Without hesitation, Qin Manjiang answered the call.
"Hello?"
He spoke first.
What answered him at first was endless silence.
Only after a long while... did he hear a low, bewildered female voice:
"Who am I?"
Strange things happened every moment in this world, but someone suddenly calling to ask who she herself was hardly qualified as ordinary strangeness.
Glancing at the name saved for that number on the phone, Qin Manjiang chose to remain silent.
"Where... is this?"
Besides bewilderment, the low female voice on the phone now carried a measure of helplessness and panic.
"Beep, beep, beep!!!"
Short blasts of car horns cut through the phone. Qin Manjiang could almost see the densely packed cars speeding past her.
What exactly was going on with this woman?
"Are you on a road?" Qin Manjiang asked.
"A road..."
On the other end, a painfully thin woman in a white dress, with disheveled hair and sickly pale skin, swayed as she crossed from the middle of the road back to the sidewalk.
Qin Manjiang could hear that something was clearly wrong in her voice.
She sounded far too dazed, as though she had just woken from a nightmare.
"Tell me a landmark you can see nearby. I'll come find you."
Qin Manjiang spoke after a moment's thought.
"I'm under a tree..."
"..."
"Something else."
"Mermaid Fountain..." she said again.
Mermaid Fountain?
After thinking carefully, Qin Manjiang determined her approximate location. She was in the western part of the city.
"Don't wander off. Wait for me."
Without hanging up, he took Little Yellow Dog home, settled him in, and immediately headed out.
The woman's condition was strange, and her identity was stranger still. She could not even remember who she was, yet she had instinctively called this phone. She must have a close