Luo City, autumn.
In the empty office, beneath the pallid glow of an incandescent lamp, a middle-aged doctor pushed up his glasses.
"Hello, Chen Ji. I need to ask you some questions. After you answer, I'll use my judgment to score you on five levels: 'none,' 'very mild,' 'moderate,' 'severe,' and 'very severe.' Is that all right?"
"Sure."
"Do you want to end a life?"
"...Whose life?"
"Your own."
"Then no."
The middle-aged doctor hesitated for a moment. "Do you hold grudges? Is it difficult for you to forgive people who have hurt you?"
"I don't hold grudges."
"Do you often forget things? What memories do you still have from when you were twelve?"
Across from the doctor, eighteen-year-old Chen Ji let his gaze drift into the night outside the window. "Twelve? That summer, my deskmate Ma Kai secretly took one of my erasers. I liked that eraser a lot because it had a picture of Itachi Uchiha on it."
The doctor looked back at the previous question about holding grudges, crossed out "1 point, none," and wrote "5 points, very severe" in its place.
He studied the young man across from him. Eighteen-year-old Chen Ji was fairly handsome. Perhaps because he rarely went out, his skin was clear, and his eyes were clear and sincere.
"Next question. Can you tolerate loneliness?"
This time, Chen Ji finally stopped to give the question serious thought. After a long while, he answered, "Yes."
The questioning went on for half an hour. When the hands of the quartz clock on the wall reached ten at night, the doctor said, "One last question. Do you feel that someone wants to harm you?"
Chen Ji said, "No."
The doctor's eyelid twitched slightly as he quickly jotted down in his notebook: 168 points for positive symptoms, 67 positive items, factor score 3.8. Following the deaths of his parents in a car accident, the patient developed severe post-traumatic stress disorder and had violent tendencies.
"Chen Ji, your diagnosis shows that you have severe post-traumatic stress disorder and need to stay in the hospital for observation. A nurse will take you to a ward on the sixth floor shortly. You'll need to hand over your phone. Information from the outside world will disturb you and affect the results of your treatment."
"Oh." Chen Ji did not seem surprised.
"Please wait here a little while. I need to inform your family of the result." The doctor stood up with the diagnosis in hand.
"Wait!" Chen Ji called after him.
"What is it?" the doctor asked, turning around.
"I haven't given you my phone yet." Chen Ji took a phone out of his pocket and handed it to the doctor.
"I'm only keeping it for you temporarily." The doctor slipped the phone into his pocket and turned to leave, pulling the door firmly shut behind him.
In the empty, dim corridor outside, there was only a middle-aged couple, both looking anxious.
The man went up to him. "Old Liu, did it go smoothly?"
"It did." Old Liu nodded. "Here's the diagnosis. You can go to court and apply to have him declared 'a person without civil capacity.'"
The middle-aged woman smiled. "Thanks, Old Liu. We'll treat you to a meal sometime."
Old Liu smiled without warmth. "Forget the meal. I don't know why you want him declared mentally ill, and I don't want to ask. But when the court comes to verify it, I can also overturn my diagnosis."
Chen Ji's second uncle, Chen Shuo, hurriedly took a bulging document envelope out of his black leather bag. "Count it."
Old Liu opened the envelope and glanced inside. "All right, you two can go home. I'll arrange for him to be admitted right away. He doesn't seem inclined to resist, but to be safe, I'll call two male nurses over."
"All right, we'll be off, then." Chen Shuo headed toward the elevator with his wife, Wang Huiling.
As they walked down the dim corridor, Wang Huiling lowered her voice and asked her husband, "How much did you slip him?"
"Fifty thousand."
"That much? He just sat there and asked a few questions. What gives him the right to take so much?" The plump Wang Huiling widened her ox-like eyes.
Chen Shuo was impatient. "Did you really think we could settle this by treating him to a meal? It's only fifty thousand yuan. What's that compared to Chen Ji's house? Hurry and submit the application to the court tomorrow. Once he's declared a person without civil capacity, we'll transfer the house into our names first, before a long night brings more dreams."
Wang Huiling said quietly, "Can we trust Old Liu? We can't let Chen Ji run out of the hospital."
"Don't worry, he can't get out. Let's not talk about this in this damned place. I keep feeling like it's creepy here."
As he walked out of Qingshan Psychiatric Hospital, Chen Shuo turned back as if compelled by some unseen force.
In the darkness, twisted, dense ivy wound across the building, almost covering even the windows. As his gaze swept over it, indistinct shapes moved in the gaps between the vines, as though many "people" were watching him from there.
Held up by two male nurses, one on either side, Chen Ji walked down the dim corridor on the sixth floor. The emergency exit signs along the wall provided the only faint light.
There was no nurses' station on this floor, only an iron door at the end of the corridor that required a passcode to open. One nurse covered Chen Ji's eyes while the other entered the code.
With a click, the door opened.
Beyond it was a vast, empty hall, with single beds set one and a half meters apart. In the dim light, each bed looked like a coffin. There were over a hundred of them.
The next moment, dark figures sat up on the beds one after another and turned their heads, silently staring in Chen Ji's direction.
One of the nurses said quietly, "Ignore them. Let's get this done and get out."
The two of them pressed Chen Ji flat on a bed and secured his hands and feet with restraints.
"Wait!" Chen Ji said.
"What?" the nurse asked impatiently.
Chen Ji said, "Don't I need to change into hospital clothes?"
"...What's wrong with you?" the nurse muttered, then turned to his colleague. "Let's go."
The iron door clanged shut, and the room fell silent again.
Chen Ji turned his head to look around. Stainless-steel security bars had been welded over the ward's windows.
Rustle, rustle, rustle.
The sound of clothes rubbing against bedding rose in the ward, followed by shuffling footsteps.
Chen Ji heard the sounds approaching him, growing more numerous and drawing closer.
"Wait..." Chen Ji opened his eyes helplessly and stared at the ceiling. "I'm the only one tied up? How presumptuous."
By the thin moonlight from outside the window, he saw five or six heads craning out like turtles, crowding the ceiling from his view. Each dark face wore an eerie smile.
Chen Ji said, "That's fucking terrifying. You've cured my mental illness..."
Someone asked quietly, "Tell me, does he usually take a shit before or after a meal?"
"Let me call the United Nations and ask." As he spoke, a middle-aged man took out a calculator and rapidly pressed a string of numbers. The crisp female voice reading them out sounded especially jarring in the ward.
Before he could finish, an old man pressed down on the calculator.
"Reset to zero."
All sound vanished, and the patients parted to make way for the old man.
The old man came to the bedside and bent down to look at Chen Ji. "You really did come."
Chen Ji raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"
The old man took out a sheet of paper. "Someone once said you would come here today."
On the paper was a pencil drawing of him, startlingly lifelike.
Chen Ji was filled with respect. "That makes perfect sense."
People who ended up in psychiatric hospitals were either too stupid or too smart.
They merely wrestled with themselves in a world of obsession, endlessly, unable to break free.
Chen Ji had a little respect for psychiatric hospitals.
So when he saw the sketch, he suddenly felt the world becoming mysterious. "My head's so itchy. It feels like I'm about to grow a brain... Did you draw this?"
"No, but I can take you to meet the person who did." The old man undid Chen Ji's restraints, and all the patients made a path for them.
At the end of the path, a young man sat blankly on the edge of a bed, staring out the window.
"What's his condition?" Chen Ji asked.
"Severe delusional disorder. He always said he lived in another world, and that this world was his dream. Later, he developed dissociative symptoms and became completely unresponsive," the old man answered.
"When was he admitted?"
"A year ago. He said you would show up today, which proves he wasn't lying."
Chen Ji looked at the old man in surprise. "What's your condition? Your thinking is exceptionally clear."
"I'm not ill," the old man said.
"Now that's more like a psychiatric patient..."
The old man said irritably, "I really am not ill. I did something before and came in here to hide. If you don't believe me, give me the paranoia scale test."
Chen Ji said, "Do you love your dad or your mom?"
The old man said, "My mom."
Chen Ji said, "..."
He came up to the young man with delusional disorder. "Hello?"
But the young man simply stared fixedly out the window in the darkness and said nothing.
The old man said, "He hasn't spoken in six months."
"What's his name?"
"Li Qingniao."
Chen Ji felt a little regretful. He studied the vacant Li Qingniao carefully and asked in a low voice, "Sir, did he ever mention what the world he lived in was like?"
"No." The old man shook his head.
Chen Ji asked again, "Sir, has he received any treatment since he was admitted? Is there any way to bring him back to his senses?"
"What treatment? Everyone admitted to the sixth floor has given up on treatment. As long as they're alive, that's enough."
"Huh? You won't try to save them again? What if they get better?"
"Someone really did get better," the old man said, stroking his chin.
"How?"
"There was a little girl with severe depression before. She lost over thirty jin in the month and change after she came in. Later, her dad won over twenty million in the lottery and took her home, and she got better."
Huh?
Chen Ji slowly turned to Li Qingniao. "I'll give you twenty million too."
Li Qingniao, who had been silent for half a year, suddenly said, "You're going to that world too."
Huh?
The old man's eyes widened.
Chen Ji hurriedly asked, "How do I get to that world?"
Li Qingniao fell silent again.
Chen Ji said, "I'll give you another twenty million!"
Li Qingniao said, "The people from Uttarakuru will handle the smuggling."
Chen Ji said, "Another twenty million for you... What's that world like?"
Li Qingniao paused for two seconds. "You only have a little over forty million in your account altogether."
Chen Ji said, "???"
Bro, are you faking your illness?
He reached out and pinched Li Qingniao's cheeks, but no matter what he did, Li Qingniao would not speak again.
The old man hunched his back and clasped his hands behind him. "Young man, why were you admitted?"
Chen Ji replied, "My parents died, and I've withdrawn a little over the past six months, so my second uncle and aunt sent me here."
The old man narrowed his eyes slightly. "Young man, how much inheritance did your parents leave you?"
Chen Ji said, "A villa worth over twenty million, and tens of millions in savings."
The old man looked thoughtful. "Then you'd better be careful of your second uncle and aunt. If they apply to the court to have you declared 'without civil capacity,' you won't be able to hold on to your property."
Chen Ji's expression was swallowed by the gloom of the ward. "How could that be? They're my family."
The wind rose outside, setting the ivy swaying. The shadows of the leaves cast by the moonlight flickered and danced across the floor like black flames.