Ch. 006| Under Rezoning

07:30. Qiu Che woke up.

The first thing he did wasn't to look out the window, wasn't to listen for the rhythm of the traffic, wasn't to check that his notebook was still there. It was to reach up and feel the nightstand.

The Skylink was there. Same spot, same angle as when he'd taken it off and set it down at 15:18 the night before. But—wrong. Last night he'd pushed the Skylink left, all the way to the edge of the table, deliberately out of the range where he'd roll in his sleep. Now it sat dead center on the tabletop.

He sat up and put on the Skylink.

Good morning, Mr. Qiu. The temporary offline interval from 15:18 to 07:29 has been synced automatically. Today's health-observation log has been updated.

"Synced automatically."

"Synced automatically"—the phrase meant that across the sixteen hours and eleven minutes the Skylink had spent off his head, on the table, it hadn't really been offline. It had only stopped showing an interface; the underlying layer kept running, recording every bit of sensor data for that stretch of time—location, acceleration, ambient light, indoor sound field—and uploaded it all in one batch once he put it back on.

It also meant that last night, when he sat at the desk writing in the notebook, opening the drawer, locking the drawer—the Skylink's ambient-sound sensor had caught all of it.

The second push notification came in right behind the first:

An advanced visual calibration has been scheduled for you tomorrow at 14:00. Location: Consulting Room C-1, the Second Health Station, the Seventh Ring Road. Please arrive on time.

"Has been scheduled for you." Not "we recommend," not "please book an appointment." It was "has been." Skyvault had filed the request for him. The health station had accepted it.

Qiu Che took off the Skylink, set it back on the table, and pushed it left to the edge again. This time he knew it wouldn't make any difference.

---

08:00. Qiu Che sat at his desk, two things spread open in front of him.

On the left: the notebook, open to a fresh double page, with nothing on it but a simple box drawn in mechanical pencil—roughly mapping out the relative positions of three districts in the New Capital, along the Seventh Ring Road, the Sixth Ring Road, and the Third Ring Road.

On the right: his old map from second grade.

The old map was paper, part of a "My Hometown" assignment kit the school had handed out ten years ago. Qiu Che had colored it in with crayon back then, and it was still tucked inside that old photo album at the very bottom of his wardrobe. He'd dug for twenty minutes to find it just now, while his mom was still in the kitchen. In the bottom right corner was his handwriting at seven years old: Qiu Che · Second Grade, Class A · 2055.

He held the old map against the "places he'd been as a kid" that he still carried in his head, and bit by bit redrew them into that box on the left page of the notebook.

East side of the Third Ring Road—ten years ago there'd been a little oden shop, and his dad had taken him there twice.

At the boundary where the Sixth Ring Road met the Seventh, there was an alley, and at the end of the alley was a small park, where his mom had taken him to take photos on his fifth birthday.

West side of the Third Ring Road—there'd been a small bookstore, with an old man who always wore a green vest. His dad had talked with that old man a few times. Qiu Che couldn't read back then; all he remembered was a yellow poster stuck to the glass door of the shop.

When he was done, he'd drawn eight points in all.

---

Then he switched on the Skylink—not wearing it, just laying it on the desk—pulled up the New Capital's official map interface, and adjusted the zoom of the interface to the same scale as the box in his notebook.

He compared them.

Of the eight points—seven didn't show up on the Skylink map at all. What showed up instead was "Third Ring Road, east side, No. 287: Under Rezoning," "Sixth Ring Road / Seventh Ring Road boundary alley: Under Rezoning," "Third Ring Road, west side, No. 432: Under Rezoning."

Seven "Under Rezoning."

The eighth—the small park from Qiu Che's fifth birthday—showed up on the Skylink map as "Sixth/Seventh Boundary Public Green Space," but the shape it showed didn't match what Qiu Che remembered. He remembered that park had a little pond. On the map now, there was none.

---

08:47. His mom poked her head in from the kitchen.

"Che, what are you looking at?"

Qiu Che reflexively closed the notebook, but his mom had already walked over to the desk.

"Nothing," Qiu Che said.

His mom glanced at the desktop. On it: the notebook (closed), the old map (open), the Skylink (interface lit up).

"What's this?" His mom pointed at the old map.

"My grade-school assignment. I found it just now while looking for something."

"Oh." His mom looked at it for two seconds, her expression not changing at all, like she was looking at a blank sheet of paper. "You drew it really well back then."

She didn't ask. The map, the Skylink interface, Qiu Che looking dead serious—any one of those would make anyone else take a second look. She didn't catch it, or chose not to.

Qiu Che tried a question. "Mom, do you still remember the little park at the boundary of the Sixth and Seventh Ring Roads, at the end of the alley? You took me there the year I turned five. There used to be a little pond there."

His mom thought for three seconds.

"A little park? I don't think so."

"You took photos of me there. It was my birthday."

"For your fifth birthday I took you to the zoo, not a little park," his mom said, her tone completely natural. "The zoo, the giraffe—you took one look and cried, then came home and slept for fifteen hours."

Qiu Che nodded.

He remembered the zoo—that was his sixth birthday. His mom had folded two birthdays into the same one. Or maybe he'd remembered it wrong himself.

But he wouldn't have the little park and the little pond wrong—that photo was still there in the old album at the very bottom of his wardrobe, pressed right under this old map. He'd seen it when he dug the map out earlier.

He didn't bring up the album.

"Okay," Qiu Che said. "I got it mixed up."

"Right." His mom smiled briefly and turned back to the kitchen. "Do you want breakfast?"

"No, I'm heading out soon."

"Heading out where?"

"The library," Qiu Che said.

---

His mom answered from the kitchen and didn't press.

Qiu Che sat at the desk, looking at the eight points in the notebook, listening to the sound of his mom tidying up in the kitchen—a sound in exactly the same rhythm as yesterday, as the day before, as every single Sunday morning across his three years of middle school.

He folded the old map, tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket, locked the notebook back in the drawer, put on the Skylink, and went out.

---

11:00. Third Ring Road, west side, No. 432.

Or rather—11:00, west side of the Third Ring Road, where No. 432 was in Qiu Che's memory.

It wasn't his closest blind spot, nor his farthest; it was the one he was most confident he remembered. The little bookstore where his dad had talked with the green-vested old man, when Qiu Che was seven—that address was etched clearly in his head, because it was one of the last places his dad had taken him out to.

When he got there, it was a stretch of fencing.

The fence stood about 2.4 meters high, dark-green metal panels bolted together, a ring of rusted barbed wire along the top. The fence enclosed the whole lot, taking up a full half of the sidewalk's width. There was a gate in the middle of the fence, and on the gate hung a pale blue notice board.

Third Ring Road, west side, No. 432 to No. 438
Urban Renewal — Under Rezoning
Expected completion: Q4 2055
Rezoning authority: New Capital Urban Development Bureau

Q4 2055. It was 2065 now. That notice board had been up for ten years.

He stepped back to take in the whole fence. The fence itself—structurally intact, no breaks, no sign anyone had ever climbed over, like no one had ever tried.

Along the other stretches of the Third Ring Road, people passed during the morning and evening commute. On this stretch, Qiu Che stood for three minutes, and not a single pedestrian walked onto this part of the sidewalk.

It wasn't that they were going around it. It was that their footsteps were guided by the New Capital's pedestrian light-bands across to the far side of the street, and then guided back to this side once they'd passed—skipping exactly over the section of fence.

---

Qiu Che tried to raise his hand and press the Skylink's photo key.

This area is an active rezoning site. Per Urban Development Bureau regulations, public photography is not permitted. The camera function has been temporarily locked.

The Skylink's female voice. No escalation of any warning, no "anomalous photography behavior has been logged," just—locked, done. Like an action that had been anticipated and handled in advance.

Qiu Che lowered the Skylink and walked left along the fence.

Where the fence met the exterior wall of the building next door, there was a gap about 10 centimeters wide. Qiu Che pressed the side of his face to it and looked inside.

Inside was a clean lot, overgrown with weeds. The ground was flat, with traces of old concrete around the edges, but the center was all dirt and weeds. No sign of any construction or demolition at all—just sitting there, empty.

That lot wasn't being built on. That lot had already been cleared out, and then left there, covered over by weeds.

---

Qiu Che pulled his face back from the gap, took another step farther down the left side of the fence, and looked at the metal panels.

Just left of the gate, the surface of one metal panel, because of some angle of sunlight reflecting off it, looked like a very fogged-over mirror. Qiu Che stopped for a second and saw himself reflected in it—a blurred outline, dark clothes, hair, the position of his face too unclear to make out.

Behind the blurred outline, the reflection showed the inside of the fence, the empty lot, the weeds.

And then, above the right shoulder of his own blurred outline—about the size of a fist, a pale gray pattern in the fog.

Four characters.

萬法有缺

Qiu Che didn't move.

He held the distance close to the metal panel, held the angle of reflection, and looked at those four characters.

Those four characters weren't behind him—behind him was the west-side sidewalk of the Third Ring Road, the pale blue notice board, the colors of the ad projection panels. There was no object whose shape, at this angle, would reflect the four characters 萬法有缺.

Those four characters were in the reflective layer "inside" the metal panel—as if embedded into the physical process of the reflection itself.

He blinked once. The four characters were gone. The fogged metal panel held only his own blurred outline, and the empty lot behind it.

He held the original angle and looked another ten seconds. Nothing. Changed the angle—nothing. Stepped right, then back to the original spot, the original angle—nothing.

---

13:48. Qiu Che got home.

His mom wasn't there—she'd gone out. On the dining table was a note in his mom's handwriting: Che, I went to the market, back later. There are dumplings in the fridge.

Qiu Che went into his room, unlocked the drawer, took out the notebook, and turned to the double page with the eight points on it. In the top right corner he wrote:

③ Third Ring Road, west side, No. 432 to No. 438 — field record
Urban renewal notice up for ten years
Notice date: expected completion Q4 2055. It's 2065 now
No one's climbed the fence
Pedestrians' steps are guided by the light-bands to skip this stretch

Turn the page.

Inside the reflective layer of the west-side metal panel: 萬法有缺, a flash and gone
About a fist above the right shoulder of my blurred outline.
I blinked, and it was gone.

Turn the page, spread out the old map, line it up again with the eight points in the notebook, and use the mechanical pencil to add a small note beside each point:

① Third Ring Road, east side, No. 287 — oden shop → Under Rezoning
③ Third Ring Road, west side, No. 432 — old bookstore → Under Rezoning + fence reflective layer
⑧ Sixth/Seventh boundary — little park → public green space, shape doesn't match
(+ five similar blind spots, all "Under Rezoning," won't list each for now.)

All eight blind spots fell before Qiu Che was ten years old, all places he'd gone with his dad or his mom. His mom's reaction to the little park this morning was the first time Qiu Che had formally confirmed it—at least in part, his mom didn't remember either.

---

15:30. Qiu Che sat by the window.

Skyvault pushed into his ear canal:

Mr. Qiu, please confirm your advanced visual calibration appointment tomorrow at 14:00. Location: Consulting Room C-1, the Second Health Station, the Seventh Ring Road.

"Please confirm." Not "has been scheduled for you."

Back to the normal appointment tone—as if that "has been" push he'd seen this morning had never happened.

Qiu Che read it once. He didn't confirm, and he didn't decline. He left the Skylink where it was and looked out the window.

No. 12 Residential Tower, the Seventh Ring Road. That window on the twelfth floor. Closed.

The notebook in the drawer was eight pages thicker than yesterday now, plus the location of the second 萬法有缺, plus a ten-year-old map.

None of those pages were in Skyvault's records.

At least, that was what he hoped.

【Ch. 006 End · home, Seventh Ring Road, the New Capital → the fence at No. 432, west side of the Third Ring Road → home apartment】