"Sis, you're a cop already at your age? That's amazing." While Jiaming was still thinking, Lingjing had already walked up to the bedside and started chattering, full of curiosity.
"Oh? Haha, you should call me Auntie. Is Auntie still young? What a good kid. Auntie's had a baby face since she was small, and I love it when people say I look young—heh, heh..."
Watching the fake policewoman's furtive, half-hidden smile, Jiaming's expression twisted. If she had come with some scheme in mind, the woman seemed a bit too stupid for it. Maybe she's not some hired killer—maybe she's a lunatic who wandered out of the hospital's psych ward.
"Mm—ahem. Well then, little Gu Jiaming, I'd like you to think back first over what happened that night. Let's begin."
"Oh." Jiaming nodded.
"First, name..."
"..." Jiaming's own expression went a little foolish. Could this woman have come back from another life too? Is she even better at playing the idiot than I am? He looked up, and the policewoman, catching his expression, seemed to realize how redundant her question had been. She flushed and defended herself: "Uh, that—I mean—this is routine procedure. It all has to come out of your own mouth anyway. All right, let's begin."
"Gu Jiaming."
Thus their questioning began. Yet although the woman appeared to be an impostor, the questions she asked were entirely by the book; she knew the police reporting format inside out, and her questions were sharp. Even so, however well she struck the key points, she was naturally unable to pry any useful intelligence out of Jiaming.
"Mm, so that's how it is, then." Having gotten through the key questions that needed investigating, the policewoman tapped her pen a few times on her notebook. "Then there are a few small points we should go over. They're mostly about..."
The questions that followed were pure nonsense, and listening to them left Jiaming utterly baffled—such an absolute contrast to the sharp interrogation she had conducted a moment ago. Looking at the girl's face, flushed pink with excitement, a very strange impression rose in Jiaming's mind: This woman... she's enjoying the feeling of asking questions...
Is she really a lunatic?
Answering as he went, and seizing the moment when the policewoman was thoroughly absorbed, Jiaming asked, "Say, sis, you go to Xinghui High too, don't you?"
"Uh, no. I study at Sacred Heart Academy..." Funded from abroad and named Sacred Heart, it was in fact Jianghai City's elite academy. At those words Jiaming clapped a hand to his forehead and nearly howled at the heavens. The policewoman, Lingjing and Shasha all froze where they stood.
Played by a little girl for over an hour. The humiliation!
"Uh, that... hehe, your sister here is actually doing work-study today. The, uh, the station was short-handed today..."
As the high schooler posing as a policewoman scrambled to explain herself, the ward door was suddenly pushed open and a policewoman with a face somewhat like hers walked in. The moment she saw the girl by the bed, she roared in disbelief, "Mu Zhenzhen?! You... you actually stole my uniform and put it on!"
"Ah, sis, I saw how busy you were, so I came over to take care of a little thing like taking a statement at the hospital for you. I'm going to apply to the police academy anyway, so I may as well treat it as one internship, right..."
"A little thing?" The policewoman's brows and eyes went crooked with fury, and she looked ready to put family loyalty aside and deliver justice. "You call taking statements a little thing? And you dared to steal my uniform—do you have any idea that impersonating an officer to deceive people is a crime?! And the gun. Where did that gun come from?"
"It's the replica pistol you gave me for my birthday last time." Mu Zhenzhen shrank her neck. "Come on, sis, I won't dare do it again, I won't dare..."
"Won't dare! Take it off. Now!"
"Huh? Take it off here?" Mu Zhenzhen turned her head and looked at the four people in the ward in disbelief. Jiaming had just picked up his cup to drink; he spat the water back out with a "pfft," then patted at the wet spots on the bedsheet, barely able to hold back his laughter. Not far off, Lingjing and Shasha were also red in the face from holding theirs in.
The policewoman seemed to realize this was not a good place to undress. Her momentum stalled, and then she pressed on: "What's wrong with here? What, a few kids can't watch you undress? Wearing it around the house would be one thing, but now you dare to put on a police uniform and go out and cheat people!"
"But..." The high schooler clutched at her collar with both hands. "Sis, I don't have any clothes to change into."
"..." The policewoman paused, then shook her head in the manner of one despairing over a hopeless case. "You can take it off when we get home. Let me see that statement you took."
Mu Zhenzhen respectfully handed the statement to her sister. A moment later, seeing her sister nod, she lit up with delight. "Sis, how did I do?"
"Not bad. But what is all this garbage on the last page? Anyone reading it would think I wrote it—they'd think your big sister had a crush on this Gu Jiaming!" She nodded with a smile at Jiaming in the bed, then turned a stern look on her sister.
"Hehe." Mu Zhenzhen stuck out her tongue. "That's exactly why I put it on the last page—because I knew the last part was useless. You can just tear it off."
With another withering eyeroll, the policewoman walked over to Jiaming's bedside. "Mm, hello, little Jiaming. My name is Mu Qingqing; you should have seen me last time—I was at the processing plant as well. Today I was supposed to take your statement, but since Zhenzhen has already questioned you, there's no need to do it a second time. There are a couple of things I'd like to confirm with you again, all right?"
"Mm." Jiaming nodded and listened as Mu Qingqing went through several questions again. In truth this was nothing but routine business; his statement came out identical to what he had told them last time, and everything was wrapped up in a matter of minutes. The moment she stood, her kindly smile turned to iron, and she swatted her sister on the head. "Come on. Home."
"Ow, sis, don't hit my head, you'll knock me stupid."
"Could you possibly get any stupider?"
"I'm so pitiful. Ever since Dad died, you've done nothing but abuse me. Once I have a brother-in-law, I'll be thrown out to sleep in the street for sure."
"I was just too good to you all these years..."
Bickering and swatting at each other the whole way, the voices of this loving pair of "steamed" sisters, Qing and Zhen, gradually faded off down the corridor. In the ward, Jiaming and the other two finally burst out laughing.
The day after the statements were finished, someone from the Tsukiike family finally came—not any relative of Tsukiike Kaoru's, but one of the family stewards in charge of their out-of-town business. He was said to be a very busy man. He had wanted to move Tsukiike Kaoru somewhere better to recuperate, but she refused, so he paid a large sum for the hospital to upgrade her nursing and care. In the course of his talk, it came out that Ten'u Masanori would arrive in the next few days to take her back to Japan.
That arrangement came as no surprise to Jiaming. After all, in the original history, with no involvement of his, Tsukiike Kaoru had been tormented by that perverted old man for a long while before Ten'u Masanori rescued her as well.
The Ten'u family was a very important branch of the Japanese ability-user organization Takamagahara, and Ten'u Masanori, the eldest son of that house, had later become engaged to Tsukiike Kaoru because of this very business. But Jiaming knew perfectly well that there had never been any affection between the two of them.
After she went home this time, Tsukiike Kaoru shut herself inside her room, and eight years later, when Jiaming made contact with the Tsukiike family to prepare for Pei Luojia's assault, she slit her wrists in that room and died. Now that he thought about it, that had also been just as her wedding to Ten'u Masanori was drawing near.
But in this version of history, everything would naturally run in another direction. Still—what kind of future would that be?
None of it has anything to do with me anyway, Jiaming thought contentedly that night.