Luo City, autumn.

In the empty office, under the pale white incandescent lamp, the middle-aged doctor pushed up his glasses.

“Chen Ji, hello. I need to ask you some questions now. After you answer, based on my judgment, I will score them according to these five levels: ‘none’, ‘very mild’, ‘medium’, ‘severe’, ‘very severe’. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to end your life?”

“…End whose life?”

“Your own.”

“No.”

The middle-aged doctor hesitated for a moment: “Do you hold grudges? Is it very difficult for you to forgive those who have hurt you?”

“I don’t hold grudges.”

“Do you often forget things? Do you still have memories from around age twelve?”

Opposite the doctor, eighteen-year-old Chen Ji’s gaze drifted to the black night outside the window: “Twelve years old? That summer, my desk mate, Ma Kai, secretly took one of my erasers. I really liked that eraser because it had the Uchiha Itachi pattern on it.”

The doctor’s gaze returned to the previous question about holding grudges, crossed out “1 point, none,” and newly wrote down “5 points, very severe.”

He seriously sized up the youth opposite him. Eighteen-year-old Chen Ji still looked quite handsome. Perhaps because he hadn’t been out for a long time, his skin was clean, and his gaze was clear and sincere.

“Next question, can you endure loneliness?”

This time, Chen Ji finally stopped to think about the question seriously. After a long time, he answered: “Yes.”

…

…

The questioning continued for half an hour. When the hand on the wall clock jumped to ten o’clock at night, the doctor said: “Last question, do you feel like someone wants to harm you?”

Chen Ji: “No, my family is all very good to me.”

The doctor’s eyelid twitched slightly. He quickly recorded in his notebook: 168 points for positive symptoms, 67 positive items, factor score 3.8. The patient, after his parents’ car accident and death, suffered from severe ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ and has violent tendencies.

“Chen Ji, the diagnosis shows that you have severe post-traumatic stress disorder and need to stay in the hospital for observation. The nurse will take you to the sixth-floor ward later. You need to hand over your mobile phone to me. Outside information will cause interference and affect the treatment.”

“Oh,” Chen Ji didn’t seem surprised.

“Please sit here for a while. I must inform your family of this result,” the doctor stood up with the diagnosis book.

“Wait!” Chen Ji shouted, stopping him.

“What?” the doctor turned back to ask.

“I haven’t given you my mobile phone yet,” Chen Ji took a mobile phone from his pocket and handed it to the doctor.

“I’ll just keep your mobile phone temporarily,” the doctor put the mobile phone into his pocket, turned and went out. Before going out, he closed the door tightly behind him.

Outside the door, in the empty, dim corridor, there was only a middle-aged couple, both looking anxious.

The man came up: “Old Liu, how did it go? Did he… discover anything?”

“No, he still feels that you are all very good to him,” Doctor Old Liu nodded. “This is the diagnosis book. You can go to court and apply to have him declared a ‘person with no civil capacity’.”

The middle-aged woman smiled awkwardly: “Thanks, Old Liu. We’ll treat you to a meal later.”

Doctor Old Liu’s smile didn’t reach his eyes: “Let’s skip the meal. I don’t know why you want to have him declared mentally ill, and I don’t want to ask. But when the court reviews it, I can also overturn my diagnosis book.”

Chen Ji’s second uncle, Chen Shuo, quickly took a bulging file bag from his black briefcase: “You count.”

Doctor Old Liu opened the file bag and glanced at it: “Okay, you can go back. I’ll arrange for him to be hospitalized. I see he has no intention of resisting, but for safety, I’ll call two male nurses over.”

“Okay, then I’ll go,” Chen Shuo took his wife, Wang Huiling, towards the elevator.

In the dim corridor, Wang Huiling walked and whispered to her husband: “How much money did you give him?”

“Fifty thousand.”

“Gave so much? He just sat there and asked a few questions. Why should he take so much?” Plump Wang Huiling widened her cow eyes.

Chen Shuo was impatient: “Do you really think inviting someone to a meal is enough? Fifty thousand is nothing compared to Chen Ji’s house! Go to court and submit the application tomorrow quickly. Once he becomes a person with no civil capacity, first transfer the house to our names to avoid problems later.”

Wang Huiling said in a low voice: “Is Old Liu reliable? Don’t let Chen Ji run out of the hospital.”

“Don’t worry, I heard the sixth floor of Qingshan Hospital is like a prison. He can’t run out. Don’t talk about this kind of stuff in this ghost place. I always feel gloomy here.”

When they walked out of Qingshan Mental Hospital, Chen Shuo turned his head strangely to look back.

In the darkness, twisted, dense ivy wound around the building, almost covering the windows. As his gaze swept over, the gaps in the ivy seemed to be shaking with shadows, as if many ‘people’ were watching him there.

…

…

Chen Ji was supported by two male nurses, one on each side, walking in the dim corridor of the sixth floor. Only the safety passage sign on the wall provided some weak light.

There was no nurse station on this floor, and at the end of the corridor was an iron door that could only be opened by entering a password. One male nurse covered Chen Ji’s eyes, and the other entered the password.

With a click, the door opened.

Inside the door was an empty hall, with single beds placed every meter and a half. In the dim light, the single beds looked like coffins, over a hundred of them.

The next moment, black figures sat up on each of those beds, turned their heads, and silently stared in Chen Ji’s direction.

The male nurse said in a low voice: “Don’t mind them, finish the job quickly and get out.”

The two of them pressed Chen Ji onto a bed and used restraint belts to tie down his hands and feet.

“Wait!” Chen Ji said.

“What?” the male nurse said impatiently.

Chen Ji: “Don’t you need to change the patient’s clothes?”

“…Got a disease,” the male nurse cursed in a low voice, turned his head to his colleague and said: “Let’s go quickly.”

With a bang, the iron door closed, and the room fell silent again.

Chen Ji twisted his head to look around. The windows in the ward were all welded shut with stainless steel security bars.

Shua shua shua.

The sound of clothing and quilts rubbing against each other echoed in the ward, followed by the sound of fine, scattered footsteps.

Chen Ji heard those sounds approaching him, more and more of them, and getting closer.

“Isn’t this…” Chen Ji helplessly opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling: “Just tie me up? How rude.”

Borrowing the faint moonlight outside the window, he saw five or six heads like turtles peeking out, occupying his view of the ceiling. On their black faces, they still wore strange smiles.

Chen Ji: “Really fucking scary, this will cure any mental illness I have…”

Someone asked in a low voice: “You all say, does he usually shit before or after eating?”

“Wait, I’ll call the United Nations,” saying that, a middle-aged man took out a calculator and quickly pressed a string of numbers. The crisp female voice reporting the numbers was particularly abrupt in the ward.

Before he could finish pressing, an old man pressed the calculator down.

“Back to zero.”

All sounds disappeared. The patients made way for the old man.

The old man came to the edge of the bed, bent down and looked down at Chen Ji: “You really came.”

Chen Ji: “What do you mean?”

The old man took out a piece of paper: “Someone once said you would come here today.”

On that paper, his appearance was clearly drawn with a pencil, vivid.

Chen Ji solemnly stood up and bowed: “Very reasonable.”

…

…

People who can enter a mental hospital are either too stupid or too smart.

They are only wrestling with themselves in a paranoid world, endlessly, unable to be free.

Chen Ji had some respect for the mental hospital.

So when he saw that sketch, he suddenly felt the world starting to become mysterious: “My head is so itchy, it seems like it wants to grow a brain. Old man, did you draw this?”

“I didn’t draw it, but I can take you to see the person who did,” the old man untied Chen Ji’s restraint belt. All the patients made a path for them.

At the end of the path, a young man sat foolishly on the edge of a bed, staring blankly out the window.

“What’s his illness?” Chen Ji asked.

“Severe delusion. He always says he lives in another world and that this world is his dream. Later, he developed dissociative symptoms and became completely foolish,” the old man answered.

“When did he come in?”

“He came in a year ago. He said you would appear today, which proves he wasn’t lying.”

Chen Ji looked at the old man in surprise: “What’s your illness? Your thinking is especially clear.”

“I’m not ill,” the old man said.

“A bit like a mental patient…”

The old man was annoyed: “I’m really not ill. I hid in here after doing something minor. If you don’t believe me, ask me with a paranoid thinking scale.”

Chen Ji: “Like father, like mother?”

Old man: “Like mother.”

Chen Ji: “…”

He came to the front of the delusional young man: “Hello?”

But the young man just stared fixedly out the window in the dark, not speaking.

Old man: “He hasn’t spoken for half a year.”

“What’s his name?”

“Li Qingniao.”

Chen Ji felt a little regretful. He carefully sized up the blank Li Qingniao, and asked in a low voice: “Old sir, has he ever mentioned what that world he lives in is like?”

“No,” the old man shook his head.

Chen Ji asked again: “Old sir, has he received treatment after entering the hospital? Are there any ways to make him regain consciousness?”

“What’s the point of treating? Everyone living on the sixth floor has given up on treatment. Just being alive is good enough.”

“Ah? Not rescuing anymore? What if he gets better?”

“There are also some who get better by chance,” the old man stroked his chin.

“How do they get better?”

“There was a little girl with severe depression before. She lost over thirty jin in the month after she came in. Later, her dad won over twenty million yuan in the lottery and took her out of the hospital, and her illness got better.”

Ah?

Chen Ji slowly turned his head to look at Li Qingniao: “I’ll give you twenty million too.”

Li Qingniao, who had been silent for half a year, actually suddenly said: “You also want to go to that world.”

Ah?

The old man’s eyes widened.

Chen Ji hurriedly continued to ask: “How do I go to that world?”

Li Qingniao didn’t make a sound again.

Chen Ji: “I’ll give you twenty million more!”

Li Qingniao: “The people of Beiju Luzhou will be responsible for the smuggling.”

Chen Ji: “Another twenty million… What is that world like?”

Li Qingniao paused for two seconds: “You only have a total of over forty million in your card.”

Chen Ji: “???”

Brother, are you pretending to be sick?

He reached out to pinch Li Qingniao’s cheek, but no matter what he did, Li Qingniao no longer opened his mouth.

The old man hunched his back, hands behind his back, and asked: “Young man, why did you come in?”

Chen Ji replied: “My parents died, and I’ve been a bit withdrawn for the past six months, so my second uncle and second aunt sent me here.”

The old man slightly narrowed his eyes: “Young man, how much inheritance did your parents leave you?”

Chen Ji: “A villa worth over twenty million and tens of millions in deposits.”

The old man seemed to be deep in thought: “Then you must be careful of your second uncle and second aunt. If they apply to the court to declare you ‘without civil capacity’, you might not be able to keep this property.”

Chen Ji’s expression was submerged in the dimness of the ward: “How is that possible? They are my relatives.”

The wind outside the window picked up, blowing the ivy back and forth. The moonlight filtered through the leaf shadows, like black flames swaying and jumping on the ground.