Chapter 5

Aunt Wang was quiet for three days.

I thought she had finally come to her senses, but on the afternoon of the fourth day, something was stuffed into my door lock, and my key wouldn’t go in.

I leaned through the peephole for a long time, but the hallway was empty.

I called a locksmith and spent two hundred bucks to have him pull a broken toothpick out of the lock cylinder.

The locksmith said, “This was done on purpose. You need to be careful.”

I took a photo and saved it into the document.

That night, someone tampered with my takeout.

The bag had been left on the package rack downstairs. When I brought it up, I found the seal had been torn open, and there was half a cup less drink inside.

I didn’t drink it. I poured it all into the sink, took a photo, and saved it into the document.

The next morning, someone flipped my breaker. The fridge was off for half a day, and all the food inside spoiled.

When I checked the breaker box, I found a note stuck to it: “Get out of the complex.”

I recognized the handwriting—it was the same as the note Aunt Wang had left me a few days earlier, the one that said, “Don’t forget tomorrow’s event.”

The handwriting was exactly the same.

I took a photo of the note and put it into the document.

Then I went to management to check the cameras.

They said the camera in Building 5’s hallway was broken and had been repaired several times, but still wasn’t working.

“When did it break?”

“About two months ago.”

“Who reported it?”

“Let me check.” The management guy flipped through the records.

“It was reported by Aunt Wang from Building 6.”

“She said the hallway light in Building 5 was too dim and might be a safety hazard, so she asked us to fix it.”

“When the electrician came, he saw the camera was broken too, so it got reported together. But it never got approved afterward.”

Two months ago. Before I moved in.

I stared at the management guy, and he looked away, guilty.

“So the camera in Building 5 was found broken when Aunt Wang had someone come fix the light?”

“I’m not sure about that.”

I nodded and left.

A thought surfaced in my mind—what if the camera had been fine before she came over?

She had someone come fix the light, found the camera was working, and then “happened” to report the camera for repair?

I didn’t have proof, but the thought lodged in my mind and wouldn’t come out.

Back in my room, I opened my computer and organized all the evidence from the past few days.

The toothpick photo, the takeout photo, the note photo, the recording of the management conversation, all of it was filed away.

The document was already twelve pages long.

Then I opened another program and started writing an auto-post script.

I needed a place where these pieces of evidence could one day be seen by everyone.

Not posted by me directly, but automatically, once a certain condition was triggered.

For example—if my account hadn’t been logged into for more than twenty-four hours.

As a programmer, doing this was as easy as drinking water.

I set up the program, tested it three times, and confirmed there were no problems.

Then I waited for Aunt Wang’s next move.