Ch. 002| The Arcane Inspector

That week passed slowly.

Lan Yingchen said nothing more to anyone about the ring. He kept up his records. Counting from the time at the convenience store: twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two entries.

Over four days, the ring drifted to a different spot each day — above the roof of a mixed residential-commercial tower in Beigu, off toward the runways of the Beigang air-freight station, over an alley above the Xiyu night market, above the climbing frame in the little park outside school. The position changed daily, and at first glance there was no pattern.

But gradually he noticed something. Every time he looked up and found the ring, its straight-line distance from him was about the same. Not "about the same each day" — about the same each time. No matter which corner of the city it drifted over today, it kept roughly 80 meters between itself and him.

The third day after school it was clearest. He looked out from the third-floor corridor of the teaching block and saw the ring above the row of banyans behind the flagpole. Five minutes later he glanced back from the chemistry room — the ring had left its place. It had moved to the top of the south corner tower of the teaching block. Its distance from him: still about 80 meters.

It had changed position, but not its distance. It was following him.

---

On the sixth day, after school, he took a different route home. That day he deliberately walked slower than usual.

At the third intersection light, he confirmed it — the ring was behind him to the right, about 80 meters off, drifting above the roof of that old apartment block. The time was 17:38.

The holographic countdown at the crossing had nine seconds left. Lan Yingchen stood at the edge of the zebra crossing, his bag slung over his right shoulder, a hot latte in his left hand.

A self-driving bus, the 285 line, came straight on toward him from up ahead; the sensor array on its roof flickered faintly before the signal, the system read a red light, and in an instant it dropped to zero. The braking was short, dry.

At the moment the bus jolted to a stop, a middle-aged man who had just started across in front of it — he'd been staring at the AR on his wrist, not watching the signal — checked his forward stride, reflexively rocked back, and bumped Lan Yingchen's shoulder.

Lan Yingchen went down onto the crossing. His bag flew off, the plastic latte cup rolled away, and the bronze mirror slid out of the inner pocket and skidded into the middle of the road, coming to rest beside the white paint of the crossing line.

A hand reached over and picked up the bronze mirror.

---

It belonged to a woman in her thirties. She was crouching beside him.

Thin gold-rimmed glasses, hair loosely tied back, brown, as if dyed but the color had already faded a little. A beige knit cardigan, black straight-cut trousers, a plain silver watch on her left wrist. She looked like an office worker on her way home.

"Sorry," she said, the bronze mirror held in her palm, not handing it straight back. "This must be yours."

Her Chinese carried a very faint accent that Lan Yingchen couldn't place for the moment.

Lan Yingchen got up and reached out to take it. But she didn't let go right away. She lowered her head, looked at the back of the bronze mirror for about half a second, and only then handed it over.

Half a second. A commuter picking something up doesn't spend that extra half second looking at the back of a bronze mirror.

"This pattern," she said. "I've seen something like it before. It's rare."

Lan Yingchen took the bronze mirror and put it back in the inner pocket. His heart hadn't settled.

"What… line of work are you in?" he asked.

She gave a small smile — a very standard, professional, shallow smile.

"Counseling," she said. "Adolescents."

She took a card from the inner pocket of her cardigan and handed it to him.

Jiang Wanxin
City Youth Mind-Body Support Center
Zhongxin New-Intake Branch · Counselor
02-2789-3xxx

"You just took a fall — did you hit your head?" she asked. "Our center can do a free quick assessment. Five minutes' walk from here."

"I'm fine."

"A quick check, ten minutes, no charge, no ID needed, no insurance needed," she said. "Mainly to confirm there's no concussion."

Lan Yingchen looked at her, then at the bronze mirror, then glanced toward where the ring was. It was still above the roof of that old apartment block, 80 meters from him.

He thought of what his grandmother had said a month before she died, holding his hand in the hospital ward.

Don't be afraid. But don't tell.

That half second she'd spent looking at the bronze mirror was too long. A counselor heading home wouldn't have seen one.

"All right," he said. "Ten minutes."

---

The Center was three intersections away.

The Center was the second floor of an old three-story apartment building. Downstairs was a shop selling handmade canvas bags. The stairwell was old-style tile, cream-colored.

Before the door on the second floor, she pressed a round button beside it, like a proximity fob. The door opened. No one had opened it.

Inside it was smaller than he'd expected, but cleaner than he'd expected. Three waiting chairs, a low table, a few free health-education pamphlets on the table, two posters on the wall printed with very standard counseling-center wording and certification marks.

He noticed a few things.

Something in the corner of the posters made him look twice — each one had a tiny figure, not among the regular certification marks. A circle, the gap between the three- and four-o'clock marks, smaller than the one over the intersection that afternoon, but the angle of the gap was identical.

The health-education pamphlets on the low table. One of them had a white stamp in the lower right corner of its cover — a number, "16," like a batch code. Lan Yingchen knew the official batch code on the city's youth health-education pamphlets was a six-digit number, not two.

Then there was the small bronze bell on the table, about half a fist in size, its surface worn smooth, its age impossible to read. His grandmother had one in her living room almost exactly like it — she'd said it was "for worshiping the Earth God, passed down from your great-great-grandmother." An ordinary counseling center wouldn't keep one of these.

---

Jiang Wanxin noticed him looking at the bronze bell.

"Please, sit," she said. "I'll go get the quick-assessment form."

She walked into another room. Lan Yingchen sat, both hands on his knees, his bag wedged between his legs.

When she came back she had a very ordinary-looking sheet of A4 paper, printed "Quick Concussion Assessment Form," the fields all standard: dizziness, nausea, memory, vision, hearing, cognition.

She began asking questions. At first they were dull — what day it was, where he'd hit himself, whether his vision had gone blurry, that sort of thing. By the third question, she looked up.

"Close your eyes," she said. "In this room right now, which direction is there sound?"

Lan Yingchen closed his eyes. The low hum of the air conditioner was behind him to the right, the rhythm of a sewing machine downstairs came from directly below, a scooter passed outside the window, its sound ahead of him to the left.

But that wasn't what she was asking. His attention was pulled to "north by east" — there was no sound there, yet he knew there was sound there.

"North by east."

"Thank you," she said, and made a mark.

---

She took a small candle from under the table, set it on the low table, and lit it.

"Can you tell me whether there's anything different about this candle's flame?"

Lan Yingchen looked at the flame.

The tip of the flame leaned slightly to the left.

There was no wind in the room. The air conditioner blew down from the ceiling, straight down, too high to reach a flame at table level.

"It's leaning," he said, "to the left. But there's no wind in this room."

"Thank you," she said. A second mark.

She took a small slip of paper from her pocket, on it a line of writing that looked like Sanskrit, yet not quite.

"You don't need to understand it," she said. "Tell me which sound surfaces in your mind."

Lan Yingchen looked at the line of script. He didn't recognize any of the characters, but four syllables rose in his mind — very faint, not like Chinese and not like English.

"Vā-ma-na-sa, something like that."

"Thank you," she said. A third mark.

She took a tiny pouch from her pocket and tipped out a small heap of fine sand onto the low table, letting the sand flow on its own.

The sand gathered slowly along the wood grain, forming a shape — one that made Lan Yingchen think of the angle of the gap in the ring on the back of his grandmother's bronze mirror.

"It's turned into the same shape as the back of my bronze mirror."

"I saw it too," she said. A fourth mark.

---

Last, she picked up the small bronze bell from the low table and struck it lightly with a bronze rod.

The bell rang out. But behind the bell's sound there was another sound — like a low drum, very faint, half a beat behind the bell.

"What did you hear?"

"A bell, with a low drum behind it, very faint."

She made a fifth mark. Her hand paused a second before it came down.

She turned the sheet of paper over and spread it on the table.

Only then did Lan Yingchen see: it wasn't a concussion assessment form.

The other side of the sheet was printed, in very small type, with five rows of fields:

1　Toward　○
2　Move　○
3　Echo　○
4　Scatter　○
5　Commune　○

---

Lan Yingchen could read all five characters. But he couldn't tell which Toward the Toward was, or which Scatter the Scatter was.

She didn't explain. She didn't say he had passed anything. She just put the sheet away, as if what she'd done were only an ordinary assessment.

But Lan Yingchen noticed her pause slightly before putting it away, turning the printed side face-down, stowing it more carefully than anything else she'd handled.

Lan Yingchen lowered his head and glanced at the tea table across from him — the "16" on the pamphlet cover, the gapped circle in the corner of the posters, the bronze bell on the table exactly like the one in his grandmother's living room. Then he looked at Jiang Wanxin across from him.

"Your collar," he said. "There's something on it."

She didn't answer, but she didn't deny it either. She folded the collar down a little, letting Lan Yingchen see the small badge pinned on the inside.

It was a circle. The circle had a gap. The gap fell between the three- and four-o'clock marks.

The same as the back of the bronze mirror, the same as the ring above the intersection that afternoon, the same as the tiny figure in the corner of the posters — exactly the same.

Lan Yingchen said nothing.

About three seconds passed before he spoke, putting into words the question that had been stuck in his throat since that afternoon.

"You can see those rings," he said.

Not a question.

She nodded, as if acknowledging something they had both known all along.

"I can."

"The same one I see."

"The same one."

"The one that followed me this afternoon," he said. "You saw it too."

"I saw it," she said. "Before we collided, it was about 80 meters from you. After we collided, it pulled back to 120, and stopped there. It knows someone has noticed it."

---

Lan Yingchen went still for a moment.

It knows someone has noticed it.

"Who are you?"

"I'm an inspector," she said. "My job is to find people like you."

"People like me?"

"People who can see," she said. "People who, in the ordinary world, can see patterns that aren't meant to be seen."

She stood, walked to a small cabinet by the wall, took out a small card, and set it in front of Lan Yingchen. The card was pale cream, with a very faint gold edge, and on it only two lines were printed:

You have passed the preliminary test.
Tomorrow morning, please check the mailbox at your home.

Lan Yingchen looked at the card. Then he looked up at her.

"What will be in my mailbox?"

"There will be a letter," she said.

"Delivered by a postman?"

"No."

"Delivered by whom?"

"Someone from the same place I'm from."

"And where are you people from?"

She gave a small smile, as if weighing how much to answer.

"A place you won't find on the ordinary internet," she said. "Once you've received the letter, you'll know the next step yourself. If you decide not to go — that's all right too. After noon tomorrow that letter will vanish on its own, as if it had never been sent."

"Vanish on its own?"

"Vanish on its own."

---

Lan Yingchen didn't move right away.

He looked at the small blank patch on the chair-back across from him where it leaned against the wall, at that very faint fingerprint. Then he looked at the bronze bell on the low table — the bronze bell exactly like the one in his grandmother's living room.

He thought of what his grandmother had said a month before she died, holding his hand in the hospital ward.

Don't be afraid. But don't tell.

Back then he'd thought it was just comfort spoken in a hospital ward. Now he understood — his grandmother had known all along that one day he would see, and known all along that he wasn't the only one who could.

He put the card away in his bag, together with the bronze mirror.

"Thank you," he said.

She didn't say "We'll be in touch." She just glanced at his bag, then at the direction he'd tucked the card, as if she too knew exactly where that bronze mirror was.

"Tomorrow morning," she said. "Check the mailbox before nine."

---

Lan Yingchen went downstairs, pushed open the glass door outside the canvas-bag shop, and stepped back onto the street.

It was fully dark now.

He looked up, glancing toward where he'd seen the ring that afternoon. The ring was still there — stopped above the roof of that old apartment block, about 120 meters from him, just as Jiang Wanxin had said. It knows someone has noticed it.

Lan Yingchen took the card out of his bag's inner pocket and stepped up to the glass display window of a convenience store to read it by the light.

The card was pale cream, that faint band of gold along the edge — under the convenience store's warm white light, it was no longer mere decoration. He ran a fingertip along the gold edge, and on the inner face of the card the outline of a circle rose very faintly. The gap between the three- and four-o'clock marks.

The same as the bronze mirror, the same as the ring above the intersection that afternoon, the same as the poster at the Center, the same as the badge under Jiang Wanxin's collar — the same.

Lan Yingchen turned the card over and looked at the back. The back had been blank earlier at the Center; now two lines had surfaced:

A letter.
Once received, a bronze halo will appear.

Lan Yingchen put the card away in his bag's inner pocket, stacked together with the bronze mirror.

On the walk home, the bronze mirror in his bag's inner pocket warmed faintly for a moment. Through the cloth of the bag, like a fingertip pressed against it for half a second, then it faded.

【Ch. 002 End · Beigu convenience-store alley → the Youth Mind-Body Support Center → the road home in Beigu】