Artifact Report

Chapter 235 Mai Minghe: Conditions for Rebirth
Mai Minghe bent down and reached under the chair. He felt a knife taped to the back of the seat with industrial tape. The tape was ripped away with a swish, and Mai Minghe stood up, knife in hand.

Mai Minghe pulled out an electric baton from the prop box.

Mai Minghe grabbed a bottle of wine from the bar shelf and smashed it with his backhand. The bottle shattered crisply on the corner of the table, and the clear wine splashed out from the jagged, sharp, blade-like glass shards.

Mai Minghe ran away.

Maybe it sounds a little ridiculous, but after she bent down and dodged half a brick thrown by Mai Minghe, her first reaction was to run while reaching out to find the "telomeres" on her body.

When her hand pressed on her lower abdomen and touched a long, sleeping snake, her heart, which had been hanging in the air, suddenly fell back to its original place; the slightly bulging long false image was still tightly wrapped around her body.

So, she is Mai Minghe.

Just now, for a moment, Mai Minghe almost suspected that he had become one of the "Maiminghe" fabricated by the nest, and perhaps was being tricked into killing the real Mai Minghe.

With the fake image, her identity can be proved; since she is the real herself, then where do all these other Mai Minghe come from?
Behind him, the glass window was smashed with a "clang", and the glass opened a fleeting ice flower in the air and shattered onto the floor.

Mai Minghe twisted her body to avoid Mai Minghe who was rushing towards her with a half-broken wine bottle in his hand. She turned quickly and rushed out from the side, rushing into between the rows of seats.

In just a few seconds, every Mai Minghe in the silent warehouse suddenly pounced and ran wildly, and at the moment, it seemed that the target of every murderous intent was her.

What should I do?
The stage seemed unattended, and the bag and sign were lying defenselessly on a chair. Should she grab the bag, or escape through the exit first?
Can she escape?
A moment of hesitation gave Mai Minghe the opportunity to kick a chair and hit it directly in the crook of her knees. She was caught off guard and lunged forward. Before she could even let out a gasp of pain, she staggered and before she could stand firm, a shadow flew in from the corner of her vision.

Mai Minghe leaped forward and fell to the ground. A dark shadow passed over her head and smashed into the face of another Mai Minghe. The dull thud of a fire extinguisher hitting flesh and bones—no, the dull thud of a fire extinguisher hitting her own flesh and bones—made Mai Minghe's scalp clench.

"If only... it weren't like this."

A loud voice suddenly rang out from the theater's speakers, startling Mai Minghe. Then she immediately recognized that the somewhat unfamiliar voice echoing and circling under the roof was her own.

There was no one at the microphone in the corner of the stage.

Mai Minghe picked up half a brick and threw it at her. Even though she rolled away quickly, she was still hit on the shoulder, and the pain was as if it had been cut by a knife.

"I wish I was born into a family like Kelly's," twelve-year-old Mai Minghe was muttering in the speaker.

Those were words she had never spoken, though they had lingered in her mind countless times.

She suddenly remembered that Kelly was the prettiest girl in the class, with sunny golden curls, and that she would go back to Copenhagen with her parents during the summer vacation. If it weren't for a chance coincidence, Mai Minghe would never have had the chance to share the same school with a child like Kelly.

Memories that had long been forgotten suddenly flooded into her mind from nowhere, making her feel dazed.

Wait, is it the memories that made him feel hazy, or is it because of the brick that hit his temple just now?
Mai Minghe covered his forehead, which was bleeding, with one hand, walked around the figure in front of him, and stumbled towards the door.

Her childhood home was also a first-floor shop facing the street.

The front of the shop sells groceries, dried seafood, soft drinks, and cigarettes; during holidays, they also sell couplets, firecrackers, mistletoe wreaths, and small national flags. The back of the shop is the bedroom shared by the family of three.

That day, Mai Minghe was wearing a short skirt and lying on the bed reading a book. The bedroom door was suddenly pushed open and a strange man walked in.

She was startled, and the man was also surprised.

His eyes quickly swept around the room, the bed, and Mai Minghe's legs. He apologized and left. After the door closed, his mother's voice rang out from outside: "There's no store behind there. Don't go there casually!"

Nothing happened except that one person took a wrong turn.

But the indescribable feeling of shame made Mai Minghe unable to continue reading. She pulled her skirt down hard and locked the door.

Why didn't you lock it? Why did you forget to lock it? Why were you so careless?
She thought, this would never happen to Kelly. Kelly's bedroom must be very exquisite and beautiful, but she couldn't imagine it.

"If I were a man, I wouldn't have encountered this kind of thing, right?"

On the speakers, the young man Mai Minghe was speaking softly to a friend.

Ah, yes.

Mai Minghe walked, dragging her injured foot, thinking. After graduating from high school, she saved money to learn typing in order to leave the area where she grew up, hoping to apply for a typist job—she even fantasized about becoming a secretary at a large company. Back then, before 1960, there weren't many jobs available for women.

But the male manager sitting in that smoky office didn't care about how fast she typed.

"My legs aren't long enough, and my butt isn't perky enough."

She spent a while in the restroom. When she came out, she heard the male employees discussing through a door: "The most important thing is, I really can't appreciate that kind of face. I still like blondes and blue eyes. They look good in the office."

It was so strange. How did she get the injury on her leg? It should have happened just now, but she couldn't remember it. However, the memory from more than 60 years ago was so clear.

"I shouldn't have done this, I wish I were different, there are so many things about myself that I don't like, I've been hurt by others and then hurt others... In this life, there are so many things that I wish had never happened.

"No one can go through life unscathed. I will strive to look towards the light, to walk towards the light... That's because I have never lived in the light. There is only chaos, tiny sufferings, every day, like a thorn in my life."

…Were these her real thoughts?
Through the speakers, Mai Minghe slowly exhaled. He still sounded like himself, but without the sense of age.

"Are you wondering what kind of place this is? And what's the purpose of asking you to kill everyone?"

Mai Minghe grabbed a roll of thick electric wire that seemed to be a spare in the corner, used it as a whip, and swung it towards Mai Minghe - she couldn't dodge in time, the wire broke through the air and hit her back heavily.

There was a moment of silence in the speaker. After her screams of pain subsided, he continued patiently:
"The me here is all weak, ordinary, hesitant, awkward, embarrassing, error-prone, indecisive, and unsatisfactory. Countless weaknesses, countless mistakes, and this is how I wasted my life.

"So what if you have a false image? Experience a few new things, and then what? You know best, right? Dragging around this version of yourself, a self that's been shaped by eighty-six years of life, even if you can enjoy the novelty for a few days, you still won't be able to enter the next chapter of your life."

Mai Minghe miraculously avoided another Mai Minghe, rushed to the door and pulled it inward.

Unexpectedly, the door was actually opened.

"You can't bring yourself to kill right now, you can only flee cowardly, screaming in grievance. Do you know why? Because this is who you are, shaped by your past. In other words, this is all your past self's fault. Only by killing these selves can you stop being shaped by the past. Otherwise, the false image you have is wasted."

"Every Mai Minghe should understand this truth."

Outside was the sidewalk; when the door opened, the pale, puffy light of day fell on the warehouse floor.

Mai Minghe stared blankly at Mai Minghe who had been waiting outside the door.

She remembered this face.

There's a small scar on her chin, from when she was working as a childcare worker and was kicked by a crying child's heel. Gray hair is starting to appear in patches at the temples and on the crown of her head. Her husband says, "You're not going gray until you're 40, which is pretty good."

He was a gentle and delicate person. Mai Minghe knew she had to get married; she chose him instead of other masculine men.

The marriage lasted uneventfully for eleven years, and Mai Minghe had no complaints. He was more like a friend than a husband, someone who wouldn't leave just to start a family.

She would occasionally wonder if this was all there was to life; but as she grew older, she thought about it less and less.

“Only by killing yourself and the past can you truly usher in a new life.”

……is that so?
Mai Minghe lowered her head, thinking vaguely, it was too late for her. Other Mai Minghes had already gotten there first.

The knife stabbed deep into her lower abdomen, the blade disappeared, leaving only a black handle.

Mai Minghe's hand, which was holding the knife handle, had no flesh on the back of his hand, with blue veins bulging out, and his knuckles were much rougher and wider than when he was twenty years old.

"His test results came back and it was throat cancer."

Mai Minghe held the knife tightly and said blankly to Mai Minghe inside the door: "...What should I do?"

　How should I put it, this chapter went very differently than I expected...

　　
　
(End of this chapter)