Chapter Two: The Person Everyone Forgot

Tang spun around. It asked, “Who are you?” By reflex, she gave her name. The gray figure asked again, “Who are you?” This rule had never appeared. Shen had no time to warn her. Facing that blank head, Tang Li said her own name a second time. The screen went black. Shen reached the archive in nineteen minutes. The clerk said no one had visited the basement that day. Tang's phone number was unassigned. Every article she had written now bore someone else's byline. In her apartment, a married couple claimed to have lived there for eight years. None of the pictures on their walls included her. Shen went to see her mother. The old woman politely accepted the scarf Tang had given her and said she had no daughter, only a son working abroad.