Chapter 393 - 343: Mai Mingle: 30 Minutes, 30 Years, 26 Days

Chapter 393: Chapter 343: Mai Mingle: 30 Minutes, 30 Years, 26 Days

"...I had a very long dream yesterday," Mai Mingle said, choosing her words carefully.

Seeing that she wanted to talk, Lan Zhui walked over to turn down the volume on the TV before returning to the sofa and sitting down beside her.

"What dream?"

"I dreamed that we didn’t have any children, and you got... you got sick." She looked at Lan Zhui. "It was very serious."

Of course, Mai Mingle knew it wasn’t a dream.

She just couldn’t bring herself to tell Lan Zhui directly, "You’re dead," or "You’re an illusion." Even if he was a creation of the Nest, he was still Lan Zhui; at least in her eyes, he was.

That was why she was unwilling to be so blunt, not wanting to startle him or make him despondent.

After Lan Zhui’s death, Mai Mingle found herself compulsively, uncontrollably replaying that day in her mind.

She imagined Lan Zhui lying in his hospital bed, unable to make a sound, unable to move a muscle. He would watch Mai Mingle’s back as she feigned ignorance, his mouth opening again and again, struggling to exhale, hoping his wife would notice, that she would turn and look at him just once...

She had been so tired back then. And she had known.

If Mai Mingle didn’t respond, Lan Zhui had no other way in this world to even get a sip of water.

Perhaps the Nest wanted to give her a chance to atone.

"I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine." Lan Zhui paused, startled, then moved a little closer, his hands still resting on his knees. He soothed her, saying, "You can’t trust dreams... Don’t worry. How could I ever leave you?"

"I’m sorry," Mai Mingle said, forced to look away. If she kept her eyes busy, her tear ducts might be distracted.

"What’s there to be sorry for?" Lan Zhui gave a confused smile.

She turned her head back, studying him for a few moments.

Everything was just as she remembered, even the few soft, curling locks of hair behind his neck and in front of his ears that Lan Zhui would always subconsciously reach up to smooth away.

Mai Mingle didn’t know if she had ever truly felt romantic love in her life, but she loved him, just as she loved so many other things in the world.

"I’m doing great," Lan Zhui said, looking at the baby monitor. "With the two of you here, I’m not alone."

’If Lan Zhui were alive, he would surely think the same way.’

Mai Mingle thought of that disgusting baby and held her tongue. ’From this perspective, perhaps "baby Ivan" also had a reason for being that one could, at least, pinch their nose and endure.’

"We haven’t really talked in a long time," Mai Mingle said, swallowing against a hard lump in her throat. "I want to hear you talk about the last few years."

A wife who saw her husband every day shouldn’t need to say something like that, but Lan Zhui didn’t question her.

He leaned back compliantly on the sofa and began to speak in a soft, slow voice about his work, about their unplanned child, asking after Mai Mingle’s health... The old television, its volume turned low, dutifully played a program in the corner. Its black-and-white images flickered, casting shifting patterns of light and shadow across time.

This was her era, with its oceans and its gutters, her point of origin and her final destination.

The news of Nixon’s official resignation filled the screen; Vice President Ford took over, but few people talked about him. The new movie Jaws was a massive hit. As they were chatting, Lan Zhui suddenly suggested they go see it that weekend. Mai Mingle laughed and agreed—only then did she realize a whole year had passed.

When the Far East War ended, they both kept saying to each other, "They should’ve stopped fighting long ago," and "The soldiers should come home."

By the time Elvis Presley died, their black-and-white TV had been replaced with a color one. Mai Mingle pointed at the screen and cried out. Lan Zhui, who had just walked over with a glass of water, hurriedly sat down, spilling it all over his pants.

"How could he just die like that," Lan Zhui murmured. "He was so young. I love his songs."

In his memory, the radio played Elvis Presley’s songs for days on end. The music was like a ship on the waves, carrying them into the economic recession of the early eighties, and then carrying them out again.

At the time, they both thought the newly elected Reagan was great—handsome, charismatic, and inspiring hope. Mai Mingle knew that by the time his high-sounding words had lost their golden sheen and the consequences of his policies had buried a nation, she herself would be ancient, with little connection left to this world.

Yes, she never for a moment forgot that this was all an illusion created by the Nest.

Lan Zhui was living out the second half of his life that he never got to have.

She watched time flow through the apartment, day by day, for nearly half a century. The TV showed major world events, local store commercials, one TV series after another. She watched Lan Zhui’s movements slow, his body ache more frequently, his skin sag, and the curly hair by his ears turn white.

In the small apartment, thirty minutes passed for her, and thirty years passed for Lan Zhui.

"...I’ve gotten old, too," Lan Zhui said softly beside her. "You, on the other hand, haven’t changed a bit."

’That’s right. Because between the two of us, I’m the only one who survived.’

She was flesh and blood, a part of the real world; the Nest couldn’t touch her appearance. Even though she sometimes felt, in a daze, as if she had relived thirty years, her physical form was likely fixed at its peak by her "Extracellular Telomeres."

Of course, she wouldn’t say any of this out loud.

Mai Mingle looked at her aging husband, a version of him she had never seen before, and finally reached out. For the first time in thirty minutes—in thirty years—she gently patted the back of his hand.

"You haven’t changed either," she said softly. "You’re still as handsome as the day I first met you."

’If this first physical contact meant she had finally taken the bait, that she had been caught in the trap, she wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest. She was simply ready. She had to touch him, just a gentle touch, before he disappeared—even if it meant the curtain was about to be ripped away, revealing nothing but pitch-black disaster.’