The Undeliverable Package

K, or let's call him Old Wang for now – names, after all, had long been worn down to vague designations in this endless hustle – rode his creaking electric scooter, navigating the maze-like veins of the city. Today, the system had assigned him a special order, marked "Urgent" and "Medicine." The remarks section pleaded, "Life-saving medicine, please be quick, only an old person at home." The address pointed to an old residential complex on the city's edge, a place like a forgotten fold hidden beneath the glossy surface of the metropolis.

The navigation system issued cold electronic prompts, guiding him through the intricate web of streets. A flicker of unease crossed Old Wang's mind, not because of the words "life-saving medicine" – he'd seen all sorts of bizarre remarks in his line of work – but because of the subtle changes in the dispatch system after this morning's update. The edges of the map seemed blurrier than yesterday, some familiar street names replaced by meaningless symbols, as if the city itself was undergoing a slow, unseen dissolution.

When he found the complex named "Happiness Village," the sun hung in a grey, listless sky. There was no guard at the entrance, only a rust-streaked iron gate left ajar, like the silent yawn of an aging beast. The building numbers were faded, large patches of wall plaster had peeled off, revealing the dark red bricks beneath, like exposed muscle tissue. The air hung thick with a mixture of dampness and dust.

The order address was Building 7, Unit 4, Room 703. Clutching the medicine bag – not heavy, but significant – Old Wang stepped into the dark stairwell. No elevator, just an endless spiraling staircase, the handrails coated in thick dust. The walls were covered in children's graffiti and inscrutable markings, some resembling primitive hieroglyphs, others like the garbled text flashing on a malfunctioning screen.

He climbed floor after floor, his footsteps echoing solitarily in the empty stairwell. It felt less like climbing stairs and more like drilling into a bottomless cavern. The windows in the stairwell were caked with grime, letting in only weak, distorted light that made everything seem unreal. He even began to doubt if the stairs truly led to the seventh floor, or if it was an infinitely looping structure, much like his daily routes with their blurred beginnings and ends.

Finally, he saw the floor sign marked "7." He found the entrance to Unit 4, the iron door plastered with small ads like ugly patches. He walked towards Room 703. The door was an old-fashioned green wooden one, paint peeling to reveal the wood beneath. He knocked. The sound was muffled, as if swallowed by the thick silence.

No answer.

He knocked again, harder this time. "Delivery! Medicine!" he called out, his voice sounding almost comical in the empty corridor.

Still no response. He tried calling the phone number on the order. The recorded message informed him, "The number you have dialed does not exist." A system error? Or... something else? A chill ran through him, not from the cold of the stairwell, but from a deeper, ineffable sense of absurdity.

"Life-saving medicine"... "only an old person at home"... The phrases hovered like ghosts in his mind. He hesitated, then tried the doorknob. It wasn't locked.

A peculiar smell drifted out from the crack in the door – not the smell of decay, but a mixture of dust, dried plants, and some unidentifiable chemical agent. He pushed the door open. A faint light emanated from the depths of the living room.

There was no one inside. Or rather, no living person. The entire room was filled, with an almost maniacal order, with all sorts of items: boxes of compressed biscuits, mountains of bottled water, canned goods sorted and stacked neatly, stacks upon stacks of old newspapers and books, even several large tubs of unidentified white powder. Every item bore a handwritten label, the script neat, meticulous, as if waging a war against forgetting and chaos. This didn't look like a home, more like a private archive, or... a fallout shelter's storeroom. The old person needing "life-saving medicine" seemed not to exist in this space completely occupied by objects.

Old Wang stood at the doorway, feeling a wave of dizziness. The scene of hoarding reminded him of the eccentric billionaire recently in the news, urging people to stockpile supplies for some unknown disaster. Could the occupant of Room 703 be a believer in that prophecy? But where had they gone?

He carefully stepped into the living room, the floor barely visible beneath the clutter. The light came from a small desk lamp in a corner. Under the lamp lay open a thick book, its pages filled with complex diagrams and symbols, looking like an atlas, or perhaps an alchemist's grimoire. Beside the book lay an empty medicine bottle.

Old Wang picked up the bottle; the label was too faded to read. He scanned the room, his gaze finally landing on the wall. There were no windows, but hanging there was a huge, hand-drawn map. It depicted not a city or a country, but an extremely complex labyrinth, its lines twisted and spiraled, leading to countless dead ends and unknown regions. At the center of the maze, a red dot was marked, and beside it, in tiny script: 703.

He suddenly understood something, or rather, caught a glimmer of some absurd logic. Perhaps there was no old person needing rescue. Perhaps the address itself was a metaphor, a coordinate pointing to an inner labyrinth. Perhaps the "non-existent number" wasn't an error, but the only truth. The person who had hoarded all these things wasn't preparing for an external disaster, but trying to fill an inner void with material things, only to be swallowed by the fortress they created, lost within the map they drew.

The medicine bag in his hand suddenly felt immensely heavy. Was this truly "life-saving medicine"? Or... a key to the deeper parts of the labyrinth?

Old Wang slowly backed out of Room 703, gently pulling the door closed behind him. He didn't try to contact anyone else, nor did he report the anomaly to the system. He simply walked back down the stairs, each step feeling like an arduous trek out of a dream. The graffiti in the stairwell now seemed to morph into the lines of the labyrinth map in his eyes, the inscrutable markings whispering some warning he couldn't comprehend.

Back beside his electric scooter, he placed the undeliverable package into the storage box. He didn't take it back to the depot, nor did he throw it away. He just left it there, alongside other accumulated packages with wrong addresses or vanished recipients. They sat like silent orphans, awaiting a claim that would never come.

He started the scooter and merged into the city's ceaseless flow of traffic. The navigation system's voice resumed, cold and certain, directing him to the next location. But he felt still trapped in Room 703, or rather, trapped within that hand-drawn labyrinthine map. The city, in his eyes, transformed into a vast collection composed of countless rooms like 703, each inhabitant hoarding objects, drawing maps, then silently disappearing into the depths of the labyrinths they created.

He continued riding, the wheels humming monotonously against the pavement. The address for the next package was clearly displayed on the screen, yet he had a strong feeling that no matter where he drove, the final destination would always be the empty room pointed to by that undeliverable package. And the package itself, like his current state of mind, felt heavy, adrift, filled with unanswered questions and an unreachable sorrow. The sky remained grey and overcast, like a vast official notice, filled with rules that no one could comprehend, blanketing him and this labyrinthine city.