Ch. 003| The Missing Man's Mother
A reporter visits a vanished clerk's mother and finds his face and eyes wrong in every photo on her wall.
8:46 a.m. Li Kaichen woke.
He hadn't set an alarm. Day 1 he'd cut the lights at four-thirty in the morning and gotten less than four hours. Day 2 he'd run all five districts and come home, lights out at 23:50, less than nine hours of sleep to make up. He should still have been tired this morning. But he was awake.
He brushed his teeth, washed his face, brewed a cup of coffee, and sat back down at the desk.
He opened the laptop and pulled up the folder labeled 0317. He wanted to find the location of the convenience store he'd gone into the night before.
On the night of Day 1 he'd walked into the convenience store on Xinyi ◯◯ Road. He'd asked the clerk, "Did you see anything strange in the sky just now?" The clerk's eyes had drifted toward the window for two seconds, and then he'd said no.
He shut the laptop, grabbed his camera, and went out.
9:21, Xinyi ◯◯ Road.
The store's day shift was two women, one of them around fifty, hair gone gray, a thin jacket pulled on over her uniform.
"Sorry to bother you. I'm looking for the clerk who worked last night's overnight shift."
"A-Xiang?"
Li Kaichen nodded.
"He didn't come in today," the clerk said. "His clock-in time came and went, no punch. Called his cell, no answer. Called his mom, and she says he never came home after he finished his shift yesterday."
"Does he usually do this kind of thing?"
"Never. He's been here two years and never missed a day. His mother was crying just now."
"Could I get in touch with his mother?"
"Who are you?"
"Freelance writer. I was around here a little after three this morning, on something, and I spoke with A-Xiang. I want to reach him again."
The clerk looked at Li Kaichen. She hesitated two seconds.
"I can't just hand you her contact info. But write down your phone number, and I'll call her first and tell her a reporter's looking for her. If she's willing, she'll get back to you."
Li Kaichen tore a small slip from his notebook and wrote down his cell number and full name. The clerk tucked it into her pocket.
"Thank you."
10:04, he was sitting on the bench outside the convenience store. His phone rang. A LINE voice call.
"Mr. Li?"
"Are you A-Xiang's mother?"
"The clerk told me. You saw my son early this morning." The voice was flat.
"Yes."
"Go ahead."
"Ms. Lin, I'm Li Kaichen, a freelance writer. I went into the ◯◯ Road convenience store around 03:19 this morning and exchanged maybe two or three sentences with A-Xiang. I heard he didn't come home today, and I wanted—"
The other end was silent for three seconds.
"Can you give me something to prove you're a reporter first?"
"Of course. I'll send you my press credential number and links to two old articles you can find on Google."
He sent the information over. The other end went quiet for about a minute—he could hear her tapping at something, probably checking the links.
She came back. "Where are you right now?"
"Outside the convenience store."
"Come over. I'll give you the address."
The address was a twenty-year-old apartment building in Xinyi District, eighth floor, southeast corner. The elevator was slow. Li Kaichen arrived at 10:12.
A-Xiang's mother opened the door. Early fifties, hair short, cut to just below the ears, half gone white and undyed. She wore a thin dark-green jacket over dark trousers, and on her feet the kind of white plastic slippers you see in hospital corridors.
"Come in."
The living room was clean. On the coffee table were two books—one was "The Last Time We Met We Only Spoke of Joy", the other a retired-nurses' magazine. The TV was off. Two pots of greenery sat on the windowsill. On the wall near the kitchen hung a wall of photographs, maybe forty of them.
"Were you a nurse?" Li Kaichen asked.
"Retired five years now."
She went to pour water.
Li Kaichen took out his recorder, a Pilot 0.5, his waterproof notebook, and an A4 consent form. The form was a format he'd printed himself. By signing, the interviewee agreed that the content might be cited in subsequent reporting, with names and identifying information handled under pseudonyms.
She came back and set down the water. She picked up the page and read it quickly. She put a mark beside the third paragraph, then signed. Her handwriting was like a nurse's charting—small, clear, evenly spaced.
Li Kaichen pressed the recorder.
"June 5th, 2026, 10:16 a.m. Interviewee: Ms. Lin ◯◯." He finished the date, then paused. "Ms. Lin, are you ready to begin?"
"Yes."
He started with background. A-Xiang was twenty-six this year, graduated five years ago from National Central University, spent two years at a small internet company, then quit and started working overnight shifts at the convenience store, doing UI design freelance on the side. The past three months the freelance work had been thin, his income volatile. A-Xiang himself never complained to his mother; Ms. Lin had only found out when she happened to see his Notion work log open.
A-Xiang's father had died ten years ago. Liver cancer; from diagnosis to death he'd held on only three months. After that it had been just her and A-Xiang.
"What was his favorite snack when he was little?"
Ms. Lin gave a small laugh—the first laugh of the conversation. "Yakult. Loved it since kindergarten. There was always a row of them in the fridge."
"Has he ever been abroad?"
"Okinawa, on his high school graduation trip. The rest of the time he found it too much trouble; he'd rather stay home."
He asked about the last time she'd spoken with A-Xiang. Ms. Lin said yesterday evening A-Xiang had come home for dinner, eaten the sesame-oil chicken she'd cooked, and after eating said he was going to work and left. She hadn't seen the moment he went out the door—she was washing dishes.
"Do the two of you usually have any set weekly routine?"
"Sunday nights we watch an episode of a mainland Chinese drama together. I pick it. He doesn't always like it, but he keeps me company."
"Did you watch last Sunday's episode?"
"We got halfway. Halfway through he said his head hurt, got up, and went to lie down in his room. I waited till the episode ended and went to knock on his door, but he didn't answer. I thought he was asleep."
"What day was last Sunday?"
"The 31st."
Li Kaichen noted down T-4 / headache, left partway through.
"These past few days, has he been waking earlier than usual, or unable to sleep in the small hours?"
Ms. Lin thought for three seconds.
"Once, last week. He was sitting in the living room a little after three in the morning, no lights on. I saw him when I got up to use the bathroom. I asked him what was wrong, he said he couldn't sleep. I told him to go back to bed, he said in a minute. I went back to my room. I never saw him sitting there again after that."
"What day last week?"
"Wednesday."
Li Kaichen worked it out. That day was T-1. T-0 was the small hours of Day 1.
He asked about the things in the house. Desk, drawers, wardrobe, photos, signage, clothes. Ms. Lin said she'd never gone through A-Xiang's room—she went in to sweep and make the bed, but she didn't touch his things.
"Could I go in and take a look? I won't go through anything—just look at how the desk and shelves are arranged."
"Go ahead."
A-Xiang's room was through the door to the left of the living room. The bed was neatly made. On the desk a MacBook sat closed, with two Apple Pencils beside it and a Notion work log printed out. The bookshelf had three rows, all of them UI/UX and design-related books. On the wall was one poster, an industrial-design rendering of a calculator prototype.
He was in the habit of reading personality off a room. Here he could find no Gundam model, no parts bags, no spray-paint markers, no anime posters—apart from the design work, no hobby showed at all.
Li Kaichen committed it to memory. He came out and closed the door.
"Thank you." He sat back down. "Those photos on your wall—is there any one of them that's been recently reprinted, reframed, or rephotographed?"
Ms. Lin turned and looked at the wall of photos for three seconds.
"No. I haven't touched that wall in ten years."
"Then would you let me go take a look? Is that all right?"
"Go ahead."
He stood up and walked over to the wall of photos, stopping about 60 centimeters away.
Forty-one photographs. From A-Xiang's infancy to last month. The most recent one was A-Xiang's twenty-sixth birthday, taken on the 16th of last month—mother and son smiling at the camera in a restaurant, a cake in front of them, A-Xiang in a black T-shirt, his hair freshly cut.
Li Kaichen stared at it for three seconds.
At 03:19 this morning, in the convenience store, he'd seen A-Xiang's face. He'd been wearing a mask, but the brow ridge above the mask, the eye sockets, the forehead, the eyebrows—he'd seen all of it. The store lights had been bright then, the distance under 80 centimeters.
The A-Xiang in that birthday photo on the wall—his brow ridge was lower than the one in Li Kaichen's memory by half a knuckle (a rough estimate, using the joints of his own fingers as a gauge). The tips of his eyebrows slanted a little farther down. His eye sockets were shallower.
Except for the face, everything matched. The background matched, the pose matched, the hair length matched, the lighting matched.
He stepped back and looked at the second photo, A-Xiang's college graduation portrait, five years ago. The A-Xiang in that one and the A-Xiang in the birthday photo looked like the same person. But against the A-Xiang Li Kaichen had memorized the night before—that same half a knuckle off.
One more photo. One more. The A-Xiang in each was consistent with the one before. And the A-Xiang in each was off by half a knuckle from the one Li Kaichen had seen the night before.
"Ms. Lin."
"Yes."
"This birthday photo—when you took it, did you feel A-Xiang looked any different from usual?"
Ms. Lin came over and looked for three seconds.
"He was thin that day," she said. "He's lost weight lately. Four kilograms in three months. So his face looks longer."
A man that age, a convenience-store clerk, dropping four kilograms in three months and his face getting longer—that was within reason.
But a longer face didn't explain a brow ridge lower by half a knuckle, eyebrow tips slanting down five degrees, shallower eye sockets. Those didn't change because someone lost four kilograms.
"Could I photograph this one?"
"Go ahead."
He took the Sony α7 from his bag, the 35 mm lens, 60 centimeters away, ISO on auto. Ten frames in a burst, covering four fields of view: a close-up of the birthday photo, a mid-distance including the print's border, the row in the lower-left corner, and the full wall in full frame.
When he finished, he stepped back and swept the whole wall again.
The last row, the far-right photo, was A-Xiang's sixth birthday, the first solo shot after infancy. A-Xiang stood in front of the living-room sofa, cradling a cloth doll. The angle was slightly low, the kind you get when a parent crouches to shoot.
Li Kaichen stared at six-year-old A-Xiang's right eye for three seconds.
Around the rim of the right eye's pupil there was a thin grayish-white ring. Visible to the naked eye. The left eye had none.
He looked at the next photo over—the elementary-school graduation portrait. The right eye, that same 1 mm gray ring. The left eye clean.
He worked back through them—junior-high graduation, the high school orientation, the basic-training photo from military service, the first suited photo from entering the workforce. Every right eye had the same grayish-white ring. Every left eye was clean. Back to the most recent one, the birthday photo. There too.
"Ms. Lin, is there something wrong with A-Xiang's right eye?"
Ms. Lin came over. She looked for three seconds.
"No. Both his eyes are perfectly fine."
"Are you sure?"
"I washed his face for twenty-six years; I've looked at his eyes for twenty-six years," Ms. Lin said. "Both his eyes are normal. Why?"
Li Kaichen stared at the photo.
In every photo on the wall, A-Xiang's right pupil had a grayish-white ring at its rim. Ms. Lin said it wasn't there.
Last night in the convenience store, A-Xiang had worn a mask, but his eyes were uncovered. From 80 centimeters, under bright lights, Li Kaichen had looked at A-Xiang's eyes for more than three seconds. A-Xiang's eyes—both of them—were clean.
"It's nothing," Li Kaichen said. "I probably misread it."
He lowered the camera.
"Thank you. Let's stop here for today. I may come back again later—would that be all right?"
"That's fine. Will you find him?"
"I'll do everything I can."
Ms. Lin nodded. She saw him to the door. Before the elevator doors closed, she was still standing in the doorway, one hand on the frame, watching the elevator.
13:11, Li Kaichen sat in the car downstairs from the building.
He transferred the ten frames he'd just shot to the iPad and zoomed in on A-Xiang's right eye.
The grayish-white ring, clear. Using the print's border as a scale, its width looked to be on the order of a millimeter.
He switched to his own phone's photo album and found the glass-reflection shot he'd casually taken at the door the moment he left the convenience store at 03:19 that morning—in that one, A-Xiang was restocking inside, his upper body behind a shelf, only half his face visible. But you could see a small part of the right eye in profile.
He zoomed in, and in again.
In the glass reflection the right eye in profile was only a dozen-odd pixels, the pupil itself under three pixels. He couldn't see the gray ring, but the resolution wasn't enough to rule it out.
His real basis for the reading was last night's direct observation—80 centimeters away, lights bright, more than three seconds. That time, A-Xiang's eyes, both of them, had been clean.
He leaned back against the headrest and sat for about a minute.
Then he took the SD-card reader from the passenger seat, connected the Sony α7's SD card to the iPad, and copied the ten original files onto an encrypted drive. He opened Terminal, ran SHA-256, and recorded the ten hashes in the iPad's Notes—one copy local, one copy on iCloud.
He opened the close-up of the birthday photo and, using the print's border as a scale, measured the position ratios of the brow ridge, eyebrow tips, eye sockets, and gray ring relative to the border's width. He wrote the ratios into Notes, aligned with the hashes.
Day 2's reference frame was in place: original-file hashes plus relative ratios plus one iPad screenshot.
He opened the waterproof notebook. He turned to the page after the 002 entry. At the top he wrote today's date, then wrote:
Convenience-store overnight clerk, A-Xiang, 26, out of contact after last night's shift change.
41 photos on the wall, from infancy to last month, every right pupil with a grayish-white ring at the rim.
Mother says it isn't there.
Last night, 80 cm, bright lights, more than 3 seconds, both eyes clean.He paused. Below it he wrote:
The A-Xiang in the 41 photos on the wall, and the A-Xiang at the convenience store last night—are they the same person?He paused again.
He thought back to 001, that night, the convenience-store clerk's eyes drifting toward the rift for two seconds, then saying he hadn't seen anything.
That was A-Xiang.
Below the last line, he wrote:
A-Xiang is the 18th person to have witnessed the rift, beyond the 17.
He went out of contact within 24 hours.He closed the notebook and started the car.
Outside the window was the Xinyi District sun of 13:13 in the afternoon. The light fell on his left wrist, on the glass of his watch. He saw nothing wrong with any of it.
That was the first place all morning where he'd seen nothing wrong.
For the next two days he didn't go back to Xinyi.
The morning of Day 3 he opened the encrypted drive and ran SHA-256 again on Day 2's ten original files from the SD card, comparing them against the hashes in the Day 2 Notes—all ten, not a character off. The files hadn't moved at the byte level.
He opened the close-up of the birthday photo and aligned it against the relative ratios in the Day 2 Notes: brow ridge, eyebrow tips, eye sockets, gray ring, all relative to the print's border. The ratios on the Day 2 original file were still the same set of numbers he'd written on Day 2. But the one he was looking at now—every item was a shade fainter than that set of ratios.
He saved today's screenshot and the newly measured ratios, the filename stamped with the date. Day 3's reference frame was in place.
At noon he called the Day 1 Banqiao witness who'd taken the LINE call. After three rings it bounced to voicemail. He tried a second time, and it came up directly with "the number you have dialed is out of service area." The third time it bounced to "the number you have dialed is not in service."
He noted down the three error messages.
In the afternoon he called Ms. Lin to ask whether the police had any new progress. Ms. Lin said the police had come this morning to look at A-Xiang's room, gone by the book, nothing new.
The morning of Day 4 he ran the SHA-256 comparison once more. The hashes of the Day 2 originals were not a character off from what he'd recorded two days ago. The Day 3 screenshots and relative ratios matched what he'd saved the day before, too.
He opened the birthday photo and aligned it three ways against the Day 2 and Day 3 relative ratios. Brow ridge, eyebrow tips, eye sockets, the right eye's gray ring—every item was a shade fainter again than on Day 3.
The relative ratios on the Day 2 original hadn't changed; the Day 3 ratios hadn't changed. What changed was what he was seeing now.
As if the A-Xiang in this photo were slowly moving closer to the A-Xiang in Li Kaichen's memory. As if this photo knew what Li Kaichen remembered.
At noon on Day 4 he went back to that convenience store in Xinyi, hoping to find the Day 2 day-shift clerk who'd taken his number and passed it along to Ms. Lin.
She wasn't there.
Behind the counter was a young man he'd never seen. He asked after the gray-haired woman who'd been there two mornings ago. The man said, "There's no one like that here. Day shift this week is just me and one other girl, and she comes in the afternoon."
"She was here two days ago."
"That's not possible. Three of us cover the schedule, and we know each other."
Li Kaichen didn't press further. He left the store and got back in the car.
He sat for three minutes.
Then he opened the waterproof notebook and, at the bottom of the A-Xiang page, added a line:
Originals, hashes, cross-day ratios, screenshots—none of them changed. What changed is what I see.
The clerk who spoke with me here two days ago—today they say there's no such person.【Ch. 003 End · Li Kaichen's place in Da'an District → Xinyi convenience store → the missing man's family residence → Li Kaichen's place → Xinyi convenience store】
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