The room fell quiet again, and the HISS... HISS... of the background noise resurfaced.
The thief seemed to have only just heard it. He pointed at the small plastic tube in Mai Mingle's nose and asked, "Is that… are you on oxygen?"
"Huh?" Mai Mingle sometimes forgot about it. "Oh, yes. It's such a bother."
The thief sighed. He set his flashlight down by the bed. The beam cast a circle on the opposite wall, slicing the room in two: a ring of brilliant life against the dim decay beyond the light.
"Oh, look at me… I forgot to ask. Would you like some tea?" Mai Mingle asked. It was so rare to have a visitor that she'd forgotten her manners. "It's a struggle for me to get up… There's tea and cookies in the kitchen. Please, help yourself."
The thief grew visibly uncomfortable, as if he had never expected this scenario.
"No, thank you," he said, hesitating for a few seconds before adding, "Um… would you like some? I could get it for you."
Mai Mingle declined and thanked him. For a moment, the homeowner and the thief exchanged pleasantries.
The thief clasped his hands, stared at the television in the corner for a long moment, and then asked it, "You're not in good health?"
"I'm doing just fine. I can still get out of bed and walk around by myself."
"…What about meals? Do your son or daughter bring you food?"
"I don't have any children," she said with a small smile. "I don't eat much, so I just whip something simple up… A social worker brings me vegetables and eggs from time to time."
"A social worker? You don't have any relatives in Blackmoor City?"
"I'm used to it," Mai Mingle said. "I never had many relatives or friends to begin with, and the ones I did have all died before me. Young man, do you watch television?"
The thief seemed to find the question absurd. After a moment of silence, he suddenly pulled out his phone, glanced at it, and rushed out of the room.
"Hello?"
'So he went to answer a call,' she thought.
"Yes, I've found her… No, I haven't done it yet." Here, the thief hesitated. "Listen, did you know she's an old lady? Eighty-six. The file didn't say anything about that."
The person on the other end gave a short reply, because the thief spoke again almost immediately.
"Yes," the thief said, not bothering to lower his voice. Perhaps he didn't see the point. "But… do we really have to take hers? She's not the only one with a Path. Besides, we don't even know what kind of Path she has… Taking it is a tough ordeal even for a young person, isn't it? What if she can't take it and dies?"
The person on the phone was clearly unhappy; even Mai Mingle thought she could faintly hear their shouting.
The thief took the dressing-down in silence. Finally, like a student who'd been caught making a mistake, he said, "No… I understand. I'm sorry. I'll get it for sure."
Sometimes, Mai Mingle would be startled by her own hands.
The thick, wrinkled skin was layered over her bones, bulging with veins and blood vessels. They were almost without warmth. It was as if these hands and the hands of her memory belonged to two different people.
With this hand that felt like it didn't belong to her, she fumbled under the blankets, found the pendant on her chest, and clutched it tightly.
This time, the thief spoke the moment he re-entered the room. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I need to take something from you."
Mai Mingle could just barely make out his features. He was clean-cut and looked to be in his twenties or thirties—still just a kid. You would never have guessed he was a bad person if he hadn't said so himself.
"What is it you want?" Mai Mingle asked. "*Cough*, I have no use for my things anymore. You can have them. There's a silver brooch in the drawer…"
"No, I don't want your valuables," the thief interrupted. "I need to take something from inside your body."
"An organ?" Mai Mingle asked, curious. 'Her organs didn't seem to have any value worth taking.'
"No, it's not that. Don't ask. You wouldn't understand even if I told you."
"Then… will I die?" Mai Mingle asked. "From what you were saying earlier."
The thief was caught completely off guard. He froze for a couple of seconds before replying, "I don't know… Maybe."
Mai Mingle stared quietly at the cracks in the ceiling for a while.
"If you must take it, then take it," she said in a low voice. "But… before you do, could you grant me one wish?"
At some point, the thief had come to her bedside.
"What wish?"
"I used to work part-time at a library. The pay was terrible, but I loved libraries, so I was happy… One time, as I was leaving work, the head librarian told me there was an old book they were about to cull. It hadn't sold on clearance, so he gave it to me to take home."
The thief's hand rested on her pillow.
Only now did Mai Mingle notice the dark shape by his feet. It looked like some sort of machine, and she had no idea when he'd brought it in.
"I saw it was a poetry collection, so I flipped through it for a bit when I got home," Mai Mingle murmured. "I read some, put the book down, and eventually I lost track of it completely. But I don't know why… for the past few years, I keep thinking about one of the poems inside."
"What poem?"
"You young people all have those… what are they… clever-phones, right?"
"Smartphones," the thief corrected her.
'If she had a grandson,' she thought, 'he would probably correct me just like that.'
"They say you can find anything on them, is that right?"
"…More or less."
"Could you look up that poem for me?" Mai Mingle pleaded. "I want to hear it one last time."
The thief looked down at her, suddenly looking a bit flustered. He pulled a tissue from the bedside table and pressed it into her hand. As Mai Mingle stared at it, baffled, he said, "Alright, alright, don't cry. I'll find it for you. Do you remember the title?"
'Was she crying?'
'Turns out, even at her age, she still couldn't accept death.'
'Or maybe it was that at her age, she still hadn't had the chance to truly live.'
"It was… It was called something about daisies," Mai Mingle said, deliberately leaving out half the title.
There was a lot of information on the "clever-phone," and finding a single poem was difficult. "Daisies" was a very common theme, so, as expected, it took a long time.
After looking up several poems that were all wrong, the thief finally grew impatient. "Ma'am, it's not my fault you can't remember the title. I have to get back and complete my task, so you—"
"I remember now," Mai Mingle said quickly.
'This young man, the one who was about to take something from her, was probably the last person in her life who could let her hear a poem one more time.'
'Even if she couldn't stall any longer and had to face death, at least she could listen to the poem. That would be nice.'
"'I'd Pick More Daisies'… I think that was the title."
The young man glanced at her without a word, his fingers TAPPING a few times on the screen.
This time, he quickly found the poem that Mai Mingle kept thinking about.
"I found a video with a reading of it," he said, placing the phone on the bed beside her.
In the silent room, thick with the smell of medicine and decay, a loud ad began to play before the video, announcing a special offer from a Little Caesars pizza shop.
"It'll start after the commercial. You just listen. While you do that, I'll get to work."
He bent over and pulled a tube from the dark machine.
…If I had my life to live over,
I'd dare to make more mistakes next time.
I would relax.
I would limber up.
I would be sillier than I have been this trip.
Mai Mingle felt something wet by her ears.
Like her parents, she had spent her entire life worrying. When wartime inflation hit, she meticulously planned their daily rations; in times of peace, she balanced the household budget every week. As a child, her family owned a small store, and no matter how much she longed for it, she never dared to steal even a single piece of candy from the shelves.
As she grew older, she came across many forks in the road, overgrown with wildflowers, but she never stepped onto them.
'People are strange. Everyone knows they only get one life, yet they live each day as if they have an infinite amount of time, as if they can always try again.'
The thief pulled back the covers and laid a cool tube on Mai Mingle's chest. It was only then that she vaguely realized the machine looked a bit like an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner.
"What's this?" The thief picked up the pendant on her chest and glanced at it. Without waiting for a reply, he pushed it away from the mouth of the tube. Young people generally didn't recognize such things; they wouldn't know what it was for.
'Good thing he didn't know.'
As the poem continued, he pressed the mouth of the tube against Mai Mingle's skin-and-bones chest. He activated the machine, and a low thrumming she had never heard before began to fill the room.
…If I had to do it all over again, I would travel lighter than I have.
If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.
I would try to skip school,
I wouldn't study so hard for high scores, unless they came by accident.
I would ride more merry-go-rounds.
I'd pick more daisies.
In the final moment, as the darkness of death enveloped Mai Mingle, she vaguely heard her front door being smashed open, followed by the sound of frantic footsteps and voices rushing in.