"Doctor Mand, lately I keep hearing voices."
Perhaps unaccustomed to the clean, tidy environment of the consulting room, Old Mark sat very straight, his hands resting on his knees like a student in a classroom.
"What voices?"
Mand paused at those words, and a long-lost look of interest appeared in his eyes as he asked.
"Um... I can't really explain it."
Having never gone to school, and dealing mostly with dead fish and seawater in his daily life, Old Mark naturally lacked the ability to express himself fluently. He replied haltingly.
"It's... it's lots of people talking."
"Sometimes they're men, sometimes women. Some are loud, some are quiet."
"What are they saying?"
"I... I can't hear clearly." As though he had worked himself into a panic, Old Mark's tone grew hurried. "But I know... I know they're all talking about me!"
Mand sat across from him, his expression unchanged, but inwardly he was growing more and more excited.
After two years in Fishhook Town, it seemed his primary profession as a "psychiatrist" had finally found an opportunity to shine.
He displayed tremendous patience and, in a gentle tone he had not used for a long time, continued asking, "Other than that, is there anything else?"
"There are... there are some strange things too." Old Mark looked somewhat hesitant and nervously glanced out the window.
Mand followed his gaze, but found nothing.
"They're always at the edges, like shadows. When I turn my eyes toward them, they're gone, but everyone else says they can't see them."
"Later, I stopped moving my eyes. I just stared ahead and used the corner of my eye to look, and they were still there."
Visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations.
Mand held a fountain pen and wrote on the medical record.
"Have you experienced any recent shocks?