Lin Zhiwei was the youngest lead structural designer this group ever had. The day the site caved in, she was pushed forward to carry the blame for a leaked drawing set; her licence was revoked and her name cut from the registry. Two years later she came back to the same tower in a grey uniform as a night cleaner, reading one floor at a time. What she wanted was not the word innocent. She wanted the man who had raised his hand at that review to read her name out loud himself.
She mopped the floors of that tower for two years and nobody looked her in the eye. No matter how clean the whiteboard on thirty-two was wiped, she knew the last meeting had stopped for nineteen minutes, because she could see whose shoes had walked around the coffee stain. She was not memorizing a floor. She was memorizing people.
