Ch. 008| White Paint
Ren Yi tracks the rotating watermark, then visits the Wankou riverbank and scrapes white paint off a wall to find a hidden arc—returning home to find a faint pencil line drawn in her absence.
October 25, 12:30.
Ren Yi sat at her desk, opened her notebook, and looked at the second reference point she'd marked next to the watermark at 11:52.
She compared them—the relative position of the mark to the watermark had shifted again, just slightly. By eye: roughly another 1/96 of the circle's circumference off from the 11:52 reference.
Confirmed: the watermark was still rotating—not moving once and stopping. From the first reference point at 10:14 to now, 2 hours 16 minutes, the cumulative drift was about 2/96 of the circumference. Slow, but continuous.
A new cycle was underway, much slower than the acceleration phase that afternoon on October 22—like the gradual drift in the first letter's first seven days, not like the 1/24 burst in 35 minutes the afternoon she'd met Sekhet.
Beside the reference points in her notebook, she added one more small mark, 12:30, the third point. She tentatively set the next check for 15:00. The watermark was slow; she didn't need to watch it all day.
Once she'd confirmed the observation was ongoing, she ate lunch—the same day-old toast, the remaining half. The coffee was from this morning, already cold, and she didn't reheat it.
What she faced now wasn't "nothing to do"—it was "what to do for the next two weeks."
Sekhet's letter said: take two weeks of personal leave, don't come into the museum, we'll be in touch. No instructions for that interval. She didn't know whether two weeks meant a real two weeks, or shorter, or longer, and she didn't know whether the Academy's "we'll be in touch" meant tomorrow or next month.
She could wait. She could sit at home and watch the watermark.
But she'd already decided—the Academy was only a short-term hedge, not trust. While she waited, she'd also work her own line.
She had one verifiable thing—the low wall in the background of the Wankou riverbank group photo from December 21, 2060. That wall fell outside Sekhet's prohibition—it wasn't the museum, nor a storage vault / auction house / overseas site. It avoided the third-party contact risk of the museum, and it could verify the relationship between the Chen Yufang line and that ring.
She could go.
13:00, she went out.
This time she wore her wrist terminal—now that she was on personal leave, the terminal no longer needed to serve as "evidence she was on duty at the museum"; she could use it normally. She didn't bring the muji booklet (she didn't want to carry the whole record out of the apartment and leave it at risk). She brought the Moleskine notebook, plus the fountain pen—in case she needed to write something on site.
Mailbox 305 downstairs, empty. She hadn't expected otherwise.
14:00, she reached Wankou Station.
She came out of Exit 2, walked to the riverbank, and started following the river toward the old street. As she walked she shot photos—each segment of the low wall, the wrist terminal numbering the album automatically.
The wall's height was more or less uniform, roughly a little above her waist. The material was coarse grey concrete, its surface marked by water stains left over the years, the sheen of hands that had touched it, moss and bird droppings.
She walked about eight minutes, past the thirty-second photo, and stopped. She remembered that in 2060, they hadn't walked as far as eight minutes. Probably closer.
She backtracked and walked along the riverbank again, this time noting the "distinctiveness" of each wall segment.
14:25, she noticed one segment.
That segment of wall was about 3 meters long, wedged between two stretches of grey concrete.
It was white.
Not a uniform renovation—every other wall segment around it was the original grey, and only this one had been painted white. The segments before and after were untouched.
She stepped closer and reached out to feel it. The paint was fully dry, didn't come off on her hand. The surface was smooth, as if applied with a roller rather than sprayed.
She crouched and looked at the paint's edges—at the seams with the adjacent concrete segments, the white paint ended unevenly, overrunning the boundary in a few places, leaving small white dots. As if someone had painted in a hurry and didn't much care about the edges.
Timing—by her estimate—painted within about a week, no longer than that. The paint was fully dry but the surface still had its sheen (beyond a week, wind and sun would dull it), there was no accumulated dust or moss on the white paint, and it hadn't rained in Xinshu these past few days, so there were no water marks on the white.
First she used the wrist terminal to fully photograph this stretch of white paint in its undisturbed state: the wide view, the mid-section detail, the seams with the two adjacent concrete segments, the few details where the white paint had ended unevenly. She followed procedure, the same as building a record at the museum—document the site completely first, then consider doing anything.
Once done, she walked slowly along the white-painted segment, looking for any spot that hadn't been covered.
Reaching the seam near the far end, she crouched. The right angle where the wall's edge met the ground had the thinnest coat of white paint—thin enough that a light touch of her fingernail would lift a layer of white flakes, as if a layer had been carried off by the wind before it dried.
She judged: this corner had only a single, extremely thin coat, a top layer added on compared to the main face, and scraping it would expose the concrete beneath—but the cost was locally destroying this small patch of white paint surface. She accepted that cost.
She still recorded the action "I'm going to scrape, there's a risk." She aimed the wrist terminal at the corner again and took an unscraped close-up.
She scraped lightly with her fingernail. White flakes fell, and the original grey concrete beneath was slowly exposed—and with it, a stretch of arc, dark, like something drawn with an oil-based marker and then painted over with white.
She kept scraping, working out an arc about 2 centimeters long.
The angle of the arc matched the broken ring she now looked at every day. The thickness of the line matched too.
Along the direction the arc extended, she filled in the whole ring in her imagination—the break would fall in the upper right, between the third point and the fourth.
It matched the photo in her memory, matched the watermark at the end of the letter, matched the ring she'd drawn herself.
She took the wrist terminal and shot a close-up of the scraped-out arc—forming a "before → after" contrast of unscraped and scraped.
Once done, she stood up and looked around.
On the riverbank, about 5 meters from her, an old man passed by dragging a two-wheeled cart. He wasn't walking fast. As he passed her, he stopped, looked at her for about three seconds, then kept going. He didn't say hello, didn't ask what she was doing. She didn't say hello either. She watched him recede, reach the bend at the far end of the riverbank, turn, and disappear.
She turned back to look at the white-painted segment—no one had come by.
14:50, she kept walking along the wall, about 100 meters, checking whether any other segment had been covered too. None. Only that one.
She went back and looked again. 3 meters long, white paint, targeted, painted not long ago.
She couldn't stay here too long. An old man had seen her.
15:30, she took the subway back to Xinshu. On the train she flipped through the wrist terminal's album, looking at the set of photos she'd just taken. The whole stretch of white paint, the mid-section detail, the arc she'd scraped out. The photos stayed only on the terminal itself—she hadn't hit share, hadn't hit backup. Only after the train passed the next station did she put the terminal away.
16:30, she reached the foot of her building. Mailbox 305, empty.
Upstairs. The hair in the gap of the entryway door—she'd set it again before going out this morning, at 30 centimeters off the ground. She took out her flashlight and looked down. The hair was at 30 centimeters. It hadn't moved.
Inside, door shut, shoes still on, she walked to the desk.
The things she'd left on her desk—the part she hadn't taken when she went out—the nine sheets of blank paper, the muji booklet, the letter with the watermark at its end, the pen holder—all looked to be in their original places.
She opened the muji booklet, turning to the page of the sixth entry, "the fact that 'I am observing.'"
Below the sixth entry—in the blank stretch before she'd written a seventh—there was a faint grey line.
Horizontal. Running beneath the positions of the four characters "I," "am," "observ-," "-ing."
The line was drawn in pencil. Pale and faint. Pressed very lightly.
She hadn't drawn this line. She hadn't drawn it before going out this morning.
Ren Yi stood at the desk, not sitting down.
She held the muji booklet under the lamp and used the wrist terminal's camera to magnify the line. Confirmed it was pencil—not the ink of her fountain pen, nor the trace of an office ballpoint. A faint grey line, with no retracing.
There was a pencil in the pen holder at home—the one she'd borrowed from the museum office, which she normally used for marking (the same one she'd used to dot marks next to the ring she'd drawn herself, that afternoon she met Sekhet). She picked it up and looked at the tip.
The tip was worn wrong. She remembered her last use was that afternoon of October 22, when she'd pressed the tip down to make a mark, and she hadn't used it since. But now the tip was flatter than she remembered, as if someone had recently drawn a long line with it.
She took another sheet of blank paper and, with the same pencil, tried drawing a horizontal line like the one on the muji. The line she drew was darker than the one already on the muji. She changed the angle, laid the pencil very flat, used the side of the tip, and deliberately drew lightly once. This time it came close to the depth of the muji line.
Whoever drew the line had used a deliberately light pressure. As if they wanted her to notice, but didn't want to leave too heavy a trace.
That wasn't random. It was a designed message.
She sat back in the chair.
From going out at 13:00 this morning to coming home at 16:30, three and a half hours total. In that window, someone had entered her home, used the pencil from her own pen holder, drawn a faint grey horizontal line below the sixth entry in the muji booklet, and left.
The hair in the entryway hadn't moved—the other party knew she had the habit of placing a hair, kept its position on entering, and put it back at 30 centimeters on leaving. Nothing else on the desk had moved—the other party only touched the muji, leaving everything else as it was. The other party knew she'd check, knew she'd turn to below the sixth entry.
The other party was talking to her.
She took out the muji booklet, turned to below the seventh entry, and wrote the eighth:
Eight: A pencil line has appeared below the sixth entry in the muji booklet.
I was out from 13:00-16:30 this morning, the entryway hair hadn't moved, everything else on the desk was in place, only the muji was marked.
The pencil is from the pen holder at home, the tip is worn wrong—the other party used it.
The line was drawn with deliberately light pressure, as if to make me notice, but not to leave too heavy a trace.
**Status: candidate, source cannot be distinguished**. Possibilities:
1. The Academy (Sekhet)—but the Academy already notified me by letter, no need to draw a line as a reminder.
2. A third party (the old woman's side)—the old woman can make a database entry vanish in real time, and might be able to enter my home too.
3. Myself—these past few days I've already built up evidence of memory gaps.She finished writing, closed the booklet, sat a moment, and looked at the close-up of the scraped arc in the wrist terminal's album.
The arc was drawn by someone before 2060, with an oil-based marker, and recently painted over by someone with white paint. The pencil line was drawn by someone who entered her home this afternoon between 13:00 and 16:30, with a pencil, with deliberately light pressure.
The two things might be the same other party.
She set the muji booklet on the desk, side by side with the Moleskine, in the same position as the morning.
She didn't erase the pencil line.
She wanted the other party to know she'd seen it.
【Ch. 008 End · Ren Yi's apartment + the Wankou riverbank】
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