In the first frame, the passenger looked like Yansheng.
In the second, when Yanchuan enlarged it, the face became six pale blocks beneath a roof reflection. He returned to the first. The resemblance came back.
The investigator had shown him a short extract with permission to discuss what he recognized. A roadside camera recorded a vehicle matching the booked van on the airport route. The plate was clearer than anything behind the windscreen. The driver occupied one side; on the other was a dark shape that could have been a person in a light shirt.
“That is the shirt from the equipment photograph,” Yanchuan said.
“It may be,” the investigator replied. “Do you recognize a feature of his face?”
Yanchuan looked again. His own breathing was loud in the small office.
“No.”
The answer cost him more than he expected. He felt as if he had failed to identify his brother deliberately.
They recorded his response. The van had been on that road at the indicated time, subject to the camera clock being checked. That was useful even without an identification. The driver would be asked about the route. Yanchuan was not allowed to take a copy of the full recording, which also showed other travellers.
Outside, he called Mei and described the frames. She was eating something crunchy, then stopped when he asked whether an enhancement model could settle it.
“Settle what?”
“Bring back his face.”
“Do you think the camera measured enough of it?”
He heard an edge in her voice and answered too sharply. “That’s what I’m asking you.”
She apologized for the tone. Then she described the fault-image project on which they had met. A tool could produce a sharp-looking crack from a blurred dark line. Sometimes there had been a crack. Sometimes there had been a shadow. The sharpness belonged to the output, whichever reality had gone in.
“There are ways to improve a picture using information across frames,” she said. “Someone qualified should examine the original. A convincing new portrait isn’t the same job.”
He walked until he found a strip of shade beside a closed shop. He wanted her to be wrong in a way he could repair by paying for a better tool.
That night An asked him to tell her what he had actually seen. He began with the vehicle, the time, the possible passenger. When he described the light shirt, she went to her wardrobe and took out two shirts Yansheng had left at home.
“These are light too.”
“I know.”
“I’m reminding myself.”
Her son appeared at the edge of the screen and asked whether they had found a photograph of Baba. An asked him to get his reading book. He stayed where he was.
“A picture of a car,” she said. “We don’t know who is inside.”
“Then why are you looking at it?”
She took a moment. “Because knowing where the car went might help us ask someone who does know.”
The boy accepted that more readily than Yanchuan had.
The driver gave his account the following afternoon. Yanchuan learned only the portion relevant to the family: the airport booking had been changed by a dispatcher before pickup was completed. The vehicle had then carried another passenger on a separate job. The driver’s memory of the change needed to be compared with the booking records.
There was no confirmed airport departure for Yansheng. There was also no confirmed sighting of him in that van.
Yanchuan read the summary twice, then sent An a message saying he had mistaken a vehicle lead for a passenger lead. She called him almost immediately.
“You said you couldn’t recognize him.”
“I wanted to.”
“So did I.”
They left the two things side by side for a while.
When the call ended, he opened his brother’s equipment photograph. It was sharp enough to show a small shaving cut beneath the chin. He had stared at that face so often that he could summon it from a smear of light on glass. That was something his memory could do. It was not something the camera had witnessed.
He added the changed booking to the questions for the contractor. Then he shut the photograph and set an alarm for his meeting with Amina. They had another family to visit, if that family still wished to see him.