Chapter 62 Perhaps There is Someone in the World Who Looks Just Like You

Heath's mouth twitched. This setup was practically a massive mishmash of clichés, leaving him completely at a loss for words. Still, he finally understood why the area was blocked off—it was, after all, a major film shoot.

"Officer Mirror, do you know where they sell edible quartz?" Heath asked curiously, looking at Officer Mirror. He only had a tiny piece of edible quartz. Although he intended to try cooking with it, the quantity was so scarce that he didn't dare attempt it yet.

"Edible quartz? You can buy that right at the supermarket. It's a specialty of our Quartz League. But nobody really knows how to cook with it nowadays, so people just treat it as ordinary quartz decoration," Officer Mirror said, pausing for a moment before pointing vaguely in a certain direction.

Heath stared blankly at Officer Mirror. What? You could actually buy this stuff at a supermarket?

"Isn't... isn't this thing supposed to be very precious?" Heath felt terrible inside. Weren't they supposed to say this was a precious, specialty ingredient? How did it suddenly turn into something you could just pick up at the local grocery store?

"Not precious at all. Edible quartz is a secondary mineral associated with regular quartz, so it's mined quite often. We usually just leave them lying around as decorations. Though some chefs do buy them to experiment with cooking," Officer Mirror said dismissively with a wave of her hand. Heath's mouth twitched. He finally realized he had been completely played by old man Officer.

Was edible quartz precious? No, it wasn't. What *was* precious was the method of preparing it. After all, the recipes for cooking edible quartz had been lost to time, which was why its current value was indeed very low. However, if the preparation methods were to resurface, Heath figured edible quartz would instantly become quite expensive.

"Ah... I've been conned," Heath muttered with a darkened face as he walked toward Officer Mirror's apartment. Just as Officer Mirror had said, a piece of edible quartz the exact same size as the one he had was currently selling for just a few dozen League Dollars.

It couldn't be said to be completely worthless, but it held virtually no collectible value either. Heath now felt like an absolute fool, played right in the palm of old Officer's hand.

Fuming with resentment, Heath headed into the kitchen, though old Officer was nowhere to be found. Fortunately, Heath was an optimistic person and quickly adjusted his mindset. After all, his food truck was parked in the Officers' parking lot, which saved him a considerable amount in parking fees.

"Trainer! Trainer!" However, Heath's biggest headache right now was Zorua. Ever since the little rascal discovered that Heath had sold out of all his crab roe soup dumplings, she had been clinging to him relentlessly, demanding a raise. Heavens knew how she had found out that he made over forty thousand League Dollars from them.

"Stop shouting! My head is pounding with just the word 'trainer' echoing in it. Fine, a raise, right? I'll bump it up to two hundred a week," Heath rubbed his temples helplessly. If this kept on, he felt like his brain was going to explode.

Although Zorua greedily wanted more, Heath firmly rejected her request. Otherwise, he felt that if he agreed too quickly, Zorua would start demanding an even higher salary.

Just as he was preparing to cook, Heath discovered that the water pipes in the Officer cafeteria were broken, which left him somewhat helpless. He had no choice but to contact the Officer on duty today and ask her to help find a plumber to fix it. After waiting for a while, a man with deep blue hair walked in. Wearing a plumber's uniform, he greeted Heath with a cheerful smile and asked where the damaged pipe was located.

Heath looked at the man in front of him with a strange expression. He looked so much like James. It was uncanny.

However, the badge pinned to the man's chest clearly stated his name: Yujian—a rather ordinary name. It was true that in the Pokémon world, some people looked strikingly similar without being twins. The most obvious examples were Jessie and James's fiancée, Rumika; the two of them looked so identical that even their hair colors matched.

In fact, there was even an episode in the anime where Jessie was mistaken for Rumika by the latter's bodyguards. Therefore, even though the man in front of him looked identical to James, Heath didn't say much and simply pointed out the location of the broken pipe, letting the James look-alike get to work.

Watching Yujian busy at work repairing the pipe, the suspicions in Heath's heart faded significantly. After all, Yujian's plumbing skills were undeniably professional, and he hadn't done anything suspicious along the way, just honestly getting on with fixing the pipes.

"Master, what do you usually do for a living?" Heath asked, unable to help himself as he looked at Yujian's back.

Yujian paused, then turned around with a baffled and strange expression, looking at Heath as if he were a mental patient who had escaped from an asylum. Heath coughed awkwardly twice.

After finishing the repair, Yujian collected his payment and left, acting completely natural the entire time. Heath figured he must have been overthinking it. But right after that, Zorua leaped up from behind Heath and covered his eyes with her paws.

"What is it, Zorua?" Heath asked, feeling somewhat bewildered. Was the little thing planning to play hide-and-seek?

"Trainer, give me four hundred League Dollars, and I'll tell you what that man just did," Zorua said mysteriously. Heath paused, pried Zorua's paws away, and looked down at the water pipe. It looked completely normal, with no signs of abnormality.

"What did you see?" Heath's interest was piqued; he really hadn't noticed Yujian doing anything out of the ordinary.

"Just a little secret. That man might not actually be a plumber, you know~" Zorua said smugly, her tone implying she had Heath completely wrapped around her finger.

Heath fell silent. He really wanted to know what Yujian had been up to, especially since he strongly suspected the guy was actually James. In the end, he pulled out four one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Zorua.

"If you don't tell me something actually useful, I might just have to treat you to a wooden-stick stir-fry today," Heath glared at Zorua menacingly. If this little trickster dared to mess with him, Heath swore he would make her pay a heavy price and teach her that you couldn't just run your mouth about anything.

"Tch, if you swapped the wood for meat, maybe I'd consider it~" Zorua made a funny face. Heath froze. Swap wood for meat?

"That man put a tiny little thing on the inside wall of this water pipe. I don't know what it is, though~" Zorua wagged her paw and then scampered off.