Once the money was in his hands, Baoruri dropped the airs. He even brought out some fine liquor from his private collection, saying he wanted the three of them to "sample" it.
Now he no longer minded the Slit-Mouthed Woman being some unclean entity, either.
After three rounds of drinks, he told them everything he knew, starting with where the clock had come from. A Hui man had lost to him in a private poker game and, unable to come up with that much cash on short notice, had given him the clock to settle the debt.
When Baoruri examined it, he found the craftsmanship exquisite. It did not look like a modern reproduction, either, but rather something from the late Qing period. Figuring it was worth a little money, he accepted it.
Once he took the clock back to his shop, he noticed several paper talismans pasted onto it. His limited knowledge left him unable to decipher them; he only thought they spoiled its appearance.
So he peeled them all off, and that was when something strange happened!
He felt the clock draining the strength from his body! And it did not stop there. As it drained him, its hands began moving on their own, only backward.
As a well-known black-market antiques dealer around Hohhot's Hui Muslim Street, Baoruri knew perfectly well that certain objects had supernatural things attached to them, so he had naturally learned a trick or two to deal with them. In the terms used by Japan's Jujutsu Society, he had cursed energy but no cursed technique. The methods he had learned were only general-purpose ways of handling supernatural incidents, something akin to the New Shadow Style.
By the time the Western clock had drained him to the point that his vision was going dark, the process finally stopped. Its hands had moved backward roughly two minutes from their starting position.
After taking a moment to recover, Baoruri continued examining the wall clock. That was when he discovered something on its back that looked like either a winding key or a knob for setting the time.
He gave it a gentle twist, and then things got strange-
"It felt like everything around me had gone into 'slow motion,'" Baoruri said, pouring himself a glass of Grassland White. His hand still trembled slightly as he drank, clearly shaken by the memory. "Everything around me moved incredibly slowly. After I turned that knob, I accidentally knocked over a half-full bottle of mineral water on the counter. And from my perspective... that bottle hung in the air for a very, very long time before it hit the floor."
"But that state actually only lasted... about two minutes? I couldn't say for sure."
Shoichi Kano's eyes lit up. This was fucking reminiscent of the Heavy Acceleration phenomenon in Kamen Rider Drive, which I watched in my previous life!
Still, to avoid jumping to conclusions, Kano asked another question. "Mr. Baoruri, after that strange phenomenon ended, did you ask the people around you about it? Were they affected, too?"
Baoruri had just finished the Grassland White in his glass and let out a grimacing "hah," clearly savoring the liquor's fiery bite. "...I did, but none of them noticed anything. I reckon the phenomenon was limited to my antiques shop."
Now Shoichi Kano was certain. The clock's effect really did resemble Heavy Acceleration: the movement of objects within its range was drastically slowed, including molecular vibrations, sensory processing, and so on. To an outside observer, everything within that area would appear to move extremely slowly, as though time had stopped.
"Who did you end up giving that Western clock to?" Zhao Qingshan asked, taking a token sip of the liquor in his glass without actually drinking it.
"A man came down from Hailar," Baoruri said. Having accepted their money, he had no intention of hiding anything. "I traded a few moves with him and confirmed he was in the same line of work. He asked whether I had any goods related to 'time.' He said he had a regret he wanted to put right, so he needed to return to the past. I didn't know whether my clock could help him, so I showed it to him. He decided to take it back and try it first, then figure things out if it didn't work."
"How much did you sell the clock for?" Shoichi Kano asked.
Baoruri held up two callused fingers.
"Two hundred thousand?" the boy ventured.
Baoruri shook his head. "Two million. And he said that if the clock worked, he'd give me an additional reward."
"Do you know any specific details about him?" Shoichi Kano pressed. "Like where in Hailar he lives? Or whether he left a phone number?"
Meanwhile, since Miss Slit-Mouthed Woman could not understand Chinese, she simply watered down the Golden Horde Mongolian King Baijiu that Baoruri had brought out for his guests-a liquor good enough to serve at state banquets-and drank it like Japanese sake. She had even helped herself to the little green tangerines, candied fruit, walnuts, and other snacks in his fruit basket to accompany her drinks.
Anyone who knew their liquor would probably have been furious enough to bleed from every orifice at the sight.
While Kano and Boss Zhao took turns pressing for information, she happily alternated between mouthfuls of liquor and snacks.
"I don't know exactly where he's from," Baoruri said, shaking his head. "But he left me an address and a phone number. He said if I found any other objects related to time, I could use those details to get in touch and send him a letter."
At that, Baoruri got up and rummaged through the counter for an old receipt, then wrote the address and phone number on its back.
Shoichi Kano picked it up and saw that the address belonged to a small convenience store in Fendou Town, Hailar District. The owner's surname was Bai, and his given name was Ning. The phone number belonged to this Mr. Bai as well.
There was also a note beneath the address. In essence, if they needed to contact the buyer, they should send a letter to the store, but make sure to tell the owner to pass it on to the "Mongolian Gentleman."
Mongolian Gentleman was obviously an alias. Whatever else the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region might lack, Mongolian people were hardly difficult to find. Shoichi Kano could not just grab a Mongolian person off the street and ask whether he was the gentleman who had bought the Western clock.
If he actually did that, he would probably be slapped with charges of picking quarrels and provoking trouble and disturbing public order, then treated to a stint in detention.
Kenjaku probably would not even pull strings to get him out. He would just treat him as a joke.
So they would have to start with that little store.
"Thank you." Shoichi Kano put the paper away.
After they left the antiques shop, Zhao Qingshan naturally asked, "When are you two planning to head to Hailar? Would you like me to arrange train tickets or something?"
"Let's leave tomorrow," Shoichi Kano said after a moment's thought. "You have a car, don't you? We'll drive and take turns behind the wheel."
"That'll be more than ten hours on the road," Zhao Qingshan said.
"That's fine." Shoichi Kano did not particularly mind.
As he recalled, at this particular point in 2006, the famous Haiyan System and Skynet System had yet to be rolled out nationwide. Plenty of drivers on the roads had no licenses at all; they simply knew how to drive and got behind the wheel. This was especially common in remote regions.
Following behind them, the Slit-Mouthed Woman yawned, clearly a little bored.
Shoichi Kano felt bad about neglecting this mother of his, so he deliberately slowed until he was a step behind Zhao Qingshan, allowing him to walk alongside the Slit-Mouthed Woman.
He translated what they had just discussed as simply as he could, giving her a general idea of where they were headed next.
Before you continue