For the rest of the night, Ye Xuan tried to prove that the name on the directory meant nothing.
It should have been easy.
Ye was a common surname. Ming was a common given name. A university in New York could have enrolled dozens of Chinese students with names that sounded familiar to someone from Hangzhou.
He knew the argument was sound. Understanding it did not make him stop staring at the screen.
Wei had sent the archive page with its web address and date. The entry was part of a public list of students who had assisted municipal engineering projects in the previous academic year. It contained an enrollment code, a project category and a brief status note.
YE MING — withdrawn before completion.
No birthplace. No photograph. No family information.
The absence of details should have settled the matter for the moment. Instead it made Ye Xuan imagine the missing ones.
He set the phone down beside the fluid mechanics book. Another thought came, colder than hope: even if this were his brother, why would a man who disappeared three years ago have appeared here last year? And why would he have left another project unfinished?
A name was not proof of a person. A name was only a place to begin asking questions.
He wrote that down.
In the morning, Mrs. Tang made him sit while she examined the rent notice.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes.”
“Something besides my bread?”
He hesitated.
“Then no.” She folded the notice and tucked it beneath the sugar jar. “You owe me the money. That’s not going away. But I’m not turning you into the street before the end of the week.”
Ye Xuan thanked her, embarrassed by how much relief a few days could bring.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “Find work.”
At the institute, Wei was waiting outside the library with two coffees and a stack of printed pages. He looked as if he had slept even less than Ye Xuan.
“I checked the directory’s publication history,” he said. “The name wasn’t added yesterday. The archived page goes back to the spring.”
“Are you sure the archive is genuine?”
“I can show you the campus catalogue entry. It has its own accession date. Beyond that, we’d need the records office.”
Ye Xuan accepted the printout. There was a difference between a document that had existed for months and a document that told the truth. Still, the first was worth establishing.
They went to the student records counter.
The clerk listened and shook her head before they finished.
“We can’t give you another student’s personal file.”
“We’re not asking for that,” Ye Xuan said. “Is there a way to verify that a public project listing was issued by the institute?”
She considered the question, then checked an internal catalogue.
“Yes. This list was published by the engineering outreach office. I can confirm the document number and publication date. I can’t confirm anything private about individual students.”
“That’s enough,” Ye Xuan said.
Outside, Wei studied him.
“You thought that was your brother.”
“He has the same name.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Ye Xuan watched students pass through the revolving doors. They were discussing examinations, weekend shifts and the price of lunches. An ordinary university on an ordinary morning, except that one student could suddenly understand any book he finished, and another seemed to be carrying the shadow of a missing stranger.
“My brother disappeared,” he said. “In the place I came from.”
Wei did not speak.
“I’m not ready to explain that sentence,” Ye Xuan added.
“You think I haven’t noticed things are wrong?”
“I know you have.”
Wei looked down at his coffee. “I don’t need an explanation today. But don’t use me to chase a ghost without telling me what you’re asking me to do.”
It was a fair request.
“I won’t,” Ye Xuan said.
Dr. Price was in the laboratory examining a pressure sensor whose cable had been wrapped so tightly around its housing that the insulation had split.
“People are very inventive when they don’t have to maintain the result,” she said, setting it down.
Ye Xuan showed her the public listing.
“Did you know this student?”
She read the entry. Her face changed a little, but not enough for him to know why.
“I wasn’t supervising that project. The outreach office managed the placements.”
“Can you tell me whether the project existed?”
“Yes. It was an inspection survey of municipal structures, not the Pier Seventeen assignment. I remember reviewing the final summary for a separate class.”
“Was the work finished?”
“The project was. The listed student’s participation may not have been.”
That distinction gave him a way to ask the next question without making it an accusation.
“Could I read the public summary?”
“Of course.”
Price led them to a university workstation and brought up the institute’s repository. The report described the condition of several older service tunnels. It included measurements, maintenance recommendations and a section on the limits of remote inspection.
Ye Xuan read it from the opening page to the last appendix while Wei waited beside him. The report was shorter than the textbooks he had finished, but more uneven: some measurements were carefully documented; others had been inferred from records that no longer existed.
When he reached the end, the structure of the work became clear at once.
There was nothing miraculous in its conclusions. What interested him was the final page, where the report acknowledged that a section of service infrastructure had not been directly inspected because access was controlled by a separate contractor.
A familiar phrase.
ACCESS BY SEPARATE PERMIT.
He found the wording in his notes from the waterfront plan. The same phrase did not prove the sites were connected. It might be ordinary contractual language used throughout the city.
“Who approves those permits?” he asked.
Price frowned. “It depends on who operates the structure. You’re looking at two different projects.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t join them just because the words match.”
Ye Xuan took his notebook out.
“Could we find the governing procedure? The one that defines when a separate access permit is required?”
Price nodded. “That’s public information. It will tell you what the phrase means, not who used a particular door.”
For the first time that day he felt the ground beneath his questions grow solid.
At noon, Detective Reed called.
“Your lecturer sent the inspection exception sheet through the university channel. Thank you for keeping the original in place.”
“Did you find the person who edited our copy?”
“That’s being checked. I can’t share the account investigation with you.”
“Understood.”
“I want to ask about the department code you noticed. What made you pay attention to it?”
“It was on the sheet with the unsigned closure boxes. I didn’t know what it meant.”
“Did anyone tell you?”
“No.”
There was a pause at her end, followed by the rustle of paper.
“Good. Don’t guess when someone asks what you saw.”
Ye Xuan thought she was about to end the call, then heard her draw breath.
“One more thing. Have you received any other messages from the anonymous number?”
“Only the photograph. I sent it to you.”
“If another comes, preserve it as received.”
“Detective, do you think Mara walked through that door?”
“I think a photograph shows a door open beside her,” Reed said. “I’m trying to find someone who can tell me what happened afterward.”
When the call ended, Ye Xuan stood beside the library window for a long time.
His brother’s disappearance had taught him how fiercely a family could cling to a possibility. In his old world he had been the one waiting at home. Here, somewhere in New York, another family was waiting for Mara Chen.
He would not give them a story merely because it made the waiting easier.
He returned to the workstation and opened the public access procedure. It was seventy pages of definitions, exceptions and responsibilities. He began at the first line.
Halfway through, his phone rang again.
Mrs. Tang.
“Xiao Ye, someone came to the bakery,” she said. “A man asking about your room.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“No. He said he was from the university. But he wasn’t wearing a badge, and he knew your brother’s name.”
Ye Xuan’s hand tightened around the phone.
“Which brother?”
There was a brief silence.
“He said Ye Ming.”
Ye Xuan looked at the directory printout beside him.
He had not told Mrs. Tang that name.