Ch. 006| Not a Replica

October 24, 06:42.

Ren Yi woke. For the fourth time.

She lay in bed for a full minute, confirming she was actually awake, before getting up. She didn't go straight to the desk—first the kitchen, to boil water and make instant coffee, then back to her room. Only then did she look at the desk.

The nine sheets of blank paper on the desktop, plus the watermark at the end of the letter tucked into its place inside the notebook, were exactly as she'd left them at 23:00 the night before. Not a single sheet had shifted. She opened the hidden compartment on the left side of the desk, the one she'd never used. The small brass key was still inside, in the same position as when she'd put it there yesterday. It hadn't vanished.

She'd expected something to happen. She couldn't get used to the dissonance of "nothing happened."

---

She ate breakfast, washed the cup, went back to her room, and put on the gray jacket of a museum intern.

Mid shift, 13:00 to 21:00. She'd taken personal leave yesterday; today she was going back—her supervisor would be watching her, her coworkers would be watching her. She couldn't let anything seem off.

Out the door at 12:15. She'd decided to keep up a habit Sekhet hadn't told her to continue but that made her feel safer on her own—no wrist terminal. The wrist terminal stayed on the desk, powered off. In her backpack: the Moleskine notebook, the muji booklet, the brass key from the office, a thermos, and a convenience-store ballpoint pen from the office.

The fountain pen she left in the pen holder; she didn't bring it. She wanted to see what would happen if she didn't.

---

At 12:55 she reached the museum. Signed in.

The supervisor was in the office, nodded when he saw her come in. "Feeling better?"

"Better. Thanks."

"This afternoon you're on the Greek vase gallery and the Byzantine gallery upstairs—alternate between the two."

"Okay."

"Oh, one more thing—" the supervisor turned his head, glanced at a document on the desk, "before you clock out, check the display label for GR-1857-A in the Greek vase gallery one more time. There was a typo last time; the print shop already swapped it. Just confirm the label lines up with the new print, no need to sign off."

"Okay."

She didn't let herself react—the supervisor knew nothing, the supervisor was just an ordinary supervisor.

GR-1857-A—that was the "replica" in the Greek vase gallery that gave off a faint echo. The piece she'd slowed down in front of every time she passed since 10/15.

---

At 14:00 she entered the Greek vase gallery.

The gallery was 12 meters long and 6 meters wide, twelve freestanding glass cases arranged against the walls in a U shape, with a low island case in the center. The lighting leaned yellow; the floor was a retro diamond parquet.

When she patrolled here normally, she'd start at the entrance, walk clockwise around half the room, check the cleanliness of each glass case, then double back from the center. She did the same today.

She reached the seventh case and stopped. GR-1857-A. Greek ceramic vase. Excavated on Crete, 5th century BCE. Replica (that was what the display label said).

The echo came.

Very faint. Like someone tapping something hollow, lightly, from very far away. The rhythm was irregular. Short, short, long, a half-second pause, then short again.

She didn't slow down, kept walking, circled the island, came back to the entrance, found a corner where no one would look, sat down, and took out the muji booklet.

14:08 GR-1857-A echo. Rhythm: short short long, half-second, short.
14:09 Second time. Same rhythm.
14:11 Third time. Same rhythm.

She closed the booklet, stood, kept patrolling. The echo came seven times. Every time the same rhythm.

---

At 15:30 she handed off her shift and went back to the office. She wanted to run a test.

She took an ordinary sheet of A4 paper from the desk drawer—not the kind she used at home to print receipts, but the kind the office printer used, a different spec. She took out the convenience-store ballpoint pen.

In the center of the blank sheet, with the ballpoint, she slowly drew a broken ring. The break was at the upper right, between the third point and the fourth. She tried to keep it the same size as the ones she drew at home, though the ballpoint's line came out thinner than the fountain pen's.

Using an office pencil, she marked a point 1 centimeter outside the break. Time, 15:45. She put the sheet into an office document envelope, into the drawer on the right side of the desk that she locked every day, and locked it.

She went back to work.

---

At 16:00 and 17:00 she was on the Byzantine gallery upstairs. There was no echo there at all, as quiet as the whole museum had been yesterday.

At 17:00, back in the office, she opened the drawer, took out the envelope, and looked at the paper.

Compared with 15:45, the broken ring hadn't moved. Hadn't moved at all.

She'd expected this—it only turned when all four conditions were met; swap the fountain pen for a ballpoint and it wasn't a condition anymore. She needed to verify once more, because by now she already suspected she might mistake an ordinary lapse of memory for evidence, which meant she might also misjudge an ordinary regularity as evidence. Repeating the test made her feel a little more grounded.

17:05 Office ballpoint, drew broken ring, put in company drawer. Didn't turn. Verified again: ballpoint doesn't work.

---

At 17:30 she went back to the Greek vase gallery.

She wanted to run a second test—whether that echo had anything to do with her.

The echo would happen even when she wasn't there—when she was absent, other coworkers occasionally covered the Greek vase gallery, and some had mentioned "you sometimes hear a strange sound over there." The director had ruled it the resonance of HVAC ducting and had the engineering team come look twice; they couldn't find the cause.

So this echo did not happen only in front of Ren Yi.

She went to the GR-1857-A glass case and waited.

17:32, the echo. Same rhythm. Short short long, half-second, short.

Now she listened carefully.

She caught it—it wasn't rhythm. It was words.

It was a very faint short phrase, repeated over and over in some language she didn't recognize, four syllables in all. Short short long, pause, short. Short short long, pause, short.

She couldn't "directly know the meaning"—it wasn't like that time on 10/14 with "All laws are flawed; the Void Gate stands unclosed." That time she'd known the meaning directly, across languages. This time she could only hear the sound; she couldn't understand it.

She listened for about two minutes, confirming she hadn't misheard.

17:35 The GR-1857-A echo is actually a four-syllable phrase, repeated. Can't understand it. Not the same language family as 10/14.
I can hear the sound; I can't hear the meaning.

---

At 18:00 she logged into the museum's internal database and pulled GR-1857-A's full record.

Accession number: GR-1857-A
Category: Pottery / Greek
Period: 5th century BCE (replica)
Provenance label: Excavated on Crete (original)
Original location: the British Museum, number GR-1857-0807.31
Reproduction date: 1970s (manufactured at a factory in England)
Year acquired by this museum: 2055
Donor: He█jin
Notes: For display, low insurance, no temperature/humidity control required

She stared at the donor field.

It started with "He" and the last syllable was "jin." The character in the middle wasn't blurred—it was blank—as if someone had deliberately deleted that character, left an empty slot, and then the system had auto-filled it with a box symbol.

She couldn't reconstruct the full name from the other fields. She searched the database for "He jin," and what came up was a string of unrelated entries.

18:15 GR-1857-A donor: He█jin. Middle character deleted. Transferred to this museum from somewhere in 2055 (this museum was only founded in 2055). Why would a replica need a donation procedure instead of just being purchased?

She rested the cursor on the deleted character and pressed F5 to refresh the page.

The blank between "He" and "jin" turned into a plain box. She pressed F5 again, and the entire donor field went blank. On the third press, the desktop threw up a system prompt: File access restricted. Please contact IT.

The entries she could query a moment ago wouldn't open now. In the very instant she was looking, someone was making changes.

She didn't keep trying. She logged out, shut down the desktop, and got up.

---

At 19:00 she went back to the Greek vase gallery for her final round.

There was a visitor in the gallery—an old woman she'd never seen before.

Gray-white short hair, a dark long coat, a very thin silver bracelet on her left wrist, standing in front of the GR-1857-A glass case, motionless.

Ren Yi looked over from the entrance. The old woman was just standing there, looking at the Greek vase. No photos, no wrist terminal out.

Ren Yi carried on with her patrol, walked half the U, didn't disturb her. When she reached the eighth case she glanced back; the old woman was still there. When she got to the center she didn't look back again, but she had the vague sense the woman was still standing in the same spot.

By the time she finished circling the island and returned to the entrance, the old woman was gone. That was 19:18.

She went into the gallery, up to the GR-1857-A glass case—no one. The echo had stopped. The whole time the old woman had been there, the echo hadn't sounded either (Ren Yi realized afterward: when she was at the eighth case, the echo hadn't sounded; when she was at the center, it hadn't sounded either).

When the old woman left, the echo left too.

Ren Yi walked out of the gallery and looked down the corridor. No one. The elevator indicator showed the first floor; she'd probably gone downstairs.

For two seconds she wanted to rush downstairs after her, but she didn't move—first, she was on duty and couldn't leave the gallery for more than five minutes; second, she realized that if the other party had come to see GR-1857-A, then her own presence, Ren Yi's, was part of what was being observed, and she shouldn't let the other party know she'd noticed her.

Keeping her current position—the one where "the other party thinks she didn't notice"—might be more important than chasing.

---

At 20:30 she took the ballpoint-drawn broken ring out of the drawer and confirmed once more—still hadn't turned. She tucked it behind the Moleskine notebook, took out the muji booklet, and turned to the list.

Five: Greek vase gallery, GR-1857-A replica. **Status: candidate, has independent anomalous evidence** (echo is a four-syllable phrase, repeated, unintelligible, not the same language family as 10/14; donor "He█jin" with the middle character deleted; came from somewhere in 2055 with no clear origin; mysterious old woman at 19:00 spent 18 minutes looking only at this piece, and when she left the echo left too).

She paused, then added:

Six: the fact of "I'm observing." I thought I was the one observing. The old woman at 19:00 makes me suspect I'm also the one being observed, and I don't know who's observing, or since when.

She closed the booklet.

---

She went back to the desk and tried to see whether the database would open again—booted the desktop, logged in, searched—the entire GR-1857-A record was gone. Not access-restricted; the entry itself had vanished. The database showed "No such number."

She logged out.

20:50, off shift. She walked out of the museum, out to the street, and looked back at the window of the Greek vase gallery on the third floor.

One light was on in the window. The position lined up exactly with the GR-1857-A case. She didn't remember whether she'd turned it off before she left.

She suddenly thought of the old woman at 19:00—when the other party left, the echo left too; so this light, was it also one of those things she thought she'd switched off when in fact the other party was there?

She didn't go back to check. She walked home.

【Ch. 006 End · Ren Yi's apartment + the museum's Greek vase gallery】