Chapter 132

Chapter 132

In the end, Qingshui walked through that door once again.

Only a day had passed since her last visit. She hadn’t told anyone, not Wen Lianfeng or Chu Jingchu. She hadn’t even given herself much time to think. The next time she found herself alone, she simply knocked on that door.

It opened almost immediately.

The Director seemed to have known she would come. There was no surprise on her face, and she had even prepared some water in the room.

Qingshui lowered her head and stared at her hands. They had been stained with so much blood.

Zombies, Madmen, humans, and those she couldn’t bear to remember. Now they rested quietly on her knees, trembling slightly.

“I don’t know how to say it.”

Countless thoughts flashed through her mind, all tangled together until she had no idea where to begin. “They all told me to stay alive.”

“Who were they? Family? Friends?”

“Both. And many others. I can’t remember all their names. Before they died, they all told me the same thing: Stay alive.”

“And I did.” Qingshui abruptly pressed her lips together. It felt as though saying certain things aloud would shatter her completely.

“But surviving has caused you pain,” the Director finished for her.

She regarded Qingshui with calm objectivity. “Many people feel this way. Those who survive disasters often ask themselves: Why me? Why did they die while I lived?”

Qingshui’s eyelashes fluttered.

“It’s called survivor’s guilt,” the Director said. “It’s a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. You believe your life was bought with their deaths. You feel you don’t deserve to be alive.”

Qingshui fell silent, but that silence was, in a way, an admission.

“Who does?” the Director asked.

Qingshui’s head snapped up, and her gaze collided with the Director’s. The woman’s eyes were as calm as a deep pool.

She looked like someone who had lived through a great deal, her eyes holding too many things for anyone else to understand. Yet none of it weighed on Qingshui. Instead, there was an almost compassionate gentleness in her gaze.

“No one is born deserving to live, just as no one is born deserving to die.

“They told you to stay alive,” the Director continued, “because they wanted you to live. Every day you’re alive is another day their wish has come true. Sometimes people turn themselves into living gravestones, thinking it will somehow atone for the past. It won’t.

“A gravestone can’t remember what those people looked like. You can.”

The Director continued, as though speaking to herself as much as to Qingshui. “If they had been the ones to survive, how would you want them to live?”

Qingshui went rigid. She had never considered that question before.

If Captain had survived, if Sister Fang had survived…

How would she have wanted them to live?

She would have wanted them to… live well.

To enjoy every meal and sleep soundly every night. To find somewhere safe and meet people they could trust. When they thought of her, she wouldn’t want them to cry, to hate, or to feel they had wronged her. She would want them to live.

To truly live.

Qingshui’s eyes began to sting. A long time passed before she finally spoke again, her voice so hoarse it was nearly inaudible.

“But… I don’t know… why I’m alive…”

“Everyone else seems to have something they’re living for… Going home, finding their families… But I don’t know…” She raised her hands and covered her face. “I don’t know where I should go. I don’t know who I should look for. I don’t know what the point of my life is…”

There was no one left to catch her.

Qingshui paused, her voice so faint it seemed on the verge of fading away.

“And… I think I’ve forgotten a lot of things, too. There’s someone I dream about all the time. I can hear her voice and feel her warmth… but I don’t know who she is. I can’t see her face or remember her name.”

The Director’s gaze sharpened slightly. “When did this start?”

“I don’t remember.”

The Director was silent for a moment before saying softly, “Some things can’t truly be forgotten.”

Qingshui looked at her. “Can I… get those memories back?”

“If you truly want to, yes. There are treatments such as hypnosis.” Her tone shifted. “However, I wouldn’t recommend using such methods to recover them.

“And I don’t believe you need to rush to discover the meaning of your life right now.”

Qingshui raised her head.

“I’ve lived for many years,” the Director said. “I’ve met many people and experienced many things. Human society has assigned all sorts of meanings to life. People live for duty, to leave a legacy, or to fulfill some lingering obsession.

“But if you strip all that away and ask what it means simply to be alive, I can’t say for certain either. To me, it’s something vague and intangible.

“So you don’t need to hurry to find an answer. Just keep moving forward. One day, two days, a month, a year… Perhaps one day, you’ll naturally come to understand why you’re alive.”

She reached out and gently rested a hand on Qingshui’s shoulder.

“You only need to keep going. Keep moving forward.”

…

When Qingshui stepped out of the room, sunlight illuminated half the corridor. The hall outside remained as orderly as ever.

She leaned against the wall and slowly exhaled.

Nothing had been resolved.

And yet, it felt as though something had.

She didn’t know where to go. She didn’t want to return to her room or see Wen Lianfeng and Chu Jingchu, so she began to wander aimlessly.

She climbed stairs, passed through corridors, and crossed halls. Familiar and unfamiliar places alike passed beneath her feet, one after another.

Before she knew it, she had reached the far end of the second floor. Just ahead was the staircase leading to the third floor.

The Director had warned them not to go up there without permission. Some of the other patients were confined on that floor.

Qingshui stood at the foot of the stairs and was about to leave when she heard faint noises without warning. They drifted down from above in broken fragments, sounding almost like someone speaking, yet also like someone crying.
The voice was too far away for her to make out clearly, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

After a moment’s hesitation, she turned around and continued climbing the stairs.

The voices grew clearer.

There wasn’t just one. There were several. Some muttered to themselves, some wept quietly, and others were pounding on something.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Qingshui followed the sound.

There were people locked in the rooms on either side of the corridor. As she passed one of the small windows, she couldn’t resist glancing inside. A young man was curled up in a corner, trembling all over. In another room, a gray-haired woman was talking to the wall as though having a conversation with someone.

These people were nothing like the quiet patients downstairs.

Qingshui quickened her pace.

The sound was coming from the last room at the end of the corridor. She stopped in front of the door and peered through the small window.

The room was nearly empty. Much like the room where Song Yunqing had once been held, it contained an iron cage with a bed inside.

A disheveled middle-aged woman sat on the edge of the bed, repeatedly slamming her head against the wall.

With each blow, she muttered, “Die… die… die…”

Then she abruptly stopped. As if something had startled her, she suddenly curled into a ball, burrowed beneath the covers, and began to wail.

“Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me! I don’t know anything!”

Her eyes were fixed on something in the corner of the room.

A camera.

Qingshui recalled what Wen Lianfeng had said.

“She’s afraid of cameras. So afraid that she wraps herself in a blanket and trembles.”

This woman…

Qingshui stared at the camera, summoned her courage, and grasped the door handle.

It wasn’t locked.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The woman’s wailing stopped abruptly. She slowly turned toward Qingshui, her eyes peering through her tangled hair, filled with terror.

Qingshui crouched in front of her. “What’s behind that?” she asked, pointing at the camera.

The woman’s gaze slowly shifted to the camera, then back again. She stared at Qingshui, her lips beginning to move.

“There’s… someone…”

“No, there’s a god…” Her words descended into incoherent rambling, spilling out faster and more urgently with every breath. “There are eyes… They’re watching us… Always watching… Always watching… It’s fake. It’s all fake… Die… The world… Everything is fake…”

“This world is… fake?” Qingshui asked.

“Yes. Yes, fake.” The woman repeated the word, then began to laugh. “Hee-hee… Fake… It’s all fake…”

Qingshui swallowed. She tried asking another way.

“Do you think… there might be other worlds besides this one?”

The woman’s laughter cut off abruptly. Her entire body went rigid as if struck by electricity, and her eyes locked onto Qingshui. For that single instant, she seemed lucid.

“Yes,” she breathed.

Her voice was impossibly soft, so faint that it should have dissolved into the air. Yet Qingshui heard it. Every syllable landed with perfect clarity in her ears.

Her heart suddenly began to hammer against her ribs.

There was so much she wanted to ask. Did you come from another world too? Are you truly insane, or are you pretending? What exactly do you know?

But in the end, she asked only the question she wanted answered most.

“How… do I get back?”

The woman opened her mouth, but Qingshui couldn’t hear her. She leaned forward, closer still, only for the woman to suddenly reach out and seize her by the throat!

Her hands were shockingly strong. Qingshui couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t fight back. She only stared fixedly at the woman’s lips.

The woman’s grip tightened, her nails digging deep into Qingshui’s skin. She truly meant to kill her.

Just then, Qingshui heard hurried footsteps approaching from behind.

A moment later, the door flew open with a bang.

A figure rushed inside. Electricity crackled, and the woman screamed as she was forced to let go.

It was Qi Zhi.

The quiet man who bore some resemblance to Quan Lin. He stepped between Qingshui and the woman, who had been knocked back onto the bed. His face remained expressionless as he said calmly,

“Quiet.”

The woman fell silent. She shrank into the corner and began muttering to herself again, never once looking at Qingshui.

Qi Zhi turned to her.

“Are you hurt?”

Qingshui touched her neck. Deep finger marks had been left on her skin, but she shook her head. “I’m fine.”

Qi Zhi said nothing else. He merely stepped aside, clearing the doorway, and motioned with his eyes for her to leave.

Qingshui looked at him, then glanced once more at the woman huddled in the corner. Finally, she turned and walked out.

Qi Zhi followed her into the corridor and gently pulled the door shut behind them.

The corridor was silent.

Qingshui stood outside the room and took one last look through the window. The woman sat blankly on the edge of the bed, facing the wall. She no longer looked at the camera. She no longer looked at Qingshui.

After several seconds of silence, Qi Zhi spoke.

“At times like this, everyone wants something to believe in.”

Qingshui looked at him.

“But whatever she said, you’d be better off not believing any of it.”

“Unless you want to become a Madman too.”

Qingshui lowered her eyes.

If she hadn’t experienced everything she had, if she hadn’t come to this world from another one, she might have dismissed that woman as nothing more than a Madman. But she had experienced it. She knew another world existed.

But did the woman truly know that too? Or had she gone mad precisely because she knew something?