Stark felt terrible now.
More precisely, this was the first time he had understood what people truly meant by mental illness.
He had never admitted that he was sick before, and it was not entirely stubbornness. Anxiety Disorder was a long torment, and it was easy to grow accustomed to being ill over time.
Especially for people born with particularly rich emotions, they might have begun to feel anxious from the moment they became conscious. Anxiety was a state of being, part of their personality—like being born with five fingers. It was hard to understand what a Beast without fingers felt like.
Stark was one of those people.
He had not developed Anxiety Disorder one day; he had been in this state for as long as he could remember. So whenever others said he was sick, he had genuinely found it baffling.
Thus, even though he knew Schiller might be the best psychiatrist in the world, with Charles as the other one, and both of them said he had Anxiety Disorder, he had still refused to admit it.
But things were different now.
The scenes of what the little boy in red had done that night kept replaying in Stark's mind—the red fish endlessly leaping from a blood-red ocean, the rainbow cast by the bloody mist spewed from the enormous black-and-red whale under the light, like the gates of Hell.
Countless fragments kept playing in his head, leaving his thoughts without even an exit. The logical thinking and scientific inspiration he had once taken such pride in had all vanished, completely blocked out by these things.
Pale-faced, Stark braced himself against the table with one hand. He could not even tell what he was thinking when, before long, there was a knock at the door. He looked up and saw