Prisoner of the Mountain

K, weary of the office air thick with a mixture of dust and despair, decided to climb a mountain during the holiday. He'd heard of one on the outskirts of the city, not high, but with views said to cleanse the soul. He needed cleansing, desperately. The city felt like a vast, sticky web, and he sensed he was being slowly digested. The mountain, perhaps, was a pocket of reality outside the web.

When he reached the foot of the mountain, he froze. It was less a mountain of rock and earth than a slowly moving mountain formed of people. The queue began at the entrance at the base, snaked upwards, and disappeared into the dense fog (or perhaps dust) around the first bend, with no end in sight. "Feels like a hundred million people," the absurd thought barged into K's mind, but looking around, he found the thought disturbingly apt. People were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, like some kind of collectively migrating insects, their faces bearing a peculiar expression—a mixture of anticipation and numbness.

K hesitated for a moment, but the way back was just as crowded, and besides, "Might as well, since I'm here," a voice whispered within him. The voice was so familiar, as if it were his own, yet also like some command implanted in his brain. He took a deep breath, as if plunging into an icy river, and squeezed himself into the crowd.

Instantly, he lost his sense of individual boundary. There were warm bodies pressing in from all sides, breathing air exhaled by others. The smells of sweat, perfume, and food mingled into a thick, suffocating miasma. The queue moved with excruciating slowness; it wasn't walking so much as being jostled, nudged forward in minuscule increments. Sometimes it would halt for several minutes, even ten or more. No one complained, no one asked why, as if these pauses were an indispensable, sacred part of the mountain-climbing ritual.

K tried to strike up a conversation with the person beside him. "This queue... when will it ever end?" he asked a middle-aged man wearing a sun hat. The man turned his head, looked at him blankly, as if K were speaking an incomprehensible dialect. "End?" the man repeated, then shook his head, a smile bordering on pity on his face. "There is no end, only the path." With that, he turned back, refocusing his attention on the back of the head in front of him.

K felt a chill creep up his spine. He wanted to retreat, to push his way out, but the tide of people behind him felt like solidified concrete, immovable. He tried to edge backwards slightly and was immediately met with several disapproving glances and even stronger pressure from all sides, pinning him firmly in place. He was like a tiny tessera embedded in a vast mosaic, unable to stir.

Time lost all meaning. The sun moved across the sky, or perhaps it didn't; K couldn't be sure. He only knew he was ascending at a despairingly slow pace with the human flow. He observed the myriad faces around him. Some were engrossed in their phones, short videos flickering rapidly, a stark contrast to the queue's stagnation. Others carried full picnic sets, as if prepared to camp within this endless line. Still others had their eyes closed, hands clasped, murmuring prayers, engaged in what seemed like a long, mobile pilgrimage.

K felt thirsty; the water he'd brought was long gone. He saw vendors hawking bottled water and snacks at exorbitant prices. A man in a uniform, face expressionless, pushed a small cart, navigating with difficulty through the barely passable gaps in the crowd. "Water! Ten yuan a bottle!" he rasped, his voice hoarse as if he'd been shouting for centuries. K hesitated, but ultimately didn't buy. Not because of the cost, but because it suddenly struck him that the very act of drinking water seemed part of this absurd ritual, a form of surrender to the situation.

He began to observe the expressions of those around him more closely. The initial anticipation had long since vanished, replaced by a deeper numbness, a placid acceptance of their circumstances. This very calmness filled K with dread. They seemed to have forgotten the purpose of climbing, forgotten the scenery at the summit, perhaps even forgotten who they were. They were merely components of the queue, mobile, unconscious cells.

"Why did we even come here?" K couldn't help but hiss into the air. His voice wasn't loud, but in the relative silence (an inner silence, contrasted with the ambient noise of the crowd), it sounded jarring. A few people turned their heads at the sound, regarding him with curiosity, as if looking at an intruder, or perhaps a lunatic. No one answered. They simply stared for a moment, then silently turned back to continue their perpetual, slow shuffle forward.

A wave of dizziness washed over K. He steadied himself by placing a hand on a stranger's shoulder. The person offered no resistance, didn't even react, as if their shoulder were merely a cold railing. K closed his eyes. He felt himself shrinking, dissolving, becoming part of this human tide. His anxiety, his defiance, his yearning for freedom – all were being steadily eroded by the slow, interminable movement.

When he opened his eyes again, he found that he had, at some point, passed the bend. The scene ahead remained unchanged: still the dense sea of heads, still the queue moving at a near standstill, snaking upwards to disappear into the mist around the next turn. The summit? Perhaps there was no summit. Perhaps this mountain path itself was the destination – an endless, beginningless, upward-spiraling Mobius strip formed by the crowd.

K no longer tried to struggle, nor did he think. He simply moved with the flow of people, step by excruciatingly slow step, upwards. His face gradually took on the same expression as those around him – that blend of numbness and placidity. He no longer felt hunger, nor thirst, nor even fatigue. He simply existed, as one molecule in this vast procession, existing on this endless mountain path.

The bells marking the end of the holiday seemed to toll in the distant city, but here, they couldn't be heard. Perhaps tomorrow, this queue would carry him somewhere; perhaps he would never escape this mountain made of people. He lowered his head, looking at the stone steps beneath his feet. Polished smooth by countless soles, they reflected countless blurry, similar faces. One of them was his. Or, perhaps, it had once been his.