Chapter 6 — The Lost Golden Bangle

To prevent abnormal weight fluctuations from triggering an internal audit, manager La was tasked with falsifying the warning logs to read as mere equipment errors. Their favorite targets were packages sent without additional insurance. When most people heard the cold reassurance that compensation would amount to at most a few hundred yuan, their initial reaction was not to pursue the matter further, but rather to resign themselves to bad luck. Even if a rare customer chose to file a formal complaint, it was nearly impossible for them to conclusively prove the original contents of the parcel. Of course, their scheme did not always succeed. On occasions when victims produced unbroken, continuous unboxing footage, the perpetrators would have no choice but to scrape together funds from previous illicit sales to offer a partial settlement, quietly sweeping the incident under the rug. When the victim's evidence fell short, the blame was effortlessly shifted back onto the sender. Once. Twice. Until it reached seventeen times. My cherished bangle became the eighteenth.

Yet, they failed to anticipate that this time, the recorded weight at dispatch happened to exceed the receiving weight by precisely 37.3 grams. Nor did they foresee that the jewelry workshop routinely retained comprehensive surveillance footage covering every single stage, from repairs and precision weighing to final packaging. Above all, they never imagined that I would forgo the temptation to immediately tear open the delivery box. Instead, I weighed the sealed package first.

Three days later, the police raided the rented apartment of Do Cuong, recovering a cache of valuables that had not yet been fenced. There were mobile phones, velvet jewelry boxes, camera lens packaging, alongside countless shipping waybills and torn anti-tamper security seals. My jade bangle, however, was nowhere to be found in the room. Do Cuong claimed he had already handed it over to a private gold buyer. That individual never preserved items in their original form; once received, the precious metals were immediately cast into the melting pot.

For the first instant, a wave of genuine panic suffocated me. Thirty-eight thousand yuan could easily purchase a replacement bracelet. Yet once melted down, the very bangle my mother had worn continuously for thirty-one years would vanish forever. Imbedded within that gold was the portion she bought the year she married. There was also the gold she had painstakingly accumulated, grain by grain, and added to it over decades. And nestled within that legacy was my maternal grandmother’s old ring.

I sat alone in the dim hallway of the police station, my gaze fixed intently on the narrow seams between the gray floor tiles. My mother called once more.

"Is the repair still not finished yet?"

I could no longer maintain the deception.

"Mom."

"The bangle was lost during transit."

Silence stretched across the line for several agonizing seconds. I braced myself, expecting her to demand its exact monetary value, or to scold me for failing to purchase shipping insurance. Instead, the very first question that escaped her lips was:

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Then why are you crying?"

It was only then that I realized the raw, trembling state of my own voice.

"It was something you wore for decades."

"How can a mere object ever compare to a human being?"

My mother’s tone was remarkably gentle.

"If it cannot be found, then so be it."

"I still have decades left to live."

"We can simply save up together and buy a new one."

I raised a hand to shield my eyes.

"Grandmother's ring was inside it, too."

Mother fell silent for a brief moment.

"If your grandmother knew, she would surely have scolded you first."

"Such a precious item, why on earth didn't you buy insurance when you shipped it?"

I remained speechless.

"Once she finished scolding you, she would have told you this:"

"What is lost is lost."

"Life must still go on."

After ending the call, I lingered on the bench in the corridor for a long time. I had once imagined that the conclusion of this ordeal would arrive in the form of monetary compensation—either the courier company paying out the full thirty-eight thousand yuan, or, due to my lack of insurance, both parties splitting the loss. Yet what I found truly unacceptable all along was never the numerical value itself. It was the terrifying thought that the bangle might have already been reduced to an unrecognizable, formless lump of molten gold.

That afternoon, the police brought in the gold buyer. True to his word, he had already melted down several pieces of jewelry. But my bangle remained untouched. Engraved upon the inner surface of the band were two distinct characters: Thu Lan. Fearing that the piece might be a custom-made sentimental heirloom of dubious origin, the buyer had not dared to process it immediately. Instead, he had locked the bangle away in his personal safe, waiting for Do Cuong to provide legitimate proof of purchase. Naturally, Do Cuong could produce no such document.

When the bangle was finally retrieved from an evidence bag and handed over, the clasp had been slightly forced open, and a few fresh scratches marred its surface. Yet the carved characters "Thu Lan" remained distinct. My mother's name was Tran Thu Lan. Those were the very words my late father had secretly commissioned a craftsman to engrave during the second year of their marriage.

I stared through the transparent plastic evidence bag for a long time, not daring to touch it. The police informed me that the formal forensic appraisals and procedural formalities were still underway, meaning the item could not be returned to me immediately. I simply nodded.

"It doesn't matter."

"Finding it is already enough."

A month later, eleven of the valuable items tied to the criminal case had been successfully recovered. Those that remained unrecovered would be handled separately by the courier enterprise through individual claims, based on verifiable evidence, contractual liability limits, and the ongoing investigation. Not every victim received full restitution; some struggled to prove the intrinsic value of their lost goods, others had explicitly agreed to limitation-of-liability clauses when placing their orders, and a few had failed to truthfully declare their merchandise during shipping. Furthermore, two final cases could not be conclusively linked to the main syndicate.

My own case, by contrast, was remarkably straightforward. The platform had recorded my formal declaration of contents. The pickup agent had completed the mandatory inspection. Both the transit and repair processes were backed by video surveillance, and the parcel's weight had shown an unexplained, drastic drop right at the local distribution hub, where staff had actively manipulated system statuses to conceal the anomaly. Ultimately, the courier company was compelled to compensate the full value of the loss while covering all repair expenses.