Artifact Report

Chapter 256: Mai Minghe Jones's Hiding Trick
Most of the records in Eugene's notebook were written in shorthand.

Although he had increased his writing speed, the strokes in the following parts became more and more hasty and sloppy. Sometimes a word was written in a hurry and became a curved line, which made it difficult for Mai Minghe to recognize.

*
What happens next is a bit confusing, so I'll try to record it in order.

While examining the twenty unfamiliar toys, someone said, "Twenty employees, twenty toys."

This sentence has been weighing on my mind, and I think others feel the same way. At the very least, Jie must have made the connection between the two...

Everyone was examining the toys one by one, and secretly looking at each other, trying to compare themselves with the toys.

But we wasted at least ten minutes and couldn't see what connection these twenty strange toys had with us.

Jie said that the little girl on the cover of a coloring book looked a bit like her.

The skin color and eye color are indeed the same...

But Learymon thought that this didn't mean anything; it was just a poorly drawn cartoon girl, and that Jade had brown eyes, which was common. (I think the little girl looked more like bread.)
No one else found a toy that represented themselves.

The idea that if we can't find Jones, we'll become toys seems really absurd—more absurd than if the staircase window suddenly disappeared.

Besides, if the disappeared people turned into toys, then there should only be fourteen toys here, not twenty - the six of us haven't disappeared yet.

As a result, we were divided into two camps. One camp believed that the strange toy appeared together with Jones, and there must be a connection between them, which needed to be carefully analyzed.

Another group believes that toys may just be a "red herring" (a false clue to divert other people's attention and deceive others), and the appearance of toys is purely to waste our time.

I am a fence-sitter. I think whichever faction starts the analysis is right.

When the next move was voted on, I was cursed to death by both sides.

...Strange, who said that?

*
Seeing this, Mai Minghe turned around and looked at the child's doll outside the door.

It remained motionless, maintaining its original posture.

After thinking for a moment, she walked out with the notebook and gently moved it a few times with her toes - it was made of hard plastic and could not be cut open; but once she used her toes to open its outer shell, she found that there were several scissor holes on it, which were obviously the traces left by Eugene and his group when they were looking for Jones.

It seems that the toys have not been changed and are still the same batch.

Mai Minghe took the opportunity to check all the toy samples in the office and found that there were indeed twenty in total; one of them was a coloring book with a little girl on the cover.

But what is the relationship between these toys and the employees?
*
If you ask me what the only good thing about this nightmare is, I can only say that the manager disappeared as well, which is really great.

But when I think about the possibility that I might end up like him—

*
Eugene may have wanted to write something lighthearted to lighten his mood, but his efforts obviously failed.

He added below the abruptly cut-off sentence: "Alas, I can't imagine what will happen to them. I almost vomited on my legs just now."

Those kids... I'm afraid they all suffered a lot of fear at the end of their lives, right?

Mai Minghe reminded himself that this was a nest and they might not be alive.

But precisely because this is a nest, and nests are unpredictable, she is not sure whether they were once living people - what if?
She sighed softly and glanced across the paper.

Because they were all written on paper with the same pen, if Eugene hadn't used words like "just now", it would be difficult to tell that there was actually a gap of time between the previous sentence and the next.

……Eh?

I always feel that this seems very important.

Mai Minghe slowly rubbed this thought over and over several times, committing it to memory. He whispered to himself, "This seems very important... I'll think about it later and why it's important. I can't think of it right now."

This was the first time she had made a sound since entering the office on the third floor. It was clearly her own voice, but it suddenly fell into the silent air and floated in front of the photos marked with red crosses on the wall. It was a little tight and dry, but it sounded like a stranger.

Mai Minghe held her breath and waited for a few seconds - fortunately, no other voice suddenly sounded and spoke to her.

She is really good at scaring herself.

*
We had no choice but to search every corner of the third floor again.

The result is no different from last time.

There aren't many places an adult can hide... It's already past seven o'clock, and apart from the rustling sound of my writing, no one has spoken in the conference room for a long time.

More than once, I thought they had all disappeared and my heart was pounding; but every time I looked up, they were still there, just too desperate and depressed to speak.

*
Somehow we got into an argument about what "Jones" was.

Leremon refused to participate in the discussion and went to check the tea room and the pipes outside the house to find the "toxic gas" that caused our collective hallucinations. Osho asked him not to act on his own, but he didn't listen.

Patricia believes that "Jones" is the monster in the heart of each of us, a primitive fear of Neanderthals in the subconscious of Homo sapiens left over from evolutionary history.

Osho laughed at her, and at this time he did not forget to say some high-sounding nonsense that only a psychiatrist would say.

I thought Jones might be something supernatural that happened to take on human form; perhaps a ghost, a curse, something out of a horror movie. Jai agreed with my suggestion, but Osho refused to acknowledge the existence of forces beyond the scope of science.

Anyone could see that Osho was very scared.

He must not see this sentence.

*
Mai Minghe turned the page and his blood stopped beating when he saw the next sentence.

*
I flipped back a few pages and Laura was indeed among us in the beginning
*
……What's the meaning?
Laura suddenly disappeared?
Even Mai Minghe couldn't help but flip back several pages and hurriedly read his notes again; yes, although not many times, Eugene did mention Laura several times.

But in the last two paragraphs, everyone appeared, but only Laura disappeared from the notes... When did she disappear?

It seemed that Laura did not leave alone. Could it be that she disappeared quietly when she was among the crowd?
*
Is the deadline up?

Why did Laura disappear first? Wasn't Jai the first person Jones asked to find her?

And we waited for several minutes, but it didn't disappear?

Even Leremon, who had gone out alone, came back safe and sound after hearing us crying and shouting.

In the end, it was Patricia who wiped away her tears and came up with an idea that temporarily calmed everyone down.

"Laura should be one of the colleagues who came to look for Jones in the previous few waves, not the same group as us."

We asked her why.

She took out the employee list and said, Laura's name is in the top ten, but the remaining five of us are in the last part.

The order in which Jones asked employees to play hide-and-seek with her seemed to be based on a list of employees.

The reason why Laura didn't disappear with the previous group but stayed with us for a few hours was because Laura had been helping her sister take care of her children recently and didn't sleep well last night. She secretly took a nap in the conference room at noon today. Patricia knew about it at the time, and when the manager looked for her, she helped cover it up for her in front of the manager.

"I remember glancing around the office and wondering why it was so empty. Now that I think about it, the first group of people who should have gone to Jones but treated it as a joke had already disappeared. Whether the staircase was sealed before or after that, I don't know."

In other words, Laura should have been one of the people who went to find Jones in the last wave.

But because she was asleep at the time (I don't know whether she had received the request to look for Jones before going to bed. Now it seems that she might have received it, but she didn't take it seriously), the time after she fell asleep was temporarily "frozen" - after waking up, she was pushed into our group.

No one knows whether this inference is correct or not, but I think that others, like me, desperately want to believe it.

After all, this means that as long as we fall asleep now... the ending where we also disappear can be postponed, right?

Maybe when the sun rises tomorrow, everything will return to normal.

We are getting ready for bed.

*
Mai Minghe immediately reached out and grabbed the employee list.

JL Toy Company Employee List

Marketing and Sales Department:

Lecone, Carter Jr., Melina, Bailey, Julie Lan
Administrative Customer Service Department:
David
Finance and Accounting Department:
Gabor, Angelina, Laura

Human Resources Department:
Frost, Hyman.

Production Department:
Felix, Theresa, Ayton, Scott, Eugene.

Design and Development Department:

Patricia, Jai, Osho, Leary Moon.

Patricia was right. Laura was indeed alone at the front of the line, belonging to the accounting department, and the other five were at the back.

Mai Minghe put down the list and was a little stunned for a moment. He turned around and looked at the wall full of photos marked with red crosses.

...is there something that doesn't seem to be right?
She picked up Eugene's notebook again.

In fact, she just realized that Eugene had not written a single word since everyone decided to go to bed; but she was unwilling to give up, so she flipped through the book again before finally putting it down in disappointment.

Even if Eugene could have fallen asleep under those circumstances, he could not have escaped the ultimate outcome by sleeping; so there is no doubt that everyone disappeared together in the end because Jones was not found.

Mai Minghe sat in the chair for a long time without saying a word.

…She seemed to have guessed where Jones was hiding.

　I was worried that the physical problem was not caused by diet, so I made an appointment to see a doctor.

　　After booking the appointment, I discovered that my appointment was on the same day as my vaccination appointment! The vaccination appointment date couldn't be rescheduled; I had to wait about a month for the vaccine to take effect. I was leaving on March 3th, so this was my last chance to get vaccinated.

　　This doesn't leave me any chance of survival... Good people have to suffer for a day or two after getting vaccinated, and I'm in such a bad condition to get vaccinated...

　　
　
(End of this chapter)