The Nightmare Investigation Bureau's building was always ablaze with light, like a giant insomniac beast.
No one knew who really ran it. The Ministry of Finance said, "Not us." The military said, "Not us either." In the end, everyone pointed vaguely toward one concept—"The Void."
Who—or what—was the Void? No one dared answer. Some whispered it was a god. Others claimed it was a self-running system. And a few joked over drinks: "The Void is just a blank page with four words written on it: You don't need to know."
The Bureau's slogan, written in shining gold above the main gate, read:"Eliminate variables. Preserve normality."
But "variables" covered nearly everything.Sneeze on the street and cough up a spark? Variable.Write a novel so vivid your characters crawl out of the page? Variable.Report your neighbor's goldfish came back to life three times in a row? Agents arrive in sunglasses, confiscate the fish like it's a terrorist.
There was nothing romantic about the agents.Their uniforms were gray and black, as if wholesale from a crematorium.On missions, the first thing they did was hand the suspect a thick stack of paperwork: "Temporary Consent for Variable Elimination." The font was as tiny as ant footprints.Anyone who tried reading would be cut short by a cold command:"Sign. Otherwise, you are the variable."
It worked every time. No one wanted the label "variable," since that meant a night locked in a room with a bucket of disinfectant—before being released pale-faced under the excuse: "Misunderstanding resolved."
The agents liked to call themselves civil servants. But unlike ordinary clerks, their desks held not just files, but bizarre tools.
A "Reality Eraser," which could wipe someone from existence as easily as deleting a typo.A "Truth Magnifier," which revealed your neighbor wasn't a man at all but a colony of spores in disguise.And the most grotesque, a "Regret Gun"—shoot someone with it, and they'd break down crying, confessing: "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been born."
They used these without guilt, convinced they were nothing but "the Void's hands." And what do hands do? Clean. Mop floors, sweep dust, take out trash—only sometimes, the trash had two legs and glasses.
A dark joke circulated in the Bureau:"The Void doesn't need hands—because we already are its hands. But whose hands are we? Probably Fate's."
No one knew where it came from. Some said a drunken director. Others, graffiti on a bathroom wall. But all agreed it was true. Once you saw yourself as a tool, the absurd became routine.Erase a newborn because its cry carried the wrong frequency.Delete a rising scientist because his invention threatened the rules.
Tools don't ask why.Ask too much, and you're no longer a tool—you're a variable.
A rookie named Li once asked on his first mission:"Isn't this cruel?"
A veteran stared at him coldly. "Cruel? Have you ever seen a toilet brush complain about its fate?"
Li fell silent. That night he dreamed he was a toilet brush.The next day, he resigned.The day after, his file read: "Li—Eliminated."No one ever mentioned him again.
The Bureau's halls were lined with awards, each titled: "Outstanding Tool of the Year."Each plaque listed how many variables a squad eliminated, how much normality they preserved. They shone with ironic pride, like a factory celebrating the destruction of defective products.
The Director's favorite line was:"Don't think of yourselves as people. You are screws, screwdrivers, cleaning agents of the Void. Remember that, and you'll sleep well."
Everyone clapped like they'd heard an inspiring speech.But when the meeting ended, their smiles clattered into the trash, like tin cans hitting the floor.
Sometimes, someone wondered:What if the Bureau itself became a variable one day?Would the building be erased, goldfish-style, dragged away by its own agents?
No one dared speak it aloud. That thought itself was a variable.And variables must be cleaned.
So they kept working, kept signing forms, kept scrubbing reality like obedient toilet brushes.
Until one day, the Void opened its ledger and scribbled a new command:"Nightmare Investigation Bureau: Mission complete. Eliminate."
The Bureau fell silent.Like a tool worn down, tossed casually into the trash.