My Little Puppet Kidnapped the Child?!

"Found them?"

"Found them!"

The two police officers hurried to his side. They looked up, turned their heads, and followed the direction of his finger, scanning left and right with blank expressions.

"Where?"

"Right there! Sleeping on the tree branch!"

It was the first fork in the trunk, where the thickest branches grew. About the height of a person and a half, four or five branches spread out in different directions, naturally forming a platform. Three children, around ten years old—one boy in a sailor-style shirt, one in a white undershirt, and a little girl in a goose-yellow dress—were sprawled across the platform, fast asleep.

"Where? Which branch? The leaves are too thick, I can't see!"

Shen Le pointed several times to no avail, so he simply stepped forward, rubbed his hands together, and prepared to climb. Unfortunately, it had been too long; he charged twice and failed twice. With no other choice, he grabbed the probe rod of the life detector and poked it upward.

With a soft "pop," as if bursting a bubble, the two officers cried out in unison:

"I see them, I see them!"

"They're right in the tree!"

"Strange, how did we miss them before?"

"It's so obvious on this branch!"

Now that they were located, things were easier. The auxiliary officer stepped up to the trunk, crouched slightly, and locked his hands together. Shi Guangbing stepped back, charged forward, stepped into his partner's hands, and with a burst of effort, vaulted up into the tree.

"Get ready to catch them! Be careful!"

One passed them down, the other caught them, and the three sleeping children—two boys and one girl—were lowered from the branches and placed safely on the ground. Only when they touched the ground did the three children rub their eyes and wake up. The two officers immediately stepped forward to question them:

"How did you end up here?"

"We climbed over the wall! Right back there, there's a low section, it's really easy to climb!"

Shen Le followed them to take a look. In the corner by the servant quarters behind Wangxian Tower, there was indeed a low wall with a flat, wide top, and a ladder leaning against the corner. He climbed the ladder to look; there was a trash can on the other side, and by stepping on the lid, one could easily reach the top of the wall.

Shen Le: "..."

He stepped forward and shoved the ladder away with all his might. As he moved it, he gritted his teeth:

Tomorrow, I'm hiring someone to install barbed wire! The entire property, every single section of the wall, is getting a perimeter!

The two officers also peered over the wall. Not knowing what to say, they could only continue asking the three children why they had run out to play. At this question, the three children began to chatter all at once, creating a cacophony like a flock of ducks:

"School is too tiring!"

"I have to learn piano and painting every day when I get home. I have no free time at all, so I finally managed to run away!"

"Learning piano is fine! I have to learn the erhu. My dad yells at me, my mom yells at me, even the neighbors yell at me!"

Shen Le's heart skipped a beat as he looked at the boy who played the erhu. He looked him up and down, but couldn't see any resemblance to the boy in his memories; he could only assume he must look more like his mother. While he was lost in thought, he heard the police ask:

"How did you find this place?"

The two boys looked at each other and stayed silent. It was the little girl in the goose-yellow dress who raised her head, her voice bright and clear:

"A big sister brought us here to play!"

"What did this big sister look like?"

"She was very pretty!... She was wearing a bright red dress with beautiful flowers on it!"

"Also, that big sister, right here..." The little girl tilted her head slightly, raised her finger, and pointed to the corner of her right eye:

"She had a very pretty red mole!"

A red mole?

A cinnabar mole at the corner of the right eye?!

Shen Le pinched the webbing of his thumb hard to keep his expression from changing. The young officer, Shi Guangbing, had already shot a quick glance his way:

"Have you seen someone like that?"

"Never!"

Shen Le shook his head with righteous indignation. Are you kidding? He'd seen a puppet like that, but a living person? Absolutely not!

Shi Guangbing was a patrol officer, not a detective. Although he was observant and felt that the owner of 18 Nanhua Street was a bit suspicious, he didn't feel like triggering his interrogation skills to grill Shen Le. He hadn't slept all night! Finding the children was the greatest success; he really didn't have the energy to go looking for some "big sister"!

Besides, his gut told him that the homeowner before him really had nothing to do with this...

He reported to his colleagues over the radio and led the children away. Shen Le followed them out to see them off, help look after the kids, and, incidentally, go find something to eat. After walking two blocks, with the police station in sight, a swarm of parents rushed toward them:

"Hanhan! Hanhan, how did you end up here!"

"Yuanyuan, are you okay? Is anything hurting? Why didn't you come home in the middle of the night, and why didn't you tell your mom and dad?"

"Smack!"

"Hey, don't hit the child!"

Between the questioning, the worrying, and the physical discipline, the men and women were in a total state of chaos. In the distance, another middle-aged man, drenched in sweat, came sprinting over:

"Hanhan!—Hanhan!"

"Screech—"

A sharp sound of braking rang out. The driver poked his head out and cursed, "Are you in such a rush to reincarnate?!"

The middle-aged man, however, didn't even look; or rather, at this moment, his heart and eyes were filled only with his son, who stood in the middle of the crowd, his hand held by a police officer.

He had been sprinting over, clutching a schoolbag in his right hand and a bag containing soy milk, flatbread, and a tea egg in his left. Just as he was about to reach them, his foot caught on the ground, and he slammed face-first into the pavement.

"Thud." Shen Le's shoulders flinched; he felt the pain just watching the man.

Yet, the man seemed completely oblivious. His eyes remained fixed on the child, scanning him up and down. Seeing that the boy was completely intact, without a scratch or tear, a smile naturally bloomed on his face.

Even as he fell, the man had strained to keep his hands held high. He paused for a heartbeat, then propped himself up with his elbows, scrambling to his feet:

"Hanhan, Hanhan, are you alright?! Hurry, eat your breakfast, then go to school!"

The soy milk in his left hand hadn't spilled, the flatbread hadn't dropped, and the tea egg didn't have a single extra crack in its shell. The schoolbag in his right hand was only slightly dusty; the buckles hadn't even come undone, and the textbooks, stationery, and workbooks inside hadn't spilled a single page onto the ground.

Hanhan stood stunned for a long moment until the police officer gave him a nudge. He finally stepped forward, took the breakfast from his father's hands, and began to wolf it down. The father, with one hand holding the schoolbag and the other resting on his son's shoulder, led him toward the school.

As they walked, he held his head high and chest out, singing off-key:

"In this lifetime, one must fulfill their duty; how could an inch of land belong to another..."

Shen Le took two quiet steps back. He had heard this middle-aged man's voice before; it was the same man who had berated his son and thrown away the boy's puppet. But, but...

At the same time, in the home of the child who played the erhu—one of the three missing children—two people were busy at work. A baby-faced youth held a long pole with a probe attached, scanning everywhere from the ceiling to the floor, from under the bed to behind the cabinets.

The other, a young man dressed in a Tang suit, held the child's mother and asked incessantly:

"Have there been any unusual occurrences in your home lately? Any sounds with no identifiable source, objects moving on their own, mysterious handprints or footprints, tap water turning red, things of that nature?"

"None of that, actually... Does it count if the child is disobedient and only wants to play all day instead of doing his homework?"

"Uh... that's not what we would call an anomaly. Besides that, does your family keep any old heirlooms, or have you recently damaged or discarded any old items?"

"Well, there is that. We just threw away a puppet recently... It was passed down from the child's great-grandfather, and the child had been playing with it constantly!"