But they didn’t notice.
A few drops of water had seeped through the gap of the drawer, dripping onto the watch face inside.
For a few seconds, the second hand stopped moving.
–
In the afternoon, Yu Qinjiu finished her meeting. Seeing the two WeChat messages from Ji Qingyou, a smile touched her lips. She replied:
【Alright, I’ll go pick up the kitten after work then?】
Ji Qingyou didn’t reply immediately. That was normal. She was either in surgery or in a meeting. Doctors were always busy.
Yu Qinjiu poured herself a glass of water, leaned back in her office chair, and stared absently at the blueprints on her computer.
Some colleagues were discussing the previous person in charge of her project:
“Is Sang Sinan not coming back?”
“Yeah, haven’t you heard? Her grandma got sick, so she took a month off to go back to her hometown. But only a week after she left, the boss called her, said there was a meeting she had to attend. She just got back to the company, and the next day, her grandma passed away. A few days later, she was determined to quit. The boss felt pretty guilty too, gave her a good severance package. She’s back in her hometown now!”
“Wasn’t it hard for her to get out of her hometown, get a graduate degree, and land this position? Just to leave like that?”
“You don’t get it. For some people, life is more important than work.”
“That’s true. But do you remember that day?”
“Which day?”
“The day Sang Sinan’s grandma passed away. I saw her looking off. I asked what was wrong, how serious her grandma was. She said she was doing okay. But during the meeting, she kept holding her chest. She looked really stuffy…”
“Oh, that. Isn’t that just telepathy? I had that once too. The day my dad was diagnosed with liver cancer, I had such a bad chest pain I thought I was having a heart attack!”
“Telepathy is a real thing?”
“Yeah, it is!”
…
The fragmented words drifted into her ears, but Yu Qinjiu didn’t pay much attention. She absently closed her eyes. Her long-term anxiety symptoms made her habitually feel tired.
She wasn’t feeling very energetic.
Until the office conversation shifted from the departed Sang Sinan to her.
Half-asleep, she vaguely heard someone call her name.
“Engineer Yu! Engineer Yu!”
But it sounded like a hallucination, morphing into Ji Qingyou’s voice, calling her name.
Once, then again.
Very soft, but inexplicably forceful.
A bit fuzzy, but these clearly illusory sounds sent a chill through her heart. It was like she was suddenly dragged into a terrifying black hole. She jolted awake from the daze. Her heart was suddenly pounding wildly.
Light flooded in.
The face in front of her was a friendly colleague, her tone warm. “Engineer Yu, it’s time. You can get off work now. Aren’t you eager to go pick up that little coal ball you bought today? No need to work overtime today. You can go.”
Yu Qinjiu blinked, then let out a deep breath. She nodded and smiled at her colleague. “Okay.”
The colleague patted her shoulder, picked up the blanket that had slipped off her chair, packed her things, and walked out slowly.
Yu Qinjiu narrowed her eyes. When she opened them, she found she was still holding the glass of water she had poured. She took a sip. The water was still warm.
That meant she had only just closed her eyes.
But she had had such a vivid hallucination.
Her gaze lingered on the vortex in the water for a moment. She picked up her phone. Ji Qingyou hadn’t replied to her message.
She pursed her lips, still feeling a bit of unease.
But it had only been a short while.
She thought for a moment and sent another message:
【I’ll come pick you up first】
【We can go get the kitten together after you get off work】
【Okay?】
As expected, Ji Qingyou didn’t reply immediately. Qingyou knew this was normal during her work hours. She also knew that the fear and unease she felt right now were entirely a product of her unstable emotions and anxiety disorder.
It didn’t mean something had happened to Qingyou.
It only meant she was experiencing a kind of anxiety that was hard to alleviate.
So, she packed up, deciding not to go get the little coal ball that was about to join their world. Instead, she couldn’t wait to rush to the hospital.
The distance from her company to the hospital was quite far.
Thirteen kilometers. She drove almost as fast as she could. This kind of groundless fear had happened many times before.
When she was in London.
She would always have this baseless fear whenever she was apart from Lin Yingxiang, imagining all sorts of terrible things happening to her again. The only way to truly feel at ease was to see Yingxiang in front of her. She knew this fear was irrational. But a small trigger would send her into a spiral.
This time was no different.
Driving over, she kept telling herself this was just the helplessness and hyper-vigilance caused by her anxiety disorder.
But Ji Qingyou never replied.
And to make matters worse, she hit a serious traffic jam just around the corner from the hospital. She pressed her lips together. She overheard a driver checking the traffic ahead say, “Something happened at the hospital up ahead.”
The words were blurry.
She thought she had misheard. But it triggered a physiological reaction. She opened the car door and got out, urgently asking the driver what had happened.
The driver was startled by her panic. He explained, “Oh, there was a car accident on Riverside Road. A lot of people were taken to the hospital. Ambulances kept coming. We had to make way!”
Her hands went limp. Yu Qinjiu asked blankly, “Is that all?”
“That’s what I heard.” The driver replied.
Ji Qingyou was always at the hospital. It was unlikely she was in a car accident. Realizing this, the anxiety in Qinjiu’s body subsided briefly, but didn’t completely disappear.
She was about to get back in the car.
Two middle-aged women carrying groceries walked past her. Their conversation drifted into her ears.
“Did you hear about the incident at Nanda Third Hospital?”
“Yeah, I saw it from the hospital entrance. A patient was about to have surgery when her mother suddenly had a breakdown. What was it called? Oh, schizophrenia. The name is scary enough…”
“Did a female doctor get her throat cut by the psychiatric patient?”
Yu Qinjiu stopped dead in her tracks. The heart that had just settled was suspended high again, as if about to fall and shatter.
“I only heard it from someone at the hospital entrance. A female doctor went to see a patient, and the psychiatric mother suddenly grabbed a fruit knife a nearby patient was using and stabbed her. She said the doctor was trying to harm her daughter. The people there said the female doctor was bleeding everywhere. She collapsed immediately. I heard she was from the general surgery department. The person who told me said she had been treated by that doctor during her own hospital stay. She seemed like a really nice person. Young and pretty. What a pity. It’s so unfair. Why did she run into something like this….”
“Oh, and it was a Doctor Ji. I heard the patient call her Dr. Ji…”
With a bang, the suspended heart fell heavily to the ground, seemingly shattered into pieces, barely able to function.
In that instant, it was very hard for Yu Qinjiu to control her expression or her body. She wanted to abandon her car on the road. But just then, traffic started moving. Someone honked, urging her.
She had to pull herself together and get back in the car.
She tried to fasten her seatbelt. Her hands were too sweaty, too clumsy. It took several tries.
The cars behind were still honking.
Forcing herself to breathe deeply, she repeatedly tried to calm down. After a while, she gripped the steering wheel hard and drove the car that belonged to them to the hospital.
She didn’t remember where she finally parked, or how she managed to get to the general surgery department in the inpatient building. She only remembered stumbling around, mistaking the elevator button for the 7th floor when it was the 5th, searching the 5th floor in panic.
Only to realize she was in the wrong place.
So she went back to the elevator. The elevator was slow. She had to struggle up the stairs instead. Her breath was ragged. Her chest hurt. It felt like a sign she was slowly losing something.
She kept calling Ji Qingyou. Qingyou didn’t answer.
Then she called Ji Xiruan. Xiruan didn’t answer.
And the message she had sent, 【We can go get the kitten together after you get off work】, remained unanswered.
Until she reached the 7th floor.
Everyone’s faces were pale, unnerving. The environment was chaotic and noisy. Someone was arguing. The words that reached her ears were hard to make out. She could distinguish “Psychiatric patients shouldn’t be allowed out to harm others!” and “Who wants to be so close to a mental patient? They’re asking for death!”
It looked like a battle had just ended. Everyone’s emotions were unstable. Panic was in the air.
Until.
She reached a ward door.
The floor was wet, covered in the smell of disinfectant. It looked like it had just been cleaned. But everyone walking past that spot carefully avoided it, as if afraid to get contaminated. The trash bin nearby was full of used gauze and tissues. On them was a lot of blood. The shocking red filled her vision.
The department was bustling. Everyone passing by was in an unusual hurry.
No one noticed her sudden appearance.
Someone was standing woodenly at the ward door. Their white coat was covered in bloodstains. Their mask was also covered in blood. Their hair was disheveled, hanging around the neck, as if it had been pulled violently. But it wasn’t their own blood.
Yu Qinjiu suddenly couldn’t quite see the person’s face.
She struggled to recognize them. The dizziness made it hard to make out who it was. She kept dialing the phone, getting closer. From the pocket of that person, a phone also started to vibrate.
But the person didn’t answer.
Tears fell silently, drop by drop, burning holes in her body.
Yu Qinjiu instinctively clenched her hand. But she found she wasn’t just holding her phone. The texture was soft.
Looking down, she saw the little dark green scarf she had bought for the kitten. It was crumpled, soaked with sweat from her palms and tears that seemed to form a line.
She hadn’t been able to pick up her kitten.
Staring at the scarf in her hand for a long time, Yu Qinjiu pressed her hand to her aching chest. Every breath of air caused her pain.
She had to walk closer to the person. With great difficulty, she asked, “Why are you standing here?”
The stunned person, covered in blood, turned around. The moment they saw her, the wooden expression on their face cracked. Then they slowly crouched down and started sobbing, their head in their hands.
Yu Qinjiu barely recognized her. It was Ji Xiruan.
Then where was Ji Qingyou?
