Chapter 1

After dinner, I went to the coat room to retrieve my coat.

As soon as I picked it up, I realized something was wrong.

Upon closer inspection, I realized the clothes in my hands were not mine.

I had also lost a small clutch.

It contained my car keys and ID.

Since both items were quite valuable, I hurried to report the situation to a staff member.

The staff member reassured me that someone might have taken the wrong coat by mistake.

The restaurant had real-time surveillance.

So, it should not be hard to track down the person who took my coat.

I waited all day.

Finally, I received a message from the restaurant.

They had found the person.

It was a middle-aged woman in her fifties named Molly Clark.

The surveillance footage showed that she took my coat half an hour after I entered the restaurant.

She had examined it carefully before taking it.

My clutch was also neatly placed right next to it.

I could not figure out why this Molly Clark would have taken the wrong one.

Then, I eagerly called her.

“Hello, Ms. Clark, I’m the customer who dined at the same restaurant as you three days ago. When you left, you took my coat by mistake.

“How about this? Let’s add each other on WhatsApp so we can figure out how to exchange the items back.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then, she denied it.

“Coat? What coat? I didn’t take your coat. You have the wrong number.”

Before I could say another word, she had already hung up.

As I listened to the busy signal coming from my phone, I felt a bit frustrated.

Did this person have no eyes? It had already been three days. Yet she still had not realized she had taken the wrong coat.

I called back, but she was not picking up.

Staring at the “unreachable” message, I took a deep breath.

Even if she did it on purpose, my coat was still in her possession.

I should try to communicate with her first, if possible.

I forced myself to calm down and called back from my spare phone. “Ms. Clark, I didn’t dial the wrong number. You were having dinner at the restaurant on the second floor of Joy Mall yesterday at 5 p.m., right?

“If you don’t believe me, just take out your coat and check. Also, that clutch that was with it isn’t yours either. Neither the coat nor the clutch belongs to you. As long as you give them back, I won’t hold it against you.”

To my surprise, Molly was not having any of it and immediately launched into a tirade.

“Are you out of your mind? I said I didn’t take the wrong items, and I didn’t. That’s my coat. Are you so poor you have to steal other people’s clothes?”

Her unwarranted insults made me so furious I felt like I was about to burst into flames.

Just as I was about to snap back, she blocked my number again.

I had no choice but to borrow a friend’s phone and text her again.

“I have surveillance footage on my phone showing you taking my coat. If you don’t return it, we’ll see each other at the police station.”

About ten minutes later, I received a friend request on WhatsApp. It read [Molly Clark].

As soon as I accepted it, she asked if I had called the police.

After I told her I had not, she said she had not seen clearly at the time and had taken the wrong clutch.

She offered to mail the clutch back to me. As for the coat, she had already washed it. So, she told me to take her jacket as compensation.

I was so furious that I was shaking all over. So, I immediately called her back via WhatsApp.