Chapter 1
The endless plum rains had been pouring over the bluestone roads of Old Town District for three full days.
At the very back of the alley, a brass wall lamp, its surface eaten away by the rain and beginning to show a faint green rust, swayed in the night wind. It cast the five characters of “Echo Office” onto the damp brick wall, flickering in and out. Inside, the air was thick with the scents of aged camphorwood, old paper, and freshly boiled mint tea.
Jiang Jianqing sat behind the dark chestnut bar, holding a slightly damp chamois cloth as he polished, with painstaking slowness, a strange-looking two-pan scale. One pan hung heavily downward, weighed down by a severely rusted iron key. The other was tipped high into the air, completely empty.
“Boss, it’s raining outside like the sky sprang a leak. There’s no way we’re getting any customers tonight.”
Lin Chu shoved the last cowhide-bound file into the filing cabinet, then turned around and stretched. She wore a slightly oversized army-green utility jacket, her ponytail tied high, the wisps of hair over her forehead a little messy. She squinted at Jiang Jianqing’s hands and couldn’t help grumbling, “And if you ask me, the deposit that woman left last week wasn’t even enough to cover this month’s electric bill. Why didn’t you accept the double price she offered? Just because she chose to completely destroy that wedding ring in the end?”
“Forgetfulness isn’t a business transaction, Lin Chu.” Jiang Jianqing didn’t look up. His fingertips moved steadily along the scale’s brass pillar. “She decided to erase that marriage. The price was three months of a sense of emptiness. We only collect the proportional fee needed to keep the scale balanced. Take even a little more, and the backlash falls on us.”
“Yeah, yeah, rules first. You bear the consequences of your own choices.” Lin Chu curled her lips, pulled out a barstool, and sat down, pouring herself a cup of mint tea. “But if the office goes under next month, we won’t even have a roof under which to follow the rules.”
Jiang Jianqing folded the chamois cloth into a neat square, picked up the white porcelain cup beside him, and took a sip of the tea, which had already gone lukewarm. His features were cool and distant, the outer corners of his eyes slightly lowered. He usually carried a hint of careless weariness, but whenever he came into contact with objects carrying an obsession, a near-cruel clarity would shine from his deep brown eyes.
The old wind chime hanging above the door suddenly gave a crisp chime in the middle of a silence that had settled without warning.
Cold wind mixed with fine rain burst into the room.
An old man stood in the doorway. He had no umbrella, and the dark gray trench coat he wore, washed nearly white with age, was completely soaked through. It clung heavily to his gaunt frame. Droplets ran from his graying temples down the deep folds beside his mouth, splattering into tiny patches of water on the floor. His gaze was utterly confused, mingling bewilderment and fear with a kind of fixation like that of a drowning man clutching at driftwood.
“Excuse me…” The old man’s voice was hoarse and trembling, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Is this… the place that can help people get something back?”
Lin Chu immediately put away her previous casual air and rose to greet him. “Sir, sit down first and dry yourself off. What are you looking for?”
The old man seemed not to hear her. Staggering slightly, he walked straight to the bar and tremblingly drew out an object from the deepest—and only dry—pocket inside his trench coat. With extreme care, he placed it on the dark wooden countertop.
It was a yellowed cardboard train ticket.
The edges of the ticket had worn away into fuzz, and the corners even showed faint blackened scorch marks. The ink at the top had faded badly. Only the words “one-way” could still be made out, along with a blurred year stamp at the bottom—1984.
“I… I don’t know when it appeared in my pocket.” The old man’s breathing quickened. He braced both hands against the edge of the bar, the veins standing out on the backs of them. “But every morning, the moment I open my eyes, this ticket is beside my pillow. The doctor says my brain is breaking down… Alzheimer’s. That’s what they call it. I’ve started forgetting what I ate, forgetting the way home, even forgetting my students’ names…”
The old man’s eyes reddened, and at last his cloudy tears ran down mingled with the rainwater.
“But I know this ticket is important. There’s a huge hole inside me… It hurts. It hurts every day. I can’t remember where I was supposed to go, and I can’t remember who I lost… Please, help me find it. If it’s a debt, I’ll repay it. If it’s a crime, I’ll confess.”
Jiang Jianqing lowered his eyes to the solitary train ticket.
To ordinary people, it was nothing more than a scrap of paper abandoned for forty years. But in Jiang Jianqing’s eyes, an exceedingly faint, thin layer of ghostly blue halo was rising from its surface, slowly rippling like water and radiating a bone-deep chill—this was a Forgotten Thing of extremely high purity.
When a person’s obsession exceeded the limits their body could endure, yet was forcibly severed and forgotten by reason, a fragment of the soul would cling to the original medium and take physical form.
“Sir, have some hot water first.” Lin Chu handed him a cup of warm tea, her voice gentle. “What should we call you?”
“Chen… My name is Chen Mobai.” The old man cradled the teacup in both hands, using the warmth through its sides to still his trembling. “I used to teach classical literature at Normal University.”
Jiang Jianqing took a pair of pure white silk gloves from beneath the bar and put them on with elegant, deliberate movements.
“Professor Chen, before I begin, I have to explain the office’s rules.” Jiang Jianqing’s voice was calm and flat, as though he were stating a law of physics. “Things that have been forgotten are often not lost by accident. More often, the person involved deliberately chose to cast them away. Forcing them back doesn’t mean you’ll have a happy reunion. More often than not, what awaits you is the truth that once made you wish you were dead. Even so, do you still want to see it?”
Chen Mobai raised his head. A nearly desperate light surfaced in his clouded, illness-ravaged eyes. “I don’t have much time left in this life. Boss Jiang, more than pain, I’m afraid of turning to ash without knowing anything. I want to know… who I wronged.”
Jiang Jianqing nodded and said no more.
He drew a deep breath, raised his right hand in its white glove, brought his index and middle fingers together, and pressed them with extreme gentleness against the exact center of the yellowed ticket.
Hummm—
A piercing ringing instantly tore through Jiang Jianqing’s senses.
The warm room before him, the bar, and the figures of Lin Chu and Chen Mobai were swallowed in an instant by boundless blackness. Icy rain poured down over his head without warning, accompanied by the deafening crash of steel wheels against rails and the shrill whistle of an ancient steam locomotive.
Jiang Jianqing’s consciousness was violently dragged into a rift in space and time forty-two years in the past.
It was the platform of an old train station. The night was as thick as ink, and dim yellow hanging lamps swung violently in the storm.
A young Chen Mobai stood there in a blue cloth shirt washed nearly white, clutching the ticket tightly in his hand, his entire body drenched by the cold rain. Facing him stood a young woman in a cream-colored wool coat. Her long hair was blown into disarray, and she carried a heavy suitcase. Her face was streaked with tears of despair.
“Mobai, come with me. There are only two spots for going abroad, and I’ve already taken care of all the paperwork… Once we board this train, we can leave this place!” The woman’s voice broke with sobs as she reached for Chen Mobai’s sleeve.
Young Chen Mobai took a step back and tucked his hand into his sleeve.
Jiang Jianqing stood as an observer within the consciousness, but he could clearly feel the heart-rending agony in Chen Mobai’s chest—that wasn’t a metaphor, but a physiological pain like nerves being forcibly torn apart. Deep in Chen Mobai’s pocket was also a crumpled hospital diagnosis and a family background investigation report. In that special era, if he went with her, his family background would completely ruin the woman’s future, while his seriously ill mother would be left without anyone to care for her.
“Go, Lin Hui.” Young Chen Mobai heard his own voice, cold as ice. “I don’t love you anymore. This ticket is the stub left after I returned it. I’m not going.”
“You’re lying!” the woman shrieked, but the thunderous roar of the train pulling into the station crushed her voice to pieces.
Chen Mobai said nothing more. In the final second before the train doors closed, he suddenly shoved the woman onto the carriage step, then turned resolutely and ran wildly across the platform under the pouring rain, until a bloody taste filled his lungs, until the whistle vanished completely into the far reaches of the night.
He fell to his knees in the mud and let out a silent howl at the black sky.
Then an incredibly powerful will erupted—
“If this memory will only bring destruction… then let me forget her. Tear this pain, my name, this night—all of it—out of my soul!”
Boom!
A tremendous emotional backlash crashed into the sea of Jiang Jianqing’s consciousness like a heavy hammer.
In the real world, in front of the bar, Jiang Jianqing’s body suddenly jolted.
He yanked his hand back as if shocked by electricity, staggered half a step backward, and struck the liquor shelf behind him with a dull thud. The fingertips beneath his white gloves trembled violently, and an unbearable ache and suffocating pressure surged into his throat.
“Cough… cough, cough!”
Jiang Jianqing clutched his chest and coughed violently. The color drained from his face in an instant, leaving it nearly transparent. Fine beads of cold sweat appeared at his temples, and even his breathing rasped like air through a broken bellows.
“Boss!” Lin Chu’s expression changed. She immediately pulled a glass test tube filled with pale golden liquid from beneath the bar, uncorked it, and brought it to Jiang Jianqing’s lips.
Jiang Jianqing took the test tube and tipped back his head, drinking down the liquid, which carried an intense bitter herbal taste. Only after the medicine slid down his throat did the resonant pain that had nearly torn his heart apart gradually subside, but the hand hanging at his side still twitched faintly beyond his control.
This was the price of recovery. Every time he probed the deep memories of a Forgotten Thing, he had to personally endure the emotional storm that had erupted when its owner first severed the memory.
Chen Mobai had been frightened by Jiang Jianqing’s reaction and stood up awkwardly. “Boss Jiang… are you all right? Was this thing too filthy…?”
“I’m fine.” Jiang Jianqing slowly straightened, removed the white gloves stained with emotional residue, and tossed them into the brass wastebasket beside him. The moment the gloves landed at the bottom, they burst into flame without fire, becoming a wisp of blue-gray smoke that vanished into the air.
Jiang Jianqing looked up at Chen Mobai again, a trace of pity now visible in his eyes.
“Professor Chen, this ticket really is yours.” Jiang Jianqing steadied his breathing, his voice hoarse. “You don’t owe anyone a debt. You were simply… too cruel to yourself.”
Chen Mobai went rigid, his lips trembling. “I… I remembered?”
“The seal hasn’t been completely undone. That only triggered the residual Echo.” Jiang Jianqing shook his head. “If I force the entire memory back into you at once, your cerebral blood vessels won’t withstand it in your current condition. We need to proceed gradually.”
By then, Lin Chu was already holding a magnifying glass and an ultraviolet lamp, carefully examining the back and corners of the ticket.
Suddenly, she stopped. Her brows drew tightly together.
“Boss, look here.” Lin Chu pushed the ticket in front of Jiang Jianqing and pointed to an extremely concealed embossed stamp in the lower-right corner. “This isn’t an ordinary passenger train number.”
Jiang Jianqing focused on it. Under the ultraviolet light, a tiny, unusual emblem surfaced beneath the blurred ink—a ring-shaped serpent biting its own tail, with the Roman numeral “VII” set in its center.
“The seventh special-dispatch express.” Lin Chu’s voice sank as she looked up at Jiang Jianqing, a hint of gravity in her eyes. “This wasn’t a route officially operated by the authorities at the time. This is proof of an ‘unrecorded express’… That train never had an arrival time listed on any public timetable.”
Jiang Jianqing’s pupils contracted almost imperceptibly.
Forty-two years ago, the sudden separation had clearly been more than a compromise between two lovers. It was also connected to a secret organization long since buried beneath the dust of history—one that might even have had something to do with the origins of the Forgotten Realm.
Outside the window, the rain grew more violent. The gale battered the office’s glass windows, producing dull, heavy thuds.
“Lin Chu, pull all the non-public railway dispatch records from October 1984, especially the batches involving the closure of the border line.” Jiang Jianqing lifted a hand and nudged the brass weight on the scale over by one notch. It clicked crisply.
He looked at Chen Mobai, whose face was filled with confusion yet tinged with a growing unease, and said slowly:
“Professor Chen, go home and rest tonight. Echo Office is taking this commission. Within three days, I’ll return to you, exactly as they were, the woman who waited for you on that platform… and the forty years of time you buried with your own hands.”