Chapter 425 - 370: Mai Mingle: The Growing Number of Strange People and Ivan

Chapter 425: Chapter 370: Mai Mingle: The Growing Number of Strange People and Ivan

At 12:40, the Red Swan Garden Hotel was still just an old, brown-brick building in a mid-20th-century style—it had no garden and no red swan. The only thing on its facade was a painted flamingo, as if daring people to call a deer a horse.

’Well, at least it’s not a construction site,’ Mai Mingle thought, breathing a sigh of relief. She started to suspect the Nest had overstimulated her imagination.

That so-called wife should have arrived before her. But could the hotel really turn into a construction site just because she said it was?

Not even the inhabitants of the Nest had the power to turn their words into reality.

"Don’t stop, I’m not getting out of the car."

Mai Mingle noticed the taxi slowing down and quickly told the driver, "I need to go check out Kaine Street next."

Thank goodness for the money she’d made from the lipstick; it was the only reason she could stand to let the taxi meter tick away, each jump like a hard beat against her heart.

Starting from Kaine Street, half a city block was similarly enclosed by temporary panel fencing. The site was far larger than the one on Observation Point Street. Mai Mingle pressed her face to the window, watching the grayish-white panels rush toward her and flit past, one after another.

Wait a minute.

...Was that just my imagination? It must have been, right?

’How could someone sitting in a car, even one that isn’t moving fast, possibly see a face flash past in a gap in the fencing?’

"Where on Kaine Street do you want to get out?" the driver asked just then.

"I’m not getting out," Mai Mingle replied instinctively, then immediately corrected herself. "Wait. Let me get out and take a look. Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be quick."

The driver’s suspicious gaze met hers in the rearview mirror. She had no choice but to leave her backpack on the rear seat as a hostage to be allowed out of the car. Mai Mingle looked at the panel fencing, paused, then walked step by step toward the gap between two of the panels.

...She hadn’t been mistaken.

She had only been standing before the gap for a few seconds when a patch of flesh squeezed into view. A brown eye was pressed against the crack, watching her. It blinked.

Short black hair, a blue plaid shirt... even his complexion was the exact same dark shade.

Mai Mingle let out a low breath.

She pulled the folded, AI-generated portrait from her pocket and said to the worker behind the wall, "I’m looking for Ivan."

"This is a construction site."

"I know," Mai Mingle said, already prepared for this. "My name is Mai Mingle, and I need to find Ivan. Is he near this site?"

"I don’t know," the worker behind the wall said.

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes," said the worker behind the wall.

Mai Mingle had absolutely no idea what she was doing. In a situation like this, her eighty-six years of experience were useless. Even if she’d ridden mammoths as a child, she still wouldn’t have a clue what to do.

’He—no, I should call it "it." What are the rules governing its speech? What is its purpose? Why has it appeared in the human world?’

’There’s still no sign of Ivan, but I’ve stumbled upon something incredible in Blackmoor City... I have to inform the Hunters about this, right?’

Her head was full of questions, but she had no answers.

It felt like standing in the pitch-black of a moonless night, unable to see your hand in front of your face. She didn’t know where she was or what lay ahead, but she could vaguely feel a puff of foul, hot breath on her ankle.

Whether in this metaphor or in reality, Mai Mingle had no idea what kind of creature was standing before her.

She swallowed, her throat dry and itchy.

’Since I don’t know what to do, and anything I try seems pointless, then... looking at it another way... doesn’t that mean I can do anything I want?’

"There’s a public housing renovation project in the Lower City District. Do you know about it?"

"Yes," said the worker behind the wall.

"Is Ivan there?" Mai Mingle felt like an incompetent medical examiner, her questions a stick she was using to poke randomly at a corpse. She had no idea which prod would make the body suddenly sit up. It was all just guesswork.

"No."

"Is Ivan inside this construction site?"

"Yes."

"Then tell him I’m coming into your site right now—"

A car horn blared, sharp and violent. It was like a hammer blow to her eardrums, instantly jolting Mai Mingle from her trance. She flinched and turned her head to find the driver leaning out of his window.

"Where are you going?" he yelled. "Are you getting back in or not?"

Gasping for breath, Mai Mingle looked around.

Somehow, she’d already walked away from the panel fencing. Without realizing it, she had rounded the front of the taxi and was about to wander dazedly into the middle of the road.

Kaine Street was far busier and more bustling than the area around the last construction site. Cars streamed by in an endless procession. If the driver hadn’t called out to her in time, she would have stepped right into the flow of traffic.

Mai Mingle hurried back to the side of the road and glanced over. The worker she had been talking to was gone from the gap.

"Thank you, I’m not going any farther," she said, leaning into the car to grab her backpack and pay the fare. "This is my destination."

The driver gave her a doubtful look, clearly counting her as one of Blackmoor City’s growing number of oddballs.

"Excuse me, one more question," Mai Mingle said, holding the car door. "From the time I got out to when I walked past the front of the car toward the road, how long do you think it was?"

The driver thought for a moment. "Three minutes at most, I’d say. You were standing there talking to the person behind the wall, and then all of a sudden, you just turned and started walking into the middle of the street."

’In other words,’ she thought, ’the moment I stated my intention to enter the construction site to find Ivan, I immediately turned and walked into the road, completely unaware of what I was doing.’

"Thank you," Mai Mingle said sincerely. "You saved my life."

After the taxi drove off, she didn’t dare risk approaching the panel fencing again, so she went into a coffee shop across the street. She was debating whether she should order something before asking to use the phone, her eyes scanning the dessert counter, and so she wasn’t paying much attention to the rest of the shop. When she suddenly looked up, Mai Mingle was dumbstruck.

The coffee shop employee was standing behind the register, staring straight at her, his face a mask of utter, soul-crushing grief.

The muscles of his face seemed to be sliding downwards, his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth drooping into a tragic frown. He looked like a terrible actor trying, and failing, to portray grief.

"BOO HOO HOO," he wailed. Even his sobs were perfectly articulated, each syllable distinct, yet he couldn’t squeeze a single tear from his eyes. "Welcome, may I take your order?"

Mai Mingle stared at him, stunned. After a few seconds, she turned her head to look at the construction site across the street.

"Are... are you crying?" she asked cautiously.

"Hm? Why would I be crying?" the employee said, managing to laugh a few times through his sobs. Mai Mingle had no idea how he did it. "I probably just got something in my eye. It’s a little red."

His eyes weren’t the least bit red. On the contrary, his smile lines were deeply creased, as if they were actively forcing the corners of his mouth and his facial muscles downward.

Mai Mingle looked away, but she didn’t dare to *not* look at him, so her eyes darted back. "I’ll have a latte... and I’d also like to borrow your phone."

Her own phone had a full battery, but she didn’t dare use it anymore.

She hadn’t received a single call or seen a single message, and yet Hai Luwei had said that he and Emily had tried to contact her several times without success.

"How is that possible? I haven’t seen anything since I got my phone back," Mai Mingle had said at the time, completely baffled. "Could someone be intercepting my calls and messages?"

As soon as the words left her mouth, both ends of the line fell silent for a few seconds.

You couldn’t be a Hunter without being sharp and alert.

"That’s impossible," Hai Luwei had replied. His tone was strangely subtle; beneath its easygoing surface lay a veiled, shadowy meaning. "I think it must have been a bad signal."

People who had faced death together, no matter how short a time they’d known each other, likely understood one another far better than casual, everyday acquaintances.

"Don’t worry, I’m fine," Mai Mingle had also replied cheerfully. "We already agreed, didn’t we? You guys go to my apartment first and keep an eye on things. I’ll be there soon."

Thankfully, she hadn’t lost her old-fashioned habit of always carrying a pen. After hanging up, she’d scribbled down Hai Luwei’s and Emily’s phone numbers on a receipt and immediately turned off her phone.

Now, her only way to contact Hai Luwei was to pretend her phone was dead and, in a feigned panic, repeatedly beg the employee to let her use the shop’s phone.

"BOO HOO HOO, normally the office phone isn’t for public use," said the employee, his entire face straining to maintain its sorrowful expression. "But please don’t take too long, BOO HOO HOO."

’Can he really not hear the ’BOO HOO’ sounds coming out of his own mouth?’

Mai Mingle managed to wipe the inappropriate expression from her face, thanked him, and picked up the receiver.

Hai Luwei picked up on the first ring.

"Mai Mingle?" he said in a low voice. "We’re downstairs from your apartment. You’ll never guess who’s inside."

"...Ivan?"

"That’s right." Hai Luwei sounded like he was muffling the phone with his sleeve. "He kept flashing past the storage room window, back and forth. I don’t know what he was—huh?"

’What’s wrong?’

"Quick, look," Emily’s voice came faintly through the phone, taut and anxious. "Is that him?"

"It is—" Hai Luwei sounded startled. He quickly explained into the phone, "Ivan’s come out! He just walked out the main entrance!"

The sounds of breathing, wind, and jarring movements suddenly erupted, battering the receiver. Mai Mingle asked urgently, "What’s happening?"

"The moment that guy came out, he just started running—"

"Did he spot you?"

"No, he didn’t even glance in our direction. He just picked a direction and started sprinting the second he got outside—how the hell can this guy run so fast?" Hai Luwei was panting now, and it wasn’t clear who he was asking. "He hasn’t stopped for a second, he clearly has a destination in mind! Where is he trying to go?"

Mai Mingle fell silent for a few seconds, listening to the cacophony of wind, footsteps, and low curses on the other end of the line. Then, as if by a stroke of insight, an answer materialized in her mind—one with no logical basis, but that convinced her completely.

’Ivan knows.’

’The task he had to complete after rising from the sea... he hasn’t finished it yet...’

"He’s running toward the Kaine Street construction site," she murmured. "He... he’s coming for me."