The money was enough to keep him in Kenya for another month.
Yanchuan calculated that before reading the second page. Accommodation, meals, transport, calls. Enough to stop checking his balance before every journey. Enough to tell his father that he did not need to send anything else.
Then he reached the acknowledgment.
By accepting the payment, the family would confirm that the employer had completed its assistance regarding the assignment, and that subsequent inquiries should proceed without direct approaches to its commercial partners.
The document called the payment discretionary support. It did not call it compensation for silence. Yanchuan read it again, trying to see whether he could take the help and disregard the part he disliked.
Luo was waiting across the café table.
“No one is asking you to stop looking.”
“Only to stop asking the people who dealt with him.”
“You have formal channels.”
“Which you spent the first week telling us were being handled.”
Luo set his coffee down. He looked tired enough that Yanchuan briefly wondered whether the support payment also bought Luo an end to these conversations.
“I argued for this amount,” he said.
“Then argue for removing that paragraph.”
Luo took the document away. He did not promise anything.
Yanchuan returned to the hotel and called An. She read the copy he had received, then asked whether he had signed.
“No. But I wanted to.”
“So do I.”
He had expected anger from her, perhaps a declaration that no sum could change what they owed Yansheng. Instead she turned her camera toward a bill from the school and then turned it back. It was not overdue. It would have to be paid, like every other bill that had retained its date.
They marked the travel expenses separately from any acknowledgment. An would request reimbursement of documented costs without a statement that assistance was complete. They would ask someone qualified to read any revised terms. Until then, the money could not go into their budget.
“I should stay,” Yanchuan said.
“What appointment do you have after Tuesday?”
“One could come.”
“Someone here also has to keep answering the phone.”
He turned the camera away from his face. On the desk were receipts for taxis to offices where he had sat waiting for people who were waiting for other people. Being nearby had let him see the test, meet Amina, and hear Daniel. He could name those things. He could not name what another month would achieve.
Chen had sent a brief message: We need your answer about next week. His job was not a villain trying to separate him from his brother. It was the source of the rent and the airfare he might need again.
“I’ll come back Tuesday,” he said.
An exhaled. “Book the train to Guangzhou when you land. Don’t arrive with three days of washing and expect me to be pleased.”
He laughed, unexpectedly, and felt disloyal for it.
The revised offer came that evening. The amount was unchanged; so was the acknowledgment. Luo said the wording had been approved above him. Yanchuan and An sent a short refusal, together with the separate request for the expenses already submitted.
His father called as he was folding the shirt he had dried badly. Jianming asked whether the trip had been worth it.
Yanchuan looked at the suitcase.
“I haven’t found him.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
He described the witnessed test and the document versions. His father asked whether those records would be safe when he left. Yanchuan realized he had been thinking about departure as abandonment, without finishing the practical arrangements departure required.
“I’ll confirm who has them tomorrow.”
“Do that. And eat before the airport. You always decide food is too expensive when you’re worried.”
After the call, he counted his remaining cash and set aside the cost of breakfast. The refusal had changed nothing about the size of his bank balance. It had changed which promises he would have had to make in order to enlarge it.
He packed the spare adapter last. There might be another journey. If there was, he would need a way to pay for it that did not depend on pretending this one had finished the search.