I glanced over instinctively. It was Old Zhou's phone, screen lit up, stuck on a WeChat chat. The contact was labeled "Fang Jushi."
Fang Jushi.
Aunt Fang.
The chat history wasn't long. I scrolled up.
Fang Jushi: Did you burn the shoes?
Old Zhou: Yes.
Fang Jushi: What about the ashes?
Old Zhou: Buried them.
Fang Jushi: Where?
Old Zhou: Under the locust tree at the alley entrance.
Fang Jushi: You shouldn't have buried them there. Locust trees are yin trees. Burying under one is like leaving them in place. Dig them up and burn them again in the sunlight.
The next message came a day later.
Old Zhou: Fang Jushi, I'm not feeling well.
Fang Jushi: What's wrong?
Old Zhou: I keep hearing someone standing at my door these past two days. I'm afraid to open it at night.
Fang Jushi: It's come for you. You burned its shoes, and now it holds a grudge.
Old Zhou: What should I do now?
Fang Jushi: Don't open the door. Day or night, no matter who knocks, don't open it. I'll come tomorrow.
The last message was sent at 11:43 last night.
Fang Jushi: I'll come tomorrow.
Today was "tomorrow." But Aunt Fang hadn't arrived yet.
I exited the chat and saw the timestamp on Old Zhou's message to me—11:58 PM on Wednesday, just fifteen minutes after Fang Jushi said "I'll come tomorrow."
"Don't open the door."
He must have heard something then. Something was at the door.
I put down the phone and looked around the room. The curtains were drawn, the light dim. Everything was shrouded in a layer of gray shadow. That pair of cloth shoes sat quietly on the floor, toes pointing toward the door, as if waiting for someone to put them on.
A sudden chill ran from my feet to the top of my head.
The shoes had been pointing toward the door before I walked in.
And now I stood in the doorway. Between the shoes and the door.
I looked down at my feet.
I was wearing ordinary gray sneakers, the tread patterns still clear. But standing there, facing those cloth shoes, I felt like I was barefoot. The soles were icy cold, the chill seeping through from the arch of my foot upward.
I turned and walked out of the room.
Downstairs, the sunlight hit me, and I realized I was shaking all over.
The landlord and community workers were still standing outside, asking what was inside. I shook my head, said I didn't know, that Old Zhou wasn't there. Then I pulled out my phone and called my uncle.
The phone rang for a long time before he picked up. His voice sounded surprised—we didn't talk often.
"Dongzi? What's wrong?"
"Uncle, I need to ask you something." I tried to keep my voice steady. "You told me before—when the soles are worn thin but the uppers are new, you can't fix them. Tell me again why."
There was silence on the line.
"Why are you asking this all of a sudden?"
"Just tell me."
My uncle sighed—a long, heavy sigh.
"Your grandfather was a shoemaker too," he said. "Had a stall at the old street entrance in town. When I was young, I learned the trade from him. Once, a woman in black brought shoes like that to be fixed—worn soles, new uppers. Grandfather took one look and said, 'Leave, I can't fix these.' The woman didn't say anything, just set the shoes down and left."
"What happened next?"
"Grandfather came down with a high fever that very night. Burned for three days and nights. When he woke up, he said one thing to me."
"What did he say?"
"'The soles wear thin from walking the underworld's roads, the uppers stay new for lives unfulfilled. Don't touch them—once touched, never let go.' " My uncle's voice dropped to a whisper. "'When you fix someone's shoes, you're giving up your own path. You walk their road, they walk yours.'"
"What happened then? How did Grandfather recover?"
"Grandfather had a senior apprentice brother who did rituals—knew a lot about this stuff. He came and performed a ceremony, sent the thing away. But Grandfather's health never recovered after that. He passed away within two years."
My palm was sweating through the phone.
"Uncle, what happens if someone burns those shoes?"
Silence again.
"Dongzi, tell me the truth. What have you gotten yourself into?"
I told him the whole story—from the man in black coming to fix shoes, to Old Zhou's warnings, to Aunt Fang's appearance, to the shoes being burned, to Old Zhou's disappearance.
After I finished, my uncle was quiet for a long time.
"Where are you now?"
"At Liuyin Alley entrance."
"You listen to me. Don't go home. Find a crowded place and stay there. I'll have my senior's son contact you—he's in your city, knows about these things."
"Uncle, what's going to happen?"
"Burning its shoes cuts off its path. It can't leave, can't go back—it's trapped in between." My uncle said. "That Uncle Zhou of yours took the hit for you, but now it has no shoes. It'll go after whoever's closest to it."
"What do you mean by 'closest'?"
"The shoes you fixed. You didn't fix the yin pair, so it couldn't get to you. But your Uncle Zhou burned its shoes, and now it holds a grudge against two people—the one who burned them and the one who fixed them. Your Uncle Zhou is definitely gone. Next is you."
After hanging up, I stood under the locust tree at the alley entrance. The sun blazed down brightly, but I felt cold to the bone.
I glanced back at the gnarled locust tree. Its trunk was rough, branches lush. Around its roots, the ground showed signs of being dug up—the spot where Old Zhou had buried the shoe ashes.
The earth was loose, covered by a stone. Beside the stone was a shallow footprint.
Not a human footprint.
The shape was that of a cloth shoe sole. Thousand-layered, the fine stitching clearly pressed into the soil—each stitch visible.
But the most important thing: this footprint was fresh. Dewdrops still clung to the grass nearby, while the grass crushed by the footprint was broken, the cut edge a vivid green.
It had been here.
Or rather, it had never left.
I stood there, staring at that footprint for a long time. Sunlight flooded Liuyin Alley—steam rose from the steamed bun shop, the fruit stall displayed bright colors, residents came and went buying vegetables. Everything was ordinary, familiar, the scene I knew like the back of my hand.
But standing in the middle of it all, I felt that something was fundamentally wrong.
That feeling came back—the one where you walk down a familiar street and suddenly realize every detail looks exactly like yesterday, but you just know something's off. Can't pinpoint it, but it's definitely wrong.
Before, you'd tell yourself you didn't sleep well.
Now you know that feeling is real.
That afternoon, my uncle's senior's son contacted me. His surname was He—he asked me to call him Old He. In his forties, dressed casually, spoke casually, looked like a desk worker at a state-owned enterprise. When he arrived at Liuyin Alley, he walked around the locust tree twice, squatted down to examine the footprint by the roots, and his expression changed.
"Tricky," he said.
"Why tricky?"
"Locust trees belong to yin—they're ghost trees." Old He stood up, brushing dirt off his hands. "You buried the shoe ashes under a locust tree, which is like giving it a home. Let's go—show me your Uncle Zhou's place."
We went back to Old Zhou's rented room. The door was still slightly ajar, the room the same as when I'd left that morning—curtains drawn, things scattered everywhere, the black cloth shoes still in the center of the living room. But Old He took one look and said something was wrong.
"Someone's been here."
"I was here this morning."
"Not you—someone came after you." Old He pointed at the shoes. "Their position changed."
I looked closer. The shoes had turned 180 degrees—the toes now pointed away from the door.
"What does this mean?" I asked.
Old He didn't answer directly. He pulled a small cloth bag from his pack, pinched some white powder, and sprinkled it on the shoe prints by the door. The powder turned black where it touched the prints, as if burned.
"This is finding a replacement," Old He said calmly, as if discussing everyday matters. "It left the shoes at the door with toes pointing out—wanting someone to put them on and walk out. Whoever puts them on becomes its replacement. Now the heels point out, which means it already found someone. And succeeded."
"Succeeded? What does that mean?"
"Someone put these shoes on and left." Old He looked into my eyes. "Your Uncle Zhou may no longer exist."
My head buzzed.
"What do you mean he doesn't exist? He—"
"Not dead," Old He said. "Replaced. He's walking that thing's path now, and that thing is walking his. He might be somewhere, but he's not the Old Zhou you knew."
It took me several seconds to understand. Then my legs gave out, and I slumped against the wall.
That night, on Old He's advice, I didn't go back to my rented room. Instead, I stayed at a friend's empty apartment in a new development in the north. Few people lived there yet, and at night it was so quiet I could hear the elevator running in the building next door.
I lay on the unfamiliar bed, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, my mind racing with thoughts of Old Zhou.
He'd burned the shoes for me. If not for him, I'd be the one missing now. But only he and I knew about burning the shoes. Wait—Aunt Fang knew too.
I sat up suddenly.
Aunt Fang. The woman who'd come to me for shoe repairs. She knew everything—she'd brought that old pair of shoes, asked me to fix them so she could burn them for her son. Then Old Zhou burned the yin pair for her, and then Old Zhou disappeared.
There was definitely something I wasn't seeing.
I called Old He and told him everything about Aunt Fang in detail. He was silent for a moment on the line.
"That Aunt Fang of yours—she might not have been here to help you," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Where did she go before finding you? Who did she ask? Who told her she could find you? You don't know any of these things." Old He said. "Her son died three years ago. Why come back looking for shoes now, not earlier? Why did it take her three years to remember to burn them?"
I couldn't answer any of these questions.
"I'll investigate tomorrow," Old He said. "Don't think too much—just get some sleep."
I hung up, but I couldn't sleep at all.
I opened my phone, checked the local map, searched for "Zhou Mingsheng." Too many people with that name online—I flipped through pages and found nothing relevant. I tried searching "Zhou Mingsheng car accident"—still nothing.
I tried a different angle: "Liuyin Alley car accident."
And there was one.
An old article from a local public account about Liuyin Alley's history. It mentioned an incident from the past.
"At the end of the 1990s, a serious car accident occurred on the national highway behind Liuyin Alley. A small truck crashed into the roadside drainage ditch, killing the driver instantly. The deceased was said to be a young man surnamed Zhou, who lived near Liuyin Alley. The cause of the accident remains unknown—there were no surveillance cameras at the scene, and it became a local unsolved mystery."
End of the 1990s. Almost thirty years ago.
Aunt Fang said her son Zhou Mingsheng died three years ago, and would be thirty-two if alive.
If he died three years ago at age thirty-two, he would have been twenty-nine when he died.
But the article said "end of the 1990s"—almost thirty years ago. The deceased was a "young man."
The timelines didn't match.
A strange thought crossed my mind. What if Aunt Fang wasn't telling the truth? What if Zhou Mingsheng's death wasn't that simple?
I continued scrolling through the article's comments. At the very bottom, I found a comment from three years ago.
The account's avatar was a photo of a middle-aged woman, username "Ping'an Shi Fu" (Peace is Blessing).
"The car accident the author mentions—the deceased was my nephew. His name is Li Ming, not Zhou. He was twenty-one at the time, working as an apprentice at the alley's auto repair shop. That night, he delivered a repaired car to a customer and never came back. I hope the author can correct this."
Li Ming. Auto repair apprentice. Delivered a car, never returned.
Nephew.
I stared at the phone screen, my fingers trembling.
Aunt Fang said her surname was Fang. The man in the photo she brought was Zhou Mingsheng, her son.
But "Ping'an Shi Fu" said the deceased was Li Ming, her nephew.
Which story was true?
I checked "Ping'an Shi Fu"'s profile. She'd posted quite a bit—mostly inspirational articles and square dance videos. But one photo caught my eye: a WeChat post from three years ago on Qingming Festival, showing a pair of cloth shoes.
"The shoes Mingzi wore the year he left—kept them all this time. Found them while cleaning today. The uppers are still new, but the soles are worn to pieces. Mom says it's from walking underground. Time to burn them."
The cloth shoes in the photo were identical to the pair in my wooden box. Black uppers, thousand-layered soles, worn nearly transparent.
Someone in the comments asked: "Were these the shoes Mingzi was wearing when the accident happened?"
She replied: "No, these were new ones he'd bought, never worn. They stayed at home after he passed."
My back went cold.
If "Ping'an Shi Fu" was telling the truth, then Aunt Fang wasn't Zhou Mingsheng's mother. Who was she? Why was she carrying a photo of someone named Li Ming and claiming he was her son? Whose were those old shoes?
I sent "Ping'an Shi Fu" a private message.
"Hello, I'm Chen Dong, the shoe repairman at Liuyin Alley entrance. I've seen the cloth shoes in your photo. If it's convenient, could you tell me more about them? This is very important to me."
After sending the message, I stared at the screen, waiting. No reply.
It was very late. A sudden wind picked up outside, making the window frame rattle slightly. I rolled over and put the phone on the nightstand.
I don't know how much time passed. I was drifting off to sleep when the phone vibrated.
I grabbed it—"Ping'an Shi Fu" had replied.
"You're the shoe repairman at Liuyin Alley?"
"Yes."
The typing indicator appeared for a long time, then a message came through.
"Impossible. I heard that old shoe repairman is already dead."
I thought I'd misread. I rubbed my eyes and looked again.
Old shoe repairman.
I wasn't old. I was in my early thirties.
But there had been an old shoe repairman at Liuyin Alley before—my uncle told me our family's shoemaking craft had been passed down for generations. My grandfather was the first to set up stall at Liuyin Alley, then my uncle, then me.
The "old shoe repairman" "Ping'an Shi Fu" was talking about was my grandfather.
And the shoes she mentioned—they'd appeared at my grandfather's stall in the late 1990s.
Thirty years.
I put down the phone, my heart racing. In the darkness, I noticed details I'd missed before—the photo Aunt Fang had brought, the young man in it wearing a white shirt from the 90s.
A 90s white shirt—wasn't that thirty years ago?
If Zhou Mingsheng had died thirty years ago, then he hadn't come to me to fix shoes. He'd come for my grandfather. My grandfather had said "I can't fix them," and he'd left. Thirty years later, he came again and found me—either that, or he couldn't tell the difference between me and my grandfather. The shoemaker's stall hadn't changed, the locust tree hadn't changed, the alley hadn't changed. Only the person sitting there.
He'd been looking all this time. Thirty years, those shoes wearing thin again and again.
But Aunt Fang said her son died in a car accident three years ago. The white shirt in the photo didn't match the timeline from the public account article.
Either Aunt Fang was lying, or "Ping'an Shi Fu" was.
But "Ping'an Shi Fu"'s comment from three years ago was clear: the deceased was Li Ming, her nephew. And she'd posted that photo of the cloth shoes.
I'd zoomed in on that photo countless times.
The wear pattern on the soles, the stitching arrangement, the shine of the uppers—identical to the pair the man in black had placed on my wooden box, and identical to the pair that appeared in Old Zhou's rented room.
I suddenly realized something.
That pair of shoes had never been ordinary. It was a yin shoe. Yin shoes didn't follow the logic of the living world. They could appear in different people's hands at different times simultaneously. Thirty years ago and now—for the living, that was a lifetime apart. For it, it might have been no more than a turn of the head.
This meant the thing I was facing had existed for at least thirty years.
And my grandfather, my uncle, Old Zhou, Aunt Fang, "Ping'an Shi Fu"—everyone was connected to this, everyone knew a piece of the truth, but no one had told me the whole story.
Early the next morning, Old He arrived.
I told him everything I'd discovered, showing him the screenshots of my conversation with "Ping'an Shi Fu." Old He studied everything carefully, his expression grim.
"Your grandfather sent the shoes back, but that thing didn't leave. It left the shoes at his stall, and your grandfather's junior apprentice—my father—helped deal with them. But the method wasn't thorough enough. That thing has been in the alley ever since." Old He said. "It didn't go after your grandfather because someone was protecting him. After your grandfather passed, your uncle took over the stall, and it started targeting him."
"My uncle never told me about this."
"He wouldn't. He was afraid of scaring you." Old He paused. "But your uncle told me something. He said during the years he repaired shoes at Liuyin Alley, strange things happened every autumn. One year he almost got replaced—my father handled it. Then he left, went back to the county town to repair shoes. No one took over the Liuyin Alley stall."
"Then I came."
"Yes." Old He looked at me. "Your uncle never expected you to come to the provincial capital, let alone set up stall at Liuyin Alley. He'd been wanting to tell you, but didn't know how. When you called him this time, he told me everything."
"Who exactly is Aunt Fang?"
Old He was silent for a moment.
"I'm not sure. But my guess—she might be the 'replacement.'"
"What do you mean?"
"Thirty years ago, or even earlier, someone put on those shoes and got replaced. That person might have been Aunt Fang, or a relative of hers. She came to you to fix that old pair of shoes, saying it was for her son—but it might not have been for her son at all. It was for herself."
"Why would she do that?"
"Replaced people want to come back," Old He said. "She no longer has her own path—she's walking someone else's. She wants to switch back."
I suddenly remembered something Old Zhou had said, before Aunt Fang came. He'd warned that I shouldn't fix those shoes. Fixing them would open the door for it.
But after Aunt Fang came, I fixed another pair—the old shoes she'd brought.
That old pair.
The shoes I'd fixed—Aunt Fang said she'd burn them for her son.
But what if she hadn't burned them? What if she'd kept them and worn them herself? What if those shoes were the real "medium," and I'd fixed them with my own hands?
I looked at my hands. These hands had repaired countless shoes, attached countless soles, driven countless nails. But this time—I might have fixed the one pair I should never have touched.
"I fixed her shoes," I said, my voice low.
Old He looked up at me.
"The old pair Aunt Fang brought. I fixed them. She said she'd burn them for her son—but what if she didn't?"
Old He's expression changed.
"When was this?"
"About ten days ago."
Old He stood up and paced the room quickly, as if measuring its dimensions.
"Ten days ago." He stopped. "After you fixed those shoes, Old Zhou burned the yin pair for you. Then Old Zhou disappeared. If that fixed pair wasn't burned, but was worn instead..."
"What would happen?"
"It means the exchange was completed the moment you fixed the shoes." Old He looked into my eyes, his voice calm but each word hitting me like a nail. "You didn't fix the shoes. You opened the road."
The room was silent. So silent I could hear water flowing through the pipes in the walls, footsteps upstairs, car horns far away on the street. All sounds seemed distant, as if filtered through thick glass.
I looked down at my gray sneakers. The soles were worn thin in places, the outer edge of the right foot more so than the left—a result of my pigeon-toed walking. These marks were proof of my daily walks, of eight years coming and going, setting up and packing up, living in Liuyin Alley.
But now, looking at them, I felt an indescribable fear.
What if one day, the tread patterns on my soles wore away too. Not from normal wear, but overnight—all patterns gone, soles smooth as mirrors, while the uppers stayed brand new.
Would I still be me then?
My phone rang.
It was another message from "Ping'an Shi Fu."
"I knew you were in trouble the moment you messaged me. Let me tell you the truth—those shoes weren't ours. They were left by a traveling shoemaker many years ago. He repaired shoes at my sister's door, left, and forgot a pair.
My sister chased after him, but he was already gone. Those shoes stayed at home. Then Mingzi had his accident. My sister thought they were unlucky and wanted to burn them, but a fortune-teller told her not to burn them casually. Later, she took them to Liuyin Alley and gave them to that old shoe repairman."
A traveling shoemaker.
Left behind a pair of shoes.
And disappeared.
I suddenly remembered what Aunt Fang had said when she first came to me.
"My son loved wearing cloth shoes, said they were comfortable, didn't tire his feet. He'd just bought a new pair, barely worn, kept at home."
But what if those shoes had never belonged to her son? What if they'd been left by that traveling shoemaker from the very beginning?
Who was that traveling shoemaker?
I asked Old He if he knew about traveling shoemakers.
Old He thought for a moment. "I heard my father mention them. There used to be shoemakers who didn't have fixed stalls—they carried their tools on shoulder poles, walking from village to village, staying a few days to repair shoes before moving on.
These people were transient, didn't get close to anyone, just repaired and left. They had an unwritten rule: if there was already a shoemaker in a place, you couldn't steal their business—you had to move on."
"My father said there was a type among them—they appeared to repair shoes, but that wasn't their real business. They 'delivered shoes' for people."
"Delivered shoes?"
"Delivered things that couldn't be sent away." Old He said. "For example, if a family had bad luck and needed to get rid of it, they'd find these people. They'd work the bad luck into a pair of shoes, then the shoemaker would take them away, as far as possible.
That traveling shoemaker came to Liuyin Alley, didn't dare stop near your grandfather's stall, so he went elsewhere. He 'delivered' those shoes to that family's door and left."
"Those shoes stayed there, later becoming Mingzi's 'new shoes.'"
"Yes."
"Mingzi put them on and had the car accident."
"Yes."
"After he died, the shoes returned to his family."
"Yes."
"His mother took them to my grandfather's stall."
"Your grandfather knew what they were, so he said 'I can't fix them.'" Old He said. "But he couldn't explain it to others—no one would have believed him."
"Thirty years later, those shoes are still here."
"They are." Old He nodded. "And there are more now. Every time someone touches them, another pair appears. The new pair you saw—it's not the original. It split off from the original."
"What about that old pair I fixed?"
"That was the pair Mingzi's mother kept—his real shoes from when he was alive. It would have been fine, but you fixed them." Old He said. "After you fixed them, Aunt Fang wore them. You think she's Aunt Fang, but she hasn't been for a long time. She's just something wearing Aunt Fang's appearance."
"When she came to me for shoe repairs..."
"She was still human then. But after the shoes were fixed, she wasn't anymore." Old He paused. "She used the shoes you fixed to walk to where she needed to go. And that thing—used Mingzi's shoes to find you."
I was silent for a long time.
"What do we do now?" I asked.
"Find Aunt Fang," Old He said. "Before she completely replaces you."
I picked up my phone and dialed Aunt Fang's number. She'd given it to me when she came to pick up the shoes, saying it would be convenient to contact her.
The phone rang a few times and connected.
"Aunt Fang, it's me, Chen Dong."
"Master Chen." Her voice was the same as that day—calm, steady, like a stone sunk deep in water. "What is it?"
"I need to see you."
Silence on the line for several seconds.
"Very well," she said. "Tomorrow afternoon, Liuyin Alley entrance."
After hanging up, Old He frowned at me. "Why agree to meet at the alley entrance?"
"She chose the place—I had no say."
Old He said nothing, but his expression was dark.
Sunlight filtered through the curtains, painting a bright square on the floor. I stared at that patch of light, thinking about tomorrow afternoon's appointment, about the locust tree at Liuyin Alley, about Old Zhou's final WeChat message.
Don't open the door.
But the door was already open.
I often wonder—if that evening when the man in black came for shoe repairs, I hadn't said "I can't fix them" but had just packed up and left, would things have been different? If my uncle had told me the truth earlier, if Old Zhou hadn't burned those shoes for me, if I hadn't fixed Aunt Fang's old shoes—any one of these changes could have altered the outcome.
But that's how things are. One wrong step leads to another, and by the time you realize it, you've walked down a path with no return. Like those quietly replaced routines—you think everything is normal, but nothing is as it was.
I looked down at my phone screen.
Old He asked me: "Are you really going tomorrow?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
I didn't answer.
My face was reflected in the phone screen. Behind that face, I seemed to see another pair of shoes. Black cloth shoes, thousand-layered soles, fine stitching, worn nearly transparent.
It was waiting for me.