My older brother used to do this job, too.
Now he lives in a nursing home on the west side of the city. He recognizes my face, but can't remember who I am. Every time I visit, he has to ask all over again: "You're my sister, right?"
Last month, I took over a female corpse. The police said she'd been drunk and fallen by accident. While moving her, I tore my right glove, and my fingertip brushed a cufflink she was clutching.
I heard a voice.
"Don't tell Xiaorou."
I looked up at the medical examiner signing the paperwork and told him the color of the sofa in the woman's living room.
He held his pen and stared at me for a long time, then asked the question no one else dared to ask:
"Anything else?"
People in our line of work can hear the unfinished words of the dead when we touch something they last held. The price is that every time we listen, we lose one of our own memories.
That's how my brother forgot everything about himself.
And this cufflink in my hand is the first of seven. The other six disappeared together on the day my father went missing.
