All the phantoms of the corpses disappeared after a brief pause, and the scene in the room began to change again, but this time the transformation was very slow, as if accessing this part of the memory required some effort.
The living room turned into a small bedroom, probably less than 10 square meters, furnished with a single bed, alongside which was a desk scattered with various workbooks. A huge map of China hung above the head of the bed.
The bedsheets featured a very common teddy bear pattern, washed to a faded white. The nightstand was a stool repurposed to hold a photo of a woman with three children. The three children were all young; the little boy at the very front was Shiller.
Shiller's gaze suddenly became focused; he remembered this place and realized that his consciousness was still streaming with the High Tower, and the room must have accessed a memory from the High Tower.
This was his bedroom when he stayed at the nurse's home.
There was a time when The Ninth Institute was being renovated. The plan was to refurbish it in sections, and Shiller had changed rooms. But at that time, his condition had just started to improve. The unfamiliar environment and the noise from the construction work made his condition very poor.
The doctors and nurses noticed this and discussed it with the director, deciding to let the nurse who was taking care of him at the time take him back to her home.
However, it was a secret unit, and the staff quarters were also within the institute's grounds, so they weren't far from The Ninth Institute. Shiller was taken back and forth between the staff building and the doctor's office by the nurse, which somewhat resembled the routine of going to school.
While he stayed at the nurse's home, his communication with the outside world wasn't very good due to his illness. He hardly spoke to the nurse's children, but his memory was clear. He remembered every single item in that temporary bedroom very vividly.
The Shiller sitting on the sofa seemed completely oblivious to the abyss beneath his feet. Like a spectator in a cinema, he looked at the room with a hint of nostalgia and even a touch of anticipation.
Knock, knock, knock, the door was knocked. Shiller was familiar with this sound because although he couldn't communicate with the outside world, the nurse always knocked on the door.
A familiar figure walked in.
It was still a relatively young woman. At that time, the nurse was not yet 30 years old. Being somewhat new at the research institute, everyone took good care of her. That's why she was assigned to take care of the quietest patient.
Indeed, in The Ninth Institute, Shiller was even considered an easy-going patient. At least before his episode, he was a very quiet child, understood instructions, and did not attack others randomly. The nurses and staff of the institute liked him a lot.
At that time, the nurse should not have yet divorced her husband. Although Shiller had never seen her husband, he remembered occasionally overhearing the nurse talking on the phone. It seemed her husband worked in another distant research institute and did not come home often.
The face of the woman who walked in was blurred.
That was to be expected. After leaving the institute, Shiller had erased all detailed memories of the faces of the people he saw there. He remembered only that such a person existed, but not what they looked like.
"A Zhi, don't sit in such a dangerous place," came the nurse's voice from within the room, speaking gently, "Come over here, dinner is almost ready."
Shiller suddenly laughed. He didn't respond to the nurse but instead addressed the room, "It seems like you can't see deeper memories. Do you know what the real nurse would say?"
Then he answered his own question, "She would tell me to get down quickly or she'll go find the doctor to complain tomorrow morning."
Nurses and doctors who work in such research facilities are not ordinary people. Even in a regular hospital, no nurse in a slightly busy department could be so gentle.
Realizing that it would be difficult for the room to reconstruct those people from his memories, Shiller felt a bit disappointed, while the nurse still stood by the window, continually calling his nickname.
After a while, the room changed again. This time it became brighter and more spacious. On both sides of the window were bookshelves with glass doors, and in the center, there was a solid wood desk. A tall figure sat at the desk, writing something with his back to the window.
"A Zhi... A Zhi!! Come and see how well I've written this piece!" Another familiar voice came through, its pronunciation of the rising and falling tones slightly unclear, but the tone was quite robust and powerful.
Without looking, Shiller knew that it must be just another piece of illogical scribble. Dr. Anatoli hadn't even mastered hard pen calligraphy before attempting to emulate the director's brush writing, the outcome was, needless to say, even psychiatric patients would want to scream upon seeing it.
Dr. Anatoli turned his head around, his features also unclear and his ethnicity hard to discern. He called out to Shiller, "Don't just sit there, you still have problems to do today."
Shiller laughed again and said, "If it were the real Anatoli, he would just pick me up and take me down, of course, that was when I was younger."
Like the other phantoms, this illusion of Anatoli couldn't affect anything outside the room, so he could only stand by the window watching Shiller.
After a long while, he too dissipated, and the room began to change again, still in the appearance of an office, but this time, a large national emblem hung on the wall opposite the windows, and a small red flag adorned the office desk.
"A Zhi, in the blink of an eye you're almost in college, and I'm nearly retired. Make sure to take care of yourself when you're away, come with me, I have something for you..."
The figure that appeared behind the office desk was a slightly stooped old man wearing old-fashioned round glasses, his facial features indistinct, but his hands were covered in crisscrossing lines.
The deeper the memory, the clearer it would be represented here, and Shiller had a profound impression of the director's hands because the director always enjoyed stroking his head and was the only person in the institute who, against the warnings of the doctors, reached out to touch his head.
He was a very kind and humorous little old man; when Shiller went off to university, he retired. Yet during Shiller's childhood, he experienced a period of burgeoning influence.
It was he who, in the face of a storm of objections, invited the Soviet expert—Dr. Anatoli—to take care of Shiller's illness with eloquent arguments.
Shiller still remembers that after the dust settled, they left the meeting room; the dean held his hand and walked with him down the long corridor.
The walls of the corridor were lined with green, and the floor was made of brown quartzite, which seemed to be compressed from various kinds of stones, with differently colored small fragments embedded within.
Back then, the sunlight outside the window was just right, with the wind-blown trees as green as the waves. In the cement-gray yard, the lines on the basketball court had faded, and there was still undried puddle water along the edges of the lawn path. A pleasant scent of books wafted through the air, and the large hand he held was rough and dry, while the corridor seemed never-ending.
The dean's figure then disappeared, and they reappeared at the same time, both standing by the window calling Shiller's nickname. What was originally a warm scene now looked somewhat eerie.
But Shiller didn't mind at all; he nodded to them like a movie star, full of pride and satisfaction.
This was just a fragment of his memory, each recollection like a pilgrimage, because he wasn't driven out, nor did he escape; he had perfectly completed a stage in life, leaving of his own choice.
"I don't know how many people have lived in this room," Shiller began, "but the things they've left you with make you think you understand what human race's regrets really are."
"You think my regret must be hidden in my memory, that there must be a moment when I felt incomplete, but I can't go back, or I terribly miss it, but those days are gone."
"You think if you keep searching like this, you'll find the answer, or you think I'm a despicable cheater who's hidden the real answer somewhere you can't find."
"But there is no such answer," Shiller shook his head, his gaze landing on the nurse.
The nurse's clothing began to change color, from neck to chest to abdomen, her clothes gradually stained red. She let out a cry of alarm, followed by a short scream as if something had attacked her, and once again, the scent of blood filled the room.
"Yes, this is your trump card," Shiller said, "You think this must be my biggest regret, that I hurt someone who cared for and loved me, and that I'm full of guilt over it."
"But it's not like that," Shiller shook his head, "This is the blood that a mother must shed—you know how newborns come into this world, right?"
Shiller, watching the ever-changing room, said, "This here is the mother's uterus; from the moment I arrived, my only goal, everyone's only goal, was to get me out of here. This isn't a meeting and parting filled with regret, but a magnificent pregnancy."
Shiller gently bowed his head, "Parting is always regrettable, but for me, that regret is like a baby leaving the mother's body. How many people would regret having left their mother's womb in the first place?"
"It's warm and comfortable in the mother's amniotic fluid, but the process of being born is what truly brought me to the world."
"Only those who have lived in extreme pain would regret their birth. Do you think I've lived in pain after leaving here?"
The illusions in the room began to fade gradually, and one by one, red fish appeared, seemingly silently answering Shiller's question.
"No, I don't kill because of pain," Shiller shook his head again, "Nor do I find joy only by killing. I've never been desperate; I've always had choices."
"Nor do I want to become God, or to carry out His will by judging sinners. I'm fully aware that God doesn't exist, and I'm neither controlling nor corrective. The conventional types of murderers defined by society do not apply to me."
The room's phantasms gradually vanished, eventually returning to a chaotic living room with nothing in it. The clock had stopped at 11:59, and the other person still refused to leave.
Glass fragments flew up, as if the room was trying to prevent Shiller from coming in, to ensure he also missed the midnight check.
"If I must seek a reason..." Shiller slowly said, almost to himself, "I've always felt out of place in that world, never able to connect with anyone. At first, I thought this was a symptom of hereditary solitude, but later, I realized I have only one way to deepen my connection with this society and its ordinary people."
Shiller recited softly, as though humming a lullaby.
"The amniotic fluid of the mother converges into rivers, bridging birth and death. The crowd walks on the other side of the river, never calling out my name with the joy and love they show to other infants."
"I came before them, dismantled their bones and flesh, and wove a new umbilical cord to connect to the people on the other side."
"When I reach the end of the river, both my spirit and body will decay, and my grave will link to countless others. This will be the most beautiful and stable connection in the world, like a mother to her child, like love and death."
With a crash, the glass shards all fell to the floor.
The supernatural phenomena in the room receded.