初入世事的明媚。走到门口，空气中弥漫着雨后特有的清新，令人诧异的是，我竟对此前的落雨毫无察觉。四下里寻觅雨的痕迹，目光不经意间，捕捉到一个身影，定格在约莫四层楼高的建筑边缘。下方，警员们已然聚集，构成一片肃穆的蓝色海洋。

好奇心驱使我上前，试图 decipher 那被距离稀释的言语。然而，就在我走向那片未知场域的半途中，那身影跃下。随之而来的，不是预想中的沉寂或悲鸣，而是嘈杂与笑声。跃下之人并未因此终结，反倒以一种近乎荒诞的方式幸存下来，甚至伴随着某种胜利的狂笑。一种不安的预感瞬间攫住了我——是否？这并非单纯的坠落，而是一场精心设计的序幕？炸药，这个念头如闪电般划过脑海，意图在人群聚集围观之际引爆？

我的猜测尚未完全成型，巨响已然炸裂。一声震彻天地的轰鸣，紧随其后是另一声微弱的回响。奇异的是，围观的人群毫发无损，他们面带微笑，与那爆炸的中心保持着一种意味深长的距离。仿佛，这是一场早已预知结局的表演，而他们是心照不宣的观众。他的算计，似乎在此刻落空？

一种莫名的冲动驱使我奔向楼上，俯瞰那个混乱的舞台。从高处望去，刚才那个鲜活的身影已然四分五裂，散落在地面上。警员们正准备着最后的清理工作，将这些存在的残余物从现实的画布上抹去。旁观者的低语传来，这个人并非此单位职工，一个无源之水，不知从何而来，又在此刻归于虚无。

我走下楼梯，在半途再次投向地面。只有一分多钟，原先触目惊心的景象已然消失无踪，警察打扫的地面光洁如初，仿佛一切都未曾发生过。走向单位大门，内心深处涌起一种复杂的感慨，关于存在的脆弱，关于事件的瞬逝。那一刻，我竟觉得，或许警员们最本质的角色，并非是秩序的维护者，而是，最高效的，现实的保洁员。他们清扫的，不仅仅是物理的残骸，更是那些可能扰乱日常感知的、不安的真实。

这时，单位门口的玉兰树还在滴水，带着雨水特有的消毒水气味。雨珠滴落在地上，如破碎的镜面里折射出万千个摇晃的天空。

On an afternoon back at my father's workplace, I witnessed an absurd fall-and-explosion erased in an instant, making me realize the guardians of order are actually the most efficient "reality janitors," sweeping away uncomfortable truths.

Around noon, after lunch and a short rest, my father took me to his workplace, just as he had when I was a child. During office hours, I sat alone at his desk, just like the old days, while he threw himself into some meeting of uncertain length, leaving behind an instruction that required no waiting.

As the clock approached quitting time, the desk phone rang. My father's voice announced he would head straight home, and I was to make my own way back. I gently closed the office door and stepped into the corridor, surrounded by young, newly hired faces—many of them pretty girls—and I carried a certain bright-eyed freshness of someone just entering the world. At the entrance, the air was filled with a distinctive post-rain freshness. Surprisingly, I had been completely unaware it had rained. Searching for traces of rain, my gaze inadvertently caught a figure, frozen on the edge of a building roughly four stories high. Below, officers had already gathered, forming a solemn blue sea.

Curiosity drove me forward as I tried to decipher the words diluted by distance. Yet halfway toward that unknown scene, the figure leaped. What followed was not the expected silence or wailing, but noise and laughter. The jumper had not perished; instead, he survived in an almost absurd fashion, even accompanied by a kind of triumphant cackle. A sense of unease seized me instantly—could it be? This was no simple fall, but a carefully designed prelude? Explosives—the thought flashed through my mind like lightning—intended to detonate once the crowd had gathered to watch?

My guess had not yet fully formed when a tremendous blast tore through the air. An earth-shaking boom, followed by a fainter echo. Strangely, the onlookers were completely unharmed. They stood smiling, maintaining a meaningfully deliberate distance from the epicenter. As if this were a performance whose ending they had long foreseen, and they were its knowing audience. His calculation, it seemed, had failed?

An inexplicable impulse drove me upstairs to survey the chaotic stage from above. From that height, the once-living figure had been torn apart, scattered across the ground. Officers were preparing for the final cleanup, erasing these remnants of existence from reality's canvas. Whispers among the bystanders revealed that this person was not an employee of the workplace—a rootless stranger, arriving from nowhere and, in this moment, returning to nothing.

I went back downstairs, glancing at the ground once more from the halfway landing. In barely a minute, the horrifying scene had vanished entirely; the police had cleaned the ground to a spotless finish, as though nothing had ever happened. Walking toward the main gate, a complex emotion welled up from deep within—about the fragility of existence, the fleetingness of events. In that moment, I felt that perhaps the most essential role of the officers was not as guardians of order, but as the most efficient janitors of reality. What they swept away was not merely physical wreckage, but those uncomfortable truths capable of disturbing everyday perception.

Just then, the magnolia tree by the entrance was still dripping, carrying the antiseptic smell peculiar to rainwater. Droplets fell to the ground like shattered mirrors refracting a thousand trembling skies.