“So - what - what have you found these days?” Gloria looked at Sue, sniffled and asked.
“It’s - it’s very interesting. ” Sue held Gloria’s hand and sat beside her: “But - I just want to make sure you’re certain you want to get back into it? Right now?”
“There’s nothing else I want more now.” Gloria shook her head, then after a short moment of hesitation, she made the decision to let out something that was on her mind: “Sue - there’s - there’s this thing I want to tell you.”
“Sure, what is it?”
Gloria took a deep breath, then spoke with a trembling voice: “I think - I mean I know, that I am responsible for Gyuu Park’s death.”
“... why’d you think that?” Sue inched closer to her friend.
“Do you - do you know about deliverers?”
“Yeah, yeah - what about it?” A chill crawled up from the soles of her feet, up her ankles and through her spine.
“Gyuu Park and I killed one.” The next sentence that came from Gloria almost knocked Sue to the ground: “It was - it was after I fought off the ghost from the electric substation.”
“You fought off the ghost, then you came to Gyuu Park’s temple, but the deliverer followed you?” Sue narrowed her eyes: “But - who could have sent it to you? And how did that person put the target on you?”
“I don’t know.” Gloria shook her head: “And - and Gyuu Park set up a trap for it. We didn’t exactly kill it. But - it exploded on its own, and then Gyuu Park just drove me out of there.” Gloria’s eyes became red: “I - I thought nothing of it at first - I was just too occupied. But then - ”
“That deliverer exploded. And so you think, the omens it carried were transferred to Gyuu Park?” This thought flashed through Sue’s mind, but she did not utter it. She just held Gloria in her arms, trying her best to console her. She understood why Gloria kept herself in her room this many days now. She would probably have done the same, maybe even worse.
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Gloria sobbed for a short while, but then collected herself and turned her sight on the open, but not examined box sent by Gyuu Park: “You wanna look at it with me? I think - it’ll be a start for us.”
“Sure, of course.” Sue nodded.
Gyuu Park’s box was quite heavy, and now Sue knew why: Its body was made of thin but sturdy solid wood panels with internal metal plating, and with notes and manuals fully stuffed inside. On the top, it was a few pieces of folded hand written notes - the only things Gloria had read from this box.
“Look, he organized our visions. I mean, the notes on our visions we saw in that warehouse.” Sue found a small handwritten booklet stuffed to the side: “Oh - and there were symbolisms to everything we saw. And he noted the similarities and differences of our visions. I’ll - uh, I’ll compare what he wrote to my notes.”
Gloria frowned as he opened a small envelope and a piece of stained and heavily folded letter paper fell out. When she smoothed it over, her eyes narrowed: “Wait, there’s a document from one of the electric companies - this logo - it looks like S&S Corp.”
Sue walked over and fixed her eyes on the paper. The first thing she saw was a few lines of handwritten notes in red ink. It looked like, to her, that this was some rough calculation on the numbers. After five lines of calculations followed by a big question mark, there was another line: “Why the deficiency?”
“It seems like some kind of official document.” Gloria narrowed her eyes as she read through some of the printed words that were not covered by the dark coffee stains: “... thus, as a theory-proofed and field-tested model of intelligent distribution unit, with additional fortifying and impact-resistant designs and smart energy relaying, the latest model should be able to serve the need to replace all older models across the city…”
“This - why did Gyuu Park put this here?” Sue scratched her head.
“Is this from the document of the city wide project to quell paranormality?” Gloria looked up at Sue: “You think - do you think this is a piece of evidence from that?”
“I think - maybe it is!” Sue almost jumped: “And - and it makes sense, doesn’t it? The electric companies control a lot of the city’s core infrastructures. If I want to deploy something on that level, I’d definitely commission the electric companies on that.”
“Let’s take a few pics of this and keep some backups. Do you happen to know if we have some place that could do discrete photo copies?”
“I’d think YOU would know more about that than me. I think the only place I’d know would be that old copy machine in the community archive.” Sue sighed: “But - I can’t say that they wouldn’t check the things they copy. I can’t do that to Turner… God, I hope he won't get into too much trouble with the things we HAVE looked into.”
“Okay, looks like we need to buy a cheap printer.” Gloria shook her head: “In the meantime, we need to keep this safe. And - do you happen to know if someone can read these calculations? They look like some kind of - some kind of advanced math.”
“I - I can’t say that I do.” Sue chuckled and shook her head more.
Without saying much else, they continued diving into the things in the box. Most of the space was occupied by a few very old looking scriptures and manuals, with the covers made with tarnished blue papers, and held together by dirty and almost crumbling cotton threads. Then underneath these manuals, they found a small wooden box holding a small sword made of copper coins and red threads, and a thin writing brush made with black bamboo shaft and a brush head made of glistening white hairs.
Under this wooden box, they found another booklet - a handwritten manual, it seemed, with a very old-looking cover, and the writings were made with the traditional writing brushes as well.