The mark beneath Yansheng’s name had a hook like a fishing line.
Yanchuan remembered teasing him about it. Their father wrote each character squarely, as if a loose stroke might let the current escape. Yansheng signed as if the pen were already trying to leave.
Now the same hook sat beneath a sentence Yanchuan did not believe his brother had approved.
The site operator had released two copies of the acceptance package to the technical reviewers. One was marked reviewed, October 29. The other was marked final, October 31. Their front pages looked almost identical. The scope statement on the third page did not.
The earlier copy listed an unresolved auxiliary-load item. The final copy declared all listed performance conditions satisfied.
Yanchuan called Amina before finishing the comparison.
“They copied his signature.”
The words came out too quickly. He had been ready to say them before he had examined the transmission history.
“Send the page numbers through the review channel.”
“Look at it.”
“I am looking. What do you want me to say?”
He heard his own insistence and let her finish. She asked the operator for the approval record associated with the final copy, rather than a third scan of its pages. The request included both document identifiers. It did not describe a crime.
Mei joined the review that evening. On Yanchuan’s laptop she aligned the signature images. They matched closely, including a faint gray speck beneath the first stroke.
“That’s the scanning dust,” he said.
“It appears to be the same image,” she answered. “A valid document system can reuse an approved signature image. An invalid one can too. We need the authorization, not a contest in recognizing dust.”
He hated how often the right next question delayed the answer.
The operator’s document controller met them on Saturday in an office with empty picture hooks on the wall. He was a precise man named Kamau, younger than Yanchuan expected. When Amina explained what they had compared, he pulled the earlier record on his screen.
“This is an attendance acknowledgment,” he said.
Yanchuan moved closer. The original wording confirmed who had attended the review. It did not certify that all deficiencies were closed.
“And the final?”
Kamau searched. A completion entry referred to a contractor attachment that was not in the operator’s package. He checked a second directory, then asked them to wait while he called someone. Yanchuan could hear half the conversation. No, not the copy. The underlying record.
Kamau returned without it.
“I can confirm what we received. I can’t confirm an approval I haven’t located.”
He wrote the distinction down and signed it in front of them. His signature was tidy and unremarkable. Yanchuan watched the pen touch the paper with an attention that would have embarrassed him a month earlier.
The missing attachment would be requested from its sender. The document versions and their transmission dates would be preserved. Someone with the appropriate remit could examine whether the change was a clerical mistake, an unauthorized assembly, or something more deliberate.
Outside, Yanchuan tried to call An. She sent a message saying she was at the swimming pool with her son. He nearly replied, Important. He looked at the word until it seemed to mean that the swimming lesson was not important, that her son should surrender another hour to the case. He deleted it and asked her to call when she could.
He waited on a bench. A man beside him unwrapped a new phone and struggled to transfer his contacts. Yanchuan helped him find the setting. The man thanked him with the uncomplicated gratitude of someone whose problem had ended.
An called forty minutes later, her hair wet at the temples. Yanchuan told her about the two statements under the same mark.
“Can they still say he approved it?”
“They can say it. Now we’ve asked them to show how.”
She shut her eyes briefly. Her son called from another room, asking where his towel was.
“Send me Kamau’s note. I’ll put it with the correspondence.”
Yanchuan returned to his hotel and looked once more at the hook in his brother’s signature. He could recognize a habit, a joke, the movement of a hand. None of that could tell him who had assembled the final file.
He closed the image and opened the expense sheet. He had not told An how often he counted the money before calling her, afraid she would hear the calculation as a measure of how long her husband deserved to be searched for. His return ticket was for Tuesday. Under the approved days of leave, there were no blank rows left.