Chapter 516: Mai Mingle: Nobody Waits, Someone Tracks

When no one was watching, Mai Mingle took one risk after another.

The last nineteen hours of her life were the only thing she had left to put on the gambling table.

The world isn’t fair. It always takes too much and gives too little. Mai Mingle had almost nothing left to bet, yet what she sought was still impossibly far away.

All she could do was return to the gambling table again and again with the same pitiful handful of chips.

Back then, as she wondered what was happening in the world outside the bus, she had gently reached out and pinched a corner of the “Mobile Seat” tag.

In the few seconds Mai Mingle waited for the consequences, it was as if her heart had forgotten to beat, her mind a complete blank. Only when sound and light gradually returned to her senses did she finally confirm it—she was fine.

‘So as long as I don’t “sit” in the “Mobile Seat,” just touching the tag is fine?’

‘Then… if I fold it up, stuff it in my pocket, and sit in another reserved seat, will I also be fine?’

This was the most critical step in Mai Mingle’s plan. She didn’t fully trust the “Living Person’s Seat,” but for now, she had to rely on it to survive the crucial fifteen minutes, while also using the other half of a blank A4 sheet to write “Mai Mingle’s Seat.”

Once the fifteen minutes were up, the “Mobile Seat” would start to wander randomly, and Ashley, with no reserved seat to sit in, would become the biggest target on the bus.

But this plan couldn’t be discovered by Ashley beforehand. Otherwise, the moment Ashley saw her take a piece of paper from her briefcase, even a fool wouldn’t just sit there and let Mai Mingle act.

If the two of them started fighting over it, besides the question of whether Mai Mingle was even a match for Ashley, could the paper withstand being torn?

The only way was to take advantage of the brief moment when the bus reached a stop and the lights went out, writing “Mai Mingle’s Seat” on the paper in the dark.

“At that time, I didn’t know that a small fare could buy you a reserved seat for one stop,”

Mai Mingle said softly, “but even if I had known, the plan would still have worked. If you spent all your fare on reserved seats, you wouldn’t be able to get off the bus, forced to ride all the way to the final station.”

“But you didn’t expect the ‘Living Person’s Seat’ to get off the bus first,” Ashley finished from a short distance away in the dark, her voice low.

That was right—when the “Living Person’s Seat” told her it was getting off, Mai Mingle’s scalp had prickled with terror.

She was still sitting in the chair, but it felt as if her blood, her heart, and her soul had already plunged into a bottomless abyss.

She slammed a hand on the back of the chair, as if that could stop the “Living Person’s Seat” from leaving, and demanded in a low voice, “You lied to me? You—you did this on purpose!”

“What? I didn’t lie to you. Have I told a single lie?”

Unexpectedly, the “Living Person’s Seat” seemed to treasure its non-existent reputation and actually started to argue its case.

‘No, wait, this might be an opportunity—’ A thought suddenly sparked in Mai Mingle’s mind.

“Didn’t I tell you from the start that I’ve worked part-time on this bus many times?”

While the “Living Person’s Seat” was defending itself righteously, she bent down, pulled her briefcase out from under the seat in front of her, and fumbled inside for the other half-sheet of A4 paper.

“Let me ask you, what does ‘coming to this bus’ mean? If I can come, I can also leave, right?”

The “Living Person’s Seat” paused there. “Hm?” it sounded.

She still hadn’t found the half-sheet of paper—but the “Living Person’s Seat” seemed to have sensed her movements.

‘I can’t let it leave yet. No matter what, I have to stall it a little longer.’ The more anxious and frantic Mai Mingle became, the more elusive the half-sheet of paper seemed.

‘Where is the paper? Why does this briefcase have so many compartments?’

“Please, if you leave, I’m finished,” she pleaded in a low voice. “Can’t you just stay for one more stop? Just one—”

‘I saw that half-sheet of paper with my own eyes just now. Can it run away too?’

With no light, she couldn’t see a thing. She had no idea where the paper was—wait, there was something here—

Her fingers finally touched paper.

Mai Mingle’s breath hitched. She didn’t even finish her sentence, hastily pulling the paper out and spreading it on her briefcase.

“No way. Stop talking nonsense. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to get off? Honestly.”

‘The pen—the pen, why isn’t it in my pocket? Where did it go? Did it fall? Oh, no, no, it’s in the other pocket. Got it. I have it. I can start writing—’

“I did you a huge favor, and now you’re giving me this? Give you an inch, and you take a mile?”

As the “Living Person’s Seat” said this, it paused slightly, like the faint, suggestive hesitation before the end of an essay.

Mai Mingle’s heart gave a violent thump, as if trying to tear free from her veins. She knew instinctively that the “Living Person’s Seat” was about to get off.

There wasn’t enough time to write her full name.

River Rye’s Seat—the phrase, which would leave the bus no room for misinterpretation, was simply too long.

In the pitch darkness, ensuring each letter didn’t overlap or wasn’t spaced too far apart, and maintaining the right amount of space between words, was already a difficult task. She had to use her finger as a guide, writing bit by bit.

To accomplish that in one or two seconds was basically impossible.

“Alright,” the Living Person’s Seat said. “Let’s part on good terms.”

Mai Mingle had no time to respond. She had no other choice. She pressed the pen to the paper and, in the pure darkness, began to scrawl out strokes with near-maniacal speed.

She had to use her finger as a guide as she wrote to ensure she formed two distinct words that wouldn’t blend into one.

Just three letters left—

“Bye!”

Something in Mai Mingle’s pocket suddenly stirred.

It was just a folded piece of paper, yet it was as if its four corners had suddenly grown grippers. With a sudden dart, it slithered out of her pocket. Mai Mingle had just two letters left, but she was forced to stop, slapping her hand down on the outside of her pocket and barely managing to pin it down and grip it tight before it could crawl onto the seat.

The last letter—

The mobile tag was only paper, but Mai Mingle clearly felt it flip over in her hand, its sharp, cackling laughter slicing open the skin of her palm.

The searing pain almost made her cry out, but it still hadn’t escaped her grasp.

Mai Mingle spun around and slapped the freshly written tag onto the seat. She had no tape, nor the time to use any. She could only press her back against it, holding it firmly in place.

…Ashley seemed to be listening, stunned.

After a few seconds, she finally murmured, “You’ve got some nerve. Weren’t you afraid it wouldn’t work after you wrote it? Didn’t you consider that the office worker was lying to you?”

How could she not have considered it?

“What other choice did I have?” Mai Mingle said in a low voice. “Luckily, it worked in the end, didn’t it?”

Ashley seemed to understand, but she still asked, “What tag did you write?”

“Elderly Seat,” Mai Mingle said.

Elderly Seat. In that split second, it was the shortest, least dangerous type of reserved seat she could think of.

“Living Person Seat” had even more letters than “Mai Mingle’s Seat,” so she had ruled it out first.

Besides that, what other reserved seat could she sit in without suffering a backlash?

“I’m already eighty-six years old,” Mai Mingle said slowly. “It’s perfectly reasonable for me to sit in an Elderly Seat. After I sat in the Elderly Seat…”

She raised a hand and gestured up and down her own body.

“…it’s also perfectly reasonable that I became like this.”

“You mean you were faking it?” Ashley asked. “That dying look, you were just acting?”

Mai Mingle wanted to see the expression on her face, but the street was too dark.

They were standing right between two streetlights. In the distance, Mai Mingle’s car and the police car Ashley had used to chase her were parked one behind the other, inches away from being smashed into each other.

‘Ashley has probably never been around someone on the verge of death.’

“No,” she said with a small smile. “That was my true state.”

The effects of the Extracellular Telomeres seemed to have been suppressed by the “Elderly Seat.”

Mai Mingle was thrown back to the brink of death. Although the Extracellular Telomeres hadn’t expired, all they seemed to do was keep her from dying instantly.

When she later fell from her seat, the effect of the Extracellular Telomeres returned, restoring her strength—which, for Mai Mingle, was a completely unexpected blessing.

“If you had taken off the Snake Belt back then, I would have died.”

Mai Mingle said in a raspy voice, “But I was dazed and confused then… Do you know? Being able to feel an emotion as strong as ‘fear’ is actually a kind of fortune.”

Ashley was silent for a few seconds.

“I didn’t want to touch you,” she said suddenly. “You didn’t look dirty or injured at the time. But I subconsciously didn’t want to touch you.”

Of course. Who would willingly reach out and touch death?

Even when Mai Mingle was lying in her hospital bed, she would be startled by her own withered, wrinkled, coarse, and ice-cold fingers.

“I watched you walk back and forth on the bus. When you talked to the residents in your head, you’d sometimes speak out loud. You bought a reserved seat, saved enough fare, and prepared to get off at the ‘Birthday Party’ stop… I saw it all.”

But understanding it all and translating that understanding into signals to move her body was as difficult as crossing an impassable chasm.

“I knew how to get off the bus, but I couldn’t move.”

Back then, Mai Mingle had leaned her head against the seat, listening to Ashley’s footsteps walking toward the bus door as tears slowly trickled into her hair.

…How ironic.

“I wanted to see a world I had never seen before, which is why I clung so tightly to the youth the Illusion gave me. But if I had just stayed on that bus, wouldn’t it have shown me things I’d never seen before at every single stop?”

Ashley didn’t speak.

She turned her head, her gaze fixed on the car headlights that were gradually brightening from the other end of the street.

Was it Chaisi? Or just a random passerby?

Mai Mingle didn’t know either.

“From that perspective, whether I stayed on the bus or got off made no difference. Maybe that’s why, no matter how much I forced myself to move, I couldn’t even manage to fall out of my seat.”

‘Why struggle so hard? It was too exhausting.’

‘If I wanted to see the Nest, to see the world, I could just stay perfectly still and keep watching forever.’

She couldn’t move, and she no longer wanted to.

As Mai Mingle leaned against the chair, feeling the tears soaking her hair, she suddenly remembered the thief who had broken into her room. When he saw her crying, he had frantically wiped her tears away.

…’So that’s how it was.’

“In this world, there was no one waiting for me to get off the bus,” Mai Mingle said softly. “So I thought, if I can still get off, I have to change that.”

Ashley didn’t seem to hear her.

She was distracted by the approaching car. She probably thought that nothing could happen in the span of a few sentences, that it wouldn’t be too late to act after figuring out what was going on.

The approaching car gradually slowed, stopping beside them as if it had known all along it would find the two of them here.

The brilliant headlights illuminated the regret on Ashley’s face with perfect clarity.

Even after leaving the bus, her weapon hadn’t changed back to its original form. Ashley had thrown away the toothbrush from her waist long ago.

“Who is it?” she shouted. “Police business, move along!”

The car door opened.

“Police?” From behind the door, a voice leaped lightly into the night.

When Mai Mingle saw the person step out of the back seat, she realized that Ashley wasn’t the only one who had been tracking her phone.

“What a coincidence,” Mercury said with a smile. “I was looking for the police.”