Chapter 396 - 345: Mai Mingle: Strange Weirdo, Familiar Weirdo, Acquaintance

Chapter 396: Chapter 345: Mai Mingle: Strange Weirdo, Familiar Weirdo, Acquaintance

...Who on earth decided to turn an old mental hospital into a police station?

Mai Mingle casually averted her gaze. When she looked back, she saw a pair of yellowish eyes still floating at the edge of the floor in the distance, staring at her.

The top of the person’s head was hidden by the cell’s ceiling, and their face was obscured by the lobby floor, leaving just a pair of teary, jaundiced eyes visible. Mai Mingle glanced around and realized that if any of the cells were occupied, a pair of peeping eyes would appear from the edge of the police station’s first-floor lobby.

It was a truly unsettling architectural design.

Maybe it was the psychological effect of being in a former mental hospital, but she felt her own sanity starting to fray at the edges.

In the brightly lit areas, the carpets and walls had a fuzzy, white sheen, giving one the sense of a desperate cover-up—as if something had been frantically scrubbed away and everyone was now pretending nothing had happened.

The areas around the pit-like cells still had the original dark brown walls of the mental hospital. The light couldn’t penetrate the sunken, gloomy darkness, which resembled a hollow, empty gumline after all the teeth had been pulled.

A fair number of people were locked up in the cells in twos and threes. From somewhere out of Mai Mingle’s sight, a voice was calling out, over and over: "Momma. Momma. Come quick. Momma. Oh. Whoa. Mom. What is this? Come on, come take a look."

Even when an inmate or an officer would occasionally roar, "Stop yelling, shut up!" the person paid no mind and continued— "Ah. Oh no, it really came. Uh oh. This is bad."

...If she closed her eyes, it was as if this place had never been converted into a police station and was still a mental hospital.

’Has the Central Police Station always been like this?’

She knew a significant portion of the homeless population suffered from mental illness. ’Could it be that the Central Police Station just happened to round up a few homeless people today?’

Her mental distress wasn’t just because of the architecture or the people in the cells.

Mai Mingle sat on the waiting bench and glanced at a man reporting a case at a nearby officer’s desk. After a couple of seconds, she snuck another look.

From several meters away, she could faintly hear the man’s voice.

"I don’t know her," he said, his face stern. "I’ve never seen her before in my life."

It was hard not to look at him.

"...But she insists that you’re her husband, that you changed the locks and won’t let her in." The female officer taking the report was young and spoke politely enough.

"I have no idea. She must be crazy. I’ve never seen her in my life."

"She has a driver’s license with the same address as your house, and you share the same last name," the officer reminded him with strained patience.

"It’s not uncommon for people to have the same name. And can’t she register whatever address she wants? I told you, I don’t know her. You’re trying to force me to take a strange woman home. You might not be worried about her safety, but I’m worried about mine."

The female officer heaved a long sigh, opened a file on her desk, and said, "She described the layout of your home’s interior. She also said there’s a photo of the two of you on your bedroom wall and a marriage certificate in the filing cabinet. She said we could call your parents or colleagues to confirm... Sir, you should know that if we go to your residence and do in fact find this evidence, you will be held responsible for obstructing a police investigation."

"I don’t have parents," the man scoffed. "See? She’s clearly a crazy stalker. Her story’s already falling apart. You don’t have a search warrant, do you? So don’t talk about coming to my home."

The female officer stared at him for a second.

The two of them continued to bicker for a while, but a police officer nearby answered the phone in a booming voice, and Mai Mingle couldn’t hear what they said after that.

The female officer was certainly experienced, though, to be able to maintain a straight face while dealing with that man. Setting aside whether he truly had a wife, not once during the entire conversation did she ask him, "What are you doing with your hands?"

For the several minutes Mai Mingle had been sitting there, the man’s hands had been in bloom for just as long.

His sleeves were empty; he had pulled his arms back into his shirt and raised his hands at his chest. His hands emerged from inside his collar, palms pressed together at the base, fingers splayed wide to the sides, forming a "flower" under his chin.

This "hand-flower" remained motionless, lightly cupping his face. Whether he was sneering, glaring, or explaining, his hands stayed bloomed inside his collar.

’...Why?’

’What in the world is he doing?’

Mai Mingle found it impossible not to steal glance after glance at him, and she couldn’t help but admire the female officer’s composure. ’Has this man suddenly had some kind of mental breakdown? Is that why he’s not recognizing his wife and acting so strangely?’

After finally getting rid of the man, the female officer sat for a moment, annoyed and weary, before getting up and calling Mai Mingle over. "Please, come here."

After Mai Mingle sat down, the officer looked her up and down and seemed to relax slightly. "What can I help you with?"

"That man just now..."

"Blackmoor City has no shortage of weirdos. What’s your business?"

"My friend is missing," she said, pulling the picture of Ivan that Hai Luwei had printed for her from her bag.

’No, he said this shouldn’t be called a ’photo’—he said he described it to an AI, and the AI drew it for him.’ Mai Mingle now understood the principle behind it. It was just an intelligent robot, something she’d seen in sci-fi movies before.

The portrait had an oily brushstroke style. The skin and hair glistened with a slick, slimy feel that was rather unpleasant to look at. But the facial features and shape were a seventy or eighty percent match for Ivan.

’This should be good enough, right?’

"This is an AI portrait," the officer recognized it at a glance. "Isn’t he your friend? You don’t have a photo of him?"

"He... he doesn’t like having his picture taken."

"You young people these days, there are still some who don’t like photos?"

Mai Mingle was taken aback. She had looked at the officer and guessed she was in her early forties at most, in the prime of her life. Now, being called one of "you young people" made her suddenly recall the disconnect between herself and the outside world.

The feeling was like walking along and suddenly missing a step, stepping on air.

She was terrified that the next time she missed a step, she would be jolted awake from her youthful dream.

"He’s rather introverted..."

"His parents don’t have a photo either?" the officer asked as she took the portrait, clicking her mouse a few times while looking at the screen.

"I don’t know his parents," Mai Mingle said, already prepared. "He was staying at my place, but he suddenly disappeared."

Before asking for details, the officer went through the routine questions for her personal information. Mai Mingle answered them all truthfully. As for whether the police would later investigate her and discover she was actually an eighty-six-year-old woman, she decided she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

To live a long life, one had to learn to focus on the big picture and let the little things go. If you worried and stressed about every little thing that hadn’t happened yet, you wouldn’t easily make it to eighty-six.

As the female officer was CLACK-CLACK-CLACKING away, inputting the information into the computer, the sturdy police officer next to her happened to take another call.

"Ma’am, please slow down and speak clearly," the sturdy officer said. "You’re saying you saw a naked man?"

Mai Mingle was only human; her ears perked up immediately. Whose wouldn’t?

The sturdy officer’s next sentence made her ears practically stretch to his desk.

"Huh? What? Are you sure?... He was completely bare, no hair, and no... uh, no genitals?"

Even the female officer taking the report stopped what she was doing and stared blankly at the officer on the phone along with Mai Mingle.

"Okay, okay, I understand. You’re absolutely sure you didn’t see wrong... Oh, he spoke to you. What did he say?"

The officer seemed dumbfounded himself, able only to repeat what he was told.

"He told you, ’I cheated death. An experience this precious is sure to be worth a great fortune. Would you like to go on a date with me? If you do well, I’ll reward you by making you my wife’—is that really what he said?"

The female officer snorted and turned her attention back to Mai Mingle.

"What did I tell you? In all my years on the force, I’ve seen plenty of weirdos."

She placed the AI picture on the desk and looked at her computer, frowning. "Hmm... You said his name is Ivan Weston? Are you sure that name is correct?"

Mai Mingle’s heart skipped a beat, but she could only say, "That’s right."

"When did he go missing?"

She’d heard you had to wait 24 hours to file a missing person report, and on the surface, Ivan was a capable adult male... so Mai Mingle had to stretch the timeline as much as possible. "It’s been almost two days."

She had already considered that if the police didn’t take her report seriously, she would have to embellish the story to make it sound more severe. But she hadn’t expected the female officer’s lips to tighten into a thin line. She gave Mai Mingle a heavy look, told her to wait, and immediately picked up the phone.

’...What’s going on?’

Mai Mingle couldn’t understand it, so she could only wait for the call to connect.

Nearby, the sturdy police officer was still gathering information. "Where did you see him?... Oh, the public housing construction site... so that’s in the Kaine Street area?"

The female officer’s call connected at the same time, but she lowered her head and spoke in a very soft, rapid voice, "Someone’s here to file a report. Says Ivan Weston disappeared from her house two days ago."

’Do the police already know who Ivan is? Does he have a criminal record?’

Mai Mingle’s attention was split in two: on one side, the female officer hung up and turned to ask her for more details; on the other, the sturdy officer said something into his phone.

"Huh? The Lower City District? Didn’t you say the public housing construction site?" the sturdy male officer asked into the phone. "The construction site is on Kaine Street. Ma’am, you must be mistaken..."

"Describe the clothes he was wearing before he disappeared," the female officer said.

Mai Mingle struggled to explain the faint, strange feeling in her heart—it was as if something was happening that she didn’t know about. Her arrival had engaged the gears, and now they were slowly starting to turn.

She answered the question nonchalantly and gave an embarrassed smile.

"I’m sorry, but could you tell me where the restroom is? I’ll be right back."

"I can take you,"

A woman’s voice suddenly sounded from behind her.

Mai Mingle turned her head and saw a middle-aged woman with dark skin and a long, narrow face, her appearance sharp and capable. The uniform she wore seemed to indicate a high rank.

"Chief," the female officer greeted her.