Translator: Dj2203
Editor: Dj2203
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Xing Cheng almost never dreamed.
Moderate to severe alexithymia prevented his brain from producing hallucinations, making it difficult for him to dream during sleep. In simple terms, he was unable to “fill in” anything beyond reality in his mind.
Everything he saw was reality to him.
For example, right now, he stood alone at the end of an empty corridor.
It was pitch black; you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Ahead was a door emitting light, behind which lay endless darkness.
His intuition told him that he couldn’t go any further.
Hearing someone calling his name from afar, Xing Cheng turned around and looked into the darkness, but saw nothing.
Just one step away from the gate at the end, something grabbed his hem, stopping him from moving forward.
He lowered his eyes and saw a pair of thin, small hands belonging to a little girl.
He stopped and said to the owner of the hand, “Let me go.”
“Do you know what’s ahead?”
A childish female voice came from the darkness. She was holding tightly to his clothes from behind, preventing the man in front of her from entering the door. “That’s a place where people go after they die. If you go there, you’ll never come back.”
Xing Cheng didn’t speak.
The owner of the hand stood frozen in the darkness for a long time before, for the first time in his life, he finally spoke up and apologized: “I’m sorry.”
Hearing Xing Cheng’s apology, the girl giggled in the darkness: “Xing Cheng, thank you.”
Her laughter was melodious and pleasant, echoing in the empty corridor, yet it did not sound eerie.
“Yue Yue is about to take the high school entrance exam. She’s wanted to go to the affiliated high school for a long time. Qi Zai just bought train tickets to the beach and should be on the train by now. A Han and Lin Gou have also made plans to go to the amusement park in the city after watching your concert.”
The girl said earnestly in the darkness, “Thank you for saving them. If it weren’t for you, they would never have had the chance to do these things.”
Xing Cheng’s voice was hoarse: “…And what about you?”
Since you’re already dead, why are you still here? Why don’t you go through that door?
The girl smiled sweetly: “I can’t get across, I don’t have legs.”
Xing Cheng’s expression froze.
He turned around and saw a little girl in a pretty dress sitting on the ground, tightly clutching the back of his shirt, preventing him from heading towards death.
The girl’s face was hidden in the darkness. She sat obediently on the cold floor, her white dress spreading out all over the ground.
There was nothing underneath the skirt.
….
“…Young Master, Eldest Young Master?”
As soon as the girl finished speaking, Xing Shi’s voice suddenly came from a very far place at the end of the corridor.
A dull pain shot through his mind, and the voice in his head pulled him back to reality.
Slowly opening his eyes in the hospital bed, Xing Cheng felt a terrible headache.
He seemed to have just had a dream.
The content of the dream gradually became somewhat blurry. Although a few scattered fragments remained in his mind, they were incomplete.
The scene was so realistic that a thin layer of cold sweat appeared on his back.
Seeing the young master open his eyes with a frown, Xing Shi quickly bowed and said respectfully, “Young Master, Dr. Lu has arrived and is waiting outside.”
Normally, even if he had ten times the courage, he wouldn’t dare to easily wake his sleeping master. But today, it was none other than Dr. Lu, whom the young master had specifically requested to see.
Dr. Lu’s face clearly said, “I’m very unhappy and annoyed, don’t mess with me.” If the young master wasn’t woken up in time, and Dr. Lu ran away in a fit of rage, he would definitely be in big trouble later.
Seeing that the young master had no reaction, Xing Shi asked humbly again, “Young master, shall I invite Dr. Lu in?”
The young master remained silent with a cold face, only raising his eyelids and glancing indifferently at the doorway.
Having served the young master for so long, Xing Shi had long since learned the skill of reading between the lines and knew that this meant tacit agreement.
As Xing Shi opened the ward door to go out and fetch the person, he vaguely heard the rustling sound of bedding being moved from the bed behind him.
Through the reflection in the glass door, he saw the young master grab a capsule of psychiatric medication from the bedside table and quietly slip it under his pillow.
This scene looks so familiar…
As Xing Shi walked out of the ward, images of the science and education cartoons he had watched as a child kept flashing through his mind.
When the adults came into the bedroom to check on the children, the children quickly crawled under the covers and secretly hid all the candy.
….
Shaking his head, Xing Shi quickly banished all the subtle thoughts from his mind.
Xing Cheng had just hidden the pills when Lu Dangui followed Xing Shi into the ward.
He was also holding a bouquet of flowers.
Glancing at what the newcomer was holding, Xing Cheng turned his head to look at the dark night outside the window and said in a low voice, “Dr. Lu has quite the refined taste.”
As Xing Shi was about to put the flowers in the vase on his bedside table after receiving them from Dr. Lu, he suddenly realized that the flowers seemed to be… made of plastic.
“Dr. Lu, this is—”
“Sigh, no need to insert it.” Seeing Xing Shi’s action, Lu Dangui quickly waved his hand, “It was given away for scanning a QR code at the subway station entrance, it’s not worth much.”
Xing Shi glanced nervously at his master on the hospital bed, then silently placed the flowers back by the bedside.
Sensing the oppressive atmosphere emanating from the young master, he didn’t dare utter a sound, so he decisively turned around and closed the ward door, giving the young master time to spend with Dr. Lu.
Looking at the silent man on the hospital bed, Lu Dangui felt that something must have gone wrong in his brain.
This should have been such a perfect night. No night shift, no dealing with those spreadsheets on the computer. He could have gone home to play games or watch movies; there were so many things he could have done. Why did he have to come to the hospital to see this person?
Today, after leaving his sister’s school, he had a lot of questions he wanted to ask Xing Cheng. Unexpectedly, after listening to what the tall guy said on the phone, his bulging stomach felt like it had been pricked with a needle, and most of his anger instantly dissipated.
He got on the subway, and with only two or three stops left to get home, he got off halfway and took the subway back to the hospital.
As he came out of the subway station, a girl selling cosmetics stopped him and said that if he scanned the QR code and followed her account, he could receive flowers and take them home to give to his girlfriend.
After waving away the enthusiastic salesman, Lu Danggui walked a hundred meters along the subway entrance, then turned back.
Touching the tip of his nose, he awkwardly said to the salesperson, “Then I’ll scan one.”
It’s not really appropriate to visit a patient empty-handed.
Besides, plastic flowers are just as suitable, just like his relationship with Xing Cheng, so superficial.
Before coming here, he thought that Xing Cheng had been admitted to the rehabilitation department again because he had been discharged from the hospital too hastily last time and the aftereffects of the car accident had not been fully cured.
Sitting on the sofa in the VIP ward, Lu Dangui glanced at the person on the bed and noticed something was wrong.
Having previously worked as a clinical assistant under Director Wang, he gradually developed the habit of quickly discerning patients’ mental states.
He placed his hand on the edge of the bed, his knuckles slightly curled inward, deliberately concealing the scar on the inside of his wrist— a form of self-harm.
Upon seeing him enter, his first reaction was to avoid eye contact and pretend that he had no different from usual— an act of evasion and defensiveness.
Thinking of this, Lu Dangui frowned slightly: “When did you start?”
Xing Cheng feigned ignorance: “What is Dr. Lu talking about?”
Lu Dangui immediately got up from the sofa and walked to the bedside.
“Turn your right hand over,” he commanded Xing Cheng, “and open your palm.”
Xing Cheng sat upright on the bed, not moving for a long time.
Lu Dangui was already in a bad mood tonight, so without saying a word, he grabbed Xing Cheng’s wrist, turned his hand over, and prepared to examine it carefully.
Remembering that the man had hissed in pain last time, he subconsciously softened his touch, so as not to aggravate the wound again.
Xing Cheng’s burns on his palms hadn’t fully healed when new scratches appeared, the old wounds covering the new ones, a shocking sight.
His suspicions were confirmed, and Lu Dangui’s expression turned sour.
Although he was no longer his patient, he still knew everything about Xing Cheng’s condition.
Xing Cheng’s mental illness did not fall into the category of spontaneous onset; it was generally triggered by external forces. For example, the movie “The Dog” was a significant factor that stimulated his delusional symptoms.
Self-harm was a precursor to a worsening condition, and this person’s condition was not good right now.
Just as Lu Dangui was about to ask another question, he suddenly realized that Xing Cheng had tensed up and was staring straight out the window.
A series of sirens blared from downstairs, growing louder as they approached. It was unclear where the fire had broken out in the city, prompting an emergency dispatch of fire trucks.
Xing Cheng began to tremble violently.
He suddenly grabbed the hand of the person next to him and wouldn’t let go.
….
Everything around him was rushing past him, and his vision became increasingly blurry. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in a sea of fire.
Everywhere he looked was ablaze with fire, and the thick smoke made it almost impossible for him to breathe.
He went back to the backstage of that concert once again.
Standing at a narrow intersection, the stadium’s central control room was less than 100 meters to the left.
Holding his breath tightly, he ignored the flames licking his trouser legs and staggered toward the control room.
The door to the control room was getting closer and closer.
Fifty meters, twenty meters, ten meters—
He spotted the girl lying at the entrance of the corridor when he was less than ten meters away from the control room.
The girl was lying face down, covered in blood, and appeared to be unconscious. Her lower body was trapped under the collapsed wall, and her legs were twisted beyond recognition.
Hearing footsteps approaching from not far away, the girl’s fingers twitched slightly.
“Someone… help me, please, save me—”
The emergency exit safety indicator light flickered a few times and then went out completely. A dull thud came from nearby; a long-neglected door, unable to withstand the flames, collapsed to the ground with a crash.
A girl’s weak sobs could be heard through the thick smoke; she began to murmur incoherently, “Brother, brother…”
“I don’t want to die yet—”
The fire spread rapidly, and the corridor where the control room was located was filled with acrid smoke.
He didn’t know if the fire truck had arrived, but he knew time was running out.
As long as they rushed into the control room and obtained authorization to open the doors, the 6,500 spectators in the stadium could be safely evacuated.
However, once he left the corridor, the already narrow path would inevitably be engulfed by fire.
The little girl was still trapped under the rubble, crying and searching for her brother.
A metallic sweetness rose in his throat, and the firelight illuminated his pale face.
Xing Cheng stopped in the corridor, his whole body beginning to tremble uncontrollably.
Control room.
Little girl.
He could only choose one.
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