At two o'clock in the afternoon, in the coffee shop, Narnia propped her chin on her hand, listlessly staring out the window in a daze, stirring the long-cold coffee with a spoon. She felt like yawning.
The man sitting across from her kept talking, trying to catch her attention, but he had exhausted all topics of conversation. The woman opposite him still showed no reaction.
Hyrule chuckled and shook his head, directly asking her, "Miss Narnia, don't you want to talk to me?"
Upon hearing this, Narnia turned her head to look at him and straightforwardly said, "Mr. Hyrule, when you asked me out, I made it clear that I have no intention of getting married now and I don't want to go on blind dates. You said you didn't mind, so I reluctantly agreed to come."
A bitter smile appeared at the corner of Hyrule's mouth. He had thought she was just being polite, but he realized she was genuinely unwilling to accept him.
"Miss Narnia, it seems that I did overlook. I have a good impression of you and thought that you might not have a bad impression of me either," Hyrule said. After all, he was an elite who had returned from overseas, with refined speech and gentlemanly behavior.
However, theoretically, with his appearance and status, no woman would easily reject him.
Especially Narnia, who worked with a group of rough men all day, should have had no resistance to him.
But Narnia simply had no feelings for him, rejecting him cleanly without leaving any room for ambiguity.
Hyrule gave up but was curious and asked her, "Miss Narnia, do you already have someone you like?"
"No, where did you get that idea?" Narnia scooped up a large spoonful of strawberry mousse and put it in her mouth, not caring about her image, eating with relish.
Hyrule gazed at her and said after a moment, "You seem to have something on your mind, especially when you're daydreaming, as if you're thinking of someone."
"Really?" Narnia furrowed her brow. She had heard this kind of thing before.
Whenever she sat idle and daydreamed, someone would always come up and ask if she had just broken up. Narnia always felt like rolling her eyes.
As a lifelong singleton, she didn't even have a crush, so where did the talk of a breakup come from?
At most, she sometimes felt a little empty inside...
Hyrule wanted to chat with her a bit longer, but unfortunately, Narnia received a phone call, saying there was a case at the bureau, and she left in a hurry.
Hyrule watched her leaving figure and could only sigh with regret.
After Narnia arrived at the police station, she learned that this was a very special case. It was said that a real estate company had developed a plot of land and wanted to build a villa area.
However, during the construction, they discovered a car buried underground, and there was supposedly a skeleton inside the car.
The construction site reported to the police immediately. With the police's assistance, they carefully excavated the car out with a excavator.After verification, it was an old Shanghai-brand car from over thirty years ago, which means the owner has been buried underground for more than thirty years.
Initially thought to be related to murder, but after geographers and historians investigated the land and its history, it is highly likely that this was just an accidental incident. Over thirty years ago, the area was at the foot of a mountain, where the loose soil would easily trigger landslides during yellow storm warnings.
If a car happened to pass by, it was indeed possible to be buried.
Leaving the speculation to the experts, Narnia focused on the skeleton in the car. After being buried for so many years, it had long turned into a skeleton. From the structure of the skeleton, the deceased appeared to be male, and detailed examinations revealed that he was a male around 30 years of age with no traumatic injuries on the bones, which ruled out the possibility of homicide.
Among the items found in the car were a decayed wallet, a rusted key, a popular singer's album disc from back then, and a few photos. Unfortunately, they were too deteriorated from being buried for so long to be restored.
After everything was investigated and it was confirmed that the deceased had died in a landslide accident over thirty years ago, the media was notified. Narnia checked her phone on the day the news was released and couldn't help but frown. The reporters had actually included her in the photos?
Although not very clear, one could still make out that she was holding a phone and making a call. Since it had already been published, Narnia chose to ignore it.
A few days later, just before the end of work, Narnia received a call from the evidence room, telling her about an interesting discovery and asking her to come over. When she arrived, a police officer handed her an old photo, saying, "This photo was found in the album disc box, previously unnoticed. Take a look and see if there's anything odd about it."
The photo was placed in a transparent bag, yellowed with age but still clear. It depicted an indoor scene with a 20th-century European style, a man in a white shirt sitting on a vintage sofa, legs crossed, holding a white cat. He wore gold-framed glasses with a gentle expression, looking refined and scholarly. Behind him stood a woman.
She was dressed in a competent trench coat, resembling a bodyguard, arms crossed, with a smug yet mischievous smile, her eyes bright and sparkling. Narnia blinked, feeling as if she had seen this woman before.
When she still hadn't realized, the male officer said with a smile, "Officer Narnia, don't you think she looks a lot like you?"
"Really? It's identical!" Narnia was shocked upon closer inspection.
The male officer said to her, "Officer Narnia, take this photo for investigation. It might help you identify the deceased."
Narnia stared at the photo for a long time, her brows furrowing more deeply.I apologize for the oversight. Here is the complete translation without any Chinese characters:
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She certainly didn't naively believe that the person in the photo was herself, but she was puzzled as to how someone could look so much like her.
If this woman were still alive, she would probably be quite elderly by now.
After expressing her gratitude to the male police officer, Narnia took the photo and drove home from the police station.
Narnia currently lived with her parents, and their primary concern was her marriage. They were always inquiring about when she intended to get married, which bothered her a great deal.
Although she was indeed 27 this year and had never been in a relationship, she wasn't missing any limbs, her appearance wasn't bad, and was she really worried about not being able to find a husband?
Whenever she brought this up, her parents would show understanding, only to follow up with, "So, when do you plan to marry? We can start making arrangements for you."
Narnia: "..."
Couldn't she just concede and stop discussing this topic?
That night, after her bath, lying in bed, Narnia stared at the photo for a long time. The more she looked at it, the more she felt that the woman in the photo was herself, with the same expression and posture.
She even had similar clothes. With this thought, Narnia immediately got up and dug out a windbreaker and jeans from her closet that were identical to those in the photo.
She compared them and found that, apart from the photo being too old and yellowed to see the details clearly, everything else was very similar.
It was so strange that Narnia, staring at the photo, eventually fell asleep.
It wasn't until the middle of the night that she was awakened by the sound of the TV playing. Narnia, with sleepy eyes, sat up.
Going downstairs from her room, she saw that the TV in the living room was on, but there was no one around.
It was already two o'clock in the morning. Who would turn on the TV at this time?
Puzzled, Narnia walked over, thinking that perhaps her father had left the TV on, and prepared to turn it off and go back to sleep. But when she saw what was playing on the TV, she hesitated and slowly sat back down on the sofa.
It was a very old black and white war film, with a date at the bottom indicating it was from 1975.
At that time, the filming technique was not as advanced as today's, with somewhat shaky footage, but it had a strong sense of realism, with every scene being authentic.
Narnia watched for a while and found that although there were no subtitles, the actors' Mandarin was very standard, with clear pronunciation.
Perhaps because she had never seen it before, Narnia found it intriguing and poured herself a glass of water before retreating back to the sofa to continue watching.
But as she was drinking, a sidelong glance made her spray the water out with a "Pu!"
"Cough, cough!"
Forgetting to grab a tissue, Narnia covered her mouth and coughed a few times before rushing over to the TV.
There, on the screen, a man in a military uniform appeared, the kind with a cloak, looking very imposing. But that wasn't the point. The point was, this man in the movie was identical to the man in the photo she had just seen!