The crutch fell before Yanchuan reached the doorway.
He bent to pick it up, then almost knocked over the cup balanced on the arm of the chair. The man in the chair caught the cup. Amina took the crutch from Yanchuan and set it where it had been leaning.
“We should have sold tickets,” the man said.
His name was Daniel Otieno. A dressing covered part of his lower leg. He had worked on electrical maintenance at the logistics site until a handling accident on October 24. The acceptance demonstration had taken place five days later. Yanchuan repeated the dates when Daniel asked what he had been told.
“Good,” Daniel said. “I wasn’t injured in your brother’s test. People like putting everything into one incident.”
His wife, Rose, brought tea. She left the room, returned with a plastic folder, and put it beside her chair. The folder contained documents about wages, treatment, and which company Daniel had technically been working for when he was hurt.
Yanchuan had brought the two report headers. He kept them in his bag until Daniel asked to see them.
“The auxiliary circuit,” he said, pointing. “That’s what I asked about.”
Before the demonstration, a temporary arrangement had moved a cooling load between supplies. Daniel had wanted the change recorded, with a name attached to restoring it. The shift had ended without a clear answer. His concern had not been that the equipment would explode. It had been that the next crew would inherit a condition nobody remembered arranging.
“Did you speak to Yansheng?”
“On the phone. Before I was hurt. Briefly.”
“What did he say?”
Daniel lifted his hand, asking him to wait. Rose helped him reposition his leg. His face lost its humour until the movement was over.
“He asked where the record of the change was. I told him to request the maintenance ticket. He asked if I’d sign what I remembered.”
“Did you?”
“I wrote a note. It went to the supervisor.”
Yanchuan felt the old acceleration: a note, a supervisor, a document his brother might have followed. He reached for his phone.
Rose tapped the plastic folder.
“Before another note,” she said, “who will receive it?”
He stopped.
She told him a photograph of Daniel in hospital had already circulated among workers. Someone had attached an account of an electrical fire. There had been no electrical fire. A relative had called in panic. Daniel’s supervisor had demanded to know why the family was making allegations.
Yanchuan put his phone face down.
“The case investigator, if you agree. A lawyer first, if you prefer. I won’t publish your name.”
“And the company report?”
“A separate question. We should decide who needs which part.”
Daniel looked at Amina. She told him she could introduce someone to explain the options; she could not promise that speaking would leave his work unaffected. Rose asked for the introduction before they did anything else.
The conversation returned to ordinary expenses. A follow-up appointment required travel. A payment had arrived but did not match the amount Rose had been told to expect. An had offered to help read a reconciliation if the family wanted it. Yanchuan passed on the offer without asking for the folder.
At the door Daniel called him back.
“Your brother asked whether I wanted a copy of my own note.”
“Did he send one?”
“The supervisor did, after he asked. That’s why I remember him.”
It was a small act. Yanchuan could imagine Yansheng doing it while checking his watch, thinking about another meeting, never expecting it to become a story someone would tell his family.
On the bus, Amina stood to let an older passenger sit. Yanchuan held her bag while she shifted her grip on the overhead rail.
“I nearly asked Rose to forward everything,” he said.
“She noticed.”
He looked down at the bag, its frayed strap repaired with white thread.
“So did I,” Amina added. “Eventually.”
That night he told An about the note. Then, before she could ask, he told her the family’s conditions. She wrote them above the new lead. For once the last thing they discussed was somebody else’s payment, and what help they could offer without asking that family to earn it by being useful to them.