Doctor, I'm Sick!

A single blade of grass, three slender leaves about a foot long, looking malnourished and very thin, clutched in Bai Yang's hand with roots still clinging to fresh soil—it looked far from appetizing...

For a full half hour, Bai Yang stared blankly at the grass in his hand, his expression frozen as if someone had pressed pause on him.

Then, as if burned by a branding iron, he flung the grass away.

"Ghost...!"

With a loud yell, he scrambled like a dog was chasing him, stumbling and crawling into his bedroom, ransacking drawers, grabbing his wallet, and bolting out the front door—bang—it slammed shut...

Despite the scorching weather, Bai Yang was drenched in cold sweat, goosebumps covering his skin. Bare-chested, wearing only shorts, one foot bare and the other in a flip-flop, he ran like a madman, ignoring the strange looks from people on the street.

"Shameless..."

"Depraved..."

"Bad influence on kids..."

"Hey, that big brother has muscles though..."

Bai Yang tore through street after street like a mad dog, earning countless glares...

Ten minutes later, at the City People's Hospital, where crowds of people suffering from various heat-related issues were impatiently waiting in line, Bai Yang burst in frantically, skipping the queue and heading straight for the Psychiatry Department.

Inside the Psychiatry consultation room, an old doctor with graying hair was leisurely sipping tea and reading a newspaper. Compared to other departments, Psychiatry was the most laid-back—these days, lunatics were everywhere, but few actually came to the hospital.

Bang...

The consultation room door was shoved open from the outside. The sudden loud noise made the old doctor jolt, and with a rip, the newspaper in his hands tore in half.

"Doctor, save me! I feel terrible! Just now at home, I suddenly found myself in some forest, and there was a tiger trying to eat me, and then whoosh I was back home again!"

Bai Yang burst into the consultation room, babbling frantically, gripping the old doctor's arms like a drowning man clutching at a lifeline...

"Calm down, young man, calm down—stop shaking me, I'm getting dizzy..."

After barely managing to settle Bai Yang down, the old doctor let out a huge sigh of relief. These reckless kids were terrifying. He took a sip of tea to steady his nerves, then reached out a hand to Bai Yang. "Young man, where's your medical record?"

Bai Yang: "..."

An hour later, Bai Yang had gotten a new number, explained his situation, and after a round of questions and diagnosis, the old doctor concluded, "Young man, you're not sick. It's just too hot—rest up, stay cool, and don't stay up late playing games or watching movies. Mental fatigue easily causes hallucinations. Go home, rest, make some mung bean porridge, and you'll be fine."

"No, doctor, you have to believe me—I really am sick, and it's serious! I'm mentally unstable, I'm telling you! Look, look—my shoulder, bitten by a giant mosquito; the sole of my foot, stabbed by a thorn—I got these in a forest! But I was at home! If I was at home, why would this happen, right? Am I in the late stages of psychosis? Or do I have split personality—I go to a forest without knowing it and come back without knowing it either..." Bai Yang was frantic, looking like a patient insisting the doctor was lying to him.

"Are you the doctor or am I? You're fine. Your thinking is normal, your speech is clear, and you show none of the adverse reactions of a mental patient. Really, you're fine. Listen, stop messing around..."

"No, doctor, take another look. Or at least prescribe me some medicine!"

"..."

After some back-and-forth haggling, the doctor, unable to shake Bai Yang off, reluctantly prescribed him some calming and brain-nourishing pills. Only then did Bai Yang let him go and leave.

Standing at the hospital entrance, Bai Yang stared at the diagnosis sheet in utter confusion, still not reassured. He then trudged to another hospital under the blazing sun, enduring countless strange looks. He ran through five or six hospitals in a row, but the result was always the same—he wasn't mentally ill, perfectly healthy.

After all, mental illness isn't something you just decide you have. There's a clear difference between a real mental patient and a normal person. When Bai Yang recounted his experience, the doctors unanimously concluded that either he was making a fuss or he'd had a heat-induced hallucination.

Dragging his exhausted body to his apartment building, Bai Yang paced for a long time before mustering the courage to go home. He opened the door, cautiously observed the surroundings—no anomalies—then used a clothes pole to poke into every corner. Only after confirming there was no danger did he carefully sit down on the sofa, his mind in turmoil.

He was a college graduate with a higher education, yes. He'd watched plenty of documentaries about instantly crossing vast distances to another place, yes. But having this happen to him was completely unacceptable. Aside from thinking he was crazy, he had no other explanation.

The blade of grass was still lying on the coffee table, with some dirt scattered on the floor. One of his flip-flops was missing. The instant noodles were gone, and the soup stains on his clothes proved they had really existed...

So the question was, what the hell was going on? He was sitting at home, and when he sat down, he ended up somewhere else...?

"That place doesn't look like Earth. Right now, Earth's sun is golden, but that place's sun was white—clearly not Earth. The problem is, I go there for no reason and come back for no reason. Is this a trial run of time travel?"

After the initial panic, having confirmed he wasn't sick, a calmed Bai Yang could finally think seriously about his bizarre experience.

People raised on all kinds of toxins are tough. Though it was mind-boggling, Bai Yang quickly accepted the reality of his strange encounter.

"So the next question is, why did I come back? Nothing incredible happened to me either. How did I get to experience a trip to another world? And can I go back?"

Muttering to himself on the sofa, Bai Yang didn't finish his sentence before—whoosh—he vanished from the living room...

His vision blurred, and in the blink of an eye, Bai Yang was back in that jungle. Since he'd been sitting, he landed right on his butt, yelping as he jumped up—something had stabbed him in the rear.

"I can actually come back... Holy crap... Tiger... Go back!"

Back in the jungle, Bai Yang spotted the tiger lying not far away, scared out of his wits. He mentally screamed go back, and sure enough, whoosh, he vanished from the jungle and reappeared in his living room...

Staring at his familiar home, Bai Yang was dumbfounded. Seconds ago, he was in the living room, then in the jungle, and now back again...

"Hiss..."

He pulled a thorn out of his butt cheek. The pain told him—this was all real!

The reason humans rule Earth is that they're good at analyzing and summarizing. After two brief and bizarre experiences, Bai Yang wasn't stupid—he was a college graduate, after all. He'd more or less figured things out.

"I don't know what that place is, but it's dangerous. And going there..."

Whoosh... He vanished from the living room, then reappeared in an instant, saying with a frustrated look, "...coming back is entirely controlled by my own thoughts. Want to go there..."

"...and I go..."

"...want to come back, and I come back."

After a quick summary and two more 'flash' trips, Bai Yang stared at the ceiling. He knew he'd hit the jackpot. He didn't know how, but facts were facts!

Scratching his head again, he first found two band-aids to patch up the thorn wounds on his foot and rear, then sat in a daze for a while. Suddenly, he jumped up, grabbed the blade of grass from the coffee table, and went to his computer desk. He opened Baidu and searched for plant species, spending two hours browsing tens of thousands of grass images. Not a single one matched the grass he'd brought back from that forest.

"Plants might still have undiscovered species, but that sun in the sky over there can't be faked—a white sun the size of a wagon wheel doesn't exist on Earth. That place probably isn't Earth."

After a flurry of activity, Bai Yang reached this conclusion.

Then came a mix of excitement and anxiety. An unknown world lay before him—who could stay calm? His heart itched like a cat was clawing at it.

"Whether I go over or come back, I always appear at the same spot I left from. But that damn tiger over there just lies there without moving—how am I supposed to go explore?"

As much as he wanted to see what kind of world that was, every time Bai Yang 'flashed' over, he saw that tiger lying there. He didn't dare cross over. He couldn't figure out what grudge the tiger held against him—was it really camping his 'respawn point'?

Bai Yang had no idea the tiger was already dead. He thought it was deliberately waiting for him.

But he wasn't blind. After a few times, he noticed something was off about the tiger. When he went over again, he cautiously lingered for two seconds, ready to bolt at any moment. Then he looked—his eyes went wide. The tiger's head, both eyes, were pierced clean through by an arrow. Dead as dead could be!

"Dead? How? Killed by an arrow? Someone's around here..."

At that thought, Bai Yang scrammed fast, straight back to his living room. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief. Too dangerous. What if an arrow flew out of the woods and hit him? The consequences were terrifying to imagine!

"That place is too dangerous. That tiger was bigger than an ox, and an arrow went clean through its skull—what kind of bow has that kind of power?"

Though Bai Yang only knew this much about the situation over there, it boiled down to two words: dangerous.

But the more dangerous it was, the more his curiosity itched. They say curiosity killed the cat. Humans have an unmatched desire to explore the unknown, and Bai Yang was no exception. His eyes darted around as he scanned the house, hoping to find something that could help him explore the other side...

(A new book needs nurturing—please collect and recommend!)