Ch. 005| The Sound at the End of the Alley

Day 8, 06:50 in the morning. Li Kaichen sat at his desk.

After getting home at 04:14 on the morning of Day 7, he hadn't gone straight to bed. He'd sat up until dawn before lying down, caught five broken hours through the day, slept normally that night. Day 8, up at 05:30, made coffee, had been sitting here ever since.

In front of him were two screenshots side by side. On the left, the one the Sony α7 had taken at 03:16:11 in the small hours of Day 7: a one-meter-wide hole in the middle of the brick wall, yellow light deep inside it, two blurred human shapes in the light. On the right, the same instant as seen with his own eyes—he hadn't photographed it, but he remembered it clearly—across from him was a brick wall.

At the top of the waterproof notebook he wrote:

The problem isn't the alley. It's that I can't see the alley.

He paused. Below that he wrote:

Can I use the camera as my eyes and walk in?

---

At 07:40 he reopened that stretch of 4K footage from the small hours of Day 7 and skipped to 03:16:08.

The yellow light lasted seven seconds. The upright figure and the short figure—blow them up to the pixel, the outlines wouldn't get any sharper. All he could be sure of: one tall, one short, the shoulder lines out of proportion, the short one clearly narrower than the tall one. A short person, a crouching person, or a child. No way to determine identity.

He wrote it down, added a question mark. Then closed the laptop.

---

From 09:00 to 10:00 he ran tests at home.

He dug out the GoPro Hero 12, stuck it to his chest, switched on the front LCD. He walked across the living room watching the LCD, walked up to the wall and stopped. Doable. Narrow field of view, fisheye distortion, but he could walk.

He tried closing his eyes and walking by the LCD alone. Three seconds later he hit the couch. Opened his eyes. With both eyes open, what they each saw was different, but the body deferred to the naked eye. He'd hit it.

He tried again. Closed his left eye, kept the right looking straight at the LCD. He could walk, but a few steps in his head ached.

He switched approaches: hold the Sony α7 by hand, squint through the viewfinder the way you would an old SLR, and walk.

Slow, but this path he could manage.

He did the math on the timing. From the middle of the brick wall to the far end visible on the LCD—on the LCD it looked roughly fourteen meters (the perspective might be distorting it, the real depth could be greater). His normal stride was 0.7 meters; fourteen meters was about twenty steps; each step, walking and noting detail, about 1.5 seconds; thirty seconds to get in.

One hundred sixty-one seconds. Thirty in, thirty out, a hundred and one left to look around.

Doable.

At noon he wrote a hard rule at the very top of the waterproof notebook:

03:18:00 — whatever I see, start backing out.
03:18:20 — wherever I've backed to, stop.
If at 03:18:21 I'm not out past the brick wall yet, if the camera LCD flips back to brick wall, I keep backing up, don't turn around, until I see the car.

In the afternoon he sent a LINE to Ye Wenjia: "Tonight 02:45–03:30, I'll be across from the scooter shop on ◯◯ Road in Xinyi, doing something that might be very stupid. If I haven't sent you 'home' on my own by 04:30, call the police, give them these coordinates and the on-site photos." He attached the coordinates.

Ye Wenjia replied three minutes later: "Okay. Got the coordinates. I'll wait until 04:30."

---

Day 9, 00:48 in the small hours. ◯◯ Road in Xinyi, across from the scooter shop. He parked in the same spot as Day 7.

He killed the dome light. Powered on the GoPro, fixed it with the chest mount, then hung the Sony α7 around his neck. He'd brought two extra batteries—one in his jacket pocket, one in the right back pocket of his jeans. The voice recorder clipped to the left breast pocket of his shirt. The waterproof notebook and the Pilot 0.5 went into the inner chest pocket.

He sat and waited.

03:15:40—

On the GoPro LCD, the middle of the brick wall, the hole opened.

He got out, shut the door, locked it, crossed the asphalt, crossed the sidewalk, walked up to that spot at the middle of the brick wall. The GoPro LCD showed the mouth of the hole; the Sony α7 viewfinder showed it too. He looked up—to the naked eye, brick wall.

He raised the Sony α7, pressed it to his brow, squinted his left eye, looked through the viewfinder.

In the viewfinder, the entrance.

He lowered the camera, reached out his left hand and touched that spot in the middle of the brick wall.

The brick was hot. Heat banked since evening, around 26 degrees, the surface rough, grainy.

He kept his hand pressed to that spot, then with his right hand raised the Sony α7 and looked through the viewfinder again.

In the viewfinder, his left hand was reaching into the hole, vanishing into the black past the wrist.

His hand could feel the roughness of the brick, could feel the heat. But in the viewfinder his hand was no longer in this world.

Li Kaichen looked for three seconds, then pulled the hand back. The hand was fine.

He took a step forward.

The naked eye said he'd hit brick wall—he didn't. Nothing blocked his foot. He'd stepped in. Second step. Third step.

To the naked eye it was still brick wall. Brick red, close, grainy, like he was walking with his face pressed to a red wall. But he could breathe; the air was a little cool, three degrees colder than inside the car outside.

He trusted the viewfinder.

Ten steps in, he didn't look up at what the naked eye said. In the viewfinder he was in an alley—concrete walls on both sides, the ground cracked concrete tile, power lines overhead, on one of them an old long-snouted, birdcage-shaped plastic lamp shade, the bulb dead. There was water on the ground, rainwater or something else, he couldn't tell. He stepped through it, his shoes wet.

On the twentieth step he saw the yellow light ahead.

It was an old streetlamp. The post was concrete, gray, not the modern electroplated metal you got in Taipei. The shade was green-and-white enamel, rusted. Under the lamp was a low stool. On the stool was a person.

Li Kaichen stopped for three seconds, then kept walking. He stopped about four meters from the stool.

On the stool was an old woman, sitting, feet together, hands on her knees. She wore a thin dark-blue jacket, black trousers beneath it, plastic sandals on her feet. Her hair was gray-streaked, cut to chin length, two black clips pinning it at the temples. The lines on her face were deep, but her brow, eye sockets, the bridge of her nose, her lips—Li Kaichen could see all of it clearly.

She looked up at him.

"So you heard the sound too," she said.

Li Kaichen didn't answer. He pressed the power button on the voice recorder clipped to his left breast pocket.

"What did I hear?" he said.

"The sound of a city."

"How long have you been hearing it?"

"Three days."

"Where do you live?"

She pointed to the end of the alley. "Over there, second door. There's a pot of sweet osmanthus by my door."

Li Kaichen didn't look that way. He didn't have time. He had to get the core questions out first.

"The city sound you're talking about—what does it sound like?"

The old woman thought a moment. She spoke slowly, her words clearly bitten off, a faint hometown accent—not Taipei—maybe the soft trailing tones of Chiayi or Tainan.

"Footsteps," she said. "A lot of people walking, but I can't place where they're walking. At first I thought it was the road at the mouth of our alley, then it felt wrong—too many people walking, and where around here would there ever be that many people in the middle of the night."

"What else?"

"Scooters, the metal shutters of breakfast shops, a convenience-store clerk calling out a welcome. But the way he calls that welcome isn't the same version as the welcome around here."

"How is it different?"

"I can't put it into words. Maybe the ending of the word, maybe the accent. But it isn't ours."

"Anything else?"

"An MRT station announcement."

Li Kaichen's hand tightened on the Sony α7.

"The MRT station you heard—which station?"

The old woman thought for three seconds.

"Xingyun Station."

When she said the three syllables her pronunciation was uncertain—like saying a foreign place name for the first time, not knowing which syllable to stress and which to let go light.

"Xingyun Station," Li Kaichen repeated.

"'Now arriving at Xingyun Station. Passengers, please mind the gap.'" She said the whole line. "I've heard it three days, around this time every morning, twice each time."

"You're sure it's Xingyun Station?"

"I might not be saying it right. But those two characters he said, I heard them clearly."

Li Kaichen fixed the name Xingyun Station in his head. He couldn't lower the camera to write—lower it and he'd lose the path. He wanted to ask more—this MRT line, the other stations, any he knew—but the clock was running.

He glanced at the timestamp in the corner of the Sony α7 screen. 03:17:36. Forty-four seconds left to look around, then he had to back out.

---

"Where are you from?"

"Puzi, Chiayi. I married up to Taipei at thirty. I've lived in this alley fifty-one years."

"What about your husband?"

"He's asleep inside." She gestured toward the low house at the end. "His ears are bad. He can't hear."

"And your children?"

"One in Singapore, one in Banqiao, one passed away ten years ago."

She said it steadily. Li Kaichen could tell it wasn't offhand—she had thought about these questions.

"What time did you come out to sit here today?"

"02:30."

"You come out at 02:30 every day?"

"The last three days. I can't sleep. The sound's too loud."

Li Kaichen checked the timestamp. 03:18:03. He had to back out.

"I have to go," he said. "I'll come again tomorrow."

"Won't you come in and sit?"

"I can't. I have to get back."

"Next time you come, knock, just ring my doorbell. My house number—"

She pointed at the low house at the end.

"My house number—"

She pointed again.

But she didn't say the digits.

Li Kaichen noted the detail.

"I'll find it," he said. "I'll come by at 02:30 tomorrow."

"All right."

---

Li Kaichen started backing out. He kept the Sony α7 facing forward and retreated slowly. Twenty steps. He could hear his own footsteps, water dripping, and—very far off, faint, a low-frequency sound. Like a bus engine starting up. But not inside this alley.

03:18:18, he reached the entrance. Two more steps back onto the sidewalk, then he turned around.

03:18:21—to the naked eye, the middle of the brick wall went back to being brick wall. Beside the car was brick wall. On the LCD, the hole drew shut.

He walked back to the car. Sat in the driver's seat. His hands were shaking.

He hadn't expected his hands to shake. He hadn't been afraid through any of it—inside, he'd kept the rhythm under control—but the moment he sat back in the car, his hands shook for about thirty seconds.

He didn't know why.

Once his hands stopped, he opened the notebook and wrote down what he'd just held in memory:

Xingyun Station
Puzi, Chiayi
51 years
thin dark-blue jacket
plastic sandals
sweet osmanthus
second door (no house number said)
Chiayi or Tainan accent
soft trailing tones
the welcome not the same version

He sent Ye Wenjia a LINE: "Out. On my way home, turning on location sharing, will send 'home' when I'm in." On the way home he turned on Google Maps live location sharing. Got home at 04:21, sent: "Home."

Ye Wenjia replied: "Got it."

---

Day 9, from 06:00 to 09:00 in the morning, he played back the GoPro 4K footage and the voice recorder wav file.

What the GoPro caught: walking into the brick wall, the red brick grain, then the alley's inner walls (concrete gray, ground concrete tile, power lines overhead, the lamp shade, water dripping on the ground), the old woman appearing after twenty steps, the conversation, the exit, the brick wall restored. The voice recorder wav file: the old woman's voice clear—Chiayi accent, words clearly bitten off, "Now arriving at Xingyun Station. Passengers, please mind the gap," "sweet osmanthus," "second door." Background dripping, the low-frequency engine sound carrying in from outside the alley.

What the equipment recorded matched his own experience. This space was "the equipment can shoot it, the naked eye can't see it"—not just his own perception.

He ran SHA-256, two files, three backups. The Day 9 reference frame was in place.

---

Day 9, 10:40 in the morning, he sat in the café across from that residential tower in Xinyi, tablet open to Google Maps, zoomed in to the point fourteen meters back from the middle of the brick wall. That point was the unit on the western side of the tower's first floor.

He knew this mapping might not hold—last night he'd only walked as far as the streetlamp, and the fourteen meters corresponded to the lamp's position, not to the "second door" at the far end the old woman had pointed to. If the anomalous space projected directly onto the real plane, the far end where she was should be further back, possibly landing in the middle of the tower, possibly not corresponding to this building at all.

But he'd try the simplest thing first.

He left the café, crossed the street, went into the building's stepped courtyard, up to the western unit on the first floor.

No sweet osmanthus at the door.

He rang the bell. The door was opened by a guy around thirty, glasses, shorts and a T-shirt, phone in hand, like he'd just gotten up.

"Sorry to bother you," Li Kaichen said. "Is this your place?"

"We rent it."

"How long have you lived here?"

"Two years, me and my girlfriend."

"Do you know who lived here before?"

"Landlord said the last one was a young guy too. We took it over directly from him."

"Does your complex have a list of past residents? Or any unit that's been lived in a long time?"

The guy thought a moment. "No idea. But we have a building management committee, you could go ask them."

"Thanks."

---

The management committee. The chairwoman, an auntie, fifties, took a look at the old resident list.

"This building's twenty-six years old," she said. "I know all the long-time residents, and we've got rental records for the new ones. Last fifteen years, the western unit on the first floor has had: a couple, a single man, and now this couple."

"On this road, is there any woman resident over fifty who's lived here more than twenty years?"

She thought for five seconds.

"No. I've been here since the third management committee, I've lived on this road twenty-eight years. The western first-floor unit has never had a woman over sixty."

Li Kaichen nodded.

"In your twenty-eight years on this road, have you ever heard of—at this spot—an alley?"

She thought for five seconds.

"No."

"What about the road next door—ever heard of strange sounds at night?"

"No."

"Thank you."

"Who are you looking for?"

"Someone who's gone missing."

She hesitated. "Are you asking about A-Xiang? Ms. Lin's son."

"He's one of them."

She nodded and didn't ask anything more.

Li Kaichen left the management committee, walked back to the car. The western first-floor unit turned up no old woman, and in twenty-eight years this road had never had a woman over sixty. The direct mapping didn't hold—maybe the position was wrong, maybe the far end where she was didn't correspond to this building, maybe the anomalous space couldn't project onto the plane at all. Three possibilities not ruled out.

---

Day 10, 00:38 in the small hours.

Li Kaichen on ◯◯ Road in Xinyi, parked in the same spot as before. He got there at 02:30. He got out, walked across from the brick wall, stood there.

03:00–03:15:39, nothing on the LCD. 03:15:40, the hole opened.

He walked in. Twenty steps. He reached the yellow light.

The streetlamp was there. The stool—was not.

Li Kaichen stopped where he was and aimed the Sony α7 at the lamppost. Five shots in burst. Then aimed at where the stool should have been. Asphalt ground, damp, no water mark, no stool legs' prints, no shoe prints, nothing at all.

He walked toward the far end. Another twenty steps.

No low house at the end. The end was a concrete wall a little deeper than the alley walls on either side. No door, no window, no osmanthus pot.

Li Kaichen backed up two steps and looked up at the far end on the GoPro LCD. The GoPro caught the same concrete wall.

He walked back under the streetlamp and looked again at where the stool should have been. He crouched, put his hand on the asphalt. The asphalt was cold.

He stood, circled the lamppost once.

Concrete post, old rust spots on the surface. About a meter off the ground, on the side of the post facing the end of the alley, was a scratch. About half a palm long, fresh, scraped through the rust, exposing the gray concrete beneath.

Li Kaichen had no memory of seeing this scratch when he came in yesterday.

He photographed it. Five shots in burst. Got the scratch and the whole post into frame.

He felt that behind his shoulder, someone was watching. He didn't turn around. He chose not to turn around.

Timestamp 03:17:42.

He stood and started backing out. Halfway out, 03:17:55, he remembered something—yesterday the old woman had pointed to the house at the end, but never said the house number.

03:18:21, the LCD flipped back to brick wall. He was still on the sidewalk; a few more steps and into the car. 03:18:32 he sat in the driver's seat.

He opened the notebook and, below the Day 9 page, wrote:

Yesterday 02:30 the old woman was sitting under the streetlamp. Today 02:30, lamp there, stool gone, no house at the end.
The low house at the end only exists when the old woman points to it.
She never said the house number.
A-Xiang saw the rift, vanished within 24 hours.
The old woman heard the sound three days; Day 10, walking in, the old woman, the stool, the house—none appeared. Cause unknown: maybe she didn't come out, maybe the alley's version changed, maybe a brief manifestation, maybe she's gone. Four not ruled out.
Seeing and hearing might be on the same list—but this old-woman sample isn't certain yet.

He closed the notebook.

He started the car, turned the radio on for the drive back. Some random FM station, music playing; he couldn't take it in, left it on the whole way.

【Ch. 005 End · Li Kaichen's place in Da'an District → ◯◯ Road in Xinyi (brick wall → inside the alley → under the streetlamp) → western first-floor unit of the tower → management committee → inside the alley】