He worked the registration desk at the crematorium for twenty years. The books are standard issue, hard covers, twenty-four ruled lines a page: name, date, furnace number, next of kin's signature.
There is one line that will not take ink. Page eleven, line seven, in every book.
The pen bleeds out into the paper, or the cartridge chooses that moment to run dry, or the writing goes faint overnight.
He changed pens. He changed paper. He raised it with the printer and they ran a new batch. Same line.
Old Zhang, who did thirty years, said everyone in the trade has one. Leave it. Don't push it.
On the day he retired he cleared out the archive room and stacked twenty years of books on the desk. Twenty of them.
He turned each one to page eleven.
There was writing in the slot now. Twenty books, twenty names, all of them his. The dates ran from twenty years ago to this year.
The date in the last book was tomorrow.