Chapter 49: Summary Report

Chapter 49: Summary Report

Jasmine felt that she ought to be afraid, but facing the female police officer before her, she found it difficult to produce overly intense emotional fluctuations. It was as though, after crying for a very long time, both body and mind had settled down on their own.

“All right. What do you want to ask?” She glanced at her parents’ complicated expressions, then asked with some hesitation.

The woman wearing a superintendent’s badge pointed toward the room door and said,

“Inside.”

She did not ask Jasmine’s parents to leave. She merely ordered two of the policemen who had followed her to stand guard outside.

After casually closing the door, she pulled over a crudely made round stool and sat down without the least politeness, looking quite relaxed.

This immediately made Jasmine and her parents feel less tense.

“You may call me Ms. Gray.” The police officer introduced herself, pointed at the other chairs and the bed in the outer room, and said, “Sit.”

After everyone in the room found a place and sat down, Gray smiled at Jasmine.

“I received a report saying that some hard-to-understand things happened around you. For example, men’s desire to violate you was clearly above the normal level. This does not mean that there are no villains or criminals among them, but rather that the proportion was too high—high enough to make one find it strange.”

At this point, Gray’s gaze swept across Jasmine’s face.

“As far as I know, you suffered serious injuries in a previous fire, resulting in irreparable disfigurement. Yet now, I cannot see any sign of that at all. Do you have anything to say about this?”

Jasmine’s heart rose into her throat again. Not daring to conceal anything, she said in a slightly panicked tone,

“Tonight, I went out to the municipal square for the carnival. When I passed a street, I met a wandering magician who called himself Merlin Hermes. He said he had invented a machine called the Fully Automatic Wish Machine. As long as you inserted a one-penny coin, quietly spoke your wish, and turned the lever, it could make your wish come true.

“He said I was the first experiencer and could try it once for free. Then—then I changed back into my original appearance. All my injuries were healed.

“Officer, that is exactly what happened. You have to believe me.”

After saying that, she glanced at Ms. Gray and her assistant, then at her parents, trying to obtain approval from them.

But the expressions on her parents’ faces clearly said:

“How could that be possible?

“How could there be a machine that automatically fulfills other people’s wishes?

“How could such a good thing exist, where one penny is enough to fulfill a wish?

“And the first experiencer is completely free!”

Gray and her assistant, however, did not show any obvious change in expression, leaving Jasmine unable to tell whether they believed her.

“Continue.” Seeing her pause, Gray nodded encouragingly.

Jasmine hurriedly recounted everything in full: how she had gone home to get coins, how she had wished for her parents to recover their health, and how she had wished to become beautiful. At the end, she said,

“I really did become extremely beautiful. Even I couldn’t look away from myself. It let me feel a great deal of goodwill. But later, the men around me gradually made me afraid…

“And because Dad and Mom couldn’t recognize me and drove me out of the house, I was scared—very scared. So I went back there and made the third wish. Mm, Mr. Merlin Hermes said the first one was a free wish and did not count among the three. In short, I changed back into my original appearance again, and then I met you.”

Hearing this, Jasmine’s parents instantly thought of the beautiful “thief” from earlier.

Then they discovered that their bodies were indeed much healthier than before. Their eyesight had recovered, their arms were strong enough, and everything seemed different.

They began to believe Jasmine’s description. Yet this made them feel…