What Went Missing Was a Ledger

Bi Shunli's call came after noon. When that last sentence landed, he'd just reached the street corner; the wind was coming from down the alley, carrying dust, pushing him half a step back.

His shop had been forced open. Money and goods untouched — what was lost wasn't those.

He stood for two seconds. Hands into his pockets, the one-thread bead still there, cool, against his thigh. So he turned back.

The way back was shorter than the way there. The street light was white and parched, curling the wall's plaster. He walked fast, soles knocking the flagstones, one beat after another, no other sound. These two days he'd always been standing at other people's doors; his own he'd visited less. The ledger his father left lay in a wooden case under the counter. The shop under the sealed notice sank deeper daily, yet that ledger had never sunk. Yesterday at the pawnshop he'd set his name on an appraisal sheet, and from then every word of that strand pressed on him. Today's call dragged his name back behind this door. He suddenly felt a little afraid to push it open, and didn't know what he was afraid of.

The door stood open. The sealed notice still clung beside the frame, untouched. It was the other lock that had been forced; its core lay on the floor, brass-colored, dusted. Inside stood a man in uniform, and a younger one with a camera, photographing the marks on the floor. The wooden case under the counter was open-mouthed; the ledger lay on the table, a section missing from its middle, as if someone had pulled pages from a book.

"From the Liu family shop?" The man in uniform looked up. "Good you're here — we'll take a statement."

He answered, his eyes going first to the counter.

The money hadn't moved. That old tin box was still in the drawer, lid ajar, the bit of loose change in it a sum he knew, its stacking order unchanged. The goods hadn't moved. The beads, the raw stock, the paper packets on the shelf — none missing, even the bag of loose beads he'd taken in the day before yesterday still in place. But his own shelf-compartment was empty. The ledger his father left had lain at the very bottom of the wooden case; now the ledger was still there, but the loose pages from its middle were gone. And a small jar that had stood by the ledger was gone too — his own blended incense powder, kept usually beside the account book, its mouth tied with an old cloth.

"That's all?" The young officer closed his camera. "Door forced, someone came in and turned things over — you tally up the loss."

"Not much lost," he said.

The man in uniform jotted two lines in his book. "On first look it's a common burglary. Door forced, came in, took a little, not much. This stretch of yours hasn't been peaceful lately."

"Normally, who gets into this shop?" the man in uniform asked.

"No stranger gets in," he said.

He didn't believe the words himself. Whoever came had gotten in — and gotten in more familiarly than a regular.

He didn't take it up. He squatted to study the single scratch on the floor from the door to the counter — one line, straight, shallow, its edge carrying fine grit. Whoever came hadn't ransacked the room, hadn't forced other drawers, hadn't touched the goods on the shelf. The money box just lay open, untouched. Whoever came had known what he wanted, taken it, and left — not one extra step. He hadn't even touched the signboard on the wall. That signboard still hung well, its paint old, facing inward.

He squatted by the wooden case. The little catch on its side wasn't broken; it had been opened the proper way, exactly as he always opened it. A real thief wouldn't know his way so well. Whoever came wasn't learning for the first time what this case held.

The room was too tidy. A real thief wouldn't leave every drawer exactly as he found it.

This wasn't theft. It was a taking.

He opened the ledger to where the loose pages broke off. The missing pages were the section his father had written by hand. In the lower right corner of each page a number was written — a number whose meaning he'd never read, only remembering that with every page turned, it ran a little smaller than the last. He reached out and felt each remaining page corner in turn; the numbers were still there, only cut off midway, like the most vital few sheets pulled from a ledger's middle. And what had been pulled was precisely the last pages, with the smallest numbers. He turned to the last page still left; the number in its corner was one notch smaller than the page before. Beyond it, there should have been more pages yet, with still smaller numbers — now empty.

He thought of that half-line he'd read in Chapter Three. "The five scents must not be gathered together." Six characters, written on the ledger's final half-page. That half-page was among these pages too.

His hand stopped at the paper's edge.

When the other side came in, he'd disturbed no one. No money taken, no goods — only those pages carried off. Whoever came knew something was written on them, and knew whether he'd read them. He had. That half-line was no longer in his hands alone; the one who took it hadn't acted from curiosity, but from fear the pages would reach more eyes.

Keeping it secret had once been his alone. No longer. He wasn't the only one holding that half-line, and the other side was no longer the one who "didn't know he knew." Both sides' restraint was gone at once. Before, he'd kept it for himself; now he couldn't keep it — those pages were already in other hands.

The young officer called him to the door to sign. He went over; as the nib went down, he thought of yesterday's appraisal sheet at the pawnshop, where his name had gone down the same way. That time, he'd taken joint liability for a bead strand. This time, he took responsibility for a room that had been turned over. Both times, the nib pointed toward himself.

He finished, and passed the pen back.

"In this room of yours," he suddenly said, "there's a salty smell."

The man in uniform glanced at him. "What?"

"Hard to name," he said. "Very faint — like the salt left in rock crevices after the tide goes out."

He squatted back at the empty space the wooden case left. Beneath the dust, a thread of the faintest salt — not seawater itself, but that kind left in rock crevices after the tide, lingering at the nostrils for a moment, gone on the next breath. It was strongest along the case's edge, as if someone's finger had brushed that rim when lifting the jar. He'd smelled this scent in Chapter One. The paper packet the old woman left — through the kraft paper, it was exactly this thread of salt.

Back then he hadn't known whose paper packet it was, nor where that thread of salt came from. That time, blocked at his door in the livestream, the old woman left a packet on her way out and, through the paper, asked him — what year was this taken from the water? What he'd smelled was exactly this thread of salt. Now this thread of salt had landed in his own room, as if someone had asked him that question again for him. It appeared at the edge of the turned-over case, close to the missing incense-powder jar. That jar held powder he'd blended grain by grain from the family formula — others couldn't read its craft, but he knew it himself. This jar of powder was the only thing he'd saved up on his own in half a year. The shop sank daily into its sealed notice, yet this jar of powder was the formula he'd tested out bead by bead, not yet put to use. Whoever took it took not a jar of powder, but the technique he'd written into the incense.

The same smell, now the second time in his life.

He closed his eyes a moment. The first time, someone had placed something into his hands. The second time, someone had taken something from his hands. Between the two, the other side had always been near — and had entered two doors before him. The first was the household that delivered the paper packet, who laid a riddle before him. The second was the Bi house, who placed a strand worn fifty-eight years into his hands. The third was his own shop. The thread he'd been chasing these days, the other side had long since followed it — walked ahead of him. That household's packet had asked the first question for the other side. The Bi family's beads had identified that strand's origin for the other side. Once those two doors were walked, the opponent held a more complete puzzle than he did. While he was still reading beads in the eastern quarter, the other side had already taken those pages from his cabinet.

The man in uniform handed him the statement to read. "Sure you lost nothing else? Money and goods are all here; we'll file this as theft."

"File it as theft," he said.

He didn't say it was a taking, not a stealing. He couldn't explain it, and mustn't. Say it out, and he'd hand over the very premise of that half-line — and tell the other side he'd seen through it.

He stood. The scratch on the floor was still there, one line, straight, from door to counter, like a streak of grit the visitor's sole had brought in at the door.

Before, he'd always waited. Waited for the clue to his father's disappearance to surface on its own, waited for that half-line to explain itself, waited for the opponent to move first. He'd waited long — until the shop was sealed, until someone took those pages from his cabinet — and only then learned the other side had been waiting for him to move first, to lay open what little he held, then take it back piece by piece.

He reached out, closed the ledger, and returned it to the wooden case. The case had a gap where something had been, and the incense-powder jar's spot was empty too. He pushed the case back under the counter and brushed the dust from his hands.

His shop he'd kept all these days — kept the door, kept the signboard, kept the few figures in the accounts. Yet the truly vital pages had been taken from right under his eyes. He kept the door; the opponent took the ledger. He kept the signboard; the opponent took the technique. He stood still keeping, and the opponent gathered the puzzle piece by piece. Keeping was useless.

He thought of the household that delivered the packet, thought of the medicine smell in the Bi courtyard. Those two doors he had entered, and the other side had entered too — and earlier. The next door, he would step through first.

This time, he didn't want to wait.

He resolved: no more keeping. He would go and seek.