Fourth Customer- The Little Girl Who Loved Perfection

"This old man was the first in all the cases of veterans going crazy." The man wearing the police uniform took a photo out of his pocket marked with "Fa.s.sett".

"The cleaner? No wonder I haven't seen him in a long time. I am really sorry about what happened to him." The man in the chair with his two hands bound behind him looked at the picture for a very long time before commenting on it with a tone full of regret.

"The day before he went crazy, he met you right?" Officer Fa.s.sett asked while watching the man closely.

"If communicating through facial expressions counts as meeting someone, then sure we did meet up." The man s.h.i.+fted his eyes away from the picture, looking straight into the police officer's eyes before replying slowly.

"Then what about him? Him? HIM?!" Officer Fa.s.sett took one photo after another out of his chest pocket and threw them all onto the man's face.

"Sir, if you could stop doing things like that I would be very grateful."

"They all met you for the most basic meeting and then they went crazy. This is a coincidence?!" Officer Fa.s.sett continued to interrogate, not paying attention to the man's tone.

"Sir, please remain calm."

"What do you want to do? Is it that fun to play with someone's emotions? Why won't you even let this little girl off!" Officer Fa.s.sett was so emotional that he got up from his chair, and then dragged the man up with his collar.

"Officer Fa.s.sett, visiting time is over for the patients…"

"I got it! Go die!" After interrupting the nurse's words, he roughly threw the man back onto his chair.

"May I ask if there's a problem?" The nurse curiously looked at the situation inside the ward.

"No, I'm really very sorry. I…" Realizing he had forgotten his manners, Officer Fa.s.sett left the ward with the nurse after an apology.

"Sir you must understand that I didn't play around with them." The man leaned against the chair, half squinting as he looked at the somewhat gloomy  light. After Officer Fa.s.sett and the nurse's voices became so soft that they could not be heard, he slowly said, "They came to find me because they want to be normal."

　　–

The man who had just finished enjoying his afternoon tea took his official bag and walked back along the road.

Suddenly noticing someone's attentive gaze, the man stopped in his steps and then looked over, noticing a porcelain doll quietly sitting in a vendor's stall.

The man was silent for a moment, before heading towards the stall. When the vendor saw the man, he immediately extended an enthusiastic greeting.

After waving his hand to tell the vendor that he didn't need him to introduce the products, the man put down the bag in his hand and then picked up a porcelain doll that had been placed in the corner of the stall.

The moment he saw the cracks on the porcelain doll's face, the man understood that this was a damaged good.

Holding the porcelain doll in one hand, the man didn't say more but instead handed some money over to the vendor. The vendor didn't refuse the unexpected money, but instead took out more damaged goods that had been abandoned.

When he returned to Cotidia.n.u.s, the man found that there was already a little girl waiting outside the shop.

"I'm sorry, did you wait for a long time?" The man slightly bent his body. The little girl only shook her head, not speaking.

"Please enter." The man took out a semi-transparent card and opened the door, tilting his body so that the little girl could enter first. The little girl still shook her head and then gestured at him as if to say 'please'.

"All right miss." Shrugging his shoulders, the man walked into the shop first.

"May I help you with anything?" The man asked, after leading the little girl to the reception room.

"Why did you want to keep that doll?" The little girl didn't reply to the man but rather asked a totally unrelated question.

"That one? I bought it because he wants it." The man looked at the porcelain doll that he had put in the cage. "Tom seems to like it a lot."

"Meow." Tom gave a sound of protest, and then continued to comfortably lie in the cage.

"Damaged things should be destroyed." The little girl said with a slightly unpleasant overtone.

"Can you tell me why you would say this?"

"Because it shouldn't exist." With this reply, the little girl tightly clenched her fists.

"Then what do you want to destroy?"

"Eh?" The girl drew a blank, as if she had never thought of this.

"If everything were damaged, what would you hate the most?"

"I don't know." The little girl lowered her head, her two hands clenching tighter. "I don't want to know."

"This doll is for you." She didn't know when the man had left his seat, but he then handed the pottery doll that he had just bought to the girl.

"This is for me?" The little girl suspiciously asked. Hadn't she previously expressed how disgusting this porcelain doll was to her?"

"I put a little magic on it so you'll like it." The man caressed the porcelain doll's hair while saying, "If she is broken, whatever you hate most will also disappear."

"Yeah sure." Even though she said that, the little girl took the porcelain doll.

That night, a badly damaged porcelain doll was broken and a little girl had disappeared.

TLN: Does anyone have any theories on the setting of this story? Is Cotidia.n.u.s a real place and is the man actually curing these people or somehow pretending to?

Fifth Customer- The Uninvited Visitor

When the doorbell rang, the man who was combing Tom's hair stopped. "Tom, was that the doorbell?"

"Meow." Tom replied, and then slipped away from the man's hands. Afterwards, he returned to his own cage to lie down quietly with graceful steps.

After he saw Tom's movements, the man understood that the doorbell hadn't been in his imagination. He put the comb into the drawer and then quickly checked himself in the mirror as he speedily straightened out his appearance.

When the doorbell rang again, the man who had finished fixing himself up opened the big doors of Cotidia.n.u.s.

The face that entered the man's vision was an unfamiliar one, as expected. However, the man still couldn't help but hold his breath.

"Good morning. Even though it's not that early anymore, we might as well base it on the time in your place", the middle-aged man said as he took off his hat. Then, he threw it on the floor carelessly.

"h.e.l.lo." The man couldn't help but frown at the middle-aged man's behavior, as he always concerned himself about proper manners. "May I ask your name?"

"My name is unimportant so you don't need to know it." When the middle-aged man finished, he laughed. "I've always wanted to say that handsomely haha."

"Sir, may I ask why you've come here?" The man continued to ask.

"Don't be so anxious. We have a lot of time, isn't that right?" When he found the man didn't intend to receive him, the middle-aged man straightforwardly sat cross-legged on the floor. "In any case, right now this world only consists of two people- you and me- or no, three people."

"Sorry sir, I did not invite you in right?" Although the man's voice was still polite, he clearly expressed that he did not welcome this middle-aged man.

"Haha, don't be so impatient. There's no point in being so guarded against me. I just happened to discover the door to your place, so I came in to take a look." The middle-aged man adjusted his sitting position and then continued, "But it seems suddenly intruding into someone else's world is a little impolite, so I came to find you."

"Now you've already found me." Due to his manners, the man didn't say 'So please leave now' which was what he had originally wanted to say.

"On the way here I heard some very interesting stories concerning your shop and your customers." The middle-aged man ignored the man's request for him to leave and continued on to say to himself, "You really are boring, huh."

"Thank you sir. I hope you'll pardon me for a moment." The man suddenly said, and then took out a phone and made a short call to the public order manager.

"I am Cotidia.n.u.s's store manager. Someone insulted me in my shop."

"Are you kidding me? Even 'boring' counts as an insult?" The middle-aged man stood up emotionally. "You really won't welcome me here huh. At least we're similar though, right?"

"They will probably be here in 30 minutes." The man suddenly made a gesture to invite him in. "Would you like to rest in the reception room for a moment? Sir?"

"Boring, short-tempered and you definitely have obsessive-compulsive disorder." The shameless middle-aged man comfortably sat in one of the chairs in the reception room while softly talking to himself.

"I'm very sorry sir, I don't understand what you're talking about." The man gave a cup of coffee to the middle-aged man.

"I'm talking about you." The middle-aged man took the coffee and continued, "You clearly could change this world's rules and drive me out with force, but you haven't done that. When you met me, you were very guarded but after you found a way to make me leave, you began to receive me as a visitor."

"I am very sorry for how I previously acted, please forgive me sir."

"You definitely have split personality disorder too!" The middle-aged man's att.i.tude completely changed as he yelled, "If your customers knew, what would they do? An abnormal person is the store manager selling 'normality'."

"As long as no one knows, a judge who receives a bribe is still a judge, and the judge won't be put on trial as a criminal. A judge who doesn't receive bribes is a good judge, but when that judge encounters the judges who does take bribes, he has become abnormal." The man didn't care how the middle-aged man described him. "It's only when the white sheep within the black sheep realizes that his whiteness is too abnormal that he'll come to me for help. Thus, I will help the white sheep dye his hair to become black. This is something that's only normal."

"You're protesting. You aren't satisfied with this phenomenon so you're protesting. But everything you're doing now can't change anything. No one will know, no one will understand." The middle-aged man shook his head. "Don't you feel you're a contradiction? You hate the definition of 'normal' but you are creating this 'normality'. In the end, what do you want?"

"What I want isn't important. I am whatever they say I am. I'm only doing something I see as very normal." The man looked at the time. It had already pa.s.sed thirty minutes. "Sir, it looks like we must say our goodbyes now. I welcome you to come back."

"Next time if I come I won't even be able to get here right? You hypocritical double-faced person." The middle-aged man laughed as he stood and then left the reception room.