I'm not sick

Late at night.

A silver moon hung high overhead, its light blanketing the earth in white frost.

All around stood dilapidated, low concrete houses that seemed out of place in this era, their walls crumbling into ruins.

The air was heavy and damp.

A young man walked slowly along the path.

He wore a jet-black jacket zipped all the way to his collar, black jeans, and black canvas shoes, with a black backpack slung across his body.

He was only eighteen, yet he had been diagnosed with several mental illnesses.

Piled onto a single person, these illnesses were like a heap of chemical reagents dumped into one beaker, tangling together and interfering with one another, with no telling what reaction might occur.

Their cause was unknown, baffling.

Dr. House was the young man's personal physician.

He had never seen a patient so young with such a complicated condition.

Given this combination of disorders, Dr. House had prescribed him a medication-Serotonin.

0.6 grams a day, six pills.

It was a drug used to suppress neural activity in the brain.

Put simply, it slowed a person's mental responses, making them sluggish.

The result was a quieter, dumber person with a poor memory-a carefree idiot.

Even with his multiple mental illnesses, the drug would suppress them at their root, keeping him from thinking wildly or doing things ordinary people could not understand.

The young man remembered.

There had been a smiling sunflower on the medicine box.

So he called the medicine the "Happy Pill."

But.

Over the past fifteen months, he had not taken a single Happy Pill.

The pills had piled up like a mountain at home.

"I'm not sick."

His head was slightly bowed. Beside the road, a neglected sewer had collapsed, giving off a foul, rank smell.

The cool night breeze swept through the opening of the collapsed sewer, producing a low, mournful howl, as though some terrifying monster was about to burst out from within.

At that instant.

His body suddenly began to tremble, almost imperceptibly.

His face flushed a deep red in an instant, as though his blood were boiling, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

His pupils changed subtly too, dilating one moment and contracting the next.

He seemed to be struggling to suppress something.

His head hurt terribly, as though a drill were churning through his brain.

Then.

A succession of images flashed through his mind, crowd after crowd of figures. They were an eerie blue, as though illuminated by a counterfeit detector.

The first scene showed figures pointing at him in the distance.

"Hey, come look. That boy looks so normal, but I heard he has some really terrifying mental illnesses. We'd better stay away from him..."

The young man furrowed his brow. "I'm not sick."

The second scene showed that pretty girl, Shangguan Xiaotao.

She stood on the stairs, watching him bathed in the sunset as he tugged his backpack strap with one hand and gradually walked away.

Shangguan Xiaotao gazed absently after him and murmured, "Look how quiet he is. He wouldn't hurt a fly, like a clean little white rabbit."

Her friend covered her mouth and giggled. "Xiaotao, don't tell me you... There's something wrong with his head, you know."

Walking alone, the young man frowned more deeply and stared down at the ground. "I'm not sick."

The third scene.

It showed that gentle man sitting in his office.

He patted the young man's shoulder and offered words of comfort.

"Qin Yiguan... So your name is Qin Yiguan."

"Yiguan, as in 'impeccably dressed'?"

"Yiguan, as in 'impeccably dressed'!"

"A good name."

"Don't worry about all those rumors out there. With me here, no one will dare discriminate against you. Keep your chin up."

Alone on the path, the young man went blank for a moment, then his expression grew forlorn. "I'm not sick."

Then.

Another scene flashed through his mind: a pitch-black room with a thick stack of documents on the desk.

Every document said exactly the same thing, differing only in their numbers, which ran from one to ninety-nine.

-Following investigation, the applicant was found to suffer from a severe neurological disorder. Application denied.

He clenched his teeth, his facial muscles trembling slightly with agitation.

His pupils contracted, then dilated. He growled, "I'm not sick."

At that moment.

He raised his head and looked into the distance. He had reached the outskirts, where a squat concrete house stood on a stretch of wasteland.

Under the hazy moonlight, there were no other buildings anywhere around it.

He had reached his destination.

He took a deep breath, his expression settling into calm. As he steadied his breathing, he calmly told himself once more-I'm not sick.

He approached and slowly unwound the heavy iron chain from the wooden door.

Creak.

He pushed open the rotting wooden door, its metal hinges scraping harshly.

The concrete house's windows were made of thick steel bars, and the pallid moonlight cast a grid of light across the floor.

In the corner.

A girl huddled there.

She wore a pure white dress and was barefoot, with sleek black hair. She was young and beautiful.

Now her body shook violently, as though she wanted to burrow all the way into the corner. Her tearful eyes quivered as she stared at the young man in terror.

He was tall, 179 centimeters.

He stood before her, shadows behind him, his face lit by the white moonlight-pallid and calm.

Qin Yiguan simply watched her in silence. The air remained eerily still for a full two minutes.

"What... are you going to do...?"

The girl tried desperately to curl up even tighter. Even her pale toes were trembling violently.

He stared at her pale feet and smooth calves. His previously calm gaze changed, suddenly turning icy.

Panicking, she grabbed the hem of her dress and desperately pulled it over her calves and feet.

He noticed a tiny angel painted on the hem, seemingly her own little touch, her little creation.

But the cold sweat seeping from her palms had already soaked the paint, leaving the little angel blurred, distorted, and hideous.

His breathing grew rapid again, and the corners of his mouth twitched in a sickly chuckle.

He finally could not hold it back any longer.

Slowly, he reached into his backpack and drew out a gleaming dagger, reflecting the moonlight onto the girl's face.

"You!"

"What are you going to do!"

She screamed in despair, desperately shrinking against the wall, her feet kicking up the dirt.

He slowly advanced.

His expression became eerily calm for an instant, then a faint smile appeared. He admired her for a few seconds before his face finally twisted into a vicious grimace.

"Heh, heh... You're... too tempting!"

A bloodthirsty gleam flickered in his eyes, with hysterical madness lurking beneath it.

Then, that quiet young man "disappeared."

He clenched his teeth, bared them in a grin, and laughed low in his throat. Raising the dagger, he stabbed at the girl!

Her agonized scream rang through the night sky!

One stab...

Two stabs...

Gradually, the girl fell silent.

He did not stop. The dagger kept slashing!

Ten minutes later, drenched in blood, he slowly raised his head. His features were contorted, his teeth clenched, and the low laughter still continued.

"Heh, heh..."

"Heh, heh..."

Only his laughter echoed through the little house. He pressed his palm to his forehead, leaving a horrifying bloody handprint.

"My name is Qin Yiguan. Yiguan, as in 'a beast in human clothing'!"

"I'm. Not. Sick!"