Shi Rang tripped and fell while rushing out of the apartnt building, and nearly crashed into a pedestrian when steering his electric bicycle onto the main road.
The pedestrian's angry curses and complaints ant absolutely nothing to him.
Ying Shang's scream echoed relentlessly in his mind, pounding against his heart and tearing through his insides.
"The number you have dialed is powered off..."
"The number you have dialed..."
He twisted the electric bicycle's throttle to the maximum. Amidst blaring horns and swirling chaos, he sped furiously toward the art studio where Ying Shang worked.
Ying Shang's phone was no longer connecting.
Where would she go?
The background noise on the call was very quiet at first. What kind of place could that be?
If she took a few hours off from work, what could it have been for? Was she kidnapped? Was she robbed?
Was she still alive?
All the unsettling fantasies of his ordinary days had now beco reality. Shi Rang could not rember how he arrived at the studio, nor how he had grabbed the receptionist to demand Ying Shang's whereabouts. Only then did it occur to him that he could have just called the studio, but it was aningless now.
Everyone's answer was the sa: "She took ti off and went out," "She didn't say where she was going," "You're her husband, how could you not know?"
Shi Rang rushed out of the studio in a panic, riding his electric bicycle down the streets, searching like a headless fly. He knew the efficiency and arrogant attitude of the Tenth District police, and he knew he had almost zero clues or evidence on hand, but he had to do sothing!
Trying to locate a single gunshot in this sprawling city was too difficult. The people on the streets loitered aimlessly as usual; no one looked as if they had heard gunfire.
He replayed the phone call in his mind over and over until he finally deciphered the last words she scread into the receiver:
"Central Park!"
The exact place where Ying Shang had encountered a thief yesterday.
His body reacted faster than his mind, turning the vehicle around and tearing toward that location.
Gunfire echoed from the direction of the park. It was dense and intense. Up ahead, a crowd of people fleeing the gunshots appeared, jamming the streets in a chaotic crush.
He darted into a winding alleyway, twisting the throttle as far as it would go.
Right outside the exit of the alleyway was the park. Shi Rang swerved past two trash cans, just about to accelerate, when the intense light at the alley entrance was suddenly blocked by a figure.
A tall, looming shadow stretched into the alley, casting itself over Shi Rang.
Facing the speeding electric bicycle, the figure neither dodged nor retreated. Shi Rang was forced to slam on the brakes, trying to shove the person aside.
"Move out of the way, I have an ergency—"
"You have no ergency to attend to."
The backlit figure pulled down the brim of a cowboy hat. A trench coat snapped and fluttered in the wind howling through the alleyway.
"Forget about this. Return to where you ca from, and leave right now."
The words did not sound like a threat, nor did they carry the slightest tone of coercion or command.
But they sounded like absolute truth.
Shi Rang stared at the surreal, almost illusory figure, withdrew his hands, and nodded numbly.
Supporting his electric bicycle, he backed up and retraced his path out of the alleyway.
By the ti he got ho, the sun had already sunk below the horizon.
He stood by the window, watching the table full of food turn cold. Accompanied by the city gradually falling under the rule of the night, he waited for Ying Shang to return.
-----------------
Shi Rang jolted awake.
He fumbled blindly for his mobile phone, brought it close to his face, and took a blinding flashbang of intense light straight from the screen.
The room was pitch-black, making it impossible to tell whether it was day or night. Terrified that soone might spot the Mini-Humans through the window, he had drawn the curtains shut as tightly as possible.
Using his toes, he flicked the curtain aside to let a sliver of sunlight into the bedroom, finally breaking completely free from the dream.
The mobile phone containing so many mories of him and Ying Shang had long since been soaked in mud and ruined.
But he had previously pulled up the call logs. On the day of the incident, he had never received a single call from Ying Shang.
That dream sequence did not vanish the mont he woke up. It lingered in his mind, replacing the muddled, fabricated mories of his false wait.
Throwing off the blankets, Shi Rang dashed to the desk. He tore off a sticky note and rapidly scribbled down the clues, terrified they would slip back into the haze if he blinked.
[Wore a cowboy hat, around 1.7 ters tall, male, likely in his thirties, wore a trench coat, capable of making people lose their mories or believe whatever he says.]
Yes, this was a world filled with Anomalies.
This person had been tampering with Shi Rang's mories.
The fact that the hidden truth was now revealing itself was likely an unexpected side effect of his Rapid Regeneration. Perhaps it involved the repair of his brain structures, or perhaps...
Who was this man?
Was Ying Shang kidnapped by them? Why? Why her?
Was she still alive?
"Shi Rang?" Leader Jack, clutching a charging cable, climbed onto the desk with sleep-filled eyes. "What's wrong?"
However, the Big Guy ignored him. Rising to his feet, he yanked the curtains wide open. The intense light stung Leader Jack's eyes, causing him to cover them and let out an "Ouch!"
Shi Rang's back, silhouetted against the window, radiated anger and gloom. Leader Jack had no idea what he was looking at. Feeling a bit frustrated but trusting that a reliable adult like Shi Rang must have a good reason for doing this, he climbed back down. He found The Sheriff, who had just woken up, hoisted this highly respected "Tiny One adult" onto his shoulders, and began scaling the curtain.
The other startled Tiny Ones clamored below, wanting Leader Jack to take them along, but he had already scurried away.
Since shrinking, Leader Jack had beco exceptionally good at climbing. He made his way all the way up near Shi Rang's head, stood on a decorative tassel of the curtain, and shouted forcefully into his ear.
"Did you have a nightmare? What are you doing?"
"Quiet, child. He is studying sothing," The Sheriff said.
"Studying what?"
"The wall."
In Leader Jack's mory, the wall next to the window in Shi Rang's bedroom was indeed covered in a collage. Ever since becoming small, looking at things too high or too low made his vision blurry, but now that he was at eye level, he could clearly make out what was posted there. A massive cluster of sticky notes appeared before his eyes. Their curling bottom edges made the wall look almost fuzzy. Scattered among them were nurous photographs, with countless strings of yarn weaving through the arrangent...
Leader Jack had only ever seen such things in cartoons.
"Is this a Clue Wall?"
He looked in awe toward the center, where there was a photograph of a lady. She was flashing a peace sign and smiling shyly at the cara, cradling a bouquet of flowers in her arms. All the lines of yarn radiated outward from her, connecting countless sticky notes and photographs along the way, proving that she was the starting point and the ultimate conclusion of everything. Only her photograph was not pierced by a thumbtack; instead, it was secured to the wall by a crisscrossing net of yarn.
Shi Rang was holding the newly written sticky note, cross-referencing it with the left side of the Clue Wall.
There were a massive number of photographs on the left side, most of them prints of surveillance footage. The static screenshots showed the lady exiting a building, passing storefronts, and turning around a street corner...
At that mont, Shi Rang used his fingernail to pry up one of the photographs. It showed a blurry figure seen from behind, walking into a transit station.
The person's clothes were identical to the lady's in the surveillance footage.
Shi Rang ripped the photograph off the wall and tossed it into the trash can. He placed the new sticky note into the empty spot and adjusted the yarn, turning it into a second focal point.
"Ask him for : How long have you been doing this?" The Sheriff said.
So Leader Jack relayed the question.
"From the day she disappeared until now."
Shi Rang lifted a finger and shifted to a large cluster of crossed-out sticky notes in the upper right corner, tapping the photograph labeled [Grey Dog].
"I used to focus all my investigations on this upper right section, but now I realize I was completely wrong. This guy is a thief, but now I know he's also a victim—at least in this specific incident. His mory was tampered with too."
The miniature Sheriff climbed to the top of Leader Jack's head and made a mighty leap onto Shi Rang's earlobe. "These photographs... did you suspect from the very beginning that soone altered the surveillance footage?"
"She would absolutely never leave without saying goodbye. I know she wouldn't. So I didn't believe a single clue that pointed toward her 'leaving on her own.' The people at the police station were so sick of pestering them that they tried to brush off with that photograph. They tried to tell she had simply had enough of and ran away from ho, but I knew that wasn't her. Everyone said I was going crazy, but I wasn't. I know I wasn't."
Looking completely exhausted, Shi Rang leaned forward against the Clue Wall. He rested his forehead right beside his wife's silhouette, gazing earnestly at the beloved woman in the photograph, as if lying in her embrace.
After enduring so many years of tornt, he had finally found the truth.
The evidence had been inside his head all along.
"My mories were tampered with. Soone deleted my call logs, stole her passport and photographs from our ho, and disguised themselves as her leaving the station for so foreign country. They made everyone... sotis even myself included, doubt and wonder if she had just walked away on her own. But it was all a lie."
The Sheriff remarked, "That must be a remarkably powerful faction—do you already have a suspect in mind?"
Shi Rang closed his eyes. Suddenly, his expression turned as cold as if he had donned a mask.
"Of course."
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