Chapter 3 — The Lost Golden Bangle

It is impossible to definitively determine which stage of the process is responsible.

There was a time when I, too, grew impatient with consumers who made endless complaints, viewing them as overly troublesome. That was until the day I received an empty cardboard box myself. Only then did I truly understand that the phrase "unable to be determined" rarely meant that no traces were left behind. Rather, it meant that ordinary people simply had no idea which traces were about to vanish into thin air. Manager Luo slid the document back across the table.

This is internal enterprise documentation.

It cannot be handed over to you.

I am not asking you to hand it over to me right now.

I am requiring you to preserve it.

He picked up his phone.

I need to consult higher-ups.

He strode out of the reception room. The door was left ajar. I could hear his muffled voice echoing from the corridor:

She actually understands a few things.

Do not touch the system for now.

Yes, today’s shipment...

The rest of his words faded into a low murmur. I stood up. The computer outside was sitting idle and unattended. The screen flickered back to life. The page titled "Handling of Shipments with Abnormal Weights," which had just been hastily closed, was still running in the background. I did not touch the mouse. Standing a meter away, I raised my phone, zoomed in, and snapped a photograph. The final entry on the list was my very own waybill number. Recorded package weight upon pickup: 318.6 grams. DWS data at the regional transit hub: 318.3 grams. Re-weighing at the local branch post: 281.0 grams. Abnormal discrepancy: 37.3 grams. Processing status: Equipment deviation, manually bypassed and approved. The operator was listed as LuoM—the internal account belonging to Manager Luo. Right above my waybill were sixteen other records. Mobile phones. Fine jewelry. Camera lenses. Luxury fashion accessories. Every single one of them had suffered a reduction in weight after entering this specific branch office. Every single one of them was marked with the exact same excuse: Equipment deviation. At the very top of the page, a prominent metric flashed: Total shipments with abnormal weights on the same route within the last thirty days: 17 parcels. The moment I finished taking the photo, an angry shout erupted from behind me.

Who gave you permission to take pictures?

Manager Luo lunged forward, his hand reaching out to snatch my phone away. I took a step back. The delivery courier stood frozen by the door, entirely stiff with apprehension. Manager Luo hurriedly slammed the computer screen shut.

Delete it.

I gripped my phone tightly.

What exactly was stolen from these seventeen packages?

The system statistics are erroneous.

Are we to believe that all seventeen errors occurred in the same direction?

I told you to delete it!

He advanced, closing the distance between us. I held my phone up defensively against my chest.

The image has already been automatically uploaded to cloud storage.

Even if you rob me of this physical device right now, it will be completely useless.

Manager Luo’s hand froze mid-air. I stared fixedly at the darkened screen.

My bracelet was not the first item to go missing here.

Was it?

Manager Luo forcefully shut the door to the reception room.

Secretly photographing the company’s internal system constitutes a serious violation of trade secrets.

I asked calmly:

Are seventeen express delivery parcels with abnormal weight discrepancies also considered a trade secret?

Customer data is inherently internal proprietary information.

I did not photograph the names or addresses of the customers.

I merely captured the total count of abnormal packages, the tail end of the waybill numbers, and the operator accounts.

Do not play word games with me.

He pointed aggressively toward the door.

Get out.

Your formal complaint will be handled exclusively by headquarters.

I did not move an inch.

Please ensure you also preserve the security footage that just recorded your attempt to forcibly rob me of my phone.

The muscles in his face twitched slightly. I dialed the phone number the police had provided earlier. I explained that I had uncovered seventeen anomalous packages along a single route, and that the local branch showed clear evidence of tampering with abnormal statuses through manual overrides. The police advised me not to escalate the conflict further on-site, assuring me that they would integrate these new leads into the ongoing case file. Manager Luo offered a cold, derisive laugh.

A single page on a system screen proves nothing.

Even if the weight fluctuated, it could easily be attributed to damp packaging, peeling adhesive tape, or varying degrees of equipment calibration accuracy.

Indeed.

I nodded slowly.

Then let us investigate the other sixteen cases.

His complexion finally shifted, losing its arrogance.

You have no legal right to investigate other people's affairs.

I am not prying into private personal information.

I am simply seeking out victims who have been publicly wronged.

Upon leaving the branch office, I chose not to immediately broadcast the name of the company or the specific branch on the internet. Once the exact entity and location were exposed, the other party would likely wipe the database, replace the equipment, and align their fabricated stories in advance. Instead, I first published a discreet message within several local residential community chat groups: Has anyone recently received an empty box, missing contents, or unusually tampered packaging through the western district branch? No personal information needs to be disclosed; we are merely cross-referencing weight data. Within half an hour, three separate individuals reached out to me. The first was a local university student. She had purchased a brand-new smartphone. When the package arrived, the contents inside had mysteriously been swapped out for a non-working display dummy that refused to power on. The seller provided a verified warehouse dispatch video, yet the courier company insisted that she had swapped the contents herself after receipt. Ultimately, the platform offered her only a fifty percent compensation payout. She sent me her waybill number. The package had traveled through the exact same branch. The second victim was a professional photographer. He had mailed out a camera lens for specialized repairs, but when it was returned to him, only an empty lens hood remained inside the box.