In the corner of the internet cafe, the spacebar on the keyboard is polished and shiny.

The person sitting there is a professional gamer, helping others level up in games, staying up night after night.
On the left side of the screen is the game window, on the right is RAVE's candlestick chart.
$RAVE ‌
He takes a $20 order for leveling, enough to open a contract.
The game character is fighting monsters in a dungeon, while he’s fighting himself in the contract.
The monsters aren’t dead yet, but his position is already liquidated.
Then he takes the next order, opens another contract.
He calls this an eternal motion machine— the money from leveling helps fund the contract, and the losses from the contract force him to take more leveling jobs.
Cycle repeats, more punctual than daily quests in the game.

I glanced at his order record.
0.8 leverage, 0.75 add-on, 0.7 add-on, 0.65 add-on, then a single needle pierced through — everything was gone.
He froze for a few seconds, then closed the candlestick chart and switched back to the game.
In the dungeon, teammates were cursing him for AFK, he typed: “Coming, coming, just lagged.”
His fingers hammered on the spacebar with a crackling sound, as if that needle hadn’t pierced his account just now.

At four in the morning, he received a call from home.
He walked to the internet cafe door, I happened to be going out to buy water, and I heard him say: “Mom, it’s good, it’s rising fast, almost there.”
After hanging up, he squatted on the steps, turned on his phone’s screensaver.
It was a photo of him with an elderly woman, the old lady wearing a floral cotton-padded jacket, smiling with her eyes squinting.
$RAVE ‌
He turned off the screensaver, and RAVE’s candlestick chart popped up again.
0.61.
He stared for a few seconds, locked the screen, stood up and walked back into the internet cafe.
In the game, his character was still at the dungeon entrance, teammates still cursing.
He sat down, his hand on the spacebar, but didn’t press.
The sword of his game character hung down, the tip pointing to the ground, just like him — motionless.