Ch. 006| The Characters That Shouldn't Be on the Wall

Day 11, 06:30 in the morning. Li Kaichen at his desk.

Day 10, he'd gotten home at 04:21 and hadn't gone straight to sleep. He'd sat up until dawn before getting back into bed, snatched five hours in broken pieces through the day, slept normally that night. Day 11, he'd risen at 05:30, made coffee, and had been sitting here ever since.

He wasn't going back to Xinyi today. That alley had given him everything it could: the old woman, the three characters that spelled Xingyun Station, the fresh half-a-palm scrape on the lamppost. Go again, and he wouldn't know what he was looking for.

He flipped open the waterproof notebook, to the middle of the page marked 002.

On that page he'd written it down: Day 1, that afternoon, driving the Huanhe Expressway in New Taipei, eighty kilometers an hour, catching a glimpse of a bubble-tea shop sign whose four characters he couldn't read—then fifty meters later, looking back, and it had turned back into "pearl black tea."

That was the first time he'd run into the wrong characters. He hadn't made anything of it then. He'd been thinking about the rift, thinking about witnesses. A sign he couldn't read—he'd filed it under "to check."

Now he wanted to go back.

---

He opened Google Maps and found where the sign was—the Xinzhuang stretch of the Huanhe Expressway, beside the entrance to the riverbank parking lot. He zoomed in, pulled up Street View. The sign on Street View read "pearl black tea," white on red, ordinary lettering.

He didn't expect anything from Street View.

At 22:00 he left the apartment. He took the car onto the Huanhe, eighty an hour, kept to the right lane, passed the sign—then looped back, 23:00, 00:00, 01:00, 03:17:00, five passes in all, and every pass the sign read "pearl black tea."

He parked in the riverbank lot, got out, walked up close to the sign. The typeface was the Kangxi Dictionary style, white on red, and in the lower right corner there was a little graphic of a cup of drink with three pearls on top.

He drove home.

He logged the trip, added a new column called "repeated trials," and wrote: "Huanhe bubble-tea shop, 5 tries, 0 triggers."

He didn't know why it had happened that once on Day 1.

His guess—that time, he hadn't come looking. But that was a single data point. Not yet a pattern.

---

Day 12, that morning, he listed out the stretches of road he often drove that had a high density of signs.

He deliberately didn't pick stretches he was "going to." He picked the ones he "would pass through"—and this had nothing to do with whether he wanted to go there in the moment. It was the kind of route he took on an ordinary day, working a case, meeting someone, buying coffee.

The list ran across two pages in the notebook. Under each stretch he marked the time: 15:00 in the afternoon, the working-a-case hour; 19:00 in the evening, the meeting-someone-for-dinner hour; 23:00 at night, the heading-home hour; 02:00 to 04:00, the pre-dawn drive-to-a-scene hours.

From midday into the evening he looped Zhongxiao East Road, Xinyi Road, Bade Road, Nanjing East Road, Dunhua North Road, five passes across different times of day. The signs were just signs.

In the pre-dawn hours he changed his approach—he wouldn't look at the signs himself, he'd let the camera record on its own and concentrate on driving. That time on Day 1, he'd been driving, his mind on other things, and the sign had come in from the corner of his eye—his guess was that "not looking for it" might be the trigger condition, but that was a single data point, not yet a pattern. He needed to try again.

He rigged the Sony α7 on the passenger seat, set it recording, 35mm, f/4, 1/60, ISO auto. The lens faced front-left, covering the field of view of the signs along the left curb.

He drove. He made a point of not looking at the signs, kept his focus on the road. The Sony α7 recorded continuously on its own from the passenger seat.

---

02:46, Zhongxiao East Road Section 4.

Past the Bade Road intersection, in the corner of his eye, under an arcade on the left, the sign of a chain pharmacy—

He wasn't sure.

He kept driving, didn't turn his head, didn't slow. The Sony α7 caught it.

03:14, he moved over to Neihu. He didn't know Neihu well, and on purpose he picked a small street he'd never driven. Three- and four-story apartment blocks on both sides, narrow arcades, scooters parked solid. A convenience store stood front-left, its sign lit, three colors—red, green, orange.

03:16:42, in the corner of his eye, the sign of that convenience store front-left—

He wasn't sure.

He kept driving, didn't turn his head, didn't slow. The Sony α7 caught it. He finished his loop of Neihu and got home at half past four.

---

Home, he played back the footage.

Two seconds before 02:46:00, Zhongxiao East Road Section 4, past the Bade Road intersection, that chain pharmacy sign—it was "Cosmed," orange ground, white letters, the type steady.

02:46:00. The sign no longer said "Cosmed."

He froze the frame.

Zoomed in. On the sign were two block-shaped things, like Chinese characters and yet not, orange ground, the type steady. The left one looked like a circle with a horizontal stroke; the right looked like two triangles stacked.

02:46:04, the sign turned back into "Cosmed."

Four seconds.

In the footage he'd "read" those two characters. He didn't know what characters they were. But he knew the meaning—it was some kind of "tonic," "something for tired people to drink," "to clear the head," that sort of thing.

He sat at the computer, pressed his face into his palm. He thought for three seconds, then lifted his head and wrote the sense down:

Those two characters mean something like "a tonic for tired people."

He finished writing, set down the pen, thought of that bubble-tea shop on the Huanhe on Day 1—also a drink, also "for tired people."

He wasn't sure this was a lead.

---

He cut to the Neihu stretch.

Before 03:16:42, that convenience store sign read "7-ELEVEN," three colors—red, green, orange—standard lettering.

03:16:42. The sign changed to something different.

Zoomed in. Between 03:16:42 and 03:16:46, the sign was two block-shaped characters, red ground, the type steady—different characters from the pharmacy on Zhongxiao East Road just now, but the "same set" of characters—like two different words in one writing system.

03:16:46, the sign turned back into "7-ELEVEN."

Four seconds.

Those two characters on the convenience store meant something like "a supply post in the night," "lit twenty-four hours," "tired people come here."

He wrote this one into the notebook too.

Halfway through writing it he noticed he'd used the same word—"tired people."

Two signs, different characters, but the meanings had something in common—both were the "for tired people" sort.

He circled the finding and put three question marks under it.

He thought of that time on the Huanhe, 002. The sign characters he'd glimpsed that time hadn't turned back into "pearl black tea" until fifty meters on, and he'd been doing eighty an hour then too. Two times tonight: the Zhongxiao East Road pharmacy at sixty, the Neihu convenience store at forty.

None of the three was stationary. On the Huanhe the car had been moving, and tonight both times the car had been moving too. He'd been right there each time, his eyes never fixed on the sign.

This was an observation, not a pattern—he'd have to run a few more trials before he could confirm it.

---

Day 13, midday, 11:40.

Li Kaichen blew up the four seconds of Sony α7 footage and pulled stills at the pixel level. The two characters from the pharmacy, the two from the convenience store—he saved all four side by side onto an encrypted drive.

He opened Google Lens and ran each of the four characters through it in turn. Not one returned a result.

He tried six other platforms—Microsoft Translate, Baidu image search, DeepL, Youdao, Yandex, Naver—and the responses came back as "Detected language: undefined," "no results," "this image is not currently supported," blank, and so on.

Seven cross-border OCR services, and not one of them recognized the characters.

At 12:00 he called Ye Wenjia—a college classmate who worked at the history museum, on the artifact-authentication beat.

"Take a look at a character for me," Li Kaichen said.

"Now?"

"I'll send it to you."

He sent the four characters over by LINE.

Ye Wenjia called back three minutes later.

"First impression, it doesn't look like Chinese characters, and it doesn't look like the Japanese-Korean-Vietnamese-Thai family I know, doesn't look like Arabic, doesn't look like the Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian scripts I know. But this is a first read off four static screenshots, the sample's too small, I can't categorically rule out a variant of any system."

"Couldn't it be writing from somewhere else in the world?"

"I've worked this beat eight years. There are maybe a hundred-some writing systems still alive in the world today, plus the dead ones people still study, two hundred and change. I can't say I know them all. The density of these four characters, the left-right arrangement, the line weights—they're not much like any system I know, but that's as far as a four-character sample lets me go."

"Could it be a new constructed script?"

"Klingon, Tolkien, Esperanto, I've seen samples of all those. Doesn't look much like them either. What unsettles me most about these four characters isn't their shape, it's their 'center of gravity'—the weight distribution looks mechanically equidistant, like the inertia you get when nobody's writing. But inertia you really have to see in the writing process to be sure about, and all I've got is static screenshots, I can't see how the characters surface, so this is a guess. You'd need dynamic frames to confirm stroke order, the start of a stroke, the finish."

"Thanks."

"Where'd you find this?"

"I can't explain it clearly." Li Kaichen paused. "I saw it, and then it was gone."

Ye Wenjia was silent for three seconds.

"You getting enough sleep?"

"No."

"Sleep first."

"OK."

Li Kaichen hung up and didn't go to sleep. He sat for three minutes and wrote down what Ye Wenjia had said, with notes: center of gravity mechanically equidistant (readable from static screenshots), not much like any system she knew (four-character sample, can't categorically rule out), stroke order / start / finish need dynamic frames to confirm.

The 1080p stills were enough to read density, left-right arrangement, line weights. Not enough to see how the characters surfaced. He'd take her first read on the static sample for now, and leave the rest to be verified against dynamic samples.

He printed the four characters out and taped them to the wall.

---

Day 14, afternoon, 14:12.

He sat at his desk, looking at the four sheets on the wall.

He thought: these four characters, I "know" what they mean.

The two from the pharmacy were "a tonic for tired people." The two from the convenience store were "a supply post in the night," "tired people come here."

He shut his eyes and tried to picture the shape of the two pharmacy characters.

The shape was a blur.

He opened his eyes, looked at the paper, shut them again, tried again for the shape. A blur.

He took up the Pilot 0.5 and tried to draw the first character.

He drew a circle, added a horizontal stroke. Then he stopped.

He looked at what he'd drawn—it didn't count as a character. It was just a circle and a horizontal stroke.

He tore the page off and tried again. The second time he ended up with a lopsided circle and three lines.

He tore it off, tried again. The third time, what he drew didn't look like a character at all. It looked like a cloud.

He looked at that smear of cloud on the paper. The cloud had two bulging masses, with a faint horizontal extension trailing off the top—he'd meant, just now, to draw a circle and add a horizontal stroke. But what his hand had drawn was the shape of a cloud.

He tore that sheet off too.

He stopped.

He could see the character on the paper on the wall, he could describe "the left side like a circle plus a horizontal stroke," but the moment he shut his eyes and reached for the shape, the shape vanished.

Stranger still—he could "read" the character, knew its meaning. No one had ever taught him this writing. And he didn't remember learning it.

He didn't know where it came from.

In the notebook he wrote:

I don't know why I can read it.

---

Day 14, night, 23:50.

He drove to that convenience store in Neihu and parked across from it.

He didn't get out. Didn't turn his head. Played the FM radio.

Inside the store, two clerks, young, women, one mopping the floor, the other restocking the microwave-meal shelf. Half past midnight had come and gone, no customers in the store. At 02:14 a delivery rider on a scooter went in, bought water, came out, rode off. At 02:38 a guy in athletic wear went in for a sandwich—before going in he circled the store once, as if waiting for someone. He came out with it, stood in the doorway eating. When he'd finished he went back in to throw away the trash, then rode off on a scooter.

03:00 to 03:14, the sign was normal.

03:15:40. He kept the corner of his eye toward the convenience store sign.

03:16:42 passed. The sign read "7-ELEVEN." 03:17:00. 03:18:21. He sat there until 03:30, and the sign read "7-ELEVEN" the whole time.

He started the car and drove home.

On the way home he thought: that pre-dawn time on Day 12, he hadn't "gone specifically to look," he'd "just happened to pass." On Day 14 he had "gone specifically to look."

But Day 14 had also changed the route at the same time (parked at a fixed spot across the way vs. driving past), the time window (a continuous watch from 03:00 to 03:30 vs. a single pass), the manner of attention (eyes fixed toward the sign vs. corner of the eye). He couldn't pin it all on "going specifically to look"—ruling out the other variables would take a controlled comparison.

"Going specifically to look" might be one of the trigger conditions, but it was still a hypothesis. Not a pattern.

---

Day 15, half past three in the pre-dawn. He got home, sat in the driver's seat, didn't get out.

He looked up at the sign at the intersection—a laundry shop, the sign reading "Crown Clean," four characters, the type steady.

He shut his eyes and reached for the meaning of those four block characters from earlier.

"A tonic for tired people."
"A supply post in the night."

He could come up with the meaning, but he couldn't explain to himself why he could.

Any writing he'd ever learned—Chinese characters, English, Japanese kana—he could trace back to a source. Some dictionary, some teacher, some kana chart. What he'd learned, when he'd learned it, he remembered all of it.

Those four block characters—no one had taught him. He didn't remember learning them.

But he "knew."

He got out, went upstairs, turned on the computer.

He was going to look again. Next time, he'd find a trigger point he could keep watching—not one that vanished in four seconds, one that would linger longer, that would let him confirm his "knowing" wasn't a trick of the mind.

He opened Google Maps, zoomed in on the Neihu area, then zoomed in on Zhongxiao East Road. He started marking points.

What he marked wasn't the locations of rifts—he didn't have that kind of map. He marked the intersection of conditions: "high sign density, unfamiliar to him, can be driven past in one go, can be caught from the corner of the eye." Wende in Neihu, Zhouzi in Neihu, Nangang's trade-and-economic district, Hengke in Xizhi, the Zhengda area in Wenshan, Zhongxing Road in Xindian, Bihua in Sanchong. He finished one round, looked it over, and added one more—Gangxi Street in Keelung.

That was a place he'd never been.

【Ch. 006 End · Li Kaichen's place in Da'an District → Huanhe Expressway → Zhongxiao East Road → a street in Neihu → Ye Wenjia via LINE → home → revisiting Neihu → home】