The white stone sat on the windowsill like a third eye, unblinking and patient. Lu Chengen had not moved it, had not covered it, had not even touched it since the morning he found it. He had simply let it be—a silent interlocutor that spoke in numbers instead of words. For three days, he had stared at it each morning, turning over its meaning in his mind. Twelve. The twelfth tally. There had been seven original confessions, then an eighth truth, then a ninth body, a tenth and an eleventh that had appeared in chalk on walls and benches. But the stone was different. The stone was solid, permanent, unerasable.
He had spent those three days in a state of suspended animation, going through the motions of a normal life—morning tea, a walk to the harbour, a visit to the market—but his mind was elsewhere, tracing the invisible threads that connected the chalk marks to the stone, the stone to Su Ping, Su Ping to the silent army of witnesses she had recruited. He had not heard from her since the pier. He had not tried to find her. He had sensed, with the intuition of a man who had been manipulated too many times, that she would reappear when she was ready.
On the fourth morning, the reappearance came—not in person, but in the form of a manila envelope slid under his door, just like the first letter. He opened it to find a photograph: a faded black-and-white image of a group of men in military uniforms, standing in front of a barracks building. In the centre, flanked by two sergeants, was a young man with a boyish face and a shy smile—Cheng Guanghua, unmistakable even in his youth. But Lu Chengen's eyes were drawn to the man on the far left, tall and broad-shouldered, his face partly in shadow. The man wore a diving badge on his chest, the same coiled anchor and helmet he had seen before. And his arm was draped around a woman who was not in uniform—a young woman with sharp eyes and a defiant set to her jaw. Su Ping.
He turned the photograph over. On the reverse, in neat, typed characters: "1977. 3rd Battalion training camp. Third from the left is Wu Bin. Fourth from the left is the man you seek. The woman is Su Ping. She was his fiancée before she married Guanghua."
His heart lurched. Su Ping had been engaged to Wu Bin—the training partner who had died in the 1978 explosion. She had then married Cheng Guanghua, Wu Bin's best friend and the man who had survived the accident. The triangle of grief was deeper than he had imagined. Su Ping had lost her first love, then her second husband, both to the same reckless system. And she had spent years building her own private war against that system.
The man "fourth from the left" was the key. Lu Chengen studied the photograph with a magnifying glass, trying to discern the features. The man was tall, lean, with a prominent jaw and a scar above his left eyebrow—a scar that looked like a burn. He was not Duan, who was shorter and stockier. Not Tan Weiming, who was thinner and older. Not anyone Lu Chengen had met in the substation.
But the scar. He had seen that scar before. On the body recovered from the breakwater—the decoy, the ringer, the homeless man. It was not a perfect match, but it was close. And it was enough to suggest a connection.
He dressed and went to the harbour, seeking out an old fisherman named Uncle Zhou, a man who had worked the waters for forty years and knew every face that had ever passed through Haigang's ports. He found him mending nets on a wooden pier, his gnarled hands moving with the muscle memory of decades.
Uncle Zhou examined the photograph with a squint. "That scar. I remember a man with that scar. Came here in '83, looking for work. Said he was a diver, but he had a limp—said it was old injury. He worked on the salvage boats for a few months, then vanished. Never saw him again."
"Did he have a name?"
"He called himself Chen. Just Chen. But I heard a dockhand call him 'Major' once, as a joke. He didn't laugh."
Major. A military rank. The man was a veteran, a former officer—not the enlisted man Lu Chengen had assumed. And he had been in Haigang in 1983, the year after the accident, the year the cover-up was sealed. He had been watching, waiting, planning.
Lu Chengen thanked Uncle Zhou and walked back along the pier, his mind racing. The man with the scar—let's call him "Major Chen"—was the missing piece. He was not Wu Bin (dead), not Duan (a different person), not Luo Peng (the winch operator). He was a new player, a ghost who had surfaced only in a faded photograph and a fisherman's memory.
He needed more information. He went to the municipal archives again, this time requesting personnel records for the 3rd Battalion from 1977 to 1979. The archivist, a young woman with indifferent eyes, handed him a thick folder marked "Miscellaneous—Not Fully Catalogued." He spent the afternoon sifting through training rosters, medical reports, and transfer orders.
He found it in a supplemental file, a single sheet that had been misfiled. It was a disciplinary report, dated October 1977, concerning a "Captain Chen Weiguo." The report cited "insubordination" and "unauthorised training exercises" and recommended a reduction in rank. The signature at the bottom was that of Major Zheng Weiguo—the same officer who had written the letter demanding an investigation after the 1982 accident. Chen Weiguo and Zheng Weiguo. Two Weiguos, two officers, two men with a shared history.
Chen Weiguo. The name was close to the alias "Major Chen" that Uncle Zhou had heard. And the report indicated that he had been demoted, that he had a grudge against the chain of command. If he had been friends with Wu Bin and Cheng Guanghua, he would have been devastated by their fates. And if he had believed the cover-up was orchestrated by the shipping company, he would have had the motive and the military expertise to orchestrate an elaborate retribution.
But the report also contained a final note, written in a different hand: "Transferred to coastal defence unit, November 1977. Reassigned. No further record." Chen Weiguo had been moved out of the 3rd Battalion, away from his comrades, before the training exercise that killed Wu Bin. He had not been there. He had not been able to save his friend. And that guilt, Lu Chengen now understood, had festered for years.
He closed the folder and sat back. The judge's circle was expanding. First Duan, then Su Ping, now Chen Weiguo—a trio of aggrieved parties, each with their own reasons for seeking justice, each with their own methods. Duan had been the public face, the dockworker who gathered evidence. Su Ping had been the strategist, the shadowy orchestrator. And Chen Weiguo—Chen Weiguo was the one who had drawn the chalk marks, placed the rope, set the traps. He was the architect of the physical trial, the man who had turned the substation into a chamber of reckoning.
The twelfth tally. The white stone. They had been left by Chen Weiguo, not Su Ping. He was the one who had never been satisfied with the confessions, who believed that the cycle had not been fully closed. He was the one who had drawn the mark at the lighthouse, the one who had whispered "Welcome to the wake" in Lu Chengen's ear. He had been there all along, invisible, watching, counting.
Lu Chengen left the archives, the twilight settling over the city. He knew where Chen Weiguo would be—the same place where the body had been found, where the chalk marks had first appeared, where the water had risen and the ropes had been laid. The northern breakwater. He took a taxi through the darkening streets, the driver silent, the city lights blurring past.
The breakwater was empty, the police tape gone, the concrete blocks reclaimed by the sea. He stood at the edge, the wind whipping his coat, and called out into the darkness. "Chen Weiguo! I know you're here. I've seen the photograph. I've read the report. I know what you did."
A figure emerged from behind a storage shed, tall and lean, a scar above his left eyebrow catching the moonlight. He wore a dark coat and a wide-brimmed hat, and his hands were empty. "You're more persistent than I expected, Comrade Lu. I thought you would stop after the stone."
"I was going to. But the stone changed things. It told me the count wasn't over."
"The count is never over," Chen Weiguo said, stepping closer. "I've been counting for nine years. The day Wu Bin died, I was transferred out. I wasn't there to pull him from the water. I wasn't there to save him. And when Guanghua died, I was living in a fishing village, recovering from a wound I got in a bar fight—a useless injury, a useless life. I swore I would not let their deaths be forgotten."
"So you orchestrated the trial. The chalk, the tallies, the rope. You were the one who pushed Sun Yi, who cut Tan Weiming's rope, who left the body on the breakwater."
"I pushed Sun Yi to protect her, as I told you. Tan Weiming cut his own rope—he was the mole, and I let him think he had escaped so he would lead us to Ma Zhigang. And the body on the breakwater—that was a decoy, a message. I wanted the police to find a body that was not Guanghua's, to force them to reopen the case. It worked, didn't it?"
Lu Chengen shook his head. "You manipulated us all. You made us believe we were the guilty ones, when the real guilt belonged to the corporation. You used our confessions as tools."
"I used them as evidence. Your confessions, combined with the documents Su Ping gathered, have been sent to the prosecutor's office. Shen Fu's trial is set for next month. The system is finally working—because we made it work."
"And now? What about the twelfth tally?"
Chen Weiguo's face softened, the hardness giving way to something like grief. "The twelfth tally is for me. I have been the judge, the executioner, the puppeteer. But I have also been a coward. I hid behind masks and chalk marks. I never spoke my own truth. The twelfth tally is my confession—to you, to Su Ping, to the memory of Wu Bin and Guanghua. I am not a hero. I am a man who could not save his friends, and who tried to make up for his failure by breaking the law."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a small notebook, worn and stained. He handed it to Lu Chengen. "This is my journal. Every plan, every chalk mark, every letter. It's all there. When you leave, give it to the prosecutor. I will turn myself in tomorrow morning. I will accept whatever punishment the law deems fit."
Lu Chengen took the notebook, its weight heavy in his hand. "Why now? Why not just disappear?"
"Because I'm tired," Chen Weiguo said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I've been running for nine years. I've been counting for nine years. But the count never ends. There will always be another tally, another victim, another injustice. I thought I could break the cycle by controlling it. But I was wrong. The only way to break it is to stop counting. And that's what I'm doing now."
He turned and walked toward the edge of the breakwater, where the dark water lapped against the concrete. Lu Chengen watched him, his heart aching with a strange, reluctant empathy. The judge was surrendering—not to the police, but to his own conscience.
"Chen Weiguo," Lu Chengen called. "Su Ping. Where is she?"
The man paused, but did not turn. "She is where she has always been—in the shadows, watching, waiting. She will not surrender. She will not stop. The cycle is her life, her purpose. I cannot change her. I can only change myself."
He stepped onto a small fishing boat that had been hidden behind the shed, untied the line, and pushed off. The engine sputtered, then caught. The boat moved slowly out into the harbour, a dark shape against the starry sky.
Lu Chengen stood on the breakwater, the notebook in his hands, the wind cold on his face. He had found the judge. He had received the confession. But the trial was not over—it was merely transferring from the shadows to the courtroom.
He walked back to the city, the notebook tucked inside his coat. The streets were quiet, the shops closed. He passed a wall where a chalk mark had been—but it was gone, erased by the rain or by a hand that had decided to stop counting. He felt a strange sense of release, as if a knot had finally loosened in his chest.
He reached his flat, climbed the stairs, and sat at his desk. He opened the notebook and began to read. It was a chronicle of obsession—page after page of plans, observations, calculations. Chen Weiguo had documented every step of the operation, every clue, every reaction. It was a confession of guilt and a testament to pain.
As he read, the hours slipped by. The moon rose and set. The dawn crept through the window, pale and grey. He finished the last page and closed the notebook, his eyes heavy, his heart full.
He knew what he had to do. He would deliver the notebook to the prosecutor, as Chen Weiguo had asked. He would testify at Shen Fu's trial. And then he would walk away—not because the cycle was broken, but because he had chosen to stop being its prisoner.
He stood up, stretched, and walked to the window. The white stone was still there, untouched. He picked it up, turned it over in his palm, and felt its smooth, cold weight. Then he opened the window and tossed it into the street below. It bounced once, rolled into the gutter, and disappeared.
He did not look back. He picked up the notebook, left his flat, and walked toward the prosecutor's office. The sun was rising, the city was waking, and the chalk marks were fading from the walls.
But in a small coffee shop near the harbour, a woman in a grey coat sat alone, stirring her tea. On the napkin before her, she had drawn a small vertical line—a tally that she would not erase. She looked out the window at the rising sun and smiled, a thin, determined smile.
The count was not over. It had simply moved to a new page.
And somewhere, on a fishing boat heading out to sea, a man with a scar above his eyebrow watched the shoreline shrink, his hands steady on the wheel, his heart light with the first peace he had felt in nine years.
The twelfth tally was gone. But the thirteenth was already waiting.
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