My name is Chen Jiming. I'm twenty-five, unemployed, and want to be a writer, but so far I haven't written anything worth reading.
That day, the internet cafe owner gave me a one-yuan coin with a notch missing and warned me, "Don't sit in the last row on the last bus."
Later, I saw two enormous black-and-white fish pass overhead from the stone bridge. A little bird with a blue crest burrowed into my body.
When I finally escaped home, my second uncle, who had been declared drowned seven years ago, was sitting at the dinner table waiting for me.
He told me to save a woman who sold vegetables.
By daybreak, her daughter would no longer recognize her.
To preserve proof that she had ever existed, I began investigating old photographs, unsent letters, and dreams I forgot as soon as I woke.
The clues led to the other side of the stone bridge, and to secrets my family had hidden for years.
Those who disappeared might still be alive.
But who would have to pay the price to bring them back?
