After several weeks, Bres and Qiao Anni returned to the Third District.
It seemed not much had changed, basically the same old thing. Sewage, stench, and the unfriendly restaurant owner on the roadside—except for a certain place they passed by.
Bres and Qiao Anni couldn’t help but stop in their tracks.
“Ah, the sign here has been replaced.”
Although it had been quite a while, the memory was still just as vivid.
The former Sventovit Factory had been replaced by another nameless factory that didn’t even hang a sign, and the roar of machinery coming from there was even more intense than before.
“Why have you two stopped? Did something happen here? Is it something you can share?”
Seeing the two suddenly standing still lost in memory, Farry also couldn’t help being curious.
“I once held my own against five there…”
“He was beaten to a pulp there and I had to drag him back.”
“Huh?”
Sometimes, one thing can have many different sides.
A few minutes before meal time, the three arrived at the factory where Oliver worked.
They came to the assembly line, where workers were operating like machines, like living corpses.
There, they found the factory supervisor.
“Who are you! Who are you looking for!”
The supervisor shouted at the top of his lungs.
“I’m looking for Oliver!”
Bres shouted back.
The running machines made everyone’s ears rumble, so all conversations had to be conducted in this form.
“Who! Oben?”
“I said Oliver!”
“Orff?”
“Oliver!”
After a fierce bout of gesturing, the supervisor finally understood the purpose of their visit.
“Follow me!”
The supervisor pointed to a metal box nearby.
After entering this small, makeshift office, the noise dropped to a level that wouldn’t affect conversation.
The supervisor opened his personal terminal, clicked into the employee list interface, scrolled through several pages of faces that looked no different from each other, and found Oliver’s name.
“So you’re looking for him?”
The supervisor pulled up the attendance record.
There were two bright red X’s in the columns for yesterday and today.
He shook his head.
“I don’t know. He hasn’t shown up for work for two days. I was wondering where he ran off to!”
“Do you know where he might go?”
“How would I know? I’m not his father! Once he leaves the factory, he can do whatever he wants. If he doesn’t come to work, it’s his own problem that he doesn’t get paid!”
“… Then, does he have any acquaintances here? Or colleagues he gets along well with?”
The supervisor tilted his head and thought for a few seconds.
“There’s one named Kailan. He seems to have a good relationship with Oliver.”
“Can you take us to see him?”
“Not now. Wait until meal break when work is over!”
Ring ring.
Almost at the same moment the bell rang, the roar of the machines also stopped, and a commotion came from outside.
The supervisor clicked his tongue, walked out of the office, and shouted at the whispering crowd.
“Alright, alright! Break! Come back in an hour! Don’t be late! Kailan! You stay! Someone is looking for you!”
As soon as the supervisor finished speaking, the crowd surged toward the factory gate, and at the same time, a thin, small man squeezed out of the crowd and came before the supervisor and Bres’s group.
“Supervisor? Is there something?”
“Kailan, these two are looking for you. They want to ask about Oliver.”
“You?”
Kailan looked Bres and Qiao Anni up and down (because Farry was too conspicuous and hid in a pocket).
“Does it have to be now?”
The man’s tone carried a hint of impatience; after all, this was eating into his precious break time.
“Sorry, big brother, I have a few questions to ask you.”
Bres noticed Kailan’s displeasure and put on a hearty smile, pointing toward the gate.
“How about this? Let’s talk over a meal. This one’s on me!”
“Really?”
Kailan’s eyes immediately lit up.
“Really, I’m treating.”
Kailan instantly beamed.
“Then follow me!”
‘Hope he doesn’t sting me too badly…’
Bres muttered to himself.
He felt his wallet and, with Farry and Qiao Anni, followed Kailan’s footsteps.
Fortunately, Kailan didn’t seem intent on fleecing him.
In the end, he led them to an ordinary little restaurant, the kind that uses tacky and glaring neon signs to attract customers.
As soon as he sat down, he eagerly ordered several dishes.
His hand paused over the beer section on the menu for a long time, but finally he reluctantly put it down.
“What a pity, I have to work in the afternoon…”
During the wait for food, Bres asked,
“You’re pretty close with Oliver, right?”
“You could say that? But it’s just that we chat a bit more than others and sit together when drinking after work.”
Kailan was in a pretty good mood.
“He’s gone missing. Since the night before last, he didn’t ask for leave from the factory, and he didn’t tell his family.”
“Missing?”
Kailan’s surprise didn’t seem fake.
“That’s right. Did you see Oliver that day? Any clues?”
“That day…”
Kailan tried hard to recall that evening.
“I remember now. After work that day, I asked him to go drinking together.”
“Drinking?”
“A few days ago was payday, so after work I asked him if he wanted a few drinks. His wife is strict and won’t let him drink much, so sometimes we sneak a few drinks before going home.”
“And then?”
“Then… on the way, we pass through a relatively dangerous district. We usually find someone to accompany us through that section. But that day he had drunk a bit too much, and the smell of alcohol on him was too strong to cover up. So he told us to go ahead, that he would take a while to let the smell completely dissipate before going home.”
“After that, you went home? Did you see him again?”
“No. The next day when I came back to work, I didn’t see him. I thought he was just sleeping in because he drank too much…”
“I understand. Which street?”
“Fifth Avenue.”
As the dishes came up one after another, Kailan lost interest in answering.
Seeing this, Bres didn’t press further—he had mostly gotten the information he wanted.
“Thanks.”
After paying Kailan’s bill at the front desk and ignoring Qiao Anni’s muttering of “I want to eat too,” Bres walked out of the restaurant.
The three arrived at the Fifth District.
“So, who are we looking for this time?”
Qiao Anni, chewing on an energy bar, spoke indistinctly.
“The local stronghold? Or the head of the Local Stronghold Society?”
Farry, chewing on something unknown, guessed.
“No need for that trouble.”
Bres walked straight to the entrance of a bar and examined the camera above the door.
Then he followed the wire all the way into an alley nearby and found the junction.
He easily pried open the casing and connected his portable computer.
“Ooh, is this hacking? It’s illegal but so cool!”
“If you know it’s illegal, don’t shout so loud.”
Bres sat cross-legged on the ground and, without taking much time, hacked into the bar’s surveillance system and pulled up that day’s footage.
“Let me look…”
The time started from 11 o’clock.
Bres pressed fast-forward.
The figures on the screen began to flicker rapidly.
He searched for his target at double speed.
“Hmm?”
Bres pressed pause.
It was a group of people dressed as workers.
Bres recognized Kailan among them.
“No sign of Oliver.”
Continued fast-forwarding.
At 1 AM, Bres made a new discovery.
A man and a woman were supporting a man as they walked across the screen.
“Found him.”