Hospital

At three in the morning, Biggs Apartment was utterly silent.

Night seeped through the gap in the window, staining the light and enveloping Sean. An overwhelming sense of absurdity rose in him. He stared at the block of milk on the floor, his gaze uncertain, while his heartbeat pounded in his ears like a drum.

He swallowed, reached out, and tried to touch the milk.

It was still warm, but it no longer had milk's thick, smooth texture. Instead, it felt as hard as steel.

And sharp.

Sean ran his finger along the edge of the milk block. When he pressed slightly, he felt a sting.

The pad of his finger had been cut. A drop of crimson blood fell onto the solidified milk, yet slowly spread through it, as if drawing a vivid red flower across pure white coffee.

Sean's throat went dry. He suddenly thought he might be sick too.

The same condition as Chris.

Could milk really turn hard??

Chris was a real wizard—the kind who could use magic. Was everything he'd described in his novels true, too?

The laptop screen still glowed. When Sean looked up at the black text on the white page, the characters seemed to come alive, spinning out of the screen. Each stroke broke apart, then gathered together again. In a daze, they seemed to form the gray face of a young woman. Her lips parted slightly, as if demanding to know why he had forgotten her.

Sean jerked his head, and the vision vanished. The words sat quietly on the screen again.

The bloodied milk had returned to liquid, spreading across the floor.

In the corner of the sofa lay a scarlet feather.

It looked like the one the crow had dropped earlier.

More precisely, the fiery-feathered crows in his book were called "flame crows."

"Am I going crazy, or is the world?"

Sean stared blankly at the window. A hole, as if punched through by a giant bullet, gaped in the glass, cracks crawling out from it.

For a moment, he felt that it wasn't only the glass that had shattered, but his whole worldview.

Sean was lost.

As a fantasy writer who often had similar dreams, he ought to have been more ready than most to accept all this. But if what Chris had said was true, if every story in his dreams was real and had once happened to him, then what did that make his life now?

Or had all of it happened in a previous life? Had he been a wizard in his past life?

Sean could no longer tell.

He didn't know whether he should believe it—or whether he should even realize that he had once been a wizard.

The clock's hands ticked onward.

The crow that had broken into his home didn't return. Sean stared at the fiery feather in his palm for a long, long time, sitting on the sofa until dawn. At last, as if he had made some kind of decision, he clenched his fist, shut his laptop, and got up to change in the bedroom.

His oversized slippers crunched over the glass-strewn floor.

He had to find Chris.

He had to get to the bottom of this.

Autumn weather in Holkodo was rarely pleasant.

It was a sunless morning. Gloomy clouds covered nearly the whole sky, like great wads of soaked cotton, dripping steadily.

It was raining.

The cold wind slanted the sheets of rain, probing into people's sleeves and collars. Commuters hunched their shoulders and hurried along.

Their leather shoes splashed through puddles, as if shattering a mirror. Once they hurried away, the puddles pieced themselves back together, reflecting Floris Hospital, its entrance deserted.

Sean stood outside the iron gate, holding a black umbrella.

The guard at the entrance asked, "Are you family?"

"A friend," Sean replied.

"Do you have proof of your relationship from us?"

"No, but you can ask him... if he's awake."

"You should know that what patients here say isn't very reliable," the guard warned. A psychiatric patient's answer couldn't serve as valid proof, but he still asked, "What's his name?"

"Chris Hendry."

"Wait a moment. I'll check."

"Sure."

The guard picked up the phone and called inside the hospital.

Before long, a man in a white coat came hurrying over with an umbrella.

He glanced at Sean, then at the guard. When the guard nodded, he smiled, reached through the gate, and shook Sean's hand. "Hello, sir. I'm Chris's attending physician, Dr. Quill."

Sean smiled back. "Hello, Dr. Quill. I'm Sean, Chris's friend."

Quill wore a pair of small, round glasses. His brown hair was neatly combed, and his refined, gentlemanly appearance made him seem easy to get along with. Smiling, he said, "The officers who brought Chris back early this morning mentioned you. They said you'd come to see him in a couple of days. I didn't expect you so soon."

"I only found out this morning that I have to go on a business trip in a couple of days, after my boss told me," Sean explained with a smile. "I thought I'd come early and see how his injuries were healing."

"To be honest, not well." Quill shook his head, then added, "He isn't really in a state to see visitors, but if today is the only time you'll be free for a while, I can make an exception and arrange a visit."

"Sorry for the trouble, Dr. Quill," Sean said.

"Not at all."

Quill gestured for the guard to open the gate, then led Sean into the hospital.

A large garden lay in front of the main building, equipped with plenty of exercise machines and a shallow swimming pool. Patients usually got their outdoor time there, but with the rain and the early hour, no one was out. Only raindrops fell on the water, sending ripples across it.

"The police said that after he ran out of the hospital yesterday, he went to see you. How was it? Did he say a lot of strange things?" Quill chatted with Sean as they walked.

When Sean didn't answer, Quill carried on without waiting. "I can guess even if you don't tell me. I talk with him a lot, too. He's always going on about colorful crows and coffee-flavored potions—one minute alchemy, the next black magic. He even treasures an old pair of stockings, claiming they make him cast spells faster..."

Quill shook his head with a laugh. "I've seen plenty of patients with delusions. Your friend is the most severe case I've ever encountered."

"Is there any chance he'll recover?" Sean asked.

"It's difficult," Quill replied. "His condition is complicated. Besides delusions, he also has mania and a strong tendency toward aggression. Standard treatments no longer work on him. After he woke up early this morning, it took us quite a lot of effort to calm him down."

"As long as he's calm now," Sean said, playing the part of an ordinary friend with no knowledge beyond the obvious.

"Being calm doesn't mean he can communicate normally." Quill sighed, then added, "But that's all right. Chris is my patient, and I know his physical condition best. If you want to know anything, you can ask me."

Sean nodded. "All right."

Floris Hospital had several buildings, none of them labeled. Sean looked around and spotted several groups of uniformed security guards patrolling in the rain. As he thought, psychiatric hospitals really were just as heavily guarded as in the movies.

"This place seems to have good facilities," he remarked, as if assessing the grounds.

"Of course. Ours is the most expensive hospital in all of Holkodo," Quill said with an easy laugh. "This used to be a park. From a medical standpoint, beautiful scenery helps patients recover. Our director paid a hefty price to buy it. You could say he spent a fortune—it nearly emptied his pockets."

"The buildings, interior decor, and equipment were all made to the highest standards, too. That includes the patients' meals. Everything comes straight from farms, and professional nutritionists plan the menus. Sometimes they eat better than we doctors do."

Sean looked surprised. "You're really willing to spend that much?"

"A doctor's duty is to care for the sick," Quill said with a hearty laugh. "Anything that helps the patients is worth it."

He led Sean around the main building toward the one at the far corner, explaining casually, "Your friend is over there. We keep patients like Chris, who are more difficult to treat, together. It makes things more convenient."

Sean followed Quill inside. A blast of cold air hit him, seemingly from an air conditioner set too low, along with the strong smell of disinfectant. The building was much quieter than Sean had expected—almost deserted. Apart from two staff members who looked like orderlies, standing guard at the entrance, he saw no one else.

"Are there no nurses here?" Sean asked.

"They haven't arrived yet. Their shifts start at nine in the morning," Quill said, folding his umbrella. "Even when they're on duty, they usually don't come this way. You know how it is—girls tend to be timid. They're scared."

Sean frowned. "Then who takes care of the patients?"

Quill seemed not to hear him. He took both Sean's umbrella and his own and handed them to the staff at the front desk for safekeeping. Then he instructed them, "This gentleman is Chris's friend. I brought him in. Call the Patient Center later and take care of his paperwork. Make sure all the proper procedures are followed."

"Sure," one of the orderlies replied.

Quill led Sean toward the stairs. "Come on. Your friend is on the third floor."

The building wasn't tall, so there was no need for an elevator. Perhaps to accommodate patients with limited mobility, each step was only about twelve centimeters high and more than thirty centimeters deep. They were easy to climb.

But the higher they went, the colder Sean felt.

It wasn't just his body. It was the view and the feeling of the place, too.

On the third floor, both hallways were pitch-black, like two bottomless tunnels. Only when they approached did the ceiling lights switch on one by one, from nearest to farthest, casting cold white light over the floor and walls, so clean they felt unsettling.

The smell of disinfectant grew more pungent.

"Doesn't the temperature seem too low to you?" Sean asked with a frown.

Something felt wrong.

It was already autumn, and it was raining today. There was no need to have the air conditioning set so low.

"It is a little cold," Quill agreed, then explained, "But some things have to be kept at low temperatures."

"Some smells, too, can only be covered up with more disinfectant."

"We're here, Mr. Sean."

Quill stopped in front of room 307.

The white light shone on his face, turning the lenses over his nose a snowy white. He lowered his head slightly, the corner of his mouth curling in a strange smile. Then he gently pushed open the door and called out:

"Mr. Chris, your friend is here to see you."

Inside the room stood a coldly gleaming steel autopsy table, with a corpse lying quietly beneath a white sheet.

This was the morgue.