Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 11: Modern World [Complete]

1328: TV Ad

In the first few days, she drifted through in a haze.

After placing the small white porcelain jar on the cabinet on the first day, she went to work as usual. Her colleagues asked if she had caught a cold yesterday, and she nodded in agreement. By the time she finished work, Deng Yilan still felt nothing. The thought of 'Han Jun is dead' had crossed her mind a few times, but it didn't stir her much.

Returning home, she unlocked the door with her keys, bent down to change her shoes, and called out, "Honey, I'm home—"

Then Deng Yilan remembered. She fell silent momentarily, put on her slippers, turned on the lights in the dim living room, and looked around. Nothing was missing. A stack of unfinished, missing person flyers still lay beside the television, and the dried orange peels from the past few days were still on the coffee table... Yet the house felt empty.

It was almost like when he used to work the night shift, and she would come home to find no one. Deng Yilan slowly sat on the sofa and looked up at the clock on the wall. By five or six in the morning, she would usually hear Han Jun unlocking the door. She used to hate it when Han Jun worked the night shift, not because she was afraid of sleeping alone, but because he would come home neither early nor late, disturbing her sleep.

The next morning, when she opened her eyes on the sofa, she washed her face and went to work without changing her clothes. There was a senior colleague with whom she had a good relationship, and during lunch, she asked, "When are you planning to have a baby?" Deng Yilan replied, "I don't know yet."

The third day was particularly difficult because her parents finally found out, and the police came to ask questions. Her parents came straight to her door, sighed repeatedly in the house filled with smoke, and her father asked to smoke on the balcony several times. She could still find cigarette ashes on the floor. Despite everything, she still went to work. Her mother looked at her and said, "This is terrifying. Aren't you afraid at all?"

On the fourth day, Deng Yilan was working accounts when she noticed her colleagues staring at her. She wiped her face and realized she had been crying. She couldn't hide it anymore. The company granted her five days off even though she pleaded with the leaders not to give her leave. She didn't want to go home, but everyone felt she needed to.

As she was leaving, the senior colleague who had asked her about her plans for having a baby approached her, looking concerned.

"I really didn't know," she said, sighing, as she waited for the elevator with Deng Yilan. "When is the cremation? My kid has final exams coming up, so I might not be able to attend the funeral. Let me give you a token of my sympathy."

"No need." Deng Yilan said. "I found him the next day, and they informed me that the cremation was done. There won't be a funeral."

The senior colleague was taken aback. "The next day? But didn't you say he— he was—"

It's never easy to say those words directly before the bereaved. Deng Yilan felt something stirring inside her again, tearing her apart. She steadied herself and heard herself say, "Yes."

"So soon? Wasn't there supposed to be an autopsy?" The senior colleague realized suddenly that she shouldn't have said that and quickly added, "Oh, they must have already completed the autopsy."

Autopsy. She had never thought about this issue—rather, whenever she involuntarily thought of Han Jun's final appearance, her first reaction was always to suppress it. These days, she hadn't even asked about the progress or assisting with the investigation, which was only that one time around eleven in the morning. Wasn't she supposed to identify the woman with the hat?