Chapter 276 - 160: Shen Lan
「Mid-January.」
The third floor of the old library at Keda University, in the foreign periodicals room.
The heating pipes in this day and age were always uneven. The first and second floors were hot enough to make you sweat, but by the time the heat reached the third floor, it had mostly dissipated.
The outer section of the periodicals room was a large, open area. Dozens of dark green, sheet-metal shelves were arranged in a disorderly fashion, packed densely with foreign journals collected since the 1970s and 80s.
At the far eastern end of the room was a small, partitioned-off office. It wasn’t large, less than a hundred square feet, but it had its own air conditioner.
The unit was gently blowing warm air downward.
Su Wei sat at her desk. On it was a computer, its tower humming steadily.
The light from the monitor illuminated her face.
The screen was filled with dense matrix data and probability models. Every now and then, she would give the left mouse button a soft click.
To her left sat a thermos, its lid half-open, letting steam escape.
According to the university’s holiday schedule, undergraduates were officially allowed to leave for break starting tomorrow.
Most students had already headed to the train station after their last exam this afternoon.
Su Wei had bought a ticket for the "green-skinned" slow train, leaving the morning after next. She planned to use this last day and a half to finish running her probability model and, while she was at it, secure her full attendance bonus for the month.
Two hundred yuan. For her, that was a sum she couldn’t afford to just give up.
Suddenly, a noise came from outside the office door.
THUD.
It was the sound of a heavy, hardcover book being slammed onto a metal shelf.
Su Wei’s hand, holding the mouse, paused.
Few people ever came to the periodicals room, especially on the last day of final exams.
Aside from a few old professors doing specific historical data regression, even graduate students couldn’t be bothered to look through these dated foreign journals.
THUD.
Another one. This time, it was accompanied by the faint rattling of the metal shelf being struck.
This was followed by the sound of pages being flipped rapidly. The friction of the paper was loud, and she could tell the person’s movements were rough, tinged with obvious impatience.
Su Wei’s gaze shifted from the computer screen. She turned her head to look outside the door.
The light in the outer aisles was dim, the dozens of shelves blocking her view like a maze.
The sound was coming from the Finance and Economics section, to the left of the entrance.
She frowned slightly.
Over the past six months, in order to earn that clerical bonus, she had spent three whole months organizing and archiving the tens of thousands of dust-covered foreign journals in the outer room, one by one.
She had built a complete coordinate system in her head: where every book was, which ones had torn covers, which were missing pages.
The way the person outside was flipping through books didn’t sound like they were looking for information. It sounded more like they were trying to dismantle her shelves.
Su Wei let go of the mouse, pushed open the office door, and walked out.
The moment she left the air-conditioned room, the dry, cold air enveloped her.
Su Wei didn’t go back for a coat. Carrying her thermos, she lightened her steps and walked down the aisle between two rows of shelves, heading toward the sound.
She stopped when she reached the fifth row of shelves.
From behind a row of half-height book carts, she saw the person flipping through the books.
It was a woman.
She looked to be in her late thirties, maybe forty. Her hair was simply tied up with a black claw clip, but a few loose strands had fallen out, giving her a slightly disheveled look.
She wore a well-tailored khaki trench coat and a pair of black, mid-heel leather shoes. In this era, her attire was conspicuous on the Keda campus; she looked more like a corporate executive from a high-end office building in a major city.
The woman’s hands were smudged with dust. She was standing before a shelf labeled "1990-1995 Finance," holding a heavy volume of the *Journal of Finance*.
She flipped through the book with incredible speed, her eyes scanning the table of contents before jumping directly to the last few dozen pages.
After looking for two seconds, she slammed the book shut.
SNAP.
She shoved the green hardcover back onto the shelf. She used so much force that the adjacent books were knocked askew.
The woman paid no mind to the crooked books. Her gaze darted across the shelf, and she reached out to pull down another volume, once again flipping it open quickly.
’How can it be missing...’
The woman’s voice was low, laced with clear annoyance and confusion.
She muttered to herself as she flipped through the pages.
’The index clearly stated this issue has the data appendix...’
She reached the end, slammed the book shut again, and shoved it back.
Her movements were even rougher than before.
Su Wei stood in the aisle, watching her quietly.
The woman seemed completely lost in her own frustration, utterly oblivious to the young woman with a thermos standing just a few meters away.
She raised her wrist and glanced at the silver metal watch on it.
’Damn it...’
She cursed under her breath and reached for the next volume.
"You’re looking in the wrong place."
A calm, level voice broke the silence of the periodicals room.
The woman’s hand froze in mid-air.
She turned her head, her gaze following the sound.
Standing in the aisle was a young woman in a thin shirt, holding a thermos. Her face was pale, her expression placid.
The woman was taken aback for a moment, then pulled her hand back from the shelf.
"Are you the administrator here?"
She sized Su Wei up.
"More or less."
Su Wei replied.
The woman took a deep breath, suppressing the frustration in her voice.
"Young lady, is the archiving for these journals a mess?"
She pointed to the shelf in front of her.
"The index indicates that the raw data tables for the historical volatility of US stock options for the third quarter of ’94 should be appended to the September ’94 edition of the *Journal of Finance*. But I’ve gone through all the bound volumes for that half-year, and they’re all just main text. There’s no raw data appendix at the end."
Su Wei looked at her, her gaze falling on the shelf behind the woman.
The books, which had originally been neatly arranged by year and month, were now mostly shoved back in unevenly.
"The archives aren’t a mess," Su Wei said.
The woman frowned.
"If they’re not, then where’s the data?"
"That issue of the *Journal of Finance* wasn’t printed in its entirety."
Su Wei took a sip of hot water from her thermos. Her voice sounded exceptionally clear in the cold, dry air.
The woman’s frown deepened.
"Not printed in its entirety?"
"At the end of August 1994, the printing plants in Chicago went on strike."
Su Wei spoke unhurriedly, in the tone of someone stating an objective fact.
"To meet their publishing schedule, that month’s journals cut off the final thirty-plus pages of raw data charts. The copy you’re holding is a photocopy of the original edition, so it’s also incomplete."
The woman stood frozen, staring at Su Wei.
She was a little stunned.
She had been in this industry for many years.
She knew very well that American academic journals in the early nineties did occasionally have abridged printings due to strikes or paper shortages.
But this was an extremely obscure detail, something one would only discover by physically handling the books. It would absolutely not be noted in any modern electronic index.
’How does this girl in front of me, who looks like a freshman or sophomore at most, know this?’
"Then where is the complete data?" the woman asked.
Su Wei’s gaze went past the woman, toward another row of shelves to her right and rear.
"The complete corresponding data is in another cross-disciplinary journal in the field. For those few months, they shared a data source," Su Wei said.
The woman followed Su Wei’s gaze to the section for *Econometrica*.
"Which issue?" the woman asked.
"The November 1994 issue, Appendix B at the very end."
Su Wei replied.
The woman wasted no time. She immediately turned and, her heels clicking, walked over to the *Econometrica* shelf.
Her eyes scanned the year labels on the spines, moving from 1990 all the way to 1994.
Then she stopped.
She pulled out all the volumes from the second half of 1994 and glanced at them.
"There’s no November issue."
The woman turned her head back to Su Wei, her tone now carrying a cold edge, as if she’d been played for a fool.
"After the October issue, it jumps straight to the bound volume for December."
Su Wei remained where she was, not having moved a single step.
"It’s there," she said.
"I looked. It’s not."
The woman placed the books in her hand back on the shelf with a thud.
Su Wei’s fingers, wrapped around her thermos, tapped lightly against its side.
"A few months ago, an old employee in the university bindery was about to retire. His eyesight was failing."
Su Wei’s voice was as steady as an emotionless announcer.
The woman stared at her, not understanding why she had suddenly brought up an employee from the bindery.
"While he was putting the hardcover bindings on the foreign journals, he put a 1995 cover on the November 1994 issue of *Econometrica*."
Su Wei looked into the woman’s eyes.
"The gold foil lettering on the spine says 1995, but the pages inside are from November 1994."
The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
The woman stared at Su Wei for a full five seconds.
Then, without a word, she turned and walked toward the 1995 section.
"Third row."
Su Wei called out from behind her.
The woman’s steps halted in front of the third row of shelves.
"Fourth column."
Su Wei continued giving the coordinates.
The woman’s gaze locked onto the fourth column. All the spines here were dark blue.
"Bottom shelf."
Su Wei said.
The woman bent down.
"The corner on the right. That one’s blue cover is a shade lighter than the others."
The woman squatted on the floor, reached into the bottom shelf, and felt for a heavy hardcover book in the right-hand corner.
She pulled it out.
The gold-stamped year on the spine read: 1995.
She placed the book on her lap and opened the hardcover.
On the title page, printed in bold black letters, were the words: *Econometrica*, November 1994.
The woman’s breath caught.
She flipped rapidly toward the back, pages flying past her fingers, until she reached the very end.
Appendix A.
Appendix B.
Her eyes fell on the data tables in Appendix B.
A dense matrix of numbers.
It was the very same raw data on historical US stock option volatility that her team of graduate students couldn’t find for the life of them, and that she herself had failed to locate after two hours of searching.
Found it.
The woman stared at the numbers for a moment.
"Appendix B, Table Four."
Su Wei’s voice came again from the aisle.
The woman looked up.
"Third row, second column."
From a dozen meters away, Su Wei watched the woman squatting on the floor.
"That constant term. The typesetter back then missed a decimal point."
The woman immediately looked down, her gaze sweeping over Table Four like a searchlight, landing on the third row, second column.
The data in that cell read:
0.45.
"Based on the volatility derivation formula in the surrounding context, the value in that position should be forty-five thousandths."
Su Wei said calmly.
"It’s missing a decimal point. It should be 0.045. Remember to correct it when you’re cleaning the data, or the results from your quantitative model will be off by at least three percentage points."
The woman stared at the 0.45 on the page.
As someone in quantitative finance, she only needed to mentally plug this constant into the Black-Scholes option pricing model to know instantly whether Su Wei was right or wrong.
If it were 0.45, it would imply a market volatility high enough to bankrupt all of Wall Street.
Only 0.045 was consistent with the actual market conditions of the third quarter of ’94.
The woman slowly closed the blue hardcover book.
The closing pages created a faint current of air, stirring up some of the dust that had settled on the cover. The motes tumbled slowly in the cold light filtering through the window.
The woman didn’t stand up.
She remained squatting there, one hand resting on the book’s cover, and turned her head to look again at Su Wei in the aisle.
The way she looked at Su Wei had changed completely.
If before she had seen Su Wei as just an ordinary library assistant...
...now, she was looking at her like a long-starving prospector who had just spotted a massive gold nugget amidst a pile of scrap metal.
She stood up, dusted off the hem of her trench coat, and walked toward Su Wei, the misbound book in her hand.
Her high heels made a crisp CLICK-CLACK sound on the floor.
She stopped less than a meter from Su Wei.
"I’m a visiting professor at the business school, Shen Lan."