Chapter Three: 2009 to the Present
I stared at the camera on the fourth floor.
It was too far away. I couldn't make out the model, and I couldn't see the man's face.
But I could read the label perfectly.
“Chen Zian, 2009 to the present.”
Seven words.
As if someone had compressed my entire life into a file name.
I'm thirty-one this year.
In 2009, I was fourteen.
In other words, if that label was real, these people had been filming me since I was in middle school.
Ruoqing was still calling my name on the phone.
“Zian, don't come up yet.”
I didn't answer her.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and hung up.
Ruoqing, standing by the fourth-floor window, visibly froze.
Then she immediately looked down at her phone.
A few seconds later, my screen lit up again.
She was calling.
I declined it.
She called again.
I declined it again.
The third time, she sent me a message.
“You saw that label, didn't you?”
I looked up at her.
She was still standing by the window.
I replied.
“Four-One?”
She read it almost immediately.
“Don't come up.”
I stuffed the paper from two years ago into my pocket.
I put away the memory card too.
Then I headed toward the apartment building's front entrance.
I didn't know whether I was more angry or more afraid.
Maybe both.
A moment ago, I thought I was just uncovering my girlfriend's secret.
Now this had gone in a completely different direction.
If Ruoqing really had known for years that someone had been secretly filming me for over a decade, why had she never told me?
If I had really come to this building two years ago, why didn't I remember any of it?
And that piece of paper.
Don't trust her.
It was written in my own handwriting.
There was no way I could mistake my own handwriting.
The metal security gate had been closed again.
I stood at the entrance and pressed the buzzer for Four-One.
There was no response.
I pressed it again.
Still nothing.
“Open the door.”
I spoke into the intercom.
A few seconds later, static came from inside.
Then Ruoqing's voice.
“Go home.”
“Open the door.”
“I'll tell you at home.”
“Tell me now.”
She didn't answer.
I held down the buzzer without letting go.
Its shrill ringing continued.
Someone passing by turned to look at me.
It was Transparency Day. Everyone on the street holding a phone looked like they might be filming me.
I suddenly started to hate every camera in the world.
“Lin Ruoqing.”
I spoke into the intercom.
“If you don't open up, I'll wait here until eight tonight.”
A few seconds passed.
Click.
The metal gate unlocked.
I pushed it open and went inside.
The stairwell looked even older than it had from outside.
The tiled walls had yellowed, and a notice prohibiting the storage of miscellaneous items was pasted in the corner.
There were two units on the first floor.
Both doors were closed.
There was no elevator.
I went upstairs.
Second floor.
Third floor.
On every floor, I saw another camera.
Not a security camera.
Home cameras.
Some were set directly on shoe cabinets outside the doors.
Some sat on windowsills.
There was even an old-fashioned camcorder mounted at the third-floor landing, its lens pointed at the stairs.
I stopped to look at it.
Its red recording light was on.
It was filming.
I reached out to turn it away.
Someone immediately spoke from upstairs.
“Don't touch it.”
I looked up.
Ruoqing stood on the fourth floor.
Her face looked awful.
“That isn't mine.”
“Then whose is it?”
“Come up.”
I reached the fourth floor.
The door to Four-One was open.
There were no shoes by the entrance.
Ruoqing went in first.
I followed her inside.
My first impression was the cold.
The air-conditioning was blasting.
My second impression was that this place didn't look like somewhere people lived at all.
There was no sofa in the living room.
No television.
One entire wall was lined with metal shelving.
The shelves were packed with hard drives, memory cards, videotapes, and disc cases.
Six monitors stood on the other side of the room.
Each one was split into several feeds.
The moment I saw one of them, I stopped.
It was my home.
The apartment Ruoqing and I currently lived in.
The image was shot from above the living room, looking down.
The sofa.
The coffee table.
The dining table.
I could see everything.
It felt as if someone had slammed a hammer into my head.
“What is this?”
Ruoqing said nothing.
I stepped forward.
The second feed showed our kitchen.
The third showed the building's underground parking garage.
The fourth showed the street below my office.
The fifth showed the convenience store I often visited.
Another feed showed the room I was standing in now.
It was filmed from the corner of the ceiling, looking down.
I looked up.
Sure enough, there was a tiny camera.
“What the hell is this?”
I turned to Ruoqing.
“You knew about this already?”
She looked at me.
“I only found out last year that the place you're living in now had cameras too.”
“Last year?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why didn't you tell me?”
Her lips moved slightly.
“Because you told me not to.”
That line again.
“I did?”
“You did two years ago.”
The man in the room came out.
He was the same man who had been standing by the window.
He was in his forties, with some gray in his hair, and wore a dark blue shirt.
He was still holding the camera with my name on it.
“You saw the label?” he asked.
I didn't answer.
“Who are you?”
“Cai Mingzhe.”
“Do I know you?”
“We knew each other before.”
“Two years ago too?”
“Earlier.”
I stared at him.
“How long ago?”
“You saw me once when you were nineteen.”
“I don't remember.”
“That's normal.”
He set the camera on the table.
“You don't remember a lot of things.”
I walked straight up to him.
“What the hell did you do to me?”
Cai Mingzhe didn't back away.
“We didn't do anything to you.”
“Then where did all these videos come from?”
“They were filmed by different people.”
“Who?”
“A lot of people.”
“Why film me?”
He glanced at Ruoqing.
She clearly didn't want him to continue.
“Brother Cai.”
“He's already here.”
Cai Mingzhe pulled out a chair.
“Sit.”
“No.”
“Then stand and listen.”
I didn't move.
Cai Mingzhe picked up a remote from the table and pressed a button.
One of the monitors switched feeds.
A list of folders appeared.
2009.
2010.
2011.
All the way to 2026.
Each year contained a huge number of files.
The file names weren't just dates.
“After school.”
“Cram school.”
“First part-time job.”
“Girlfriend A.”
“Moving.”
“Discharged from the military.”
“Car accident.”
“Ruoqing.”
When I saw that last name, I immediately turned around.
“You filmed her too?”
Cai Mingzhe nodded.
“Everyone connected to you gets recorded.”
“Who made that rule?”
“No one.”
“Then are you people sick?”
I pointed at the monitor.
“This is a crime.”
Cai Mingzhe's expression didn't change.
“Most of it is.”
“Then I'm calling the police.”
“Go ahead.”
I pulled out my phone.
He didn't even try to stop me.
“Before you call the police, let me remind you of one thing.”
“What?”
“Not all of this footage was filmed by us.”
“That doesn't matter.”
“It matters a lot.”
He looked at me.
“Because you were one of the people filming too.”
I froze.
“What?”
Cai Mingzhe switched to another folder.
A video appeared on the screen.
The date was 2015.
A man in his early twenties appeared in the footage.
It was me.
I was holding a camera across from a building.
The lens kept zooming in on one of the windows.
The video wasn't filmed by me.
It was filming me.
Then it cut to another clip.
I was sitting in a café, handing a memory card to a strange man.
Third clip.
I was organizing videos in front of a computer.
Fourth clip.
I was installing a small camera in the back of a car.
I stared at the screen.
I didn't remember any of it.
“Fake,” I said.
Cai Mingzhe asked, “What part is fake?”
“I never did any of that.”
“You did.”
“This could have been edited.”
“It could have.”
He nodded.
“That’s why you told us to preserve the original files.”
I turned to Ruoqing.
“You saw these too?”
She lowered her head.
“Some of them.”
“And you believed them?”
“I didn't at first either.”
“What about now?”
She didn't answer right away.
That pause was answer enough.
I let out a laugh.
Not because anything was funny.
Because it was absurd.
“So now you two are telling me that I used to be obsessed with secretly filming people, and then somehow lost my memory?”
Cai Mingzhe said, “You weren't obsessed with secretly filming people.”
“How is that different?”
“You had a purpose.”
“What purpose?”
“To find someone.”
I frowned.
“Who?”
Cai Mingzhe walked over to the metal shelving and took down a clear case.
A year was written on it.
2009.
He opened it.
Inside was an SD card.
“When you were fourteen, someone filmed you for the first time.”
“Who?”
“We don't know.”
“You don't know, but you kept filming me for seventeen years?”
“The first video didn't begin with us.”
“Then where did it begin?”
“On a website.”
He inserted the memory card into a card reader.
The screen went black for a moment.
Then an extremely old web page appeared.
Black background.
No logo.
There were only video thumbnails and numbers in the center.
“This was an underground website from years ago,” Cai Mingzhe said.
“It specialized in exchanging strangers' daily lives.”
“What does that mean?”
“Someone randomly picked a person and followed them with a camera for a day.”
“And then?”
“Uploaded it.”
“That's sick.”
“Yeah.”
He answered without hesitation.
“At first, it was that simple.”
He scrolled down.
Rows and rows of videos.
Students.
Office workers.
The elderly.
Couples.
Convenience store clerks.
Each video had only a number, no name.
Cai Mingzhe clicked on one.
A boy in a middle-school uniform appeared on the screen.
Me.
Me at fourteen.
I was talking to a classmate outside the school gate.
The next scene was a bus stop.
The one after that was a convenience store.
It was the same photo the stranger's account had sent me earlier.
“This video was uploaded in 2009,” Cai Mingzhe said.
“Number 3741.”
“Why me?”
“We don't know.”
“What about the person who filmed me?”
“We don't know.”
“Then what do you know?”
“We know it was only supposed to last one day.”
He paused.
“But the next day, someone uploaded another video of you.”
The video switched.
The date was one day later.
Still me.
This time, I was outside cram school.
The third day.
The fourth day.
The fifth day.
Seven days in a row.
Then it stopped.
Another one appeared a month later.
“Did the website have rules back then?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“You couldn't upload the same person more than once.”
I looked at him.
“Then why—”
“That’s why your videos were strange,” Cai Mingzhe said.
“Someone kept violating the rules and uploading you, but the administrator never deleted them.”
He scrolled down.
Comments had begun appearing beneath the videos.
One account wrote:
“Keep this one.”
Another asked:
“Why?”
The first account replied:
“He'll come looking for himself.”
The back of my neck began to prickle.
“What does that mean?”
“No one knows.”
“Who was the account?”
“Couldn't be traced.”
“What happened next?”
Cai Mingzhe switched years.
2013.
“When you were eighteen, you discovered these videos for the first time.”
I stared at the screen.
“How did I find them?”
“Someone sent them to you.”
“Who?”
“We don't know.”
I couldn't help swearing.
“How can you not know anything?”
He didn't get angry.
“Because even after more than a decade, you never found that person.”
“You said I met you when I was nineteen.”
“Yes.”
“So why was I looking for you?”
“That was when you started investigating the people on the website.”
Cai Mingzhe brought up another image.
It was a group photo.
Six people sat in a small room.
One of them was Cai Mingzhe, much younger.
And on the far right was me.
I was looking at the camera without smiling.
“That’s when we met.”
“You were part of that website too?”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
“You filmed people?”
“I did.”
“You filmed me too?”
“No.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You don't have to.”
He pointed at the photo.
“You didn't believe me back then either.”
The room suddenly fell silent.
Ruoqing had barely spoken since we came in.
I looked at her.
“When did you get involved?”
She raised her head.
“Four years ago.”
“We had just started dating?”
“Earlier than that.”
I froze.
“What does that mean?”
She looked at me, her expression complicated.
“The first time we met wasn't at a friend's party.”
A restaurant from four years ago surfaced in my mind.
A friend's birthday.
Someone introduced us.
I had always believed that was the first time.
“Then where was it?”
Ruoqing didn't answer.
Cai Mingzhe answered for her.
“Here.”
I turned to him.
“She came to Four-One four years ago,” Cai Mingzhe said.
“And you were the one who asked her to come.”
I looked at Ruoqing.
“You knew me before?”
She nodded softly.
“Yes.”
“Then why pretend you didn't?”
“Because you asked me to.”
Again, it was something I had asked for.
I was beginning to hate those four words.
“I asked you to get to know me all over again?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Her eyes were a little red, but she wasn't crying.
“Because you said back then that if you remembered those things, you could never live a normal life.”
I was silent for several seconds.
“So I lost my memory on purpose?”
Cai Mingzhe shook his head.
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“We don't know that part either.”
“Again with the ‘we don't know’?”
“After Transparency Day ended two years ago, you left this place.”
He pointed at the door.
“The next day, when Ruoqing found you, you no longer remembered this apartment building or me.”
“Where did she find me?”
“At the hospital,” Ruoqing answered.
I turned to her.
“Which hospital?”
She told me the name.
I knew that hospital.
And I really had been hospitalized two years ago.
I had always remembered the reason: a traffic accident.
I had wiped out on my scooter.
A mild concussion.
Two days in the hospital.
“It wasn't a traffic accident?” I asked.
Ruoqing didn't answer right away.
“You were in a traffic accident.”
“Then what else?”
“Someone hit you.”
“Who?”
“We couldn't find them.”
A scene suddenly flashed through my mind.
Rain.
Headlights.
Someone standing by the side of the road.
Only for an instant.
My head began to ache.
I closed my eyes briefly.
“Why did I come here two years ago?”
Cai Mingzhe looked at me.
“Because you found the person who filmed you first.”
I opened my eyes.
“Who?”
“We don't know their name.”
“Have you met them?”
“No.”
“Then how did I find them?”
“You received an address.”
He went to the table and took a photocopied sheet of paper from a drawer.
A string of numbers was written on it.
I glanced at it.
It was the address of this apartment building.
Four-One.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“So the person who filmed me first lived here?”
“That’s what you believed at the time.”
“And?”
Cai Mingzhe didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he looked at the clock on the wall.
10:38.
“Zian.”
It was the first time he had called me by name.
“After you came in two years ago, you stayed here for nine hours.”
“Nine hours?”
“From nine in the morning until a little after six in the evening.”
“What did I do?”
“Watched videos.”
“Which ones?”
“Your life.”
I looked at the hard drives.
“All of it?”
“Everything we could access.”
“And then?”
“You said you knew who the person filming you was.”
My breathing hitched.
“I said who?”
Cai Mingzhe shook his head.
“You didn't tell us.”
“Why not?”
“Because you wanted to confirm it yourself.”
“Where?”
He pointed at the monitor.
A surveillance video began to play.
The date was Transparency Day two years ago.
6:17 p.m.
In the footage, I walked out of Four-One.
I was holding a white envelope.
It was the same scene from the photo earlier.
At 6:21, I left the apartment building.
At 6:23, I walked into a side alley.
At 6:25, I suddenly stopped.
The me in the video looked at the camera.
Then I did something strange.
I walked right up to the camera.
My face was practically pressed against the lens.
Then I said something.
The surveillance footage had no audio.
Cai Mingzhe paused the video.
“Do you know what you said?”
I shook my head.
“Later, we had someone read your lips.”
He pressed a button.
Subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Only eight words.
“So it was me all along.”
I stared at the monitor.
No one in the room spoke.
I watched for a long time.
“What does that mean?”
Cai Mingzhe said, “We want to know too.”
I turned back to the files labeled with years.
From fourteen.
To now.
Seventeen years.
A completely unfamiliar life, yet every bit of it belonged to me.
At that moment, the phone in my pocket vibrated.
The stranger's account.
The third one.
The message contained only a photo.
The timestamp showed “now.”
The photo showed the living room of Four-One.
Ruoqing, Cai Mingzhe, and I were all in the frame.
The photo had been taken from directly behind us.
I spun around.
No one.
The next message appeared immediately.
“Stop listening to them talk about the past.”
Then a third message.
“What you really need to see is today.”
Finally, there was a video.
The date on its thumbnail wasn't 2009.
It wasn't two years ago either.
It was 7:12 that morning.
Location—
My bedroom.
In the footage, I was still lying in bed asleep.
Lin Ruoqing was standing beside the bed.
She wasn't dressed to go out.
In her hand was a phone I'd never seen before.
She leaned toward the camera and whispered:
“He should remember today.”
Then another man's voice came from outside the room.
“What if he remembers?”
Ruoqing was silent for two seconds.
Then she answered.
“Then we'll make him forget again.”