Boiling Point

Before the door of the hotpot restaurant even opened, a wave of heat seeped out through the cracks. Wu Lin pulled his cap lower and trudged inside. This was his third month working here as a waiter. Every day he faced different expressions, but he had long since learned not to look people in the eye.

"Hurry and wipe down that table! Table Four spilled soup again," the manager barked.

Wu Lin murmured a reply and walked over with a rag. As he was wiping the table, he accidentally knocked over a small bowl. The leftover soup splashed onto a customer's clothes.

"Are you fucking blind?" the customer roared, grabbing the teapot from the table and raising it as if to throw.

Wu Lin froze, his body trembling slightly. He didn't apologize. He simply clenched his jaw and stood silently. A glint of coldness flickered in his eyes.

He was used to this kind of treatment—just as he was used to all the things in life that couldn't be spoken aloud. Since childhood, he had been the "obedient" type. When his parents fought, he would quietly shut the door. When his father smashed cups, he would immediately fetch the broom. He learned not to make noise, learned that "if you just endure it, it'll pass."

But he didn't know—some things shouldn't be endured.

The next day, a customer chattered at him nonstop, complaining that the food was slow and even slammed her chopsticks down. He held it in, until the woman said:

"People like you deserve to wait tables for the rest of your life."

In that moment, what flashed through his mind wasn't the customer in front of him, but his father's face, his mother's screams, and a pot of boiling water.

"Enough," he said quietly.

He picked up the boiling yin-yang hotpot next to him and poured it out without hesitation.

When he was pinned to the ground, his face showed no rage—only an expression close to emptiness. When the police asked why he did it, he replied:

"I don't know. I just... suddenly felt really hot. Really noisy. Really annoyed."

He had grown up under emotional neglect and cold violence at home, living for years in a high-pressure, low-control mental state—immense stress with no outlet or agency.

At sixteen, he had self-harmed, and was once referred to counseling by a school psychologist. But his father only said, "Let him act out," and that was the end of it.

He thought he had made it through, but that wasn't healing—it was burial.

Now, he wasn't crazy. He was overheated. Like a pressure cooker—if the steam isn't released in time, all it takes is a single spark for it to explode.

The therapist put down her pen, looked into his bloodshot eyes, and said softly:

"Some fires can't be put out with water."