DDT - Chapter 88
Chapter 88: Female Ghost × Little Pitiful One (18)
Yi Shuhan couldn't stop laughing for a moment. The sound from behind her made her jump, and only then did she turn around.
It was Dr. Li, who had come in carrying a tray.
Dr. Li was Yi Shuhan's attending physician. He was usually lukewarm toward her at best. For him to enter Room No. 1 with medicine this late at night was unusual.
The joy on Yi Shuhan's face vanished, replaced by a stern expression. She frowned at Dr. Li. "Doctor, I don't recall needing to take medicine at night."
Dr. Li placed the tray on the bed and scrutinized Yi Shuhan from head to toe, his sharp gaze seeming to want to see right through her.
The atmosphere in Room No. 1 grew inexplicably tense. It wasn't that late yet; patients were still chatting in the hallway. The chatter from outside only made the strangeness inside the room more pronounced.
"No. 213, who were you just talking to?" Dr. Li's glasses glinted with a cold light. Yi Shuhan's expression stiffened for a second, but she quickly concealed it.
"Who? Am I not the only one in this room?" Yi Shuhan feigned composure as she walked over and sat on the edge of her bed.
"You're having severe hallucinations," Dr. Li stated.
"I am not." Yi Shuhan stared coldly at Dr. Li. Feeling oppressed in this position, she quickly stood up and took a few steps away from him, watching him with a cold look.
"Instead of sleeping at night, you run to the bathroom every day to chatter with yourself. You talk to yourself while eating alone in the corner. You talk to yourself when you're alone in the library. People who have hallucinations never believe they're having them."
"You're deceiving yourself." Dr. Li stood ramrod straight, looking down at Yi Shuhan. "Your condition is more serious than I imagined. You're already showing tendencies of schizophrenia."
"Take this medicine. Starting tonight, you are not allowed to go to the bathroom and whisper to your 'hallucination.' Do you have any idea how many people you've scared?" Dr. Li was blunt, glancing at the water and pills on the tray.
"I said, I'm not having hallucinations. How can I just take this medicine?" Yi Shuhan looked at the pills, a headache forming. Why was this doctor so idle that he had to come and observe her all the time?
"Do you want to take it yourself, or should I call the nurses to hold you down and force it down your throat?"
Dr. Li was aggressive, utterly convinced that Yi Shuhan was hallucinating.
Yi Shuhan hesitated for a moment before reluctantly walking over, picking up the pills, and downing them with the cup of water.
"Open your mouth. Let me check," Dr. Li said, clearly experienced.
Forced to swallow the medicine, Yi Shuhan climbed onto the bed with a cold face and pulled the covers over her head.
Dr. Li snorted. "I'm doing this for your own good. You're all such a handful. I've already reported the prescription to the pharmacy department. Remember to take your medicine every night from now on. I'll have a nurse come and supervise you." With that, Dr. Li swaggered out of Room No. 1.
Yi Shuhan buried herself in her quilt. Chi Junluo couldn't very well squeeze in with her, so she just sat on the edge of the bed, feeling a little guilty. It was because of her, after all, that Yi Shuhan was suspected of having hallucinations.
Under the dark quilt, Yi Shuhan's eyes reddened. The doctor's cold, indifferent face disgusted her, as did his certainty that she was hallucinating. That expression of his, as if he knew everything and had it all under control, was repulsive.
Yi Shuhan lay curled up quietly under the covers. After a long while, a force pulled the quilt down slightly, exposing her head.
The light in the room had been turned off at some point. It was dark, with only the light from the hallway filtering in through the small grate on the door.
"Chi Chi, are you still there?" After a long silence, Yi Shuhan's slightly weary voice echoed in the room.
"I'm here," Chi Junluo answered quickly.
Hearing that familiar, gentle female voice so close by her bed, Yi Shuhan felt a strange sense of reassurance settle in her heart.
"Chi Chi, do you think… you might really be a figment of my imagination? My hallucination?"
Yi Shuhan turned on her side to face the invisible Chi Junluo and asked hesitantly.
In truth, she also felt that meeting Chi Junluo was too bizarre. Did ghosts really exist in this world?
Or was Chi Junluo truly something she had imagined?
"How could I be your hallucination? If I were a hallucination created by your mind, how could Shi Qi see me? How could he hear me speak? How could I teach you to draw? And how did we make the yellow-haired man get his comeuppance last time? How did those two nurses who bullied you go flying?" Chi Junluo was getting a little anxious. Had Yi Shuhan really started to think of her as a mere fantasy???
"But what if… I mean, what if all of it was something I imagined?" Yi Shuhan reached up to hold her head. In the darkness, Chi Junluo couldn't see her expression. "What if you don't actually exist, the yellow-haired man doesn't exist, and the two nurses don't exist? What if the police never came to see me, and the trending topics were all in my head? In reality, maybe I've never even left this room???"
The more Yi Shuhan spoke, the more certain she became of this conjecture.
"Chi Chi, if you really exist, why didn't you appear during the first few months I was here? Why did you suddenly show up later?"
Yi Shuhan's eyes were wide open, staring into the empty air.
Her question left Chi Junluo speechless.
"Chi Chi, you said you've been trapped here for ten years, but why are you so familiar with modern electronics? Ten years ago, touchscreen smartphones barely existed, right? Let alone things like surfing the internet."
"You're better at using these apps than I am." Yi Shuhan reached up and rubbed her temples. She didn't know if it was the medicine kicking in, but she felt incredibly dizzy.
"…" Chi Junluo silently floated into mid-air, not knowing what to say.
Yi Shuhan reached out and felt for the drawings she had hidden, especially the first one—the portrait of the two of them in the mirror that Chi Chi had drawn for her by hand.
She didn't have the courage to turn on the light and check the drawing now. She knew her own capabilities; a drawing like that, so exquisite, was not something she could have produced.
For a moment, Room No. 1 fell into a deathly silence.
Was she that lonely? So lonely that she had to rely on fantasies to survive? She had always been a loner all these years, without a single friend. So, had she imagined a gentle and perfect girl to keep her company?
Right now, Yi Shuhan's mind felt incredibly chaotic. After thinking for a long time, she finally came to a conclusion. "Chi Chi, you're actually a personality I split off from myself, aren't you???"
Chi Junluo, who had been lost in thought in mid-air, was stunned when she heard Yi Shuhan's words. She really wanted to tell her that she was seriously overthinking things.
"I get it now. You and Shi Qi might both be personalities I split off. And those nurses and everything…" Yi Shuhan murmured.
Hearing what Yi Shuhan was saying, Chi Junluo felt her face darken with exasperation.
The Heavenly Dao's snickering echoed in her sea of consciousness. Chi Junluo sent a wave of "seawater" crashing down on its head. Ignoring the Heavenly Dao's cries, Chi Junluo felt a headache more intense than any she had ever experienced.
How was she supposed to explain this?! The heroine now thought she was one of her split personalities!
On the bed, as the effects of the medicine took hold, Yi Shuhan groggily fell asleep. Chi Junluo helped pull the covers up for her. That night, she didn't hold Yi Shuhan as she slept. Instead, she sat by the bed in a daze until dawn.
Time flew by. The morning bell rang shrilly. Yi Shuhan groggily rubbed her eyes and slowly sat up. She walked straight out the door. This was the first time since they had met that she hadn't greeted Chi Junluo in the morning. Fortunately, Chi Junluo reacted quickly. A second before Yi Shuhan left, she floated over and grabbed the corner of her clothes, successfully leaving Room No. 1.
She remained clinging to Yi Shuhan's back. Perhaps because she had absorbed most of the Power of the Heavenly Dao, she could barely feel any warmth from their contact anymore.
Coupled with the fact that Chi Junluo had been silent the whole time, Yi Shuhan didn't even notice that she had followed her out.
After a hasty breakfast, Yi Shuhan went to the balcony to sunbathe. As she passed through the corridor, she happened to run into the little boy, Shi Qi. Yi Shuhan's eyes were full of confusion. Shi Qi greeted both Yi Shuhan and the Chi Junluo clinging to her back as usual. This time, Yi Shuhan acted very abnormally. Instead of responding, she reached out and pinched Shi Qi's chubby cheeks. The sensation was incredibly real. Yi Shuhan's eyes filled with doubt. Then, she walked away in a daze, muttering, "This hallucination is so realistic."
She left Shi Qi standing there, rubbing his face with a bewildered expression.
He had wanted to tell Yi Shuhan that he was already figuring out a way to prepare something to feed the ghost.
On the balcony, a few patients sat scattered about. One of them was squatting in a corner, muttering incessantly. When Yi Shuhan saw this, a chill ran down her spine. A terrifying thought occurred to her: was this how she had appeared to others all this time—muttering crazily, acting insane?
Yi Shuhan now had no way of confirming whether anything that had happened before was real. She didn't dare to think about whether the patients around her truly existed. She was terrified that this entire hospital was something she had imagined.
Resting her chin on her hands, Yi Shuhan's mind was filled with sorrow.
Not far away, a nurse was walking toward her.
Yi Shuhan clearly didn't hear the footsteps. It wasn't until the nurse was standing right in front of her, waving a hand before her eyes, that she snapped out of it.
She looked up at the nurse, confused. Then she heard the nurse say, "No. 213, your family is here to visit. Come with me to the reception room on the first floor."
The moment Yi Shuhan heard words like "visit" and "family," her face fell. She wanted to immediately shout and question if this was another trick, but the thought that the previous incident might have been her own delusion stopped her. She didn't dare to speak, afraid of being accused of having paranoid delusions and hallucinations again.
Seeing her hesitation, the nurse was about to clarify that she wasn't a bad person and wouldn't trick her like the last two nurses, when she saw Yi Shuhan slowly stand up and gesture for her to lead the way. So, the nurse said nothing more and turned to take Yi Shuhan to the first floor.
Yi Shuhan felt uneasy. She hadn't heard Chi Chi's voice all morning, and now someone was saying her family was here to visit. Her sixth sense seemed to be telling her that nothing good was about to happen. Unsure if it was her so-called hallucinations at play, Yi Shuhan was now suspicious of everything.
She reached out and grabbed the nurse's arm over her sleeve. Feeling the warmth of a human body through the fabric, she relaxed slightly. When the nurse turned to look at her questioningly, Yi Shuhan pretended nothing was wrong and withdrew her hand. "Can I choose not to go?"
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