Chapter Three: One Person Missing from the World

Descriptions of the dress, rabbit, and mole produced no response. The page recording A-Li's admission had been torn from the archive. Tang Ke mobilized the stream, and a viewer found an old forum post: during the blackout, an electrician diverted emergency power to the children's ward and was blamed when an expensive incubator failed. "He saved her," Gu Ye said. "Why can't he remember?" A-Li pointed at Zhou's ears. "It was dark. He never saw me. He only heard me sing." Nobody knew the song. A-Li remembered fragments. Gu Ye borrowed her humming and played it through his phone. Zhou stared blankly through nine repetitions. On the tenth, his finger tapped the wheelchair. "Wrong," he murmured. "The third line went differently."