# Chapter 040: The Old Drive Mustn’t Be Powered On Again
On December 16, Junzi flattened the empty cardboard box and pushed it under the counter, then used it to block the shallow box again.
He squatted down and pulled out the box. Beside the anti-static bag lay that little bag of screws. The corners of the old label had curled up, and the part that was stuck on most firmly had already turned yellow.
“Where should I put this now?”
Ye Yan had just closed the cover on a customer’s machine when he heard that and looked up. The machine was due at three that afternoon, and still needed to undergo two hours of continuous testing. He worked out the timing and said the test bench was free for now, so they could use it for a while. They should first check what was still on the old drive, to avoid having to move it back and forth later.
Xiaoyezi took the box so quickly that Junzi almost didn’t let go in time.
“It’s not going anywhere.” He set the bag of screws back in its place. “You two can look, just don’t scatter everything across the table again.”
She pulled over a chair and sat right beside Ye Yan. Dad rolled his sleeve up a little, and she saw the faint mark around his wrist. She reached over to loosen the cuff for him, as if they were back in her childhood, waiting for him to fix something so they could go home together. Ye Yan was looking for a connector. He turned his arm, and her hand was left hanging in the air.
The computer that had once held this drive had been sold long ago. The one on the table now was the shop’s testing machine. Ye Yan booted from a maintenance disc before continuing to examine the original drive, so it wouldn’t start up using its old system.
The machine recognized the hard drive. They could see the location of the wallet they used regularly, but when they opened an older directory one level down, the window froze.
Xiaoyezi waited patiently. Outside, someone wheeled a handcart past; its wheels bumped over a joint in the floor, but the screen didn’t change. After a long while, a read error appeared, and Ye Yan noted the location beside him.
Ye Yan exited, disconnected the power, checked the connector, and swapped in a cable the shop kept for testing. She held the drive for him, keeping her fingers away from the circuit board underneath. This time, they booted from the maintenance disc again, and the directory finally listed some names. But he only read a short section nearby before the same error appeared again.
He wrote down the location and didn’t continue scanning.
“We’ve changed the cable, but this section still won’t read.”
“It used to get stuck here, too,” she said.
“Before, we were checking the file system. Today, this part won’t read.”
After saying that, he went to get the notes and didn’t follow up on what she’d said. Xiaoyezi stared at those few names, wanting to ask if everything was broken, but afraid he’d answer too quickly.
There was a wallet.dat in the directory that she’d never seen before.
It wasn’t in the location they’d been updating all these years. It was tucked away under an even older directory, beside folders labeled “Attachments,” “Paperwork,” and “Photos.” She moved the mouse closer, but Ye Yan pressed down on the back of her hand.
“Don’t click around just yet.”
His palm was warm. She stopped, but didn’t pull her hand away.
Ye Yan looked at it for a while, then said, “There may have been another copy of the wallet.”
Xiaoyezi’s throat suddenly tightened. She recognized the filename, but didn’t know what was inside.
“Didn’t we back it up on the seventh?”
“We backed up the copy we’d chosen—the one we normally use.”
She went to Junzi to open the drawer. When she took out the test USB drive, the shallow box was still tucked under her arm, and her fingertip had pressed a white mark into the edge of the old label.
The designated backup on the USB drive could be read in full, matching the verification record from December 7. Ye Yan compared the two locations, but those names from the old directory were not on the USB drive.
Staring at the gaps on the screen, Xiaoyezi remembered how, whenever she used to hear “It’s backed up,” she’d mentally included the whole box in the backup.
On the testing machine’s own drive, Ye Yan created another temporary location and tried copying the file from the original drive in read-only mode.
The progress bar moved for a while, then slowed.
Xiaoyezi carried both bowls to the corner of the table. She hadn’t even unwrapped her chopsticks. Ye Yan ate a couple of bites, set down his bowl, and went to answer a call from a customer.
“Three o’clock, got it. I’ll test it when it gets here.”
He kept it brief. When he came back, he glanced first at the machine waiting to be tested beside him. Xiaoyezi pulled out his chair for him. He sat down, his shoulder brushing hers, then immediately leaned toward the screen.
The copy stopped.
The read error occurred in the same section he’d just noted. A partially read file remained in the temporary location. Ye Yan marked it in the notes: “Incomplete. Unusable.”
“What if we try again?” Xiaoyezi said.
Ye Yan didn’t answer. He went to check the error log. She stood up, and the chair legs scraped against the floor, louder than she’d expected.
“What about another way? Can’t some things be repaired—”
She didn’t finish. Panic had already taken hold.
That broken, on-and-off story from her childhood surfaced again: Aunt Lan had come over, and Dad had formatted the hard drive. Even now, she didn’t know what had really happened back then, but her mind had already linked the drive in front of her to that story. She even wanted to stop his hand as it reached for the keyboard.
Ye Yan paused when she touched him, his hand still hovering over the edge of the desk.
“Xiaoyezi, what do you want me to do?”
She looked at her father. He had dark circles of fatigue under his eyes. His food had gone cold, and the machine he had to deliver that afternoon was still behind him.
She had no answer.
“I haven’t read this file in full. We haven’t seen what’s in it, either,” Ye Yan said. “Are you sure you want me to write to the original drive to repair it?”
She slowly drew her hand back.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know what’s in there.”
Ye Yan copied down the visible directory paths and today’s failure record, then exited, shut down, and disconnected the original drive’s power. She helped him unplug the cable, winding it up very slowly. Once it was coiled, there was no reason for him to stay.
“Let’s not power this up again for now,” he said. “That doesn’t mean everything’s gone. We’ll have to figure out another way to read it next time. We can’t keep trying the same thing we tried today.”
She opened the antistatic bag, but its mouth folded in on itself. Ye Yan held the drive while she fixed it. Seeing her fingertips turn white, he reached over and nudged the chair near the door a little farther in. A draft slipped through the gap under the door, blowing across the spot where she’d been sitting.
“If your hands are cold, don’t touch anything underneath.”
She nodded and took the drive once it was packed. Ye Yan checked that the bag’s opening wasn’t pinched shut, then turned to head over to the customer. She held the shallow box for a few seconds before placing the paper label on top: Original drive—do not power up again for now. The failure record was attached beneath it, beside the old bag of screws.
The USB drive was locked back in the drawer.
Xiaoyezi still wanted to ask him to sit with her a little longer, even if they did nothing—just not to rush off and fix another machine. But Junzi had already gone over to the testing bench and picked up the customer’s collection slip.
“Is the three o’clock machine tested yet?”
Ye Yan glanced at the clock. It was already past two. He didn’t say it was done.
Junzi stood there without moving, the collection slip in his hand. Last time, he’d already had to apologize profusely after pushing back an ordinary customer’s appointment. This time, the customer had called the shop again.
“Don’t wait until they get here to tell them,” he said.
Xiaoyezi picked up the phone and had only dialed half the number when the customer came in, carrying an empty bag.
“I came early because I was worried about traffic.”
Junzi first ushered the customer to the counter. Xiaoyezi followed and explained that the final test wasn’t finished, so they couldn’t hand it over at the scheduled time today. The customer glanced at the old drive on the table, then at her.
“I rearranged my plans at noon. If you couldn’t have it ready by three, you should’ve told me sooner.”
She apologized, but her voice was too quiet at first, so she had to say it again. The customer refused to sit down, pulled the bag closer to their arm, and asked whether they could take it home tonight after all.
Wu Chunhua had just come back from outside. Hearing this, she didn’t promise anything on their behalf. She went over to ask Ye Yan how much longer he needed, then came back and negotiated with the customer, moving the collection time to ten the next morning. They would test it first, then let the customer take it away.
“I have to make a special trip back tomorrow morning?”
“Yes. We’ve wasted your time today. We didn’t plan things properly,” Xiaoyezi said.
The customer checked the revised time on the slip, left their phone number, and walked out with the empty bag. Junzi followed them to the door and said he’d work on the machine that night, so they wouldn’t have to wait when they came in the morning. When he came back, he didn’t scold anyone. He moved the chair away from the testing bench and turned the computer case Ye Yan still had to test around.
“Come over. I’ll hook it up first.”
Wu Chunhua draped her coat over the back of a chair and came over to stand beside her. She’d spoken steadily to the customer, but now she rubbed her temples and fell silent for a long while.
“All the way back, I was thinking I’d finally get to reconcile my own paperwork,” she said quietly. “Then I walk in and there’s someone waiting to collect a machine again.”
She took out the notebook she carried with her, set it by the edge of the table, flipped through a couple of pages, then closed it. The food had gone cold, and the testing bench couldn’t be borrowed anymore. She had no choice but to stand there and move her half-finished cup of tea farther in, so it wouldn’t get knocked over while they were handling the machine. Xiaoyezi wanted to tell her to wait a little, but from the other end of the shop she heard Ye Yan plug the machine in.
Xiaoyezi turned the new paper label around so Wu Chunhua could see it. Wu Chunhua’s finger stopped beside the words “paperwork.” She asked when it had been put in there.
“We still don’t know. Today, we only saw the names.”
Wu Chunhua put the paper back in the box and smoothed down one corner that had curled up. At the other end of the shop, Ye Yan was already crouched beside the customer’s machine, asking her to pass him a cable.
Xiaoyezi answered and set the shallow box safely back inside the counter. As she carried the cable over, she moved away the noodles her father hadn’t finished, clearing space for his arm.