"Finally... back." Li Huowang exhaled, his fingers brushing the bedside intercom. Within moments, Dr. Chen entered with a nurse trailing behind, his white tablet glowing like a clinical moon.
"How's your mental landscape today, Xiao Li?" The psychiatrist settled onto a chair, his voice honeyed with practiced calm. "Any new developments in your hallucinations?"
Li Huowang's knuckles whitened against the sheets. Scabby-Face slaughtered a woman this time. Boiled her flesh in the alchemy cauldron while lecturing me on qi circulation. He described every detail – the screaming, the metallic stench of blood-steam, the way the victim's hair dissolved into the elixir like ink in water.
Dr. Chen's stylus danced across his tablet. "Fascinating. But focus on duration, not symbolism. Your priority is recognizing these visions as neurological misfires." He leaned closer, the scent of antiseptic clinging to his lab coat. "Remember – engage with the delusion's logic without internalizing it. Compliance plus medication equals discharge."
The word discharge thrummed in Li Huowang's ribs. Before he could respond, light footsteps interrupted them.
Yang Na hovered at the doorway, her black turtleneck swallowing winter sunlight. At seventeen, she carried spring in her bones – jade-pale skin framed by inkfall hair, textbooks clutched like a shield against the ward's sterile gloom.
Dr. Chen excused himself with a knowing chuckle. The moment the door clicked shut, Yang Na's solemn mask cracked.
"Your face looks worse than my calculus homework!" She flung a canvas satchel onto the bed, then produced a handheld console with magician's flourish. "Call me big sister and it's yours."
"Sis! My goddess! My –"
"Shameless!" Her laughter dissolved into yelps as he lunged for the device. For an hour, they existed in a bubble of stolen normalcy – trading insults over Mario Kart, her fingers absently twisting his hospital bracelet. When her grip tightened on his sleeve, he remembered their pact: Same university. Same future.
Reality crashed back with her departure. Li Huowang's mirth died mid-wave as the bus swallowed her silhouette. His fingers found the "medicine" on his nightstand – not pills, but Yang Na's physics notes smuggled beneath vitamin wrappers.
Night deepened. Between differential equations, his gaze snagged on the rice container. For a heartbeat, it morphed into the alchemist's mortar from his visions, crusted with unidentifiable viscera.
Not real. Not real. Not–
The itch began at his sternum. Peeling back his gown, he discovered a tar-like smear. Recognition struck like icewater – the hallucinated "candy" from Scabby-Face's murdered apprentice.