Yan met Bai at the edge of the market lane before the afternoon bell. The courier had a stack of wrapping slips under one arm and a narrow parcel tucked against his ribs.
“I want to change our arrangement,” Yan said.
Bai stopped. “You want a refund?”
“No. I want you to bring only rejected pills with intact labels. The source and the listed effects must still be readable.”
Bai’s expression turned theatrical. “You take all the profit out of my work. A mysterious jar can fetch three times what a labeled one does.”
“It can also be anything.”
“Anything could be valuable.”
“Anything could be poison.”
“Now you’re making the trade sound respectable.”
“I’ll pay more for a clear source.”
Bai rubbed his thumb along the edge of the slips. “How much more?”
“Enough to cover your time at the storehouse. Not enough to make a damaged label worth selling.”
“That is not a number.”
“I’ll pay a small fee to look at the record and decide. If the label is intact and the stock is logged, we settle a price. If it’s damaged or the source is missing, I won’t buy it.”
Bai considered the offer. “You really do want to make this a trade with rules.”
“I want to know what I’m testing.”
“And you’ll keep all the warnings?”
“In large letters.”
Bai laughed. “Fine. I’ll bring you what I can trace. But I choose the route, and you pay the courier fee even if you refuse a bad parcel.”
“Agreed.”
They walked past the stalls toward a table of used paper goods. An old seller had a basket of threadbare ledgers, blank account leaves, and notebooks with water-stained covers. Yan looked through them without touching the damp edges. Most pages had been written on or ripped out. One thin notebook had a cracked blue cover and enough clean leaves to hold several dozen entries.
“How much?” Yan asked.
The seller named a price close to what Yan had earned for a full half shift. Bai leaned over his shoulder.
“That book’s spine is split,” Bai said. “The first ten leaves are swollen. Offer half.”
The seller tapped the table. “Then buy a different one.”
Yan opened the notebook to the dry section. The binding held if he turned each page slowly. “Half is fair for the clean leaves.”
“You can have it for two thirds.”
“Half, and I’ll take the loose paper scraps too.”
The seller gave him a doubtful look. “You want rubbish?”
“I can use the clean backs.”
The seller shrugged and accepted. Yan counted the coins into his hand. The seller counted them again before sliding over the notebook and a folded packet of scraps.
Bai pointed at the cover. “The reject map.”
“It’s a notebook.”
“A notebook with a purpose. That’s a map.”
“It maps nothing.”
“Then name it something dull.”
Yan opened to the first dry page. “Batch. Ingredients. Intended benefit. Adverse effect. Dose. Observed result. Source.”
“Too many columns.”
“Every one matters.”
“Where do you put whether it tastes awful?”
“Notes.”
Bai leaned in. “You’ll need a place for the price.”
“That’s for your ledger.”
“My ledger has a place for the price. Yours should have a place for the courier who brought it.”
Yan added a final column for witness and source. Bai took the pencil from him and wrote the title in a bold hand across the top: REJECT MAP.
Yan looked at it. “The warnings need to be larger than the title.”
Bai handed him the pencil. Yan wrote READ THE LABEL beneath the title, then boxed it twice.
Their first entry was the spirit-rice pill. Yan copied the batch number from his half of the wrapper. The intended effect was a small qi gain. The adverse effect was nausea. Under observed result, he wrote that the qi remained and the nausea settled into a comfortable stomach. He included the dose time and Bai’s name as witness.
Bai read over his shoulder. “You could write that it was safe.”
“I won’t.”
“You didn’t collapse.”
“That only tells us what happened to me once.”
“And if the next person wants to know whether it’s safe?”
“He needs his own warning.” Yan turned to the second page. “We have one quarter-dose record for the warming pill. The heat remained. My hands trembled briefly, then steadied. The result is still one observation.”
Bai grinned. “At this rate, the notebook won’t persuade anyone to buy.”
“It’s not a sales notice.”
“That’s why your records are honest and your business is poor.”
At the lane entrance, a guild clerk recognized Bai’s courier badge. He glanced at the blank notebook, then the bundle of slips.
“Are you diverting rejected stock to a laborer?”
“I’m selling from the lot already marked for disposal,” Bai said. “Every parcel is logged.”
The clerk held out his hand. “Show me the tags.”
Bai produced the receipt and the batch wrapper from the spirit-rice pill. Yan kept his half of the wrapper open beside the notebook so the number could be compared. The clerk read the rejection mark and followed the number to the receipt.
“This is one dose from a returned jar,” the clerk said. “The sale is logged. There’s no rule against it.”
“I don’t want the whole jar,” Yan said. “Only a labeled dose when the source and effects are clear.”
“Then don’t take a dose from a damaged container.” The clerk returned the wrapper to Bai. “I have no reason to stop the trade as described. Keep a copy of each receipt in case someone asks where it went.”
Bai handed him one duplicate. The clerk checked the ink and tucked it into his book. Yan watched him compare the number rather than the buyer’s clothes. A clean record did not make a laborer powerful, but it could prevent a lawful sale from being treated as a hidden stash.
When the clerk had gone, Bai lowered his voice. “You see? A clear label protects a small trade better than a secret bargain.”
“It protects the buyer too.”
“Sometimes the same paper protects both.”
They stood at the end of the market table and tallied the day’s spending. Yan paid Bai for the notebook and the courier’s time. Bai counted the coins once, then again, and returned one.
“You overpaid.”
“I counted correctly.”
“You gave me one too many.”
Bai put the coin in Yan’s palm and closed his fingers over it. “I want repeat customers, not a reputation for short measures.”
Yan tucked it away. “I’ll remember.”
Bai opened the narrow parcel against his chest. It held two labeled pills from a logged guild stockroom: a weak qi tablet and a warming pellet. The wrappers were intact, and the listed effects and cautions were legible. Yan checked both batch numbers against the courier slips, then read the labels aloud while Bai followed along. They were new batches, not the spirit-rice pill or the quarter-dose warming pill he had already tested.
“I’ll pay for these,” Yan said. “I’ll record the results separately. I’m not promising to take either one today.”
“I’d be disappointed if you did. You’d have no reason to buy a notebook.”
They settled the price for the two pills and the courier fee. Bai gave him a receipt with both batch numbers. Yan folded it inside the back cover and put the pills away without opening them.
The notebook’s blank pages remained stiff beneath the cover. Yan put the wrapper half beside the first entry and the receipt behind it. Bai slung the remaining parcels over his shoulder and returned to the lane. Their bargain still had a price, but Bai had given back the extra coin without being asked. Yan left the market with a little more trust and no less caution.