Mitternachts-Handbuch für paranormale Phänomene

Kapitel 3

"Hey, hey, hey, has the tea arrived yet? Raise your hand, should we dismantle Pu'er or Oolong?"

"Who's going out next? Could you buy me some braised food while you're at it?"

"Come here, come here! Take a look at this website, haha!"

"None of the police officers in the station glanced at Youchen. They were all busy with their own tasks, laughing and joking but with a half-smile on their faces. In most cases, Youchen was not the first person to suffer such humiliation, nor would he be the last. It was a well-trained form of institutional violence."

I forget which book I read it in, but it said, "If you don't use your power, it's the same as having no power at all." The police profession is perhaps the best negative illustration of this statement. As for being an embodiment of justice, Youchen doesn't feel that at all.

"If only I could become invisible..." Youchen murmured.

If he could really become invisible, he would definitely beat those police officers half to death.

Can it become invisible?

cannot.

As he staggered away, Youchen spat a mouthful of phlegm filled with cancer cells into the umbrella holder at the entrance of the police station.

The relationship between humans and patience is very delicate.

Before knowing when they can go to the toilet, humans can stubbornly continue to hold their urine. But once they find a toilet, the strong urge to urinate will instantly break their will to endure, making it impossible to hold on for even a second longer.

Running quickly to the telephone pole behind the police car in an odd posture, Youchen's trembling fingers frantically unzipped his pants, and he released himself onto the police car's tires without caring about the stares of passersby.

Like a dog

Perhaps this is how those police officers saw him...

4

As I smoked, the evening breeze, now devoid of warmth, dried the moisture from the corners of my eyes.

His bladder was empty, yet Youchen's steps remained heavy. His left hand gripped tightly below his belt, and his lower abdomen ached slightly, likely a lingering effect of holding his urine for too long.

The pale gray light from the streetlights stretched the shadows on the ground longer and longer.

On the way to the convenience store, they passed a phone booth. Youchen kept walking, but his head was lowered even further.

His wife and daughter at home must be worried about his whereabouts. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

The more guilty he felt, the less Yu-Chen wanted to go home and face the situation.

Perhaps this is a small right of a seriously ill patient to exile themselves?

I couldn't help but cough again.

Perhaps it was because the evening breeze was getting colder, but this time Youchen coughed for almost a minute before he could barely stop.

"How can I tell you that I only have three months left to live?" Youchen asked, head bowed in bewilderment.

Fang Lin is only in the second grade of elementary school, and there are still many, many more three months waiting for her in the future.

Suddenly, I remembered that Fang Lin had been pestering me for the past few months to get a puppy. She would whine and cry, saying that she didn't care how small the dog was, as long as she had a puppy that was completely her own, and it had to be named Leonardo da Vinci, not the painter Leonardo da Vinci, but her favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Leonardo da Vinci.

He said no, of course not. The apartment is too small, and the dog won't have enough space to move around, so of course it will be unhappy. And if the puppy barks a lot and the neighbors complain, then we'll have to worry about getting rid of the puppy, and then Fang Lin, you'll have to cry and make a fuss again.

"Raise a dog... a dog named Da Vinci?" Youchen looked at the shadow on the ground.

cough.

Three months from now, there will definitely be a lot of space in the house, and maybe we can finally get a dog.

The image of his wife raising Fang Lin alone, along with a dog, made Youchen's nose sting with tears just from imagining it.

Life is the sum of a series of responsibilities.

However, just a month and a half ago, a junior high school classmate who worked in insurance came to him to see what kind of business he could do.

Having been in the workforce for so long, running into an old classmate selling insurance saved us from a lot of unnecessary small talk, and we got straight to the point. My classmate was selling a life insurance policy that combined medical and cancer coverage. Yu-Chen, who only had mandatory motorcycle liability insurance, was very interested. However, after deducting his mortgage and other essential living expenses from his monthly salary of NT$28,000, he only had NT$3,500 left.

For some time now, Youchen had been secretly wanting to get a Honda Accord, to try out the 2.0-liter engine and smell the unique rubbery scent of a new car's steering wheel. Every day on his way to work, he would secretly open Honda's car catalog and repeatedly browse through the Accord's specifications, memorizing the length, wheelbase, horsepower, torque, fuel consumption, and even all the detailed equipment. White was nice... but red was also quite eye-catching.

If you use the barely manageable 3,500 yuan to buy insurance, you can forget about getting a new car.

Unable to make a decision immediately, Youchen frowned and said, "I'll think about it."

"What are you still considering? Youchen, to be honest, insurance isn't just a matter of whether you like it or not. It's a responsibility, a commitment, and an arrangement to take care of your family."

"...It's mainly a budget issue."

"Of course it's a budget issue, it just depends on how you allocate your budget."

“I don’t have much money to spend on insurance each month, and my wife doesn’t usually work.”

"Old classmate, you can forgo buying new shoes, forgo wearing new clothes, skip a couple of movies each month, or go out to a restaurant one less time—those are all unnecessary luxuries. But insurance is different. Part of the spirit of insurance lies in your risk assessment of your own illness, but its greater significance lies in the fact that, precisely because you are important to your family and the primary breadwinner, you need to be more careful in assessing the risk of losing you to your family. If you become seriously ill, in addition to the income shortfall, your family will also need to care for you, and medical expenses will also require funding..."

Although he genuinely agrees with the importance of insurance, Yu-Chen really hates insurance agents who use the guise of "guilt" to sell insurance under the guise of "responsibility," implying that if he doesn't buy insurance, he's irresponsible towards his family.

After saying "I'll think about it" more than twenty times, all that was left was a stack of insurance documents and a business card.

If I hadn't let my desire to buy a new car cloud my judgment and had instead resolutely purchased that medical insurance policy, I could now selfishly focus on my own sadness and grief instead of worrying about and feeling indebted to my family who lost their breadwinner.

He remembered one night when he found Fang Lin crying alone at her desk.

"Dad, subtraction problems over 100 are so hard!" Fang Lin said, her eyes red. "Can I not learn them?"

"It's okay, don't worry." Youchen said, "Dad promises you'll find it very simple in a month." He patted Fang Lin's head and told her to go to sleep first and they'd figure it out tomorrow.

After subtraction, it's time for multiplication.

A month later, it was certain that Fang Lin would never have the chance to truly learn multiplication...

An empty beer can lay brazenly in the middle of the sidewalk.

But Youchen had no motivation to kick it.

5

When I walked back to the convenience store, the car was gone, and only two lines of white chalk writing remained on the ground.

The license plate number... damn it, there's also a bunch of towing yard phone numbers.

"..." Youchen threw the half-smoked cigarette directly onto the chalk writing.

Those police officers didn't even tell him the car had already been towed away? What a load of rubbish!

I'm hungry.

Actually, he was hungry when he was taken to the police station two and a half hours ago, but he had no desire to eat anything. Maybe it wasn't just a bad mood, but rather the cancer cells deeply entrenched in his lungs causing the problem... The thought of that possibility made him very uneasy. Feeling the change in his pocket, Youchen went into a shop and bought two steaming hot meat buns.

I took just one bite, and for some reason, tears started falling.

Go home.

Fang Lin hasn't signed her contact book yet...

I hailed a taxi, quietly finished the meat bun in the back seat, and arrived at the towing yard ten minutes later.

It was deserted; it seemed he was the only one planning to pick up his car at this time.

Before I could even take out my ID, the lady sitting behind the counter shook her head with a stern face.

"We are only open until 10 o'clock, and you can pick up your car after 8 o'clock tomorrow morning."

"Open until 10 PM?"

The night watchwoman pointed to the white paper with red lettering pasted on the glass and said succinctly, "Ten o'clock."

"You can't pick up your car after 10 o'clock? Ugh!" That's unbelievable.

This wasn't the first time Youchen had come to the towing yard to pick up a truck; he had thought it was open 24 hours a day.

"It was supposed to be eight o'clock, but we've extended it to ten." The night watchwoman rolled her eyes.

The TV behind the counter was on, replaying the Japanese drama "Tokyo Love Story" from Star Chinese Channel.

"How am I supposed to get home without a car? Cough! Cough cough cough!" Youchen coughed incessantly, trying to suppress his anger.

"Go back the way you came," Miss Night Watch said, her expression dismissive.

So that's what happened.

The police detained him for no reason until after 10 o'clock, just so that he could not pick up his car before 10 o'clock.

The clock hanging behind the TV shows that it is now 11:03.

"I don't think there's any room for compromise." Youchen glared at her menacingly.

This sentence is a cubic mutation of "Can you make an exception?", and has no other function than "saying this sentence".

"Rules are rules. What am I supposed to do if everyone is like you?" Miss Night Watch said impatiently, while her eyes were distracted by watching Tokyo Love Story on TV.

"At this moment, the scene is about Kanji Nagao seeing the name that Rika Akana had just left next to the name he had carved in the corridor of his elementary school classroom in his hometown... Kazumasa Oda's classic and melodious background music starts playing seamlessly after Kanji Nagao opens his eyes wide."

Yu Chen's appearance at the climax of the plot was a huge mistake. The night watchwoman, who could have been immersed in the touching story with tears streaming down her face, was interrupted by a man with an unfriendly tone who kept asking her questions. What's even more infuriating is that this man didn't plead at all; instead, he had an aggressive and demanding demeanor…

That means there's absolutely no room for negotiation!

"Ahem! My purse is in the car, I need to go get it." Youchen tapped the table and said in a deep voice.

"Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock." The night watchwoman's tone was icy.

"All my money is in my purse." Youchen stopped coughing with willpower, his face turning even redder.

"Rules are rules, it's eight o'clock tomorrow morning."

Kanji Nagao ran around his hometown, searching everywhere for Rika Akana. The music grew louder and louder, looking like it was about to reach another climax... Why isn't that rude man leaving yet? Miss Night Watchman must have been complaining to herself.

"I'm just going to get it."

"I told you it's eight in the morning, it's not like I set that."

"It's my car, cough cough cough... What's wrong with me going in to get something?"

"How do I know if your car was really towed? What am I supposed to do if you go in and vandalize other people's cars?"

"Why don't you just look it up and find out?"

"This is not part of my current job."

Youchen took a deep breath.

Miss Night Watch's eyes were completely glued to Tokyo Love Story.

Kanji Nagao was kicking a soccer ball on the school's soccer field, looking dejected. He kept kicking and kicking... Suddenly, he turned around and saw Rika Akana smiling brightly, shouting, "Kanji!" The melodious music started playing again.

"very good."