"Umm agents? Excuse me, one more question.” right before the two FBI agents left, Jason came up to them and asked: "Have you heard of Dr. Nguyen? One of the lead forensic scientists of the SFPD.”
"I heard of the name, but no we don’t have any information on her.” Agent Lance said, "Maybe you can call the SFPD for updates. But they might not have time for your questions. From what we heard the SFPD is now swamped.”
"Understood, thank you agents.”
"Just don’t forget to call us if you heard from Emilia Corin.”
"So they are pretty useless. Let me call Erika.” Caroline shook her head as she heard Jason forward the FBI agents’ answer to their question.
"Cool, let me call the hospital and see if we can go to see Aimee and Thomas.” Jason took out his phone and started looking up the phone number of St. Anna Hospital.
"What’s up? Something happened?” Jianmen came back to the lounge and was not expecting to see that both Caroline and Jason were on their phones with very serious and concerned looks on their faces.
"You know Aimee and Thomas? The detectives who’ve been here a couple of times? They were seriously injured. The two FBI agents just told us that.” Jason answered while he dialed the number he found.
"Is that so...” Jianmen scratched his jaw and thought for a while, "Alright. Let me know if you need my help. I think it’s time that I start going out of the inn. Being cooped up in here and spending most of the time in the basement and sleeping really got me depressed and frustrated. Also, feel free to go into the basement to practice visualization and meditation - it’s clear for you to use now.”
"Finally? What happened in the basement?” while waiting on the line Jason looked at Jianmen and said: "How’s your injuries?”
"Much better, still need more time to completely heal. But it’d be fine as long as I don’t have to fight.” Jianmen sat on a chair behind the reception’s desk, "Also, if you want to visit the detectives later, you can bring some matcha cakes. I made some rib soup with mushrooms, great for enhancing the body’s healing abilities, you can also bring to them.”
"Rib soup! That sounds so… homely. Oh, sorry Boss, they picked up my call.” Jason nodded, and finally the call went through.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"Just remember to do your homework!” Jianmen laughed as he started playing the computer on the reception’s desk.
"... oh, okay, and can we come in now? … right, thank you very much! We would like to come in as soon as possible.” sounded like Jason got some good news from his phone call to hospital.
"Erika heard nothing so far. Just that the lab is still looking for a lead forensic scientist, and the body is being preserved in the lab and no one in the lab can access it without the captain’s okay.” Caroline got off her call and told bothe Jason and Jianmen.
"Thomas is still in the hospital, so we can visit him. But we can’t visit Aimee just yet.” Jason put down his phone and looked at Jianmen: "Hey, Boss, I know my shift is coming up next...”
"Just go, you’ll take my evening shift so you’d better come back early.” Jianmen waved his hands.
After Jason and Caroline left, Jianmen took out three ancient copper coins, blew onto it, then put them on the desk in the form of a triangle with each coin touching the other two. Then, he quickly drew a complex symbol on a sheet of paper and placed the paper on the coins.
The sheet of paper started burning from where it touched the coins, the fire spread quickly through almost the entirety of it. When the fire stopped, all that was left was a partially burnt irregularly shaped piece with only a small part of the complex symbol Jianmen drew. Jianmen looked at the partial symbol and tried to read as many "sub-symbols" from it by looking at some of the lines and shapes while ignoring others.
"Minor fortune be in going out; Fortune be in visiting friends; Minor fortune be in getting married; Fortune be in building and land work. Misfortune be in holding a funeral; Minor misfortune in with child delivery; Minor misfortune be in starting a fight; Misfortune be in taking a test.” Jianmen wrote down the results of this quick divination for him and his students: "Well, most of it does not apply. Good that it is a good day to go out and visit friends.”
Ever since the unfortunate divination with the three incense sticks, Jianmen started doing this kind of daily divination to gauge how much chance his students might get into danger during their possible daily activities. Up till today, there is no apparent danger. Granted that these kinds of quick and easy divination are relatively low in accuracy. Yet with the wooden figures he gave to both of his students, he was confident that should anything happen they will last until he comes to their rescue.
"Hi, we would like to checkout, please.” a young couple just came into the lounge through the stairs.
"No problem. Leaving so soon?” Jianmen took the key card from them and started the process of checking out the guest; he remembered this young couple so he knew that they were actually checking out one day earlier than their reservation.
"Yeah, the file festival is done, and there isn’t much to see anymore.” the boy in the couple said: "So we decided to leave earlier for our next destination.”
"Good luck. Your payment for tomorrow’s stay will be refunded.” Jianmen smiled at the couple and gave them back a receipt to sign.
"Do you still have the matcha cake? I would like to buy some for the road.” the girl in the couple asked.
"Yeah, that’s 5 dollars per slice.” Jianmen stood up and was about to walk to the diner: "How many do you want?”
"6 slices, 3 for each of us.”
"No problem.”
As Jianmen walked by the couple’s side, he sensed a small trace of unusual energy radiating from them, he took a quick look at them and still proceeded to the diner and took out six slices of matcha cake, putting them into six brown paper bags.
After the young couple left, Jianmen extended his left hand and grabbed the air a couple of times, when he finally looked into his left hand, he saw a small shiny ball of blue light.