WAITING FOR THE BEGINNING

22. The Search Starts Here

Following Wei Xin's instruction, Xian Ling / Ping Ping arrives at the police substation on Shang He Lane.  She asks to see Detective An Li Ting; the police officer glances at her and then directs her to follow him.  He takes her to a small mirrored room, without asking for her name or identification.  It doesn't seem out of the norm to her since she's never had occasion to be in a police station before.  

Very shortly,  instead of An Li Ting, a tall older man introduces himself as Agent Ho and asks her if she answered to the name Zhang Xian Ling.  

"Don't be surprised."  Agent Ho smiles warmly.  "Wei Xin has briefed me on your situation."

"What did he say?"

"He says to help you find your family.  Is that right?"

Xian Ling / Ping Ping nods ever so slightly.

"Let's start by taking a photo of you."  Agent Ho takes out his camera and snaps a picture.  He directs her to turn to the right, then left and instructs her to move her hair behind her ears.

He then touches the screen a few times.  "And now I will send your photos to the missing persons database.  And start a search."

"Now, tell me what you can remember about yourself."

"Before I met Wei Xin?"

"Before you ended up with his grandfather."

"Oh."  Xian Ling / Ping Ping looks down at her bag. She takes out the drawings of the faces haunting her dreams, the bits and pieces that she "remembers" but cannot put into context.

She tells Agent Ho that she remembers fire and she remembers fear.  The man, she points to a sketch of De Yi,  is often in her dreams like someone drifting away, lost to her.  She doesn't think that the man is the cause of her injury and current circumstances.  She leaves out the part that she has very strong and warm feeling towards that man, the same bit that she leaves out when Wei Xin asks about the drawings.  Why she should hide this fact from Wei Xin baffles even herself.

"What about this."  Agent Ho picks up the emblem.  "Is this something like a family emblem."  

"I don't know." 

The door opens and a younger looking man drops off a medical kit.  Inside one is a swab and a clear tube.

"With this," Agent Ho puts on the gloves that came with the kid and removes the long swab.  "We're going to take some of your saliva.  For the DNA test. "

"What is it for?"

"We're going to run it against our database and see if it matches to anything."

Xian Ling / Ping Ping opens up her mouth and Agent Ho takes the sample.  he puts the swab into the tube.

She yawns.  Events of the day exhaust her. 

"One more thing."  Agent Ho takes out his iPad and calls up a fingerprinting program.  He gently takes her hand, one at a time, and presses them onto the screen.  "Just need to get your fingerprints.  Covering all our bases."

"Thank you."  Xian Ling / Ping Ping takes her hand back shyly, not used to being touched by a man, other than Wei Xin.

"I think that is all we need."  Agent Ho stands.  "Wei Xin will come in a few minutes."

"Um."  She folds her arms and puts her head down, as if she were still in primary school.  "I guess I don't need to see Detective An..."

Agent Ho smiles and shakes his head.

She'd fallen asleep with her head on top of her neatly folded arms when Wei Xin comes into the room. He moves away her hair tenderly and sees his mother's / wife's ring on her slender finger. Mao Ah opens the door and motions to him that it is time to go.

He picks up Xian Ling in his arms - light and a perfect fit. He really could have woken her and walked her to the car. But instead, he marches thru the back offices with her sleeping in his arms. It is as if he were declaring something.   The onlookers, many his long-time friends, and partner agents, all look a bit surprised, if not somewhat outright astonished. Especially after Mao Ah comments jokingly - xifu'er (meaning "wife").

When she wakes up the next morning, she finds herself in a sparsely furnished room. From the bedroom, she can see Wei Xin on the couch, where a pillow and a blank showing evidence that's where he spent the night.