The city of Shanghai never slept — a kaleidoscope of saccharine neon and cacophony — but the oldest corners of its sprawling port did have its areas no one bothered to thread during night time.

There, she was sitting at the end of a long pier, feet dangling above the water and eyes fixed on a phone screen, geometry moving in all directions with a flick of her thumb. It scratched an irresistible itch to bring order to chaos, even if the chaos was both intentional and infinite. She tapped and slid her thumb across the screen, slotting each puzzle piece into its right place for the brief reprieve of seeing large sections of colour disappear from her screen, only to be immediately replaced.

She didn’t look up when a few feet into the water from where the pier ended, a few paltry bubbles rose up to the surface, followed by a head, gasping for breath and struggling to stay above the water. It whined superficial pleas for mercy as the dirt and algae that tainted the ocean surrounding the city washed its mouth.

“Puh… Please… I… We didn’t know it was—“

Inaudible prattle. Frothing, then nothing. She triggered a cavalcade of shapes falling into place and disappearing by switching the locations of a green triangle and red hexagon amidst the disorder. A congratulatory jingle, and the number at the top of the screen went up by a considerable margin. Then, it resurfaced.

“I just thought… just for fun… Didn’t mean to—“

The more it coughed, the more water poured into its mouth. It didn’t usually take this long. She had purchased a bag of one hundred long, sturdy zip ties. The man behind the counter had claimed they could even hold two steel girders together and in place, if applied correctly. She had, and indeed, not even the monstrous strength of a mofa shaonu now proved itself able to break free. Another gasp for air, as the gentle rippling of the ocean’s surface was rudely disturbed again. It sounded desperate.

“H-Help me… Please!”

More incomprehensible vocalizations, indubitably caused by more water making its way into the lungs.

“Why are you doing this? W-Why are you just sitting there… p-please… I can’t—“

Again, it went under. It was now the fifty-seventh time she had managed to break one million points. She couldn’t remember ever caring about this game. After a while, a high score had stopped being something to be proud of. It had become an inevitability in a life full of inevitabilities.

The water remained silent after a while, and only the familiar sounds of swiping shapes in either direction now reached her ears. Before she knew it, she had broken one million two hundred thousand and the head still hadn’t resurfaced.

Then, the water started to bubble again and sky turned red and the ocean turned black and as it swirled the lights from the docks and the shipyards on the other side of the bay weren’t the lights from the docks and the shipyards anymore, they were jellyfish floating towards the sky like lanterns and she moved an orange square up by a single row and scored a thirty-two-chain combo and she didn’t care, not about the combo and not about the concrete she was sitting on feeling like it has broken off of the fabric of reality and not about the maelstrom beneath her feet howling and spinning, contorting itself into the tentacled silhouette of a massive marine hydrozoan and the tips of its tendrils shot towards her like arrows and she still had enough time to tap one of the crystals that would clear all blue circles off the board before she had to dodge them, transform and draw her blade.

She quit after she had reached one million four hundred and fifty-three thousand seven hundred and ninety-four. That put her on place fourteen, her phone told her.

If she lay flat down onto her stomach, her arms were just long enough to touch the water and retrieve the trinket that, like a fishing bobber, gently floated towards the pier. She inspected it. It didn’t look any different from all the others. The trinket, however, served its purpose when she held it against her own. It was supposed to make her feel differently. It didn’t.

“Was that the last one?” she heard.

She turned, and saw two scarlet, beady eyes staring at her from the other side of the pier. She shrugged and said something she assumed was true. The inquisitive creature, apparently satisfied, trotted in her direction and presented itself. She disposed of the trinket through the orifice in its back.

“Well done,” it said, characteristically enthusiastic. “It’s always better when everything is as it should be, don’t you think?”

She just asked if it had another job for her. It whipped its tail back and forth, and said yes.