Chapter 10: The Person Behind the Camera
8:27 p.m.
For the first time, the area outside Yongkang Care Center finally went quiet.
Not completely silent.
The police cars, ambulances, radios, and crowds outside the police cordon were all still there.
But the feeling of being watched—the feeling that had followed me all day—had finally changed.
Before eight, those people could follow me with their cameras.
Now they couldn't.
At least not legally.
Some people were still filming from a distance, but the police had started ordering anyone who got too close to leave.
One streamer refused to take the hint. He followed me all the way to the ambulance with his phone in hand, only to be stopped by the police less than a minute later.
He was still shouting:
“Transparency Day just ended!”
The cop only replied:
“Ended means ended.”
I stood at the care center entrance, watching the scene.
For some reason, I suddenly thought that line sounded great.
Ended means ended.
If only everything could be that simple.
Yuzhen had already been loaded into the ambulance.
Ruoqing went with her.
I had wanted to go too.
But the police wouldn't let me leave yet.
The basement was no longer merely an illegal server room.
It was now a major crime scene potentially involving more than ten years of secretly filming people, trading personal information, illegal surveillance, deaths, and even government data leaks connected to a joint operation.
I, Cai Mingzhe, and Zhou Jingchuan were all kept there.
We weren't under arrest.
At least not yet.
But each of us had to give a separate statement.
A detective in his forties stood in front of me. His surname was Wu, and he spoke quickly.
He hadn't taken out his phone to film me once.
That small detail actually made me feel safe.
“Your name is Chen Zian?”
“Yes.”
“Was this the first time you learned about this place this morning?”
I paused.
“As far as I remember now, yes.”
He looked up at me.
“That answer's a problem.”
“I know.”
“So you've been here before?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“At least twice. Maybe more.”
“Why don't you remember?”
I looked toward Zhou Jingchuan.
Another police officer was questioning him.
“Memory interference.”
Detective Wu's pen stopped.
“What?”
“I know it sounds crazy.”
“Crazy isn't the issue,” he said. “If you're about to tell me someone used a machine to erase your memories, I need to know whether there's evidence.”
“There is equipment.”
I pointed toward the basement.
“And records.”
“Who operated it?”
“Zhou Jingchuan.”
Detective Wu immediately started writing in his notebook.
“Did you consent?”
“The time two years ago, yes.”
“What about the other times?”
“I don't know.”
“How many times were there?”
“At least three memory gaps.”
He stopped again.
“You're sure?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say at least?”
“Because someone left records.”
Detective Wu studied me for several seconds.
“Okay.”
He didn't say he believed me.
He didn't say he didn't.
He just kept taking notes.
It was the first time that day someone had treated this like a case instead of a story.
I suddenly felt much lighter.
He questioned me for nearly forty minutes.
Starting with 2009.
Then Yuzhen.
Then 3741.
Then the underground website.
Then today's livestream.
Finally, he asked:
“How much data did you delete just now?”
I shook my head.
“I don't know.”
“Images of ordinary people?”
“Yes.”
“What about anything related to crimes?”
“Sealed.”
“Who decided what counted as crime-related?”
I didn't answer right away.
Because that question mattered.
Cai Mingzhe had written the filtering criteria at the time.
But we all knew the system itself already had categories.
Domestic abuse.
Sexual offenses.
Preparations for violence.
Illegal stalking.
Even labels like “high risk” for things that weren't necessarily crimes.
But a label wasn't the same as a crime.
I said:
“We didn't treat everything labeled high risk as a crime.”
“We only kept files with clear case information, direct footage of crimes, website management records, and anything that might be related to the deaths.”
Detective Wu asked:
“Who did the filtering?”
“Cai Mingzhe handled most of it.”
He immediately looked up.
I added, “But the process was recorded, and he wasn't the only one making the decisions.”
“Who else was involved?”
“Me, Zhou Jingchuan, and Chen Yuzhen.”
“What about Lin Ruoqing?”
“She filmed the process.”
He wrote that down too.
“So the complete footage still exists?”
“On an offline camera.”
Detective Wu nodded.
“Hand it over to forensics later.”
“Okay.”
He glanced at me.
“You're being pretty cooperative.”
“What else would I do?”
“Most people try to protect themselves first in a situation like this.”
I looked toward the basement entrance.
“If I still wanted to protect my secrets, I wouldn't have gone live today.”
He didn't say anything else.
9:15 p.m.
The first group of digital forensics specialists entered the basement.
The terminals we'd shut down could no longer access ordinary-person records.
But the judicial evidence archive was still there.
All the data had been split into multiple encrypted sections.
At least two sets of keys were required to decrypt it.
One was on the mainframe.
One was a technical key kept by Zhou Jingchuan.
The final one—
was my 3741 authorization.
More precisely, my biometric identification.
I had thought the whole thing would become useless once the system was terminated.
But the judicial evidence archive had deliberately retained an independent verification process.
One of the forensic specialists asked:
“Are you willing to cooperate with the decryption?”
“Yes.”
My fingerprints.
My face.
It also required a voice-verification phrase.
“Chen Zian, 3741.”
When I said it, I suddenly felt uncomfortable.
Seventeen years.
The number felt glued to the end of my name.
But at least this might be one of the last times.
The verification finished.
The administrator list jumped from 1 percent to 4 percent.
It hadn't unlocked instantly.
It was organizing the node data.
Detective Wu stood nearby.
“How long will it take?”
“Depends on how much data there is,” the forensic specialist said.
“Will we be able to see part of it tonight?”
“We should.”
I couldn't help asking:
“How many people will be on the list?”
The specialist shook his head.
“We don't know yet.”
Cai Mingzhe said quietly from the other side:
“There were probably dozens of people with real access in the early days.”
Detective Wu asked:
“What about later?”
“Thousands.”
“You said thousands?”
“That includes node administrators.”
“Temporary observation access during Transparency Day doesn't count.”
“What if you include that?”
Cai Mingzhe looked at him.
“It could be hundreds of thousands.”
The entire basement suddenly fell silent.
That number was too big.
Hundreds of thousands.
Not everyone knew they were participating in an illegal system.
Some may have only accepted anonymous assignments.
Some had only filmed things.
Some had only bought videos.
Some may have thought they were just taking part in a Transparency Day activity.
But once the system grew to that scale, it could no longer be explained as “a few creeps.”
It had become an industry.
Maybe even a culture.
9:40 p.m.
Ruoqing called me.
I answered immediately.
“How's Yuzhen?”
“Her leg's been stitched up.”
“Any damage to the bone?”
“No.”
“Did she lose a lot of blood?”
“The doctor said she's okay.”
I leaned against the wall and finally allowed myself to relax a little.
“Can she talk now?”
“Yes.”
“Have the police talked to her?”
“Someone already has.”
I was silent for a few seconds.
Ruoqing knew what I was thinking.
“She said she'll tell them everything.”
“Even about 4189?”
“Yeah.”
I didn't say anything.
That meant Yuzhen might have to face a murder charge.
Even if she'd stopped three other people from being killed.
She had still deliberately killed someone who hadn't actually committed a crime yet.
The law wouldn't pretend it hadn't happened just because her judgment had been correct.
Ruoqing asked:
“Will you help her find a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Are you still angry at her?”
I looked at the hard drives in the basement.
“I don't know.”
It was the truth.
Did I love her?
I thought I did.
After those memories returned, the feeling wasn't something I could fake.
But loving her and agreeing with what she'd done were two different things.
I said:
“Let's let her stay alive long enough to finish telling them everything.”
“We'll deal with the rest later.”
Ruoqing paused.
“She just asked if you were going to the hospital.”
“I am.”
“I'll tell her.”
“Okay.”
Before I hung up, I suddenly stopped her.
“Ruoqing.”
“What?”
I hesitated for a few seconds.
“What you said this morning.”
She didn't make a sound.
She knew exactly which line I meant.
Then let him forget one more time.
“When this is over, you need to tell me everything from the beginning.”
“I know.”
“Don't say you were doing it to protect me.”
“Okay.”
She answered quickly.
“I'll tell you everything.”
This hadn't disappeared just because Yuzhen had shown up.
Ruoqing still had a lot to explain.
She had been in private contact with Zhou Jingchuan for a year.
She had let him into our home.
She knew my memories had been interfered with.
She had even participated in maintaining my “normal life.”
I could understand her reasons.
But understanding wasn't the same as accepting them.
At least this time, I didn't want to make things simpler by forgetting.
10:12 p.m.
The administrator list was 17 percent decrypted.
The first batch of data was decoded.
Not names.
Accounts.
There were 214 core accounts in total.
Each one had a creation date, permission records, and login nodes.
The earliest had existed before 2010.
Three were already marked deceased.
“XW.”
Xu Wensheng.
“LSH.”
Liao Shihao.
And one more:
“C-01.”
Detective Wu asked:
“Who is this?”
Zhou Jingchuan took one look.
“I don't know.”
Cai Mingzhe shook his head too.
“I saw it back in the early days.”
“But no one knew who was behind it.”
I stepped closer.
C-01's creation date was even earlier than Xu Wensheng's.
November 2008.
That was before Yuzhen was placed under observation.
Last login:
6:51 p.m. today.
I stared at the time.
“So someone used this account today.”
The forensic specialist nodded.
“And performed operations.”
“What kind?”
He opened the logs.
6:51 p.m.
Canceled an application to activate “full transparency.”
6:53 p.m.
Blocked three external nodes from obtaining core access.
6:59 p.m.
Reenabled the judicial-sealing option.
I stared at the screen.
“Wait.”
“The judicial-sealing option had been disabled?”
“According to the logs, yes,” the forensic specialist said. “Someone reenabled it while you were operating the system.”
Cai Mingzhe frowned.
“I thought it had always been part of the system.”
“It wasn't,” Zhou Jingchuan said.
I asked:
“So if C-01 hadn't done anything, we might have only had three options in the end?”
“That's what it looks like.”
That meant someone had been helping us from the shadows all day.
Not controlling everything.
But helping at least a few times.
Detective Wu immediately asked:
“Can we trace the login location?”
The specialist checked.
The result came back quickly.
“Taipei.”
“More specifically?”
“A government network.”
Everyone turned toward him.
“Which agency?”
“That'll take more checking.”
A few minutes later, a node name appeared on the screen.
“National Information Security Joint Center—Old Backup Node.”
Zhou Jingchuan's expression turned strange.
I asked:
“You know it?”
“This node was supposed to have been shut down in 2018.”
“Then why can someone still log in?”
“Someone kept it active.”
Detective Wu said:
“I'll report this up the chain.”
He didn't start making wild guesses at the scene.
Neither did I.
There were already more than enough mysteries tonight.
At least this one had clear technical records.
The police could investigate it.
11 p.m.
There were even more media outside.
After Transparency Day ended, the biggest news in all of Taiwan was no longer which celebrity had been secretly filmed.
Everything had become about 3741.
News sites began compiling what I'd said during my livestream.
The government issued a statement immediately, saying it would investigate whether the Transparency Day system had been exploited by an illegal surveillance organization.
Several legislators began calling for next year's event to be suspended.
Others opposed them.
They argued that the system shouldn't simply be canceled because a criminal group had abused it.
The internet split into two camps.
Some said I'd destroyed “the people's right to oversight.”
Some said Transparency Day had always been a garbage system.
Others started worrying that they might be in the database too.
I shut it off after a few minutes.
Those arguments weren't going to be resolved tonight.
At least now, the discussion wasn't focused only on me anymore.
11:20 p.m.
The list was 31 percent decrypted.
The first batch of identifiable real names appeared.
Fifteen of them.
Website engineers.
The owner of a photography studio.
Data brokers.
Employees of private detective agencies.
Even two former police officers.
When we reached the eleventh name, Zhou Jingchuan suddenly called for a stop.
“This person.”
Detective Wu looked at him.
Name:
Liang Guofeng.
Occupation:
Former project consultant for the Ministry of the Interior's Information Division.
Years involved:
2014 to 2020.
I asked:
“You know him?”
“He was involved in the earliest testing of the Transparency Day system.”
“He participated in this?”
“Yes.”
Detective Wu immediately took a photo of the data.
“Where is he now?”
The forensic specialist checked public records.
“Retired last year.”
I stared at his permission records.
2015.
Large-scale imports of test data from public security cameras.
2016.
The first year of Transparency Day.
He began creating a category called “legal-day supplemental data.”
In other words, footage captured during Transparency Day was specially organized and added to people's files.
That was an unmistakable connection.
It wasn't just our suspicion that the system had been exploited.
Someone had been feeding legally captured footage into the underground system from the very beginning.
Detective Wu's expression changed too.
“This needs to be a separate case.”
I asked:
“Can this prove the government knew?”
He immediately shook his head.
“No.”
“It can only prove that someone involved in a government project was also involved in this system.”
I nodded.
That distinction mattered.
We couldn't claim the entire government knew just because one consultant was involved.
The old me might have rushed to fit everything into the biggest conspiracy possible.
Not today.
We'd say only as much as the evidence supported.
11:57 p.m.
I was finally allowed to leave the care center.
Cai Mingzhe still couldn't go.
Neither could Zhou Jingchuan.
As I was getting into the police car, Cai Mingzhe suddenly called out to me.
“Zian.”
I looked back.
“What?”
He stood behind the cordon.
“Do you remember that room from 2009?”
“Which one?”
“Number Zero.”
I frowned.
“A little.”
“That man.”
“What about him?”
“He asked whether you wanted to keep the person you were looking at today.”
That video surfaced in my mind.
A man in his thirties, sitting in front of a computer.
Fourteen-year-old me walked in.
“What about him?”
Cai Mingzhe looked toward the administrator list we'd just decoded.
“I always thought it was Xu Wensheng.”
“It wasn't?”
“The face doesn't really match.”
“Then who was it?”
He shook his head.
“I don't know.”
I looked at him.
“Just say it.”
“That C-01 from earlier.”
“Yeah?”
“I suspect it's the same person.”
I didn't answer right away.
“Evidence?”
“None.”
“Then don't treat it as the answer yet.”
Cai Mingzhe froze for a moment.
I said:
“The biggest problem over the last seventeen years is that everyone was too eager to treat suspicions as answers.”
“Let's wait until it's decrypted.”
He looked at me for several seconds.
Then he nodded.
“You really aren't like you used to be.”
I smiled faintly.
“Maybe because the old me scared himself straight.”
The police car drove away.
12:40 a.m.
I arrived at the hospital.
It had been almost five hours since Transparency Day ended.
There were still reporters outside the hospital.
But the police kept them back.
For the first time, I didn't have to cover my face.
I didn't have to worry about anyone pointing a camera at me.
Because now, if someone crossed the line, I could tell them to stop.
Instead of being shut down by the words “It's legal today.”
Ruoqing was outside the room.
When she saw me, she stood up.
I asked first:
“Is Yuzhen asleep?”
“Not yet.”
“Are the police done questioning her?”
“First round.”
“What about a lawyer?”
“I found one.”
I nodded.
Then I looked at Ruoqing.
She looked back at me.
There was a strange distance between us.
We'd been dating for four years, yet it felt like we were meeting for the first time today.
She spoke first.
“Do you want to see her first, or ask me first?”
I thought about it.
“See her first.”
“Okay.”
Ruoqing didn't look disappointed.
She didn't look relieved either.
She just led me inside.
Yuzhen lay in the hospital bed.
Her right leg was bandaged.
Her face was pale.
But she still smiled when she saw me.
“You really came.”
“Of course I did.”
“There was one time you didn't come.”
I pulled up a chair and sat down.
“When?”
“2021.”
“Why?”
“You were really angry.”
“Because you found out I worked for the website?”
“Yeah.”
I nodded.
“I had every right to be angry then.”
She smiled.
“Are you still angry now?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to yell at me?”
“Not tonight.”
She was quiet for a few seconds.
“The police asked about 4189.”
“I know.”
“I told them everything.”
“Okay.”
“Are you not going to ask if I'm going to prison?”
I looked at her.
“That's not my decision.”
Her gaze paused.
Then she slowly nodded.
“You really have changed.”
That was the second person to say that today.
I asked:
“For better or worse?”
“I don't know.”
“Then don't rate me yet.”
She smiled a little.
After a while, she suddenly asked:
“Big brother.”
“Yeah?”
“Did the system really shut down?”
“The ordinary-person observation section did.”
“The criminal evidence was sealed.”
“The administrator list is being decrypted.”
She closed her eyes, as if finally letting go of something.
“Good.”
I looked at her.
“Do you regret 4189?”
This time, she didn't answer for a long while.
“Yes.”
“Because you're going to be arrested?”
“No.”
She opened her eyes.
“Because even now, I know that if I went back to that day, I'd probably still want to stop him.”
She paused.
“But I regret thinking I was the only one who could decide how to stop him.”
I could accept that answer.
It didn't erase everything with a simple “I was wrong.”
But she also wasn't stubbornly insisting that she'd been completely right.
I asked:
“If there had been a legal way to restrict him and investigate him first, would you have chosen that?”
“Yes.”
“So the problem isn't whether we should prevent things.”
“It's who gets to decide.”
She nodded.
“Yeah.”
For the first time, we'd reached an answer without yelling at each other.
Maybe that was what Transparency Day truly needed to discuss in the end.
Not whether privacy or safety had to be chosen.
But the fact that any surveillance power needed boundaries, procedures, and oversight.
You couldn't take someone else's life into your hands just because you thought you'd seen the future.
I sat with her for almost half an hour.
When I left the room, Ruoqing was still outside.
I closed the door.
She stood up.
“My turn?”
“Yeah.”
The hospital hallway was quiet.
I didn't want to fight with her here.
So I asked only one question.
“When did you find out my memory loss wasn't caused by the car accident?”
She looked at me.
“Three months after you were discharged, two years ago.”
Earlier than I'd thought.
“Who told you?”
“Zhou Jingchuan.”
“And then you agreed to help him?”
“Not help him.”
She paused.
Then immediately corrected herself.
“Okay. I know you don't want to hear it put that way.”
I looked at her.
She took a deep breath.
“I agreed to follow the instructions you'd left before the accident and not proactively remind you about 3741.”
“What happened after that?”
“You were genuinely doing well.”
“So you kept hiding it from me?”
“Yes.”
“When did Zhou Jingchuan start coming into our home?”
“Last year.”
“To do what?”
“Check the surveillance system you'd installed yourself.”
“And?”
“Watch for signs that your memories were returning.”
“How?”
“Whether you'd react to old photos, specific places, or Yuzhen's name.”
I stared at her.
“So I've actually been tested this entire year?”
Her eyes reddened.
But she didn't cry.
“Yes.”
I was silent for a long time.
“What about what you said this morning? ‘Then let him forget one more time.’”
“If I really remembered, would you have agreed?”
She didn't run from the question.
“Before this morning.”
“Yes.”
My chest felt heavy.
“What about now?”
“No.”
“Why?”
She looked at me.
“Because today was the first time I realized that what I thought was protecting you wasn't fundamentally all that different from what those people were doing.”
“I know you didn't know.”
“But I still made the decision for you.”
She lowered her head.
“Even if the old you agreed to it.”
“The you standing here now didn't.”
That kept me from getting angry right away.
Because she'd finally understood the real problem.
The me from two years ago could make decisions for the me from two years ago.
But he couldn't keep renewing that agreement forever on behalf of my future self.
I asked:
“Did you participate in secretly filming me?”
“No.”
“Did you see footage from our home?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Since last year.”
“Including when I was doing private things?”
Her face immediately turned awful.
“No.”
“You're sure?”
“I told Zhou Jingchuan to disable everything in the bedroom and bathroom.”
I thought of the bedroom footage I'd seen today.
“But there was still a camera in the bedroom.”
“That one wasn't ours.”
“What about the other one?”
She stopped.
“The original one only turned on when you weren't in bed.”
I didn't press for more details.
The police would investigate.
And now I didn't want to rely only on what she said anymore.
I said:
“Let's not live together for now.”
Her eyes instantly reddened.
But she nodded.
“Okay.”
“I'm not saying we're breaking up.”
“I know.”
“I just can't pretend that our life before today is still the same.”
“Yeah.”
She didn't grab me.
She didn't beg me to forgive her.
That actually made it easier to breathe.
2:13 a.m.
My phone received a message from Detective Wu.
It contained only one sentence:
“Administrator list decrypted to 52 percent. We have a lead on C-01's real identity. We need you to come back tomorrow morning.”
I stared at the message.
I didn't ask who it was.
Because if they only had a lead, it wasn't an answer yet.
I put my phone away.
Then I walked outside the hospital.
From eight that morning until now, this was the first time I'd truly stood outside alone.
No Ruoqing.
No Cai Mingzhe.
No Zhou Jingchuan.
No Yuzhen.
And no cameras following me.
I stood on the sidewalk for a long time.
My reflection stared back at me from the convenience store window across the street.
Thirty-one years old.
Chen Zian.
Not 3741.
At least, I hoped that from now on I could slowly become myself again.
But I also knew the list in the basement had only been decrypted halfway.
There were still many people hiding behind the cameras, untouched by the light.
And this time—
we didn't need Transparency Day.
The police would find them.