Thirty-Three Names. Thirty-Three Lives.

Xiaoyun taped a phone card inside her chemistry binder so she could call her grandmother from the hallway pay phone between labs, always at the same hour. In Guangdong, her grandmother kept the phone plugged in until 2011.

Daniel ran the loop around Beebe Lake every morning, even in the snow, and made everyone on his floor come at least once. His AIM away message the night he disappeared said only "library, back late." He kept a spreadsheet ranking medical schools by their proximity to good running trails.

Haoran taught himself English watching American hospital dramas, then decided he wanted the real thing. He mailed his parents a Cornell sweatshirt during his first week in Ithaca. His father wears it every year on Haoran's birthday.

Wei came to Cornell on a full scholarship, the first in his family to study abroad. His mother says he called home every Sunday without fail. He wanted to become a cardiologist and return to serve his home province. He never called on a Sunday again after October 14th.

Grace organized every holiday for the Yoon family from three time zones away, the loudest of three sisters and proud of it. She had just finished her last final of the semester and told her roommate she was going to walk home in the snow because she loved it. She had already picked out the med schools she would apply to, all of them within driving distance of her sisters.

Jianhao's little brother was eight when he left Hangzhou for Cornell, and they played Chinese chess over the phone, calling out moves from memory. He made the dean's list every semester and never once mentioned it at home. His brother is in medical school now, in his place.

Emily worked weekends at her parents' restaurant in Westminster and swore her hands still smelled like lemongrass through every organic chemistry lecture. She wanted to be a pediatrician because of her own childhood doctor, whose name she never forgot. She had promised her parents she'd open her practice close enough to keep working Sundays.

Ruoxi called Beijing every Friday night, when it was Saturday morning at home and her mother was making breakfast. Her first winter, she kept a jar of Ithaca snow in the dorm freezer because she had never seen snow before. The Friday calls stopped in November.

Minjun finished his military service before coming to Cornell, and he was older than his classmates, steadier, the one people went to the night before exams. He sent half of every stipend check home to Seoul. The last one arrived two days after he was reported missing.

Ming-Hua's father flew from Taipei three times trying to get answers from the Ithaca PD. Each time he was sent away with nothing. Ming-Hua had already been accepted to medical school. His acceptance letter arrived six days after he disappeared.

Wenqian pressed leaves from the gorge trails into her textbooks and mailed them home to Xi'an, one in every letter. Her mother has forty-one leaves. She keeps them in the order they arrived.

Albert grew up above his family's pharmacy in Kowloon and could read a prescription before he could ride a bike. He was the first person in his residence hall to learn everyone's name. He planned to come home after medical school and take over the counter his grandfather opened in 1962.

Yawen was nineteen, a freshman, barely halfway through her first year away from Shenzhen. She video-called her parents every night at eleven to say goodnight, and they pretended not to be waiting by the computer. On February 9th, they waited.

Yuki's English was still a work in progress, but her lab scores were always among the highest in the class. She was shy in lectures but relentless in the lab. Her advisor called her one of the most naturally gifted students he had ever taught. She was reported missing on a Tuesday.

Kenta reserved a practice room in Lincoln Hall every Thursday night to play piano, the one thing he kept for himself outside the pre-med grind. His teachers in Osaka had thought he would choose music. He chose medicine, and he was good at it. The Lincoln Hall sign-up sheet had his name on it for the week he disappeared.

His older sister had been rejected from Cornell years earlier, and she told Chia-Hao to apply anyway. When the acceptance came, he called Taichung and no one spoke for a full minute; they were all crying. His sister keeps his student ID card in her wallet.

Every weekend Xinyi shadowed at Cayuga Medical Center, twenty years old and already certain of the work she wanted. She kept a list on her laptop titled "first patients someday" with the names of everyone she had ever wanted to help, starting with her grandfather. The list was still open when her roommate came home.

Lei studied in the coffee shops downtown because the campus libraries made him nervous during exams, and he always took the last bus back up the hill. His parents flew in from Tianjin and stayed three months, walking the same streets every day with flyers. They still call the tip line every April.

Guangyu grew up in Harbin and told everyone that Ithaca winters were mild, which no one believed. He was the designated calm one in the group chat during exam season. His last message, sent the night he disappeared, was to a panicking freshman: “Sleep. It will look smaller in the morning.”

Kevin was a sophomore. He was 20 years old. He had only been at Cornell for a year and a half. When his little sister started college, their parents refused to let her go out of state. Kevin used to make her playlists. She still listens to them.

Rachel color-coded everything — her notes, her calendar, her little brother's college applications, which she managed from three thousand miles away. On the phone with her grandmother in Taipei she slid between three languages without ever noticing. Her brother got into Berkeley that spring; he says she filled out half the forms.

Two schoolteachers in Chengdu saved for eleven years to send their only child abroad. Tao tutored classmates in physics for free — his parents were teachers, he said, it was in the blood. They visited Ithaca once, for his orientation, and once more after.

Yifan learned to cook in his dorm's tiny shared kitchen because Suzhou food didn't exist in Ithaca, and by sophomore year half the floor showed up on Sunday nights. He wanted to practice rural medicine, the kind of care his grandparents never had. He had already mapped out which counties around Suzhou needed doctors most.

Hui Min's Singapore secondary school hung a banner with her name on it — their first student ever admitted to Cornell. She sang with an a cappella group that rehearsed in Barnes Hall and joked it was the only B-minus-proof hour of her week. Her school never took the banner down.

Sophia was not pre-med — she was biochem, one of only a handful of non-pre-med victims. Her lab partner of three years gave a statement to the press that went viral. She said, "Sophia was the reason I didn't drop out sophomore year. And now she's gone. And nobody is doing anything."

Junjie collected a stone from every place he had ever lived — Kunming, then Ithaca — and lined them along his windowsill in the order he found them. He was quiet in lecture and unstoppable in office hours. His roommate mailed the stones home to his mother, wrapped one by one.

Anqi lived off campus on Dryden Road her senior year, close enough to walk to her lab at midnight, which her mother in Qingdao begged her not to do. She had interviews scheduled at four medical schools. The first one was eleven days away.

Brandon grew up in his grandmother's house in the Sunset District and took the same photo with her every Lunar New Year, both holding oranges from her little potted tree. He was the friend who texted "home safe?" after every late library night. He had already bought her a plane ticket to see him graduate.

Zihan was twenty-four, finishing a post-bacc year to strengthen an already strong application, because he never left anything to chance. He had proposed to his girlfriend in Changsha over the summer; the wedding was planned for the year after graduation. She flew to Ithaca in November and stayed until the spring.

David was funny. Everyone says that first. He did impressions of his professors that had his whole dorm in tears. His roommate still keeps his half of the room exactly as David left it. He was studying for his MCATs the week he disappeared.

Jennifer was the kind of student who stayed late to help other people understand the material. Her study group still holds a candle vigil every year on the night she disappeared. She was three semesters from graduating. Her parents have not returned to work.

Pat worked the morning shift at Shortstop Deli on West State Street for eleven years. She knew everyone's order. She called every regular "hon." She was not a student. She was not pre-med. She was a 57-year-old woman who made good coffee and remembered your name, and the Cornell Chopper took her too. Her daughter said at the vigil: "My mom had nothing to do with any of this. She just lived here." That's all it took.

Michael was one of the few non-Asian victims, and his case drew extra scrutiny — some saw it as evidence the Chopper was evolving, expanding his targets. His dissertation was 80% complete. His advisor submitted it posthumously to the university. It was awarded honors.