On a rainy night, they walked one after the other towards the emergency department.
However, Shu Tang always felt that the rain seemed to be getting heavier for some reason.
At first, Shu Tang did not realize what was wrong—
Until Shu Tang looked up and found that it seemed to be “moderate rain” around her, while directly above her head it was like a “downpour.”
Shu Tang: ?
She looked around puzzled, wanting to sneak a peek at what was actually happening.
But as soon as Shu Tang stealthily turned around a bit, she was spotted by the tall dark shadow behind her and was picked up along with the umbrella.
“He” lowered his head, silently turned Shu Tang around, and set her back on the ground.
Shu Tang saw nothing and walked forward sulkily, thinking: She had seen everything, even him walking with a large shark, so why was it so difficult to just take a look now. If only she had taken more advantage of the opportunity to look more earlier.
Shu Tang felt their relationship was extremely complex now: The mermaid wouldn’t let her know who he was, and Shu Tang knew the mermaid didn’t want her to know, and was pretending to be unaware.
It was a bit like the game of: guess, guess if I guess, guess if I guess you guess.
Lost in thought, Shu Tang quickly solved the mystery of the heavy rain on her head, because she saw from the shadow on the ground that there was an “artificial rainfall” happening over her head.
—The tall dark shadow behind her was holding the umbrella forward.
Shu Tang: “……”
She finally understood why, despite having an umbrella, the mermaid was still all wet and cold.
So, Shu Tang slowed down, raised the umbrella to demonstrate to the mermaid, showing that the umbrella should cover one’s own head.
The mermaid was just unacquainted and inexperienced, but actually quite smart. “He” quietly watched Shu Tang gesture for a long time, and soon, the artificial rain over Shu Tang’s head stopped, and the mermaid learned the correct way to hold an umbrella.
Finally, they reached the emergency department.
*
Regarding the endless strange occurrences and the sanatorium’s lockdown during this period, in the sanatorium, only a few remained from the “Cyber-Idealism faction,” while most people had turned into the “rumor-mongering faction.”
Many therapists have learned part of the truth through internal messages:
Number 001 in the Forbidden Zone has awakened, and it seems the Forbidden Zone can no longer contain “him.” “He” appears at any corner of the sanatorium at midnight.
The numbering system of Cape Sanatorium is very sophisticated. Generally, the higher the confidentiality level and the greater the danger, the smaller the number. The level of horror associated with number 001 is guessed by many to be comparable to certain powerful pollutants that can destroy a city.
If it had just been a matter of haunting, everyone could have easily joked about it. Now, however, it’s completely different.
It’s like that classic joke:
If you had a billion, would you donate it? Yes.
If you had a cow, would you donate it? No, because I actually have a cow.
All those in the sanatorium who are in the know keep silent, and the atmosphere has become very oppressive.
But Shu Tang knows nothing. She and Su Yin are considered “non-person interns,” and among them, Shu Tang is particularly oblivious, generally unaware of whatever happens.
Perhaps one day, if the sanatorium is invaded by pollutants and everyone in the hospital dies, Shu Tang would be shocked when she arrives at work in the morning: Where are my colleagues?
Amidst such a huge information gap, the oblivious Shu Tang secretly brought a mermaid in through the back door into the emergency department building.
At this time, the interns had already gone to their respective duty rooms. Shu Tang was responsible for the first floor, and her duty room was right at the entrance.
After opening the duty room, she consciously turned to face the wall and began to stand with her back to the room: “You can come in, I won’t look at you.”
She stood facing the wall for quite some time. Finally, movement came from behind her, leaving a trail of wet marks on the floor.
Shu Tang’s duty room was quite spacious for just her, but it felt cramped and narrow as soon as the tall mermaid entered.
The air itself seemed crowded.
The duty room had a bed, a desk, and a blue curtain separating the middle, with the tall dark figure behind the curtain.
Although the mermaid appeared to be “hidden,” in reality, his presence soon enveloped the entire duty room.
However, the monster from the deep sea found everything around him very unfamiliar, accompanied by a sense of inexplicable restlessness.
Just like a tiger from deep within the forest finding itself on a bustling street one day, stiff and anxious.
The overlord of the deep sea, unfamiliar and puzzled by all aspects of modern civilization, found Shu Tang’s soft and warm scent comforting, slowly soothing the restless monster, allowing him to gradually calm down.
Originally, if he had completely ignored everything around him and focused solely on the familiar Shu Tang, this fierce creature would have calmed down.
However, suddenly a Nurse’s voice came from outside:
“Nurse Shu, could you come check if the equipment is broken?”
Shu Tang had to leave. She told the mermaid:
“I’ll be out for a while, but I’ll be right back.”
The mermaid remained silent.
Shu Tang was a bit worried about leaving the mermaid alone, so before she left, she carefully locked the door and closed the duty room windows, telling the mermaid that she would be back in ten minutes.
The mermaid listened as Shu Tang’s footsteps gradually faded away.
But in reality, the mermaid was not as calm as he appeared.
Previously, although the mermaid would find Shu Tang every midnight and sit beside her through the night, his presence turned the world of modern civilization back into a primitive hunting ground—where everyone followed the law of the jungle.
But now it was different. Shu Tang was bringing him into the world of modern civilization for the first time.
There were countless chaotic scents and a variety of messy sounds.
The mermaid couldn’t understand what the device blowing hot air overhead was, only knowing that the buzzing noise kept amplifying in his ears;
The mermaid also couldn’t understand the humans who continuously passed by outside, occasionally peering curiously inside.
Everything made the monster, newly introduced to the human world, feel anxious and uneasy, almost immediately wanting to find Shu Tang and take her back to his “nest.”
However, after waiting a long while, Shu Tang still had not returned.
Gradually, the patience of the monster trying to remain quiet was running out.
He issued a threatening hiss at the air conditioner buzzing above, but clearly, the air conditioner was unaffected—
It continued tirelessly blowing hot air and making noise at the mermaid.
The monster in the deep sea would tear apart anything that enraged “it”, but this was another “nest” of Shu Tang, where the mermaid did not wish to destroy her “nest”.
The mermaid, with a strong sense of territoriality, was extremely agitated, its pitch-black eyes scanning the cramped room, feeling an increasingly intense desire to destroy everything.
Suddenly, the mermaid heard a sound at the door.
The pronunciation of the words “Shu Tang” caught the mermaid’s attention, and the fierce creature calmed down, its dark eyes fixated on the door, listening to the movements of the people outside.
The nurses were chatting:
“Didn’t Nurse Shu just go to meet her match last time? No wonder Director Zhou is so sour about it, he schedules her the most night shifts. I heard that Doctor Shu’s match is surnamed Zhu!”
“Our sanatorium has been on alert recently, and the person in charge of escorting supplies here is Colonel Zhu from South Island Base, and Shu Tang’s match is his son.”
“Which Zhu, the one from our founding hero?”
The nurses exclaimed in surprise.
One nurse lowered her voice:
“What are you talking about, our founding hero was an orphan with no descendants, this Zhu family actually has nothing to do with our founding hero at all.”
“The Zhu family at South Island Base actually didn’t originally bear this surname; it was Colonel Zhu who took advantage of a loophole when registering to change his surname, using this muddy-water tactic to infiltrate the upper echelons of South Island Base as a logistics officer.”
—Because the Zhu surname is quite rare, it was easy to associate it with the former supreme leader, so this muddy water really worked for them.
“Of course, this is all old sesame rotten millet news now; the founding hero has been retired for ten years and doesn’t care about these trivial matters anymore.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
“After all, for us, this Zhu family that found a loophole counts as a big shot now.”
“No wonder Director Zhou keeps saying that for little Shu, getting into the Zhu family would probably not be easy.”
…
In the dark, the mermaid listened quietly.
Only when it heard the term “founding hero,” did the mermaid slowly tilt its head.
The pronunciation of these words felt vaguely familiar.
But the mermaid couldn’t even remember who it was, how could it remember a term?
Thus, the mermaid’s attention quickly shifted.
“It” was trying to understand their conversation—
Every word sounded strange and distant, strung together in a blurred and upside-down manner.
The name “Shu Tang” frequently came up in conversations, often linked with some obscure and unfamiliar terms. This gave the mermaid the illusion that Shu Tang belonged to a different world.
The mermaid slowly lifted his gaze to the door—
It led to a world different from the mermaid’s nest and the ocean.
A bizarre, incomprehensible world.
…
Shu Tang had just been summoned because all the psychometers in the building had malfunctioned: for some reason, every device’s readings had skyrocketed, terrifying the nurses.
When Shu Tang hurried over, the devices quieted down, as the readings had peaked and could rise no further.
Many present recalled certain rumors and immediately turned pale. After all, linking it to a hospital under martial law, it was hard not to think of a terrifying entity in a forbidden area.
Only Shu Tang immediately offered a wise crack: she knew that the hospital interns weren’t paid overtime, but she hadn’t realized that even the psychometers were bought from the cheapest batch.
After realizing it had nothing to do with the interns, Shu Tang slipped away amid everyone’s stares.
She was only delayed because she had gone to the storeroom to fetch two clean, large towels.
She returned to the duty room and was relieved to find the mermaid still there.
Shu Tang asked, “Do you know how to dry your hair?”
The dark shadow behind the curtain stared silently at Shu Tang, water still dripping from his long hair, his slightly eerie ear fins visible, resembling a creature from an ancient legend, utterly out of place with the brightly lit emergency department and the cozy duty room.
Shu Tang thought for a moment, “Then, how about I close my eyes and don’t look at you?”
With her eyes closed, Shu Tang lifted the curtain and located the mermaid.
She touched his cool, silky hair.
The mermaid did not refuse.
Shu Tang had never dried someone’s hair before, but she had worked at a pet store during a summer break in high school, drying dogs for a while—she considered herself quite skilled, and figured a mermaid and a Samoyed were pretty similar.
But as she got closer to the mermaid, she suddenly realized how different they were—
Shu Tang could hear “his” heavy breathing, distinctly different from normal humans; even without seeing, the predatory gaze that lurked was palpable, nearly impossible to confuse with those of docile pets.
Despite the fact that at this moment, the mermaid was sitting, and she was standing.
Shu Tang’s fingers paused, always feeling like she was plucking hair from the top of a fierce monster.
The mermaid with long white hair looked up quietly, his hair naturally falling down, his expressionless face revealing no emotion.
However, when Shu Tang bent down to start drying his hair.
Suddenly, the mermaid’s slender and strong hands lightly grasped her waist and pushed forward.
—It was like being suddenly pulled into “his” world.