Ch. 011| The Mother's Room

Day 24, 09:00 in the morning. Li Kaichen at his desk.

Day 23, home at 04:21. Sent Ye Wenjia a "made it home." Caught five hours, up again at 09:30. Spent the day sorting footage and writing notes, on and off. Went out for a meal only at dusk. In bed by 22:00, and this time he slept normally; awake at 08:30 on Day 24, made coffee, has been sitting here since. He played back the Day 23 video — the red brick pillars on the second platform, and those faces inside the train car — one more time. When he reached the section with A-Xiang, he stopped for thirty seconds.

He blew up A-Xiang's face, looked at it down to the pixel. A-Xiang's eyes were turned toward the platform, toward the spot where Li Kaichen had been standing. The expression was flat — no trace of the things that should have been left behind by expectation, grief, fear, confusion.

It wasn't the face of a man trapped somewhere. It was the face of a man who simply belonged here.

What he could do now was not go back and walk the site again. It was to return to his own world and confirm that the people of his world were still in their original places.

He wrote in his notebook:

Day 25, morning, go to Ms. Lin's. Pretext: A-Xiang's whereabouts, no new progress from the police, want to talk again.
Cannot tell her I saw A-Xiang on the second platform. Cannot.

---

Day 25, 09:40 in the morning.

Li Kaichen placed a LINE call to Ms. Lin. She answered. Her voice was flat, the same as that time on Day 2.

"Ms. Lin, it's Li Kaichen. Sorry to bother you. I'd like to come over and talk again, would that be all right?"

She thought for a moment. "Come up. Come after ten. I'll be in."

"Thank you."

---

10:08, downstairs from the old apartment block in Xinyi District.

The building's doorman wasn't in today. The desk was empty. When he'd come on Day 9, there had been a man in his fifties who would look at him a couple of seconds longer and give a professional nod. Today the desk held only a thermos and an unopened breakfast. No one.

The elevator was still slow. 10:15, he rang the bell — eighth floor, southeast corner, Ms. Lin opened the door.

She had lost weight. Three weeks since he'd seen her, and the loss was visible to the naked eye — not the thinness of good health, but the thinness of someone not eating. Her chin was sharp, her eye sockets deep, the gray in her hair making up a larger share than on Day 2. She wore the same thin dark-green jacket — Li Kaichen wasn't sure whether it was the same one, or whether she had two identical ones. On her feet, the same white plastic slippers.

"Come in."

"Have you been eating lately?"

"Yes."

She went to pour water. Li Kaichen sat in the same chair he'd sat in on Day 2, near the photo wall by the edge of the kitchen.

He looked up at the wall.

At first glance the photo wall was the same as on Day 2. The same arrangement, the same wooden frames, the same clockwise order. The tones were the same too — the side near the kitchen yellowed from cooking smoke, the side near the window a touch cooler.

But he looked a few seconds longer.

The photos had changed.

---

Not "rewashed," not "reframed," not the kind of microscopic change from Day 4 where the 1 mm gray-white ring at the edge of the right pupil had been slowly fading.

There were fewer photos.

On Day 2 he had counted them by heart, 41. Starting from the upper-left corner of the wall and running clockwise — infancy, kindergarten, first through sixth grade, three years of junior high, high school, university, working life, last month's birthday.

Now there were 39 on the wall.

He could feel it without lifting his eyes. Three weeks ago he had stood in this spot, and the density of photos in his field of view had been a certain value. Today the density in his field of view was a touch lower.

He sat still, kept his neck from turning, and swept the wall with his eyes.

The two that were missing were in the middle of the wall, toward the lower right — A-Xiang at roughly 11 and 13 — one of him at the edge of a swimming pool in blue trunks holding an orange swim ring, the other of him on a school field in a row of five classmates, him on the far right.

Li Kaichen didn't have a photographic memory — but three weeks ago he had shot the whole photo wall with the Sony α7, ten frames in a burst, and that SD card was in his jacket pocket now.

The spots where the two had been were empty now. The nails were still there — he could see the small nail heads on the wall, gray-white, close to the cement color of the wall itself. But the slight depression that a hanging frame would have left, that mark of a frame edge rubbing against the paint — there was none.

It was the kind of empty that meant those two had never existed at all.

---

Ms. Lin came back with the water.

"Sit," she said.

Li Kaichen took the water, didn't drink it, set it on the tea table.

He hadn't brought a voice recorder this time. On Day 2 he'd had a consent form, a recorder, a formal interview. Today was a follow-up; what he wanted was observation, not a record. A recorder would push Ms. Lin back into the role of interviewee — she'd be careful, she'd pick what she was willing to say. What he wanted was her unconscious tone, what she remembered, and what she couldn't.

But he had brought the waterproof notebook, kept it in his jacket pocket — an old interviewing habit, pretending during an interview to jot down something unrelated while in fact writing down every key answer word for word. After he left, he would lay this page side by side with the matching Day 2 version in the car, syncing them up while the memory was freshest, before his own interpretation could contaminate it.

"Ms. Lin, has anyone from the police been in touch?"

"No."

"What about your son's coworkers? At the convenience store?"

"They say they haven't heard anything either."

"Do you still go into his room these days?"

Ms. Lin thought for a moment. "I do. Every three or four days I go in and tidy up a little, straighten the bed. I haven't touched his things."

"Has anything in his room changed recently?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I tidy it myself. I'd know."

Li Kaichen nodded. Then, in an ordinary tone, he asked the question he really wanted to ask.

"Do you remember A-Xiang's favorite snack when he was little?"

Ms. Lin thought for a moment.

"Kuai Kuai. The green packet, the coconut-cream flavor."

Li Kaichen didn't move. But in his mind he glanced at his own notebook.

Among the six missing-persons cases on the Bannan Line that he'd interviewed on Day 17, there was the mother of the one near Longshan Temple, whom he'd spoken with by phone — that one near Longshan Temple, a man in his thirties, whose favorite snack as a child had been green-packet Kuai Kuai (a Taiwanese snack people place by machines for good luck), the coconut-cream flavor. He had noted that detail specifically, because a missing man's mother usually says chewing gum, or Coke, or chocolate — few of them remember the exact flavor of Kuai Kuai.

A-Xiang's mother, in the Day 2 interview, had said A-Xiang's favorite as a child was Yakult. She'd added: "He still loves it now — there's always a row of them in the fridge."

Today she said green-packet Kuai Kuai.

---

Li Kaichen didn't let it show. He went on in the same tone, asking a few questions about A-Xiang's life, like follow-up small talk.

Ms. Lin answered naturally. But the content of her answers didn't line up with the Day 2 version. She said A-Xiang's father had still been there in the university graduation photo — but on Day 2 she had told him herself that A-Xiang's father had died ten years ago, that the graduation photo was just mother and son. She said the graduation had been at some auditorium on Zhongxiao East Road — but A-Xiang's university was National Central University, in Taoyuan, not Taipei. She said A-Xiang's high-school graduation trip had been to Green Island — on Day 2 she had said Okinawa, Japan, his first time abroad. She said A-Xiang had liked assembling Gundam models in junior high — but on Day 2 Li Kaichen had been inside A-Xiang's room, and there hadn't been a single trace of anything like that on the desk or the shelves.

Li Kaichen kept asking a few small questions. Ms. Lin's answers were fragmentary, mixed through with someone else's memories. She didn't notice. She "just remembered it that way," with the same confidence as the Day 2 tone — "I lived with my son for twenty-six years, I know every detail."

She was being replaced.

---

He finished everything he'd meant to ask, sat for a minute, then spoke.

"Ms. Lin, the real reason I came this time is to ask you a slightly strange question."

She lifted her eyes to him.

"That wall of photos — lately, has any one of them felt 'not quite right' to you?"

She turned her head and looked at the photo wall for five seconds.

"No," she said. "I look at it every day. Every one is A-Xiang."

"Have you counted them?"

"No. I haven't counted. A wall is just a wall."

"Thank you."

Li Kaichen took a sip of water and set it down. Then he raised his phone.

"Ms. Lin, may I take two photos of the wall? Just for my own records, I won't put them anywhere."

She thought for a moment, then nodded. "Go ahead."

He stood, walked to the photo wall, took two shots — one of the whole wall, one of the lower-middle section near the kitchen, taking in the area around eleven and thirteen years old. Quick, no lingering, back to the chair.

"Thank you."

"I have to go. I may come back again."

"Will you find him?"

"I'll do my best."

Ms. Lin saw him to the door. She stood at the door frame, didn't go back in, watched him all the way to the elevator. The elevator opened, he stepped in, turned back, and she was still there, watching.

The elevator closed.

---

Downstairs, he crossed to the other side of the road and looked back at the southeast-corner window on the eighth floor.

Across the road was a row of small storefronts — a breakfast place taking its last batch of customers, the grocery uncle smoking in his doorway, a delivery rider stopped at the mouth of the lane checking an order. The morning sun slanted across the apartment glass, and the reflection in that eighth-floor window was a notch brighter than downstairs.

Ms. Lin was standing at the window.

Her gaze wasn't aimed down toward the street. She wasn't looking for him, wasn't watching the cars going by. Her head was turned slightly to the side, her eyes toward the direction of Xinyi ◯◯ Road — the direction of A-Xiang's convenience store, the direction of the middle stretch of the brick wall.

Standing in that spot, her expression was flat, as if she were listening to something.

Li Kaichen watched her for ten seconds. Then he walked toward the car. After 50 meters, he looked back. She was still at the window. The same direction.

He got into the car, didn't start it right away. He opened the waterproof notebook, turned to the page he'd made that morning, and wrote out each exchange item by item, side by side — left column what she'd answered today, right column what she'd answered on Day 2. Kuai Kuai / Yakult, Zhongxiao East Road auditorium / National Central University, Green Island / Okinawa, assembling Gundam / no trace. As he wrote, he deliberately put down no inferences, only the correspondences. When he finished he looked over the whole page. The correspondences were clear enough; there was no need to rebuild it later from memory.

He started the car and drove home.

---

13:00 in the afternoon, he got home.

He took out the Sony α7 and pulled up the ten burst frames he'd shot on Day 2, enlarged them. From Day 2 — A-Xiang's birthday photo, the print's border in the lower-left, the print in the lower-right, the whole wall in full frame — all four views were there.

He laid the ten Day 2 frames side by side with the two current shots he'd taken on his phone at Ms. Lin's place today.

Day 2 photos: 41, infancy in the upper-left corner, clockwise, the 11-year-old pool shot, the 13-year-old field shot — all there.

Today's photos: 39, the spots for the two at 11 and 13, empty. Nails there, no frame marks.

He stored both sets on the encrypted drive, three backups.

He wrote in his notebook:

A-Xiang's mother's photo wall. Day 2 = 41. Day 25 = 39. The missing ones are 11-year-old pool + 13-year-old field.
Nails there, no frame marks.
Ms. Lin unconscious of it.
The snack she named, the photo positions, the school, the graduation trip, the model-building hobby — these details correspond not to A-Xiang but to several of the missing-persons cases on the Bannan Line I interviewed on Day 17. What she remembers isn't her own son's memory. It's someone else's.
She doesn't know. She thinks she's remembering A-Xiang.

---

He sat at the desk, watching the progress bar of the encrypted-drive backup.

On the second platform he had thought — to their eyes he didn't exist.

Today he thought — in this world, they were ceasing to exist too. Starting with the photos, starting with the families' memories, one by one, one detail at a time, withdrawing from this world's records.

He didn't know how long the process took. Three weeks, two fewer. At this rate, how long until A-Xiang vanished from this world completely?

41 ÷ 2 × 3 = 61.5 weeks ≈ 1 year and 3 months.

But he didn't know whether the rate was linear or accelerating.

He turned to the bottom of the notebook and wrote one line:

If A-Xiang ceases to exist in this world entirely, will Ms. Lin remember A-Xiang? Or will she remember someone else?

He thought: if it's the latter, then Ms. Lin's very identity as a "son's mother" would be transferred onto someone who "never went missing." She'd stop being "the mother of a missing man" and become the mother of another young man still in this world, still working at the convenience store. Her grief would be struck from the ledger. And then no one would remember that A-Xiang had ever existed. No one but Li Kaichen himself.

---

He closed the notebook.

It was still early; the sky toward Xinyi was white, no clouds.

He thought: when Ms. Lin had been at the window looking toward the brick wall, from that spot she shouldn't have been able to see the brick wall at all — the line of sight from the eighth floor of the apartment down that lane would be blocked by the row of residential towers in front. What she saw wasn't the brick wall. She might not have been "looking" at all — she might have been "listening" in some direction, where there was something her ears could catch and her eyes could not.

Like that time the old woman at the end of the alley heard "now arriving at Xingyun Station" for three days — that "hearing it, but it isn't in this world."

What she was hearing, he didn't know.

But that look in her eyes — drifting off toward a direction she plainly couldn't see, then coming back — made him think of 001, the small hours, the convenience-store clerk doing the same thing. His eyes had drifted out the window for two seconds, come back, and he'd said he hadn't seen anything.

One in the small hours. One at noon. One a stretch of Songshou Road, one a residence in Xinyi. One a son, one a mother. The same two seconds.

He opened the notebook and added a line:

Two seconds looking out. Ms. Lin, convenience-store clerk A-Xiang. The same blankness.

He opened his computer and began writing a LINE message. To Ye Wenjia.

"Do you have time this weekend? I want to show you something again."

He stopped, thought for a moment, deleted the line, and changed it to: "Do you have time this weekend? I want to talk through a problem with you, one not really related to your work, but I need someone who can keep it confidential to hear it." Sent it. Three minutes later Ye Wenjia replied: "Saturday afternoon, my place. I'll send you the address."

Then she added one more line: "Those four characters you showed me last time — I was still thinking about them after work. Part of me wants to tell you not to show me any more. But come anyway."

【Ch. 011 End · Li Kaichen's residence in Da'an District → Ms. Lin's home (southeast corner, eighth floor of an old apartment block in Xinyi District) → looking back up at the window from downstairs → residence】