Convenience store night shift, 2:47 in the morning.
A plastic bag was forgotten at the checkout counter. Inside was a handmade rag doll with a picture of a girl sewn on the doll's face. On the back of the picture was written: Third, Three Days Later.
Chen Mo touched the doll. He saw a pair of hands sewing it, heard a man talking to an empty chair, smelled the rust, and then withdrew.
Three days later, the girl in the photo died.
An unsearchable department under the National Archives found him. In a dilapidated office building in a fourth-tier city, three people are stationed all year round: a division director who failed to quit smoking, a technician who watches anime, and a file clerk who has not spoken a few complete sentences in twenty years. They told Chen Mo: Your hands can touch the remaining memories on the items. The doll was not sewn with cloth, it was a missing person case three years ago. The owner of the hand is still alive and sewing the fourth one.
Chen Mo had no choice. He graduated with two books and submitted 137 resumes. This poor place is at least organized.
But he didn't know more than he knew.
Every piece of evidence he touched left a mark on him. He becomes a little less of himself every time he "goes in." He wrote the same sentence in his notebook every night - "I am Chen Mo" - and it took him three notebooks to confirm that he had not been completely replaced. He didn't know that there was a file called "Project 003" when he was 0 years old, and he didn't know that the previous six people like him were all dead.
And the man sewing the fourth doll has been waiting for him for twenty years.
Man is a blank sheet of paper. It has been painted, rubbed, torn, and soaked in water.
But Chen Mo discovered that he could still hold the pen.
