Ch. 011| Auntie

October 28, 06:42.

Ren Yi woke. The eighth time.

She got out of bed, walked over to the desk, and looked at the muji first.

Below the fourteenth entry—no new line. The other party had left nothing today.

She turned to that line from yesterday, under the ninth entry—still there, a pale grey, drawn with a deliberately light pressure, not gone over again, not erased.

The broken ring on those two sheets of A4 on the desk—still in its old position, hadn't moved again.

She sat in the chair for about a minute. Today the other party had done nothing at all.

---

09:00, her wrist terminal rang.

She froze for a second, looked at the screen. Her mom.

She answered. "Hey, Mom."

"You free today?" Her mom's voice, the southern accent, same as always. "I'm coming up to Xinshu—made an appointment to take your aunt to the doctor, and after that I thought I'd come sit at your place a while."

Ren Yi couldn't say no—she'd taken personal leave to stay home, so her mom would assume she was free.

"Okay. What time?"

"Noon. I'll get there around twelve thirty. I'm bringing the peanut butter your dad made."

"Okay."

---

Her mom hung up. Ren Yi stood up and started clearing the scene.

She put the muji into the drawer on the right side of the desk, the one she normally kept locked—together with the Moleskine notebook, the fountain pen, the nine blank sheets from the desktop, and the letter with the watermark at the end tucked inside the notebook—put them all in and locked it. She pulled the key off the keyring and put it in the little compartment of the shoe cabinet by the entryway, somewhere her mom wouldn't see.

What she left on the desk: a pen holder, a coffee cup from last night she hadn't washed, and a beginner's guide to Egyptology in English she'd set down at random. She went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, changed the trash bag, opened a window to air the place out; she straightened the cushions on the living-room sofa and gave the floor a quick wipe.

While she did all this, she was calculating—whether the other party would come into her home during her mom's visit. If it did, it would be seen by her mom; but in seven days no one had seen it, so she assumed it had a way to stay out of sight.

11:30, she was ready. She sat down on the living-room sofa, set her wrist terminal on the coffee table, put her backpack into the bedroom, and brought a bottle of sparkling water from the kitchen to set beside the coffee table. She even turned on the TV, switched to a cooking channel her mom would watch, and set the volume to the level of an ordinary household on an ordinary day.

---

11:50, the doorbell rang.

Her mom was here. Forty minutes earlier than expected.

Her mom was in her fifties, short, hair dyed dark brown, reading glasses hanging on a cord around her neck, an insulated bag in her hand. She came in and took off her shoes first, lining them up neatly against the wall by the entryway—a thing Ren Yi had watched her do since childhood, her mom never leaving shoes lying around, not even in her own home.

The first look she gave Ren Yi coming in, she frowned.

"You look terrible."

"I've got a cold."

"You taking anything for it?"

"Yeah."

Her mom walked into the living room, set down the insulated bag, put her glasses on, looked at Ren Yi's face, then looked around the living room, then glanced over toward the desk.

"How many hours have you been sleeping these past few days?"

"Four or five."

"Not enough."

"I know."

---

They had lunch.

What her mom had brought was the peanut butter her dad made, a box of rice noodles made at home in the southern outskirts, and an insulated container of braised pork. Ren Yi heated up the rice noodles, ladled the braised pork over them, stirred in a little peanut butter, and sat down to eat. Her mom didn't eat anything herself, just drank water and watched Ren Yi eat.

"How's that report of yours coming along?"

"Still revising it."

"They putting any pressure on you over at the museum?"

"No."

"Your aunt says you've lost weight."

"I haven't had an appetite this week."

Her mom didn't answer. Watched her take a few bites.

Then her mom said: "Oh, right—Auntie Chen Yufang's birthday was last month. Did you wish her a happy birthday?"

---

Ren Yi's chopsticks stopped in midair for about half a second, then went back down to pick up more rice noodles.

"Auntie Chen Yufang?"

"Yes, your auntie." Her mom said. "The one whose place you used to go to do your homework back in middle school."

Ren Yi chewed, slowly, thinking how to put it, then said: "I thought you meant Chen Yufang, my classmate from middle school."

Her mom looked at her, with a look she used to give Ren Yi back when she'd said something wrong.

"Chen Yufang is your auntie. Not your classmate. You did not have a classmate named Chen Yufang in middle school."

Her mom said this in the same flat tone as before, eyes still fixed on the braised pork at her hand. Her mom was slicing the braised pork, and the sound of the knife coming down arrived together with those last words, "no classmate named Chen Yufang," like an ordinary little household correction.

That lightness, heavier than any gravity. Something in Ren Yi's chest tightened.

---

Ren Yi sat in the chair, the rice noodles still in her mouth, not yet swallowed.

She wanted to say "no, I did," but she didn't.

She chewed, swallowed, took a sip of water, then said lightly: "Oh, right, my auntie. I was just mixing her up with another friend."

Her mom looked at her for two seconds, then said: "You're too tired."

"Yeah."

"How's that dog of your auntie's, Bubu?" her mom went on. "Last time you said Bubu's ear was infected—did it clear up?"

Ren Yi didn't remember ever telling her mom Bubu's ear was infected, but she said: "It cleared up."

"Next time I go back to the southern outskirts I'll bring her some ointment, that old recipe, your auntie will like it."

"Okay."

---

Two threads ran in her head at the same time:

One was what her mom said. Chen Yufang is the auntie, not a classmate. The "middle-school classmate Chen Yufang" Ren Yi believed in might not exist at all; or she might exist, but whether her name was Chen Yufang, whether she was the person Ren Yi thought she was—there was no way to confirm any of it now. Auntie Chen Yufang's home was on the third floor down some alley off Yongqing Road, surname Chen, with a dog called Bubu—the same household Ren Yi had gone to see yesterday.

The other thread was her own. She remembered leaving school with Chen Yufang, crying together at their senior-year graduation, the first LINE message dated 2061/8/28, friended on Facebook 2060/5/4, different middle schools, no memory of how they'd first met. These memories were concrete, the timestamps were checkable, the images could be called up, the original conversations were still there in LINE.

The "Auntie Chen Yufang" her mom remembered was real (her mom's memory was more reliable than her own—logically, at least, it ought to be). The "middle-school classmate Chen Yufang" she herself remembered was real too (the LINE messages, the FB records, all verifiable).

Both were real. But only one was the real "Chen Yufang"—unless both were, or neither was.

---

14:00, her mom left.

Before she left her mom looked at Ren Yi's desk, looked around the living room again, glanced at Ren Yi's face once more, then said: "If you're still like this next week, come back home for a trip."

"Okay."

Her mom went downstairs. Ren Yi stood at the entryway, listening to the footsteps go down one floor at a time to the ground level, then the iron gate opened and shut, and outside an engine started up and slowly faded away.

She drew back into the apartment, shut the door, and locked the entryway.

---

She went back to the desk, opened the drawer, took out the muji, and turned to the page of the fourth entry, "Chen Yufang."

Below the fourth entry—below the line she'd written herself two days ago, "Chen Yufang. Possibly a coincidental doodle, not ruled out"—there was a new pale grey pencil line.

The other party had altered this notebook just now too.

---

Ren Yi went still.

Her mom arrived at 11:50, left at 14:00, two hours ten minutes in all, and Ren Yi and her mom had both been in the living room the whole time. She hadn't gone over toward the desk; the desk drawer had been locked the entire stretch, the key in the little compartment of the shoe cabinet by the entryway.

The other party might have come into her home today, opened the locked drawer, taken out the muji, drawn the line, put it back, locked it again, and left. But only yesterday she'd written, in the fourteenth entry: the other party doesn't need to physically enter. That explanation still held—and it didn't require picking a lock.

The two possibilities she couldn't tell apart right now. But either way, the other party choosing the time when her mom was present to do it—that was the message.

This stretch of time you thought was safe wasn't safe.

---

Ren Yi took out a ballpoint pen—not the fountain pen; she was still keeping up the discipline of the muji control group—and below the fourteenth entry, wrote the fifteenth:

Fifteen: The other party altered the muji again during my mom's visit (11:50-14:00).
My mom and I were both in the living room. The desk drawer was locked, the key in the little compartment of the shoe cabinet by the entryway.
The other party drew a line below the fourth entry, "Chen Yufang."
Choice of timing = message: the other party is telling me, "What your mom said, I heard it too."
The other party knows what "Auntie Chen Yufang" means.

She finished, then stopped, and added another line:

Note: My mom said, "You did not have a classmate named Chen Yufang in middle school."
Status: the Chen Yufang thread—upgraded from "candidate, possibly a coincidental doodle" to "memory anomaly, identity needs verifying."

She closed the muji, put it back in the drawer, locked it, and returned the key to the little compartment of the shoe cabinet by the entryway.

---

She sat back down on the living-room sofa.

She had two "Chen Yufangs"—her mom's version (the auntie, third floor on Yongqing Road, keeps Bubu, the place Ren Yi used to go to do homework in middle school) and her own version (the middle-school classmate, the LINE / FB records, a different middle school, the broken ring in the background of the photo taken at Wankou).

She had been to the third floor on Yongqing Road—that address was the same household as the auntie's place her mom spoke of.

Her mom's version could be verified—third floor on Yongqing Road, surname Chen, has a dog. Her own version had only the LINE / FB records, plus a person she couldn't remember "first meeting."

If her own version was false, then the "Chen Yufang" she'd been talking to on LINE / FB—who was that?

There was no way to verify it now. The other party knew. The other party wouldn't tell her.

---

Ren Yi sat on the sofa, breathing in the smell her mom had left in the living room—the smell of southern-outskirts rice noodles, the sweetness of peanut butter, and that laundry-detergent smell she'd grown up with on her mom. The whole place still smelled of "my mom was just here."

She couldn't fit that smell, and the fact that "the other party altered this notebook just now too," into the same picture.

【Ch. 011 End · Ren Yi's apartment】