## **Chapter 1: Sound of Silence**
Chen Mo woke into an unnatural quiet.
It wasn't the hazy stillness of deep sleep, but an absolute, hollow silence—even the familiar rumble of traffic outside his window was gone. He instinctively reached for the other side of the bed—the sheets were smooth and cool.
"Xiaoxiao?"
No response. Only the too-loud thudding of his own heart.
He got up and pushed open his daughter Miao Miao's door, his heart lurching to a stop. The room was empty, utterly bare. The walls were an unfamiliar off-white, no stickers, no little bed, the carpet unnervingly clean. The wardrobe door was ajar, revealing empty space inside.
Panic, cold and suffocating, drenched him. He rushed to the living room. Only two chairs sat at the dining table—the one he always used, and one opposite. Miao Miao's highchair was gone. On the kitchen counter, only a single blue mug remained from the collection Lin Xia had curated.
His phone contacts held no "Wife," no "Precious Daughter." The WeChat group chat for their family was gone. In his photo album, all family portraits had been replaced with landscape shots or work screenshots—in every one, he was alone. No, even stranger, the timestamps and location data on these photos didn't match his memory at all, as if they had been swapped for a different set of images documenting his "single life."
Hands trembling, he dialed his mother's number.
"Mom? Xiaoxiao and Miao Miao are gone! They—"
"Mo Mo?" His mother's voice was laced with confusion. "What's wrong? Xiaoxiao? Miao Miao?"
"Your daughter-in-law! And Miao Miao, your granddaughter! She's four—"
Silence on the other end.
"Son," her voice became cautious, soothing, as if talking to someone unwell. "Did you not sleep well? You're not married. How could you have a child?"
The world tilted on its axis.
## **Chapter 2: The Perfect Blank**
For the next three days, Chen Mo searched the city for any trace. Every step felt like walking on quicksand.
Vision Design, where Lin Xia worked: the receptionist shook her head. "No employee named Lin Xia. Are you sure about the company name?" Chen Mo listed several colleagues he remembered. The receptionist checked and again drew a blank.
Morning Star Kindergarten, Miao Miao's school: the principal pulled all records, her tone definitive. "We've never had a child named Chen Miao Miao enrolled." Even Teacher Wang, Miao Miao's favorite, looked at him with blank incomprehension.
Marriage registry: Unmarried. Hospital birth records: No children. The property deed bore only his name, with a purchase date five years ago—he distinctly remembered buying it with Lin Xia three years ago. Even Old Zhang, the building security guard, insisted, "Mr. Chen, I've always seen you come and go alone. Sometimes when you worked late, I'd leave the door for you."
The owner of the corner convenience store, the uncle who always gave Miao Miao lollipops, was replaced by a young man. "My dad? He sold me the store six months ago. I don't know about before."
The world was silently rewriting itself, like a book being erased and rewritten.
On the fourth day, he went to see a psychiatrist. The elderly doctor listened to his disjointed account, adjusted his glasses.
"Mr. Chen, what you describe is not clinically unique. We call it 'Confabulation Syndrome' or a variant of 'Capgras Delusion,'" the doctor said calmly. "When reality clashes violently with memory, and the entire world offers no evidence to support your memory, we must first consider the possibility that the memory itself is the problem."
"My memory is NOT wrong!" Chen Mo stood up, voice hoarse.
The doctor regarded him placidly. "You say your wife had a butterfly-shaped birthmark on her left shoulder, your daughter a small scar on her knee—if they truly existed, why is there not a single photo, a piece of clothing, a medical record? Why do the places they worked and studied have no trace?"
Chen Mo was speechless.
"I suggest you start keeping a journal," the doctor handed him a notebook. "Write down everything you remember in detail. Sometimes, when memories are fixed in writing, the brain itself begins to notice contradictions and impossibilities. The process can be therapeutic."
Leaving the hospital, the afternoon sun was harsh. A mother smiled as she pushed a stroller past; a couple walked hand in hand, whispering. The world functioned as usual. Only Chen Mo was stuck in a crack in reality, like an actor who had forgotten his role.
## **Chapter 3: Evidence from the Depths of a Drawer**
That night, Chen Mo truly examined this "home" for the first time.
Before marriage, when he lived alone, it had been cluttered with personal traces: a sofa piled with books, band posters on the walls, dead plants on the windowsill. After marriage, Lin Xia had reshaped it with her taste: a dark green velvet sofa, abstract paintings scavenged from markets, well-tended pothos and monstera on the windowsill.
But now, it was neither the pre-marriage clutter nor the post-marriage warmth.
It was… unnervingly clean, coldly neat. A gray fabric sofa, blank walls, a barren windowsill. Everything looked like a standardized template for a serviced apartment, minimalist to the point of lifelessness, and… lacking any trace of time. There wasn't even much dust.
This wasn't normal. Even living alone, there should be traces: discarded magazines, dusty corners, expired food in the fridge. But this home seemed freshly "reset" after a thorough cleaning.
He shook his head, took out the notebook and began to write:
"Lin Xia, 32, designer, 165cm tall, butterfly-shaped birthmark on left shoulder. Hates celery, takes double cream in coffee. Always applies hand cream before bed, prefers citrus scent. Our first date was during a rainstorm; she fell, scraped her knee, but insisted on watching the movie… She has a thin scar on her right middle finger from a model-making accident in college."
The pen scratched against paper, memories flooding in. He wrote about their marriage, the arguments and reconciliations, about the sweat on Lin Xia's brow and the light in her eyes when Miao Miao was born.
Writing about Miao Miao, his hand began to shake:
"Chen Miao Miao, four years old, birthday May 18th, loves pink and unicorns, has a small scar on her knee from a fall in the park last year. Terrified of thunder, needs to hold her old, ear-worn rabbit plushie to sleep during storms. Her first word wasn't 'Mama' or 'Dada,' it was 'light'—because Lin Xia always pointed at the ceiling lamp to amuse her. Lately she's started asking 'why,' enough to drive you mad…"
Tears dripped onto the paper, smudging the ink.
It was late by the time he finished. Exhausted but sleepless, Chen Mo paced the apartment. Almost unconsciously, he wandered to the study—the room that had become a storage space for his clutter and Lin Xia's design sketches.
Now, the study held only an empty bookcase and a bare desk. He pulled open all the drawers. Empty. As he was about to give up, he noticed something wedged in the track of the bottom drawer—a folded, yellowing piece of paper.
Carefully prying it out with a key, he unfolded it. His breath caught.
It was clearly a child's hand-drawn birthday card. Clumsy crayon strokes depicted three crooked figures: a tall blue one, a medium red one, a small pink one. They held hands under an equally crooked sun. Below, in colored crayon, was written:
"Happy Birthday Daddy Love from"
The characters for "Miao Miao" were scribbled out, as if the child had made a mistake, tried to correct it, then gave up, leaving only a faint, blurred pencil mark. Next to the scribble, there was an even fainter, almost invisible tiny fingerprint, tinged with a hint of pink—as if from ink or paint.
Chen Mo knelt on the floor, cradling the paper in both hands, tears falling in large drops onto it.
It had physical form. It had weight. It occupied space in the physical world, caught in a crevice of reality.
This wasn't memory.
This was proof.
## **Chapter 4: Traces on the Margins**
The card pulled Chen Mo back from the brink. If one thing survived, there might be a second. He began to believe the erasure wasn't absolute; there were always blind spots the "system" couldn't clean.
He stopped his frantic outward search and began systematically, almost obsessively, scouring the apartment. Wearing gloves, using tweezers, like an archaeologist excavating a site.
From the thick dust atop the kitchen cabinet, he fished out a faded pink plastic star with a magnet on a string—a prize from some kids' meal Miao Miao had insisted on sticking to the fridge, later lost.
From the metal filter of the bathroom drain, he tweezed out a roughly twenty-centimeter-long dark brown hair, the ends slightly curled—just like Lin Xia's. He sealed it carefully in a plastic bag.
From the hardened soil deep in an abandoned flowerpot on the balcony, he dug out a rusted butterfly-shaped hair clip, most of its rhinestones gone—Miao Miao's favorite clip at age two, always clinging to her fine hair.
All were insignificant, marginal traces. Not photos, not documents, not any official record. They were the fragments of daily life most easily overlooked and forgotten—and thus, perhaps, had escaped systemic cleansing.
Chen Mo collected them in a wooden box. Every night, he would open it, don white gloves, and examine each piece, touch it, photograph it with his phone's macro lens, confirming their existence.
Simultaneously, he continued his journal, but the content changed. He began noting daily minor "inconsistencies": the neighbor's yappy poodle was gone, the neighbor claimed they never had a dog; the taste of the breakfast shop at the complex entrance changed, the owner replaced by someone with a different accent who insisted he'd run it for ten years; colleagues at work all laughed when he mentioned a company retreat to an island last year, saying "Chen Mo, you're mixed up, last year we went to the mountains."
The world was making subtle but continuous corrections around him. These corrections weren't flawless; they were like residual bugs after a version update, taking time to fully overwrite.
On the seventh night, sketching the apartment's current floor plan in his journal, labeling each room's state, his pen suddenly stopped.
A chill slowly crept up his spine, freezing his blood.
The way the apartment looked now—minimalist, tidy, empty—wasn't his pre-marriage state (cluttered), nor his post-marriage state (cozy). The current state… eerily resembled an "ideal single life" he had occasionally imagined before marrying Lin Xia: a clean, orderly space free of burdens.
But real life was never like that. Real life was full of accidents, mess, and emotional traces.
**Something… was modifying reality based on "his subconscious conception of a single Chen Mo's life."**
If the system could access his latent understanding of "single Chen Mo" and use it to reset his environment…
Could it also access his memories of "family" and deem them "aberrant data" needing deletion?
Chen Mo slammed the journal shut, his hand trembling so badly he couldn't hold the pen.
## **Chapter 5: Rebuilding the Monument**
Chen Mo applied for a leave of absence. The HR manager was surprised; he was a department stalwart.
"I need some time off to deal with… personal matters," he said calmly, a storm brewing beneath the surface.
He checked all his accounts. His savings card showed a substantial, inexplicable deposit, roughly equivalent to a year's rent and deposit for a decent two-bedroom in the city. No transfer record, no sender account, no remarks. The date was three days ago—the day of his first psychiatrist visit. The balance notification SMS was also mysteriously missing.
Cold dread crawled up his spine. Who? Why? Compensation? Hush money? Or… some kind of test?
Looking at the photo of the crooked birthday card on his phone, at the empty, "reset" apartment, a desperate resolve rose within him. They wanted to erase? He would rebuild.
Using part of this "unexplained deposit," he rented a two-bedroom apartment on the opposite side of the city. This time, he meticulously checked the landlord's ID, property deed, rental history—all seemed normal. But he took photos, made recordings, hid copies of the contract in multiple places.
The new place was bare. Chen Mo bought no ready-made furniture. He went to flea markets for wood, second-hand tools, paint, and decided to make everything himself. He wasn't a carpenter, but had some basics from a college crafts club.
The first project was Miao Miao's bed. He remembered every dimension: 140cm long, 70cm wide, guardrail 35cm high. Rounded corners for the headboard, because she always bumped into it. Four days of cutting, sanding, assembling, painting. When the small, pale pink painted wooden bed stood in the center of the room, Chen Mo sat on the floor, buried his face in his sawdust-covered arms, and cried for a long time. The paint fumes were sharp, but they felt like a fragile kind of real.
Next, Lin Xia's dressing table. He remembered the depth of each drawer, the simple carved pattern on the mirror frame, the sticking left top drawer. He sketched from memory, revising repeatedly.
His third piece was the dining table. That round, light wood table they ate at as a family, with a small chip on the edge from when two-year-old Miao Miao hit it with a metal toy car. Lin Xia had wanted to replace it, but Chen Mo thought it should stay. "It's a mark of growth." He precisely recreated that chip's shape and size with a chisel.
Three months later, the rented apartment gradually took on the outline of the "vanished home." Not identical—his skills were rough, details crude—but the feeling returned. The space was filled with familiar shapes and proportions; the air seemed to gain warmth.
Chen Mo began a solitary ritual. Every morning, he prepared three breakfasts: his own eggs and toast, Lin Xia's preferred oatmeal yogurt with honey, Miao Miao's warm milk and bear-shaped cookies. He set them on the replicated chipped table, speaking to the empty chairs.
"Nice weather today, Xiaoxiao. Your plants would need sun on the balcony."
"Miao Miao, yesterday Dad passed the kindergarten; they were singing your favorite 'Little White Boat.'"
He began to believe, or forced himself to believe: if he remembered firmly enough, replicated precisely enough, those erased existences could continue to "live" in some way within this memory-built space. It was resistance, and also mourning.
## **Chapter 6: The Girl on the Bench**
Chen Mo discovered Xiao Yu on a gloomy Wednesday afternoon, four months into his rebuilding project.
Heading to the hardware store for touch-up paint, he passed a small park and saw a girl of about eleven or twelve sitting alone on a bench, talking to the empty space beside her, gesturing.
"Grandpa, I got a hundred on my math test today. The teacher praised me."
"Grandpa, you said you'd take me to see the ocean this summer. When? I've already packed my swimsuit."
The girl wore a faded dress, her slightly frizzy hair in two braids. Her expression was earnest, expectant, as if someone truly sat there.
Chen Mo stopped, his heart clenching. That posture of speaking to a non-existent person, that tone of certainty—he knew it too well. It was like him speaking to the empty chairs each morning.
He moved closer, hearing her continue: "Grandpa, I saved this milk candy for you. Come eat it quick before it melts." She gently placed a wrapped candy on the empty bench space.
A weary-looking middle-aged woman hurried over, carrying grocery bags. "Xiao Yu, time to go home. Grandpa isn't coming today."
"But Grandpa promised a new story today!" The girl remained stubbornly seated.
The woman sighed, throwing Chen Mo an apologetic, slightly embarrassed look. "Sorry, this child… she always says there's a grandpa with her."
"An imaginary friend?" Chen Mo asked softly.
"More… specific than that," the woman lowered her voice, crouching to coax the girl up. "My father passed away before she was born. She never met him. But somehow, from when she could talk, she's been convinced she has a grandpa, talks about him every day, gives all these details…"
Chen Mo looked into the girl's clear eyes. There was no flicker of deceit, only pure, unwavering belief.
"May I talk with her a bit?" he asked.
The woman hesitated, glanced at her stubborn daughter, then at Chen Mo's calm face, and finally nodded. "I'll go buy some water over there. Five minutes. Please watch her."
Chen Mo sat at the other end of the bench, keeping distance. "Waiting for Grandpa?"
The girl turned, eyes wary at first, then relaxing slightly seeing he just sat there quietly. "Who are you?"
"Someone… who's also waiting for people," Chen Mo said, his gaze falling on the candy. "Can you tell me about your grandpa?"
Xiao Yu's eyes lit up like kindled stars. "My grandpa is amazing! He can fix bicycles, carve wooden birds, always smells of sawdust and varnish. He has a tiny white scar behind his left ear, from a wood chip when he was young." She gestured behind her own ear.
Details. Specific, vivid, lifelike details. Like Chen Mo's memories of Lin Xia and Miao Miao—not vague shadows, but textured presences.
"He often wore an old gray jacket, cuffs worn a bit white, but always clean," Xiao Yu continued, her eyes drifting as if recalling. "His voice was low, a bit raspy, but when he laughed his eyes crinkled into slits, all the wrinkles gathered. He called me 'Little Raindrop.'"
Chen Mo's heartbeat quickened. These details were too specific for a child to fabricate.
"Your grandpa… when did he stop coming?"
Xiao Yu's eyes dimmed, her fingers twisting her hem. "Last month. One day he said, 'Little Raindrop, Grandpa has to go somewhere far for a while,' and then he never came back. But I know he'll return. He promised me the ocean this summer. Grandpa never lies."
Chen Mo understood. Like him, this little girl's world held a systemically erased existence. The adult world labeled it "fantasy" or "psychological," but the child, by instinct, insisted it was "Grandpa."
"I believe you," Chen Mo said softly, but firmly.
Xiao Yu looked up sharply, her eyes suddenly reddening. "You really do? Mom doesn't, teacher doesn't, they say I make up stories…"
"Really." Chen Mo nodded, carefully pulling out his phone, opening the photo of the birthday card. "Because I'm also waiting for my family to come back. They vanished. Everyone says they never existed. But I know they did, just like you know Grandpa did."
Xiao Yu leaned over to see the photo, her finger gently touching the screen. "You drew this?"
"My daughter Miao Miao drew it. For my birthday."
"Where is she now?"
Chen Mo paused, choosing honesty. "She and her mom went… far away. But I believe they'll return, so I'm preparing everything, waiting."
Xiao Yu looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded vigorously. A strange, kindred connection formed between them. In this world that denied their memories, they were each other's only fellow witnesses.
## **Chapter 7: A Secret Alliance**
From that day, Chen Mo visited the park every afternoon. Xiao Yu was always there. They formed a small, secret alliance, exchanging unacknowledged memories.
Xiao Yu showed Chen Mo her "treasures" hidden in a tin box: a peculiarly shaped wood chip ("Grandpa dropped it carving a bird"), a smoothed blue glass marble ("Grandpa found it in an old sofa for me"), and several of her drawings of "Grandpa"—crude crayon sketches that captured features: a square face, thick brows, the scar behind the left ear, smiling crinkled eyes.
"You draw very well," Chen Mo said sincerely, feeling the old man's gentleness from the drawings.
"Do you draw?"
"I… make things." Chen Mo thought, an idea forming. "Want to see the 'home' I made?"
He took Xiao Yu to his rented apartment. The girl's eyes widened as she entered, curiously examining each handmade piece. "This bed! So pretty! Who's it for?"
"My daughter Miao Miao."
"How old is she?"
"Four. A bit younger than you."
Xiao Yu walked to the small bed, gently touching the wood grain on the guardrail. "She likes pink?"
"Loves it," Chen Mo smiled, a pang in his heart. "Her room used to be all pink. Curtains, bedsheets, rug… like a pink cave."
"Where is she now?"
Chen Mo didn't evade. "She… and her mom, went somewhere I can't find for now. But I think they'll return, so I must have the home ready."
Xiao Yu understood, nodding with a wisdom beyond her years.
In exchange, Chen Mo asked Xiao Yu to describe more details about Grandpa, sketching them in a notebook. When the first portrait was done, Xiao Yu held the paper, studying it for a long time, eyes moist. "It's like him… but his eyebrows were thicker, like brushes. And when he smiled, the wrinkles here at the corner of his eyes were three, not two."
Chen Mo was surprised by her observation. He revised. On the second draft, Xiao Yu nodded emphatically, pointing. "Yes! That's it! Grandpa!"
In that moment, Chen Mo felt a strange solace. Sketching Grandpa for Xiao Yu, helping verify those details, was in some way an external, independent validation for his own memories. If two unrelated people both held similarly specific, similarly denied memories, did it mean these memories might not be delusion?
But this fragile equilibrium was soon broken by external forces.
## **Chapter 8: Intervention**
One afternoon during the third week, as Chen Mo and Xiao Yu sat on the bench, a woman in neat professional attire, carrying a briefcase, approached with a formal smile.
"Mr. Chen Mo? I'm Specialist Liu from the Community Care Center." She flashed an ID. "We've received reports of you frequently spending time alone with an unrelated minor girl, at fixed times and locations."
Chen Mo's heart sank. He stood, moving slightly in front of Xiao Yu. "We just talk in the park. This is Jiang Yu. I'm her friend."
"Friend?" Specialist Liu glanced at Xiao Yu, then back at Chen Mo, her tone polite but firm. "Mr. Chen, our understanding is that Xiao Yu has some… cognitive challenges. And you yourself have recent records of… behavioral anomalies. For the child's safety, and to avoid misunderstandings, we need to ensure such interactions are appropriate and transparent."
Chen Mo tried to explain how they met, how they shared memories of "vanished family."
"So you are supporting and reinforcing her non-realistic imaginings?" Specialist Liu's brow furrowed slightly as she noted something.
"I don't believe they are just imaginings. We have evidence—"
"You mean those drawings and… objects?" Specialist Liu interrupted, still calm but with undeniable authority. "Mr. Chen, according to our records and home visits, Xiao Yu never had a grandfather. Her maternal grandfather died in an accident when her mother was fifteen. The details she describes likely come from old family photos, occasional mentions by elders, or, more probably, projections of the child's inner needs."
She closed her folder, her gaze taking on a scrutinizing edge. "As for you, we understand you are currently on leave, living alone, and exhibit signs of… constructing particular family memories. The municipal mental health center has your records. In such circumstances, frequent contact with a cognitively vulnerable child, however well-intentioned, may have adverse effects."
A chill rose from Chen Mo's feet. The system not only erased existences but also monitored those trying to remember, seeking to label them "aberrant," explaining their actions as "problems."
"I'm just helping a lonely child. Listening to her."
"The best way to help is to guide her to face reality and accept professional psychological support, not deepen her non-realistic imaginings," Specialist Liu stated firmly. "From today, please refrain from private meetings with Xiao Yu. We've arranged a new, more experienced child counselor for her regular sessions."
Xiao Yu's mother arrived then, looking pale. Specialist Liu turned to her. "Ms. Jiang, we hope you'll cooperate for the child's well-being."
That afternoon, Chen Mo could only stand and watch as Xiao Yu was led away by her mother, flanked by the new counselor. The girl kept looking back, her eyes confused, hurt, and a little betrayed.
## **Chapter 9: Secret in the Tool Shed**
That night, in his replicated "home," Chen Mo felt utter loneliness and powerlessness for the first time. He wasn't fighting a specific person, but an intangible system permeating every corner of life. It used "care," "science," "for your own good" as weapons, gently dismantling one's resolve.
Late at night, the doorbell rang.
Outside stood Xiao Yu's mother, the weary middle-aged woman, Jiang Shuping.
"Mr. Chen, may I come in?" she whispered, eyes slightly swollen.
Chen Mo stepped aside. Jiang Shuping looked around the space filled with rough but heartfelt handmade furniture, a complex emotion flickering in her eyes.
"Xiao Yu has been crying, won't sleep, says she wants to see you, wants Grandpa's drawing back," the woman sat at the replicated table, voice exhausted. "The community people say you're influencing her, that you have psychological issues… I'm not sure. Xiao Yu has always been… different."
Chen Mo poured her water. "Please, go on."
"When Xiao Yu was about two, she saw my father's—her grandfather's—photo for the first time. It was deep in an old album; I never showed her," Jiang Shuping held the cup, fingers trembling slightly. "But she pointed and said, 'Grandpa,' very sure. I was startled. Later, she began describing a man identical to my father, details… some I'd forgotten until she mentioned them, and I vaguely recalled."
Chen Mo's heart skipped a beat. "Such as?"
"The scar behind the left ear. My father worked in a wood factory when young, got a wood chip there, left a small scar. I'd long forgotten, only vaguely remembered when Xiao Yu said it." Jiang Shuping looked at Chen Mo, her eyes bewildered, carrying a hint of fear. "And that gray jacket. My father did have an old gray work jacket he wore for years, cuffs worn, my mother mended them. I never told Xiao Yu these things. How could she know?"
"You think it's… coincidence? Or she heard from other elders?"
"I'm their only daughter. Father's side of the family stopped contact long ago. Mother passed before Xiao Yu was born." Jiang Shuping shook her head. "Xiao Yu's parents, my daughter and son-in-law, work abroad, come back maybe once a year, couldn't possibly know these details."
She paused, voice even lower. "Mr. Chen, I'm not a superstitious person. But sometimes I wonder, can children… sense things we can't? Can memories, or souls, somehow… pass on?"
Chen Mo had no answer. He was caught in a similar mystery.
"And the community…?" Chen Mo asked.
"They want to send Xiao Yu to a 'Special Children's Development Center' in the suburbs, say it has systematic programs and a 'behavioral correction' environment." Tears fell from Jiang Shuping's eyes. "I don't want them taking my granddaughter. She just… remembers someone she never met. What's wrong with that? She gets good grades, is well-behaved. Besides this, she's a normal child!"
Chen Mo saw in her despair a possible future for himself if he continued being "aberrant": labeled mentally ill, "treated," isolated.
"What do you need me to do?"
Jiang Shuping wiped her tears. "Xiao Yu said you promised to take her somewhere, a 'secret base' Grandpa used to sneak her to? She said Grandpa mentioned having his 'treasure' there."
Chen Mo recalled Xiao Yu mentioning a "small room smelling of tools, full of wood," in the old district.
"Tomorrow is Saturday," he said. "Community people are off. I'll take you. But we must be careful."
## **Chapter 10: The Memory Studio**
The next day, they moved like on a secret mission, taking detours, changing routes, arriving at the old district slated for demolition. Dilapidated red-brick walls bore large "拆" (Demolish) characters, most residents gone.
"Here!" Xiao Yu pointed at a peeling blue wooden door.
The lock was rusted. Chen Mo used tools to pry it loose. Pushing the door open, a stale smell of sawdust, machine oil, and faint mildew wafted out.
The room was small, about twenty square meters, dusty and cobwebbed. But against the wall, a workbench held neatly hung tools: planes, chisels, saws, files… dusty but orderly. Rough furniture sketches in chalk adorned the wall. Wood scraps piled in a corner.
Xiao Yu seemed familiar, walking straight to the workbench, crouching to pull open a bottom drawer. It was empty, but she felt along the drawer bottom, then pried—the bottom was a hidden compartment!
Inside lay a rusted tin candy box.
She opened it carefully. Chen Mo and Jiang Shuping leaned in.
Inside were several small wood carvings: a bird with spread wings, a fish with a flicking tail, a sitting dog. The workmanship was simple, not refined, but lively, imbued with the maker's patience and love. The surfaces were smooth from handling.
At the very bottom, pressed under a yellowed, ragged receipt, were a few lines in pencil, already fading:
"For Little Raindrop's birthday gifts—
Bird, finished March 2016
Fish, finished March 2017
Dog, finished March 2018 (the last one)
Grandpa is old, hands shake, can't carve anymore. But Little Raindrop must remember, Grandpa loves you forever."
March 2016, Xiao Yu was two. That was the year—even the month—Jiang Shuping's father passed away.
Jiang Shuping picked up the wooden bird, hands shaking violently, tears falling silently. "This… this is what he often carved. He was skilled, did fine woodwork in the factory when young. After retiring, he always said he'd carve a set of little animals for each future grandchild…" She sobbed. "But when Xiao Yu was born, he was already… he was already gone!"
"Grandpa didn't forget me," Xiao Yu whispered, clutching the tin box, tears dropping onto the carvings. "He prepared gifts every year… He was always with me."
Watching this, something cold and hard within Chen Mo began to soften, melt. Xiao Yu's grandfather had left traces this way—not photos, documents, any formal records easily scanned and erased. Instead, fragments that required understanding, connection, activation by love. Hidden in physical crevices, at the junction of memory and emotion.
Like his birthday card. That plastic star.
Love always found the most inadvertent, marginal ways to leave marks on the world's walls, marks that couldn't be fully erased.
## **Chapter 11: The New Base**
After that day, Chen Mo made a decision.
Using part of the remaining "unexplained deposit," he rented the old tool shed. Signed a short-term use agreement with the demolition office—it would be leveled next month, but one month was enough.
He, Xiao Yu, and her mother cleaned the room. They kept the old workbench and tools on the wall, just cleaned them. Chen Mo moved in his handmade furniture—Miao Miao's bed, Lin Xia's dressing table, the chipped dining table. On the wall, he hung the finalized portrait of Grandpa based on Xiao Yu's descriptions on one side, and his memory-drawn floor plan and detail sketches of the "vanished home" on the other.
A large worktable stood in the center, holding clay, brushes, wood blocks, fabric scraps.
Grandma helped. Using the rationale of "emotional healing through crafts for the child," she persuaded the community and the counselor to allow Xiao Yu to visit this "temporary studio" for sessions a few times a week, with Grandma present.
Thus, the "Memory Studio" quietly came into being. Chen Mo named it, writing it on a small wooden sign by the door.
Word spread slowly through Jiang Shuping's careful whispers within a tiny circle. The first visitor was an elderly man in his sixties, surnamed Zhao, a retired material analysis researcher who spoke of a son who died in a lab accident. Chen Mo had him describe; Xiao Yu helped sculpt a small clay bust.
The second was a young woman, surnamed Li, who insisted she'd had a big yellow dog as a child that helped her through her parents' divorce, but her family said they never had a dog, no photos. Chen Mo helped her make a wooden dog sculpture with yarn.
Third, fourth…
They were careful: no real names, no photos. They just came, sat, talked about those "non-existent" people and things, then left a handmade piece. Shelves and windowsills gradually filled with crude but heartfelt crafts: clay figurines, carved animals, collages. Each represented an "unacknowledged" memory. No labels, but the makers knew what they were, for whom.
Chen Mo began teaching Xiao Yu basic woodworking. The girl learned quickly, steady hands, a natural patience. Her first complete piece was a wobbly but cute unicorn carving—for Miao Miao, she said.
"When Miao Miao comes back, give this to her for me," Xiao Yu said, eyes clear.
"Okay," Chen Mo patted her head, warmth and ache mingling in his heart.
This small, soon-to-vanish studio became a temporary haven for islands of memory. Here, they didn't need to defend their memories; they just needed to remember, and create shapes for those memories with their hands.
## **Chapter 12: Refraction of Light**
The demolition notice arrived on a rainy day. The one-month lease was up; bulldozers would come next week.
People in the studio packed silently. Chen Mo carefully packed the crafts, planning to store them temporarily in Jiang Shuping's basement. Each person took their own piece, or, if willing, left it as a memento.
On the last night, Chen Mo sat alone in the mostly emptied studio. Rain pattered against the soon-to-be-gone window frame.
Looking at this brief space built from ruins, memory, and hands, a strange calm washed over him. He hadn't found Lin Xia and Miao Miao, but he hadn't let memory dissipate in loneliness and denial. He'd helped Xiao Yu find Grandpa's traces, helped a few others temporarily house their "illusory" memories. It might be negligible resistance, but resistance itself held meaning.
His phone vibrated—a text from his mother: "Mo Mo, coming home for dinner this weekend? Made your favorite braised pork. Auntie Zhang wants to introduce you to a nice girl, wanna meet?"
Chen Mo stared at the screen. His mother still didn't remember Lin Xia and Miao Miao, still lived in the corrected "reality" of her unmarried son.
He took a deep breath, replied: "Okay, I'll come for dinner. But no matchmaking, Mom, not interested right now. By the way, bringing a little friend, a girl who calls me Uncle. Her name's Xiao Yu, very sweet."
"Of course! A colleague's child? Welcome!"
Chen Mo put down his phone. He'd made a choice. He wouldn't abandon his memories, but neither would he wage futile, direct war against the whole world. He would learn to live in the system's crevices, protect his memories, help others in similar situations. He needed to become… smarter, more discreet.
The rain stopped. Cold moonlight leaked through cloud breaks, illuminating the workbench.
Chen Mo took out the wooden box, giving the evidence a final check: card, hair clip, star, hair. He took his phone, opened the camera, intending to take clearer, detailed photos for archiving. As the macro lens focused on the most rusted part of the butterfly clip's clasp, the flash automatically fired. The screen clearly revealed **extremely fine, patterned textures**—not random natural corrosion, but orderly, matrix-like indentations, like some industrial marking.
Chen Mo's heart hammered. He turned off the flash, switched on the phone's flashlight, leaned in close. Almost invisible to the naked eye, but under sidelight, those subtle bumps indeed formed regular geometric patterns.
He immediately grabbed a high-powered magnifying glass from his toolbox, bent under the desk lamp, holding his breath.
**Precise, nanoscale laser engravings**, arranged in complex matrix patterns. This was absolutely not something time or chance could leave, far beyond ordinary industrial markings.
This was **deliberate, high-tech marking**. Some technology had left an "imprint" on these "surviving" items.
His hands began to tremble uncontrollably. He rushed to open the wooden box, took out the birthday card, examining it under the same light and angle—
At the edge of the scribbled "Miao Miao," deep within the paper fibers, were the same subtle, patterned dot-like textures! Not printing, not writing, but marks embedded in the paper itself!
And the plastic star, on the back of one edge. And the hair, under magnification, seemed to show extremely tiny, unnatural nodes.
All evidence surviving from the margins bore **the same inexplicable, precise technological marking**.
They had been seen. Scanned. Processed. Then **deliberately left**.
Why? If it was an erasure operation, why not destroy completely? If an oversight, why this high-tech marking? Was it categorization? Tracking? Or… "allowed retention" after some assessment?
Chen Mo looked up sharply at the portrait of Grandpa on the wall, at the remaining "creations of memory" in the room. A cold fact hit him: he and all memory-keepers, their memorials, their treasured evidence, their gathering… might have been under the **surveillance and assessment** of some invisible gaze all along.
These traces were markers, tags. And they, perhaps, were observed specimens.
The moonlight outside grew colder. Chen Mo clenched the cold hair clip, those subtle textures leaving an indescribable sensation on his fingertips.
He opened his journal, writing forcefully on the latest page, the pen nearly tearing the paper:
**"Major discovery: The erasers are not formless. They left physical imprints on 'surviving' items—precise laser markings. This is not oversight; it's labeling. They can see what we find, may even anticipate us finding it. We observe, and are observed."**
**"Question: Why leave them? Warning? Assessment? Or… signposts?"**
He paused. A more terrifying thought surfaced: If these marks were signposts, where did they lead? To make them think they were resisting while guiding them into deeper traps? Or… was there dissent within the system, someone deliberately leaving clues?
He closed the journal, looked out at the deep night. The struggle had never ended; it had just entered a new, more complex layer. And now he had a new direction: investigate the source of this marking technology.
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