Ch. 013| What Won't Stay Buried

Day 33, Monday, 10:30 in the morning. Zhongzheng District, the 7th floor of an office building.

Li Kaichen sat in the meeting room. Across from him was Editor Gao.

He'd been freelancing pieces to this weekly for 5 years. The social beat — disappearances, human trafficking, the unrecorded numbers in long-term care — all subjects other outlets didn't much want to touch but that did have readers. Editor Gao took his copy, paid a fair rate, didn't mangle his sentences. He trusted her further than the average for this industry.

On the table was the pitch he'd sent yesterday. 8 pages, laying out the missing-persons cluster and that shared time window clearly, with the convenience-store surveillance, the family interviews, and the two photos gone from before and after on the photo wall. The part he couldn't say — the second platform, the block characters, the fact that to those people's eyes he didn't exist — he'd stripped all of it out. What was left was a solid, verifiable report on the missing-persons cluster.

Editor Gao finished reading and pushed the pitch back to the middle of the table.

"Li Kaichen," she said. "I can't run this."

---

"Which part has a problem?" he asked.

"No part has a problem," she said. "Every item checks out. Missing-persons report numbers, family interviews, surveillance timestamps — you even attached the raw SD-card files. If I were only looking at the evidence, this is the best piece this month."

"Then why can't you run it?"

She didn't answer right away. She picked up the paper cup on the table, took a sip, set it down.

"Last Friday," she said. "I got a phone call. A number I didn't recognize, very polite, calling himself the 'liaison for some inter-ministerial special project.' Not the usual people who call to arrange coverage. He said there'd lately been a batch of 'false information involving atmospheric and electromagnetic anomalies' going around, and he hoped the media would 'verify prudently and avoid causing panic.' He didn't ask me to do anything. He didn't even mention your name."

Li Kaichen didn't move.

"He didn't need to mention my name," he said.

"Right," Editor Gao said. "He just let me know someone's watching. And then I'd do the rest myself. That's the whole function of the call."

He thought of 002. The small hours of Day 1, the Central Weather Bureau's unified press release, 04:50 to 05:10, a dozen-plus outlets across the island running it without changing a word. At the time he'd taken it for PR inertia. Now he knew it was the same hand — only this time it had reached onto Editor Gao's desk.

---

"I could run it," Editor Gao said. "I could run it, and then for the next 3 months every piece of copy we put out would get 'verified,' the ads would inexplicably drop, my reporters wouldn't get into the rooms they need to get into. I've got 11 people under me to support. Don't take this for cowardice — I've run all of it."

"I know," Li Kaichen said. He really did know. She said it flat, no apology, no expectation that he'd understand. She had 11 people under her to support, and she'd done that math long ago. If anything, she was clearer-eyed than anyone.

"So my advice to you," she said, "is to put this away. Keep the material, don't touch it. Wait for it to blow over."

---

Then she did the thing he hadn't expected.

She pushed the 8-page pitch, along with the flash drive he'd attached, back toward him.

"You take this back. I'm not keeping a copy on my end."

Li Kaichen looked at the flash drive.

"Editor," he said. "You're not keeping a copy — because you don't want the thing still in your hands the day someone comes asking for it."

Editor Gao didn't deny it.

He understood. She was handing the thing back not to do him a favor but to clear off her own desk. If one day that hand reached into this office, she needed to be able to say "I don't have that thing, I gave it back." She was protecting her 11 people.

And this, in turn, told Li Kaichen something more important.

They would come to collect it.

Like that gray box in 007, like those 7 accounts in 002 that had rolled back 1 month — the way this system handled things it didn't want seen was to make them disappear. If even Editor Gao had foreseen that "someone will come asking," then the copy in his own hands would, sooner or later, get marked too.

---

Li Kaichen put the flash drive into the inside pocket of his jacket.

"Editor," he said. "I won't run it under the weekly's name. If this piece blows up, the fire won't reach back to you."

"Good."

"There's one more thing I need to trouble you with," he said.

She looked up.

"Open me an interview commission," he said. "On the missing-persons cluster, under your weekly's name, commissioning me alone to look into it. You don't have to publish it, and you don't have to care how long I take. All I want is that sheet of paper — with it, when I knock on a family's door or go into a police station asking about a case, I've got some standing, and I won't be taken for a suspicious passerby holding a camera."

Editor Gao looked at him.

"This sheet of paper you want — who are you planning to use it to block?"

"To block the people who'll come asking me for things when the time comes," he said. "The copy in my hands won't be like yours, where I can say 'I gave it back.' I'll keep it. I'll keep it the whole time. I want a formal identity in place before they come, proof that I'm lawfully doing a thing a journalist is supposed to do. That way it costs them a little more to move on me."

---

Editor Gao was silent for 10 seconds.

Then she pulled open a drawer, drew out a blank commission letter on the weekly's letterhead, signed it, stamped it, filled in his name and the words "missing-persons series report," and pushed it to him.

"This sheet of paper won't protect you for long," she said.

"I know." He folded the commission letter and tucked it into his notebook. "But it's better than nothing."

"Li Kaichen." She called him back as he rose. "That phone call — I never told anyone about it. Including you. What we just said didn't happen in this meeting room."

"Which part?" he said.

Editor Gao, for the first time, gave a faint smile.

---

In the elevator going down, he wrote in his notebook:

Weekly killed the piece. Editor Gao got a call from an "inter-ministerial special-project liaison" (last Friday) = the same hand from the 002 unified press release, now reaching onto individual editors' desks. Method upgraded: no naming, no direct pressure — just let you know someone's watching, and you'll do the rest yourself.
Got: missing-persons-cluster interview commission letter (weekly's name, single person, no publishing). = a lawful identity.
Warning: they'll come to collect my files. Have to deploy before then.

He stopped after writing, then added a line:

Right now I'm the only record of this in the entire world that can't be killed. Can't be killed means it can't be hidden either. I'm the target.

---

In the afternoon, he called the police substation handling Mr. Cai's case.

The man on the other end was very polite. Missing-persons case, no sign of foul play found, last money trail was buying tea at a convenience store 3 weeks ago, phone off since Day 14, no new evidence, "by regulation, this is where it stands for now." He asked whether the case would be closed; the man said "it won't be closed, it stays open, we'll contact the family if there's news."

Stays open. He knew what that meant — no one would ever go near it again.

Mr. Cai had become a case number, a field waiting to be filled in. No one would remember that, before he went missing, he'd told a journalist on the phone, "I've got something to show you."

No one but Li Kaichen himself.

---

The night of Day 33, he called Brother Han.

Han Zhenbang, sixty-three, had worked the social beat his whole life, retired from the newspaper 5 years ago. In Li Kaichen's first year in the trade, he'd shadowed Han for half a year. Han taught him two things: first, always run two voice recorders; second, don't store the most important things anywhere that connects to a network. Back then Li Kaichen had thought the second one was an old man's paranoia. Now it kept him alive, every single day.

"Brother Han, I want to bring you something to look at. Is tonight all right?"

"Your voice sounds a little off," Brother Han said. "Come over. I'm home."

---

Brother Han lived in Nanjichang, on the 3rd floor of an old apartment block. The place was full of cardboard boxes, news clippings, case files, old cassette tapes. Five years retired, and he hadn't thrown out a single case.

Li Kaichen went through the pitch, and the photos on the SD card, one by one on Brother Han's old laptop. The missing-persons cluster, the shared time window, the photo wall, the box that vanished in 30 seconds on the surveillance footage. Halfway through, Brother Han said nothing. When he'd finished, Brother Han got up, walked to the corner, and pulled down a cardboard box sealed with several layers of tape.

On the side of the box a line was written in marker, the ink old now, faded to gray.

Unsolved · 1998–2003 · Pre-dawn Cluster

---

"Late '90s," Brother Han said. "I was on the criminal beat back then. In a few Taipei districts, people kept going missing in the small hours. No pattern — that was the conclusion at the time. But I made one of my own, privately."

He opened the box. Inside were handwritten cards, one after another, each one a missing person. Name, age, last place seen, last time seen.

Li Kaichen pulled out the top few.

In the last-time-seen column — 03:17, 03:14, 03:18.

Not all of them. But enough. Too many to be coincidence.

---

"That 'shared time window' of yours," Brother Han said. "I saw it more than twenty years ago. I turned it in; my superior said the sample was insufficient, told me not to go scattering off. Later a phone call came to the paper — not to me, to the editor-in-chief. The next day I got reassigned to the finance beat. And this box got sealed up."

Li Kaichen's fingers stopped on the stack of cards.

More than twenty years ago, someone had already seen the same time window. Back then too it was "the sample's insufficient, don't go scattering off" that pressed it down, also a phone call to the people upstairs that moved the one who'd seen it out of his post. More than twenty years in between, and the method hadn't changed by a single word.

03:17 didn't start with him. It was far older than he was — surfacing once every few years, and every time pressed back down by the same kind of hand.

For twenty-some years, one after another, the people who saw this time window had been pressed down. He was at the back of the line — this round, it simply hadn't reached him yet.

---

"Brother Han," he said. "These cards — can I photograph them?"

"Take them," Brother Han said. "Take the box too. I kept it for twenty-some years and couldn't get a result out of it. You've got one thing I didn't have back then."

"What?"

"You've got photos," Brother Han said. "Back then, all I had was what people said. Words get changed, get forgotten. That photo of yours with the hole in the brick wall — as long as you don't store it in the cloud, it's still there."

He paused.

"And one more thing. That source of yours, the one named Cai."

Li Kaichen looked up.

"Cai Jingwu," Brother Han said. "Fifty-two years old, the one, right? This isn't the first time he's gone to a journalist. That batch in the '90s — he was looking into it too. He was in his twenties then, an amateur, keeping records on his own. Before I sealed the box, I met him once. He was more obsessed than I was."

---

Mr. Cai wasn't Li Kaichen's source.

Mr. Cai was the previous Li Kaichen.

He'd investigated it for twenty-some years, investigated until he himself went missing.

---

"Do you know where he lived?" Li Kaichen asked. His voice was drier than he'd expected.

"Wanhua." Brother Han dug an old business card out of a file, an address written by hand on it. "His wife still lives there. I'll make a call; you go over tomorrow. Mrs. Cai knows my name."

---

Day 34, morning. Wanhua, an old apartment down a lane.

Mrs. Cai was in her early fifties, thin, her eyes tired. She opened the door, saw Li Kaichen, and froze for a moment first.

"You're Li?"

Li Kaichen nodded.

"Han called yesterday, and I figured it was probably you," she said. "In the stretch before he went missing, he kept going on about it. Said there was a young one, surnamed Li, who would understand."

Li Kaichen's throat tightened. He didn't pick up the thread.

She let him in.

Mr. Cai's room was at the very back. Mrs. Cai didn't go in, stood at the doorway. "I haven't touched his things. The police came and looked once, said there was nothing, and left."

---

The room wasn't large. A desk, two bookshelves, an entire wall of maps.

A full map of Taipei City. Covered densely, in red pen, blue pen, pencil, with countless markings. Beside every marking was a time. Li Kaichen leaned in close.

03:17, 03:14, 03:18, 03:11.

Some of the points he recognized — Songshou Road, that lane in Xinyi, Ximen were all on it. And one he'd never been to, a point in Wanhua, circled 3 times in red pen, with two characters written beside it.

Xingyun.

On the desk was an old voice recorder. Li Kaichen pressed play.

Static. Then a middle-aged man's voice, flat, tired, like he was talking to himself:

Seventeenth time now. Every time at this hour. I can't get it on camera — this old camera of mine can't get it. Need better equipment, need someone who can get it.
If one day I don't come back, everything's in this room. For the one who'll understand.

The recording stopped there.

Li Kaichen stood before that wall of maps, didn't move for a long time.

Outside the window, the Wanhua sky was white. A few streets over was Bangka, the southern end of the Xingyun Branch Line.

He took out his phone and photographed the whole wall of maps. Then he took the commission letter Editor Gao had signed out of his inside jacket pocket, glanced at it, put it back.

This time he'd brought a portable photo printer. Shoot one, print one on the spot. Digital files could be made to vanish; paper couldn't.

At the doorway, Mrs. Cai asked softly: "Will you find him?"

Li Kaichen looked at the point circled 3 times in red pen.

"I'll go to the places he went," he said.

【Ch. 013 End · Weekly office, Zhongzheng → Han Zhenbang's home, Nanjichang → Cai Jingwu's home, Wanhua】