The administrator is sick, the updates will be sporadic.
Thank you for your patience!
Chapter 120: The Alter Ego Says He Loves Me (Part IX)
There was no movement inside the room.
Xiao Ji stood outside the door and, using the light from the flashlight, looked inside.
There was no one on the bed, and no one in the room.
He pressed the door handle, and with a creak, the ward door opened.
The moment Xiao Ji pushed the door open, he raised his hand and used the flashlight to block a mop handle striking forcefully towards him.
“It’s me,” he said faintly.
The flashlight beam shone on the ceiling, flickered, and went out.
But the brief illumination had been enough for Lin Chuan, who was wielding the mop handle, to clearly see Xiao Ji’s face.
Lin Chuan immediately let out a long breath, his heart, which had been in his throat for a long time, settling halfway down. He stared intently at Xiao Ji in the darkness:
“What happened just now? Are you okay?”
Xiao Ji met Lin Chuan’s gaze, backhandedly pulled the ward door shut, and locked it: “Freed up a bed in the staff dorms. I’m fine.”
Hearing this, Lin Chuan’s expression became a bit strange: “Freed up a bed? Did you… the ward-rounding nurse…”
“Dealt with,” Xiao Ji replied.
Although Lin Chuan was talking to Xiao Ji, the grip he had on the mop handle didn’t relax, and his entire body remained tense in a defensive posture.
He suspiciously scrutinized Xiao Ji’s face, which was hard to distinguish in the dark. After a long while, he suddenly said with certainty:
“You’re not Xiao Yinnian. Who are you?”
Upon hearing this, Xiao Ji couldn’t help but be slightly surprised by Lin Chuan’s sharpness. He didn’t say a word and simply handed control of the body back to Xiao Yinnian.
Xiao Yinnian took a deep breath, withdrew the hand blocking Lin Chuan’s mop, and shook his wrist:
“It’s me. Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
Just as he finished speaking, before Lin Chuan could continue his interrogation, the churning feeling in his stomach surged up again. He hastily pushed Lin Chuan aside, rushed into the bathroom, and started dry heaving again.
Listening to the dry heaves coming from the bathroom, the half of Lin Chuan’s heart that was still suspended finally fully settled back into his chest.
He clicked his tongue: “Are you okay, Brother Nian?”
Xiao Yinnian heaved for a long time before finding a moment to say: “Leave me the f*ck alone.”
Perhaps because it was his first time ever facing such a scene in his life, despite Xiao Ji telling him to rest easy, Xiao Yinnian tossed and turned the whole night, unable to sleep soundly.
His dreams were filled with his gambling, alcoholic, and domestically abusive father, and his mother hurriedly washing a butcher knife in the bathroom.
Early the next morning, when he saw the doctor making rounds again, Xiao Yinnian just stared at him with wide open eyes, without saying a word.
“How are you feeling?”
The doctor’s gentle smile was exactly the same as yesterday before he got beaten.
It was as if nothing had happened yesterday.
“Not very well,” Xiao Yinnian said. “I’d like to chat with you.”
He was very polite in his speech, a stark contrast to when he violently attacked the man yesterday.
The doctor nodded while jotting something down on the medical record: “Come to the doctor’s office on the second floor at nine o’clock. You need a full body checkup.”
After speaking, he routinely asked Lin Chuan a few questions, and after Lin Chuan responded with a bunch of nonsense, the doctor left the ward.
Lin Chuan looked at Xiao Yinnian: “Are you okay going to the office by yourself? Do you want me to go with you and wait outside the door?”
Xiao Yinnian hesitated for a moment. Logically, as long as they stayed within the rules, there shouldn’t be any problems during the day. He wasn’t worried about himself, but he was afraid something might happen to Lin Chuan if he wandered around alone, making it hard to look out for each other.
So at nine o’clock, the two arrived at the doctor’s office together.
“Just stay right here and don’t wander off,” Xiao Yinnian said to Lin Chuan while standing at the door.
Without waiting for Lin Chuan to respond, he quickly pushed open the office door and walked in.
The doctor was sitting at his desk, head down, writing something. Seeing Xiao Yinnian enter, he smiled at him: “You’re here.”
The office wasn’t quite what Xiao Yinnian imagined. Aside from a wooden desk, it was piled with various seemingly outdated instruments, and there was an iron rack by the window holding assorted archaic surgical tools.
Xiao Yinnian pulled out the chair across from the doctor, sat down, leaned against the backrest, and said: “I haven’t been diagnosed yet.”
The doctor looked at Xiao Yinnian: “I know. I was supposed to examine you yesterday, but a small, unpleasant accident occurred.”
Xiao Yinnian nodded, seeming completely ignorant of the matter, and merely said: “Understandable. Hospitals are like that; sudden accidents happen all the time.”
The doctor didn’t elaborate further. He simply pushed some documents in front of Xiao Yinnian for him to fill out.
Looking at the messy assortment of test questions, Xiao Yinnian asked Xiao Ji:
“How should I fill this out to make me look sick?”
Xiao Ji had peeked into Xiao Yinnian’s dreams the night before. He pondered for a moment and said: “Just answer truthfully.”
Xiao Yinnian was stunned: “What do you mean? Do you think I’m really sick?”
Xiao Ji was blunt: “My existence explains a lot of things.”
Left speechless, Xiao Yinnian began filling out the form according to his true circumstances.
Once he finished, he pushed the form back to the doctor.
“Would it be convenient for you to tell me about your family situation? Your parents, your wife, the people around you,” the doctor asked as he looked over the documents in his hand.
At that moment, Xiao Yinnian suddenly felt an illusion that he wasn’t doing a mission.
Seeing a doctor was something he had done many times over the past three months, so he was quite familiar with the routine.
He gave a brief account of his childhood.
“So, you witnessed the process of your mother murdering your father with your own eyes, is that right?” The doctor looked into Xiao Yinnian’s eyes.
Xiao Yinnian shook his head: “I only saw blood, and my mother locking the bedroom door and hurriedly washing the butcher knife in the bathroom.”
“Where were you at the time?” the doctor asked.
Xiao Yinnian recalled: “In the living room, behind my mother.”
“Do you remember how you felt then?”
“I forgot a long time ago. I only remember my mother holding me and crying.” Xiao Yinnian told the truth.
The doctor lowered his head to write again: “And then?”
Xiao Yinnian said: “Then… my mother turned herself in, and I was sent to my grandmother’s house. After my grandmother passed away, I’ve been alone ever since.”
“Can you talk about your wife?” the doctor asked.
Hearing this unfamiliar term, Xiao Yinnian pondered for a moment, shifted his sitting posture, and placed his intertwined fingers on his lap:
“Sorry, there’s nothing much to say. She cheated on me. That’s all.”
The topic ended there. The doctor stopped his pen, stood up, walked over to a machine that seemed to be for brain scans, and said to Xiao Yinnian:
“Now, we need to do a brain scan.”
Xiao Yinnian hesitated and asked Xiao Ji: “What should we do?”
Xiao Ji only said one word: “Do it.”
Recommended Reads
