Chapter Twenty-One finally placed the several versions of the old project on the same table: the original deadlines, the dates later backdated, the copies Ye preserved, and the internal revision records of the coordination group. Once the materials could be checked against one another, Lin proposed convening an apology meeting. Those present, besides Ye and Lin, were Su, who had been responsible for executing the rules, and Zhou, who later took over Ye's original duties. Cen did not attend; she submitted only a written statement of what she had seen at the time.
The meeting invitation read "facing the past together, restoring the relationship." Ye drew a line under the word "together." He had indeed attended every meeting, and at certain moments had chosen silence or continued working; Lin made the rules, Su executed and explained them, and Zhou benefited from the vacated position. They were jointly present, yet they did not jointly hold the same powers. If "everyone participated" is finally translated into "everyone is at fault," the de facto hierarchy of powers will be leveled away by a reconciliation table.
This chapter establishes no procedure of mediation or adjudication, nor does it rule on real cases. It preserves only a few moments of this fictional meeting, to see which segment of the consequences each person can actually alter. Institutional accountability of course still requires full procedures; what must first be prevented in this meeting is the apology once again explaining to Ye how he ought to understand the past.
First Round of Statements: "We Should All Look Forward"
Lin spoke first: "I acknowledge that my methods at the time were wrong, and I hope we can all look forward." His tone was calm, and he did not deny that the conflict had occurred. The problem lay in the object of "looking forward" being left unspecified: the rewritten records still stood, the position Lin had obtained from the old arrangements still stood, and the characterization of Ye circulating in the industry was still in motion. If the future has already inherited the gains and the labels of the past, and only Ye is asked to stop looking back, then the so-called turning of the page amounts to letting the consequences continue while ending the inquiry.
Ye did not ask whether Lin was sincere. He pushed the three materials on the table across: "Which date is correct? Who notified the coordination group? Which record are you willing to correct?" The inner life cannot be checked; actions can. If Lin acknowledges the specific events, the public facts will change; if he is willing to make corrections where the old records are used, the consequences will begin to change; if he only expresses regret, the apology shows at most his present attitude.
Lin initially answered that the events were long past and hard to reconstruct item by item. This limitation may be genuine. When materials are insufficient, Ye cannot demand that his own version automatically prevail. The meeting separated three settled items from two still disputed: the confirmed dates were corrected; motives unsupported by evidence were kept out of the conclusions; who had verbally authorized the continued waiting remained undetermined. Clarity need not be obtained by filling in every blank.
"Looking forward" is therefore not a forbidden phrase. Once the records are corrected, the gains still accruing begin to be dealt with, and the places that cannot be confirmed are no longer interpreted by default by the stronger party, looking forward acquires an object. When nothing has changed, it merely wraps silence in the packaging of maturity.
Second Round of Statements: "I Only Followed the Rules"
Su had been responsible for inserting the ad hoc demands into the schedule, and had once said, when Ye raised objections, "this was everyone's decision." She had not made the original rules, yet she had executed them continuously for a long time. Su said that had she refused, she might have lost her job; this is not a synonym for an excuse, but a genuine condition of action at the time. An external collaborator who refused Lin would at most lose one contract; had Su refused, she might have lost her main income and her standing among peers. To demand the same courage of both is only to distribute morality evenly from a safe place.
But a high price of refusal cannot explain every action. Su can explain why she did not oppose openly; she cannot use the same reason to explain why she backdated the dates on her own initiative, or why she described her own execution as "agreed by everyone." Failing to prevent, being forced to cooperate, and actively extending are not the same thing. Nor did Ye ask Su to answer for the entire structure Lin had designed. He asked only about two things she really could change: confirming which notices she herself had sent, and correcting the phrase "jointly decided" in the execution records.
Su agreed to provide the emails and an explanation, but declined to make her private circumstances public. Ye accepted this boundary. Giving testimony is not the same as handing one's whole life over to the meeting. She need not prove that she too was a victim in order to state what she feared at the time; nor, because of that fear, can she demand that Ye deduct the pressure she was under from his own harm. The two circumstances can both hold at once, and neither offsets the other.
This step replaced "who is at fault" with a smaller question: who controls which material, and who can stop which consequence still in progress. Responsibility is not a comprehensive assessment of character but the landing point of action. Lin needs to correct what lies at the level of making and interpreting the rules; Su needs to restore the parts she herself executed; their obligations differ not because one is essentially worse, but because their powers and their actions differ.
Third Round of Statements: "I Really Did Not Know at the Time"
Zhou took over part of the projects and the clients after Ye left. He had not taken part in the discussions of the rules; he was told only that a position had been adjusted. Ye's loss of an opportunity and Zhou's gain of one are two ends of the same timeline, yet it does not follow that Zhou took part in the squeeze. If the meeting merges all beneficiaries into a single bloc, it will once again answer for process with identity.
When Zhou said "I did not know," the statement had, the first time, a factual basis. After Ye later made the materials public, he continued to use the account that "the other party withdrew for personal reasons," and by then the scope of "not knowing" had already changed. He need not answer for the original design, but he must face the account he kept using after he knew. What he can do is not to hand back his entire career, nor to declare himself innocent, but to correct the information he relayed, to state when he took over, and, the next time he introduces the project's history, to stop writing Ye as having walked away of his own accord.
The gains themselves can sometimes not be returned as they were. The client relationships have changed, and the projects are finished. If compensation is understood as precisely reversing time, it will only produce new false promises. What can be dealt with are the parts still continuing: attribution, public narration, gains not yet paid out, future citation. What can be done must be done; what cannot should be left as a gap; one cannot, because full restitution is impossible, declare that there is nothing at all to return.
Zhou worried that once he acknowledged that his gains came from injustice, all his later achievements would fall under suspicion. Ye demanded no such wholesale negation. That the origin of one opportunity needs to be stated does not mean that all subsequent work is fake. Turning Zhou from "innocent party" into "vested beneficiary" and then fixing him there permanently uses the same labeling machine that once fixed Ye as "difficult to work with." Wherever the materials support only so much, there the conclusion stops.
What Those Who Were Absent Can Bear
Cen's written statement confirmed only one conversation: she heard Lin demand that the coordination group "make Ye understand the cost of not cooperating." She did not account for the motives behind all of Lin's decisions, nor did she prove the complete narrative on Ye's behalf. The value of witnessing lies precisely in its being limited: she turned a memory that at the time only Ye could uphold alone into a fact with a second position of observation; she does not thereby become a judge.
Other colleagues left no materials. Some may have sensed the anomalies; others genuinely did not know. Conspiracy cannot be inferred directly from silence, or every silent party enters an endless list of defendants; nor does "not having participated" automatically exempt anyone, because continued presence, access to information, and a position from which to speak at low cost change what a person is able to do.
The meeting did not investigate the inner life of every bystander. It only asked those who had received the relevant emails whether they were willing to keep copies, allowed anonymous statements, and made explicit that refusal would not be treated as proof of guilt. What bystanders can most often bear is testimony, not compensation on others' behalf. Those for whom speaking carries a high price need not be required to sacrifice their careers to prove their integrity; those who forged materials or kept spreading them cannot hide inside "merely watching."
Extending the web of relations without limit would in the end have Ye retell his experience for every layer of persons. That is a reckoning that looks exhaustive, and it may also become a new requisition. Repair is not finding everyone who ever touched this stretch of reality, but making the connections that still produce consequences capable of being pointed out, stopped, or corrected.
What a Single Apology Can Change
At the second session, Lin put it differently: "I altered the deadlines and had the coordination group interpret Ye's refusal as noncooperation. That was decided by me. I will correct the two records and stop using that characterization." These words cannot guarantee remorse, nor can they make Ye automatically feel better. Their function is more limited: specific events are acknowledged, the agent no longer remains invisible, and what is to be corrected next acquires a checkable object.
A sincere apology need not prove itself through a performance of suffering. What can be checked is whether it is specific, whether it carries the exchange condition "so you too should let go," and whether, after it is spoken, the gains and the records have changed. An apology that gives up nothing may still have emotional meaning, but it cannot substitute for correction; and when someone has already undertaken correction, even clumsy expression does not thereby void the action.
Compensation is not equivalent solely to payment. Restoring attribution, sending corrections to those who received the false account, and ceding part of the gains produced by the old arrangements all act directly on the source of the harm. A sum of money can address part of the economic consequences, but it cannot buy out Ye's right to interpret the past. Conversely, harm to a relationship cannot be fully discounted into money, and neither can it serve as grounds for refusing every feasible compensation.
The sharpest boundary must be preserved: once the apology has been issued, Ye is under no obligation to receive it, to forgive, or to restore the relationship. He may acknowledge that Lin made corrections while not resuming the private relationship; he may accept compensation while continuing to hold that certain losses have not come back; and he may cease pursuing the matter, not because Lin has become worthy of forgiveness, but because continued pursuit no longer merits occupying his own life.
Third parties cannot declare on his behalf that "the two sides are reconciled." The institution wants the case closed, the friends want the atmosphere eased, Lin wants to know whether he is forgiven; these wishes are all real, yet together they cannot acquire Ye's power of disposal. How much repair has occurred can be read from facts and consequences; whether the relationship continues remains for the persons in the relationship to decide.
When the Meeting Ends, Which Accounts Can Be Closed
After the meeting, the backdated dates were corrected, Su submitted her account of execution, Zhou revised the project introductions, and Lin stopped using the old characterization. These items can be moved from "pending" to "completed." They still belong to history, but they ought not to regenerate the same obligation each time they are raised. If responsibility can never be settled, everyone is permanently mortgaged to their past roles; if pursuit is forbidden from the start, the harm becomes permanently free of charge.
Two items remain unclosed: one verbal authorization cannot be verified, and part of the industry circulation cannot locate its recipients. The meeting did not seek out more reachable persons to bear them by substitution, nor did it rewrite what could not be executed as never having happened. They remain in the state of the undetermined and the unrecovered. Suspension provides no completeness, but it blocks a false clarity.
Ye also corrected an exaggerated formulation of his own. He had said "everyone knew"; the available materials support only that several people knew. Being harmed does not exempt any of his judgments from calibration. This correction diminishes none of the conduct Lin has confirmed, nor does it turn the two sides back into an even split of blame. That each side answers for the segment it can verify is precisely not to manufacture the appearance of fairness by symmetry.
The meeting did not restore the original relationship. What it accomplished was smaller and more real: several materials no longer spoke in Ye's stead, several beneficiaries began to deal with the parts still continuing, and the places that cannot be determined were occupied by neither party. Ye left without signing a "reconciliation confirmation," and no one wrote the refusal to sign as a symptom of incomplete recovery.
In the next chapter, the old files arrive at the new team ahead of Ye, and the actions completed at the apology meeting will be tested against reality: whether he is still assigned to positions without attribution, whether support again becomes a debt of gratitude, whether raising objections changes the renewal of his engagement. The repair of a relationship is not the atmosphere of a single meeting, but the next relationship not having to reenact the same interpretive structure. Who owes Ye what is finally answered not by the order of seating, the intensity of remorse, or common participation, but by what each person controlled, what each person did, and what each can still change today.