Chapter Three: The Deleted Man

“The place listed in my mother's death record.” In the current reality, Shen Lan was alive and no gas explosion had occurred on White Tower Street. Yet he still remembered a charred doorplate and antiseptic in a hospital corridor. The conflict cache was fading. They needed anchors. They abandoned digital text for crude materials: scratches, knots, scent. Lin Wan carved `ZHOU JIMING EXISTED` beneath the table. Shen Zhou tied three network cables into different knots for his mother's death, the White Tower fire, and the deleted friend. They sealed the name in a glass bottle full of blue ink; if the writing vanished, perhaps the ink concentration would change. “Have you done this before?” Shen Zhou asked. “Since I was sixteen.”