The Hidden Seventeenth Name
Version: the build of 25 October 2026 and later. The old “merge / last page of Mother’s notebook / network” version is gone. Spoilers: the four choices in chapter 7, chapter 8 and the fourth ending. How it was checked: Chapter 8’s evidence, puzzle and ending all come from in-game writing; all four endings are reachable.
Chapter 7: don’t press broadcast yet
The chapter 7 question has four choices:
- Air the master → ending “The Roll Call”
- Erase the master → ending “Blank Tape”
- Give it to the families → ending “The Names Go Home”
- Find the seventeenth name → hidden chapter 8
The first three end the run immediately. Only the fourth advances to chapter 8. You do not have to restart the whole game to reread an ending — the archive keeps what you have received — but to see the hidden ending you must walk back to chapter 7 and pick the fourth choice.
Chapter 8: the three pieces of evidence
On the Chapter 8: The Seventeenth Name screen, examine these three:
- Your sister’s call — the end of Mother’s unlabelled microcassette. Your sister asks, “Did you put my name on the list?” Mother says, “I did. You’re number seventeen.” After three seconds of silence, a name is pressed very low.
- The ferry duty phone — you dial the number in the 1998 register. The old man says the boat went back that night: “A name on the list meant I had to go back. We found one person. A girl, holding a station reception card.”
- Broadcast at 03:12 — patch the microcassette into the console, wait for 03:12, and read only the seventeenth name.
The puzzle appears after all three.
Why the answer is Lin He
The seventeenth name is not Mother, and not Chen Shouyi, the ferry duty man:
- The listener letter (16 September 1998) says: “My daughter was at the ferry. Her name is Lin He. You never read her.”
- The ferry register’s last line: “Lin He, sixteen, waiting for boat.” No “boarded,” no “evacuated.”
- On the microcassette, Mother says “You’re number seventeen” to your sister.
Three records, one name: Lin He. Accepted: Lin He / lin he / 林禾.
Wrong answers narrow the range:
Lin Suyun: “That’s Mother. The seventeenth name is her daughter—your sister.”Chen Shouyi: “Chen Shouyi is the ferry duty man, the sixteenth name.”- Anything else: “The letter, the ferry register and your sister’s call all carry the same name.”
What happens in this ending
You read none of the sixteen names. You read only the seventeenth. No one in town hears it, but the phone in the ferry duty room rings. The old man answers, is silent a long time, and says the boat went back that night; they found one person. You ask what the girl said. He says:
“She asked whether the lady on the radio ever got home.”
You don’t answer. You leave the master running empty in the machine. Outside, dawn is coming, and the tide has pulled far away.
The ending does not bring your sister back, and it does not make the town remember. It does one thing: a name cut from the master is finally read, twenty-eight years later. Mother did not cut it out to forget it. She cut it out to leave it to someone who could carry it.
How it differs from the other three
- The Roll Call: publish the sixteen names; Mother returns to the roster; the town has to face that night.
- Blank Tape: erase the master; only you remember that she read it; the public record never changes.
- The Names Go Home: copy the master for the sixteen families; the truth stays private; the town keeps its silence.
- The Seventeenth Name: neither publish nor erase; read only the one name that was cut. The cost is that you know the boat went back, and Mother died not knowing.
There is no bad ending. The hidden ending is not the “best” one; it simply carries the private motive to the last step. You are not settling a score for the town. You are finishing a sentence for your mother.
Before you go for it
- Collect all eight night intercepts. They do not change the branch, but all eight add the same REC 701 coda after every ending: a blank tape in the bottom drawer, exactly twenty-eight years long, on which you finally record your own name.
- Reread Mother’s letter and the listener’s letter in the archive. The hidden ending rests on the contrast between two mothers: one explaining why she put her daughter last, one asking whether the host simply missed her. Neither is a puzzle hint, but both change how “the seventeenth” lands.
How this is checked
Both Chinese and English were walked from the chapter 7 choice to this ending; all four endings are reachable in both language builds. Nothing here uses the old merge/network version.