Chapter Two: The Woman Everyone Forgot

Seven years of call sheets, salary payments, and chat logs had vanished. Photographs remained on Qiao's phone, but in every image with Wen, Qiao's own face was covered by overexposed white light. Worse, when she called her daughter, the child sobbed, “Lady, why do you have my mom's phone?” Qiao crouched in the corridor, beyond making any sound. Company security treated her as an unidentified intruder. Jianwei pursued them to the elevator and managed to press her address, written on cloth tape, into Qiao's palm. “Come tonight. I'll find out what happened.” “Will you forget too?” The doors began to close. Jianwei pushed last night's lipstick-marked pin into her palm. “No.” She did not know whether it was a promise or a lie.