He lived by the Peng Zu prohibitions from the age of thirty-two. Which days not to open the store, which days not to plant, which days not to travel. Not one missed.
Twenty years without anything going wrong.
In March of the year he turned fifty-two he opened the almanac to that day's page and there was an extra line under the printed text. Handwritten, blue ballpoint, the ink fresh enough to smudge under his thumb.
It read: today, do not open boxes.
There is no such line in the Peng Zu set.
The next day it had changed: today, do not meet anyone coming from the east.
He began photographing it, one a day, into his phone.
Every line was a prohibition for that day and not one was from the original set. Small handwriting, squeezed into the white space under the print.
On the thirtieth day it read: today, do not turn the pages of this book.
He shut it, put it in a drawer and locked it.
In the morning the drawer was open, the book was on the desk, open at that page, and a new line stood under yesterday's: it was turned yesterday.
He carried down twenty years of almanacs from the loft, one a year, and turned every one of them to the same date.
There is a handwritten line under the print in every one. Twenty years, twenty sentences. The same hand throughout.
He sat with his own accounts book open beside them for half an hour, comparing.
It is his writing.