The air on the bus was stuffy.
Shu Tang and Su Yin occasionally exchanged a few words, but their gazes kept drifting back to the sanatorium growing distant.
Only when it was completely out of sight did she look away.
After returning to Hua University, Shu Tang and Su Yin went to check the exam venue together, agreeing to have breakfast together the next morning. After dealing with various trivial matters, it was already 8 p.m. when they returned to the dormitory.
Shu Tang’s roommates were not in the same major as her; they didn’t need to take the therapist certification exam and were still interning at other places.
Thus, sitting on her dorm bed, Shu Tang felt the surroundings were unusually sparse and quiet.
She turned off the dorm light and decided to send a message to Chen Sheng asking about the situation in the forbidden area.
Chen responded quickly: Everything is normal.
Shu Tang thought again; often, when she didn’t come back, the mermaid would wait for her at the elevator entrance. So, she asked Chen to check the surveillance to see if anyone was at the elevator door.
About 20 minutes later, Chen Sheng replied to her that everything was normal and told her not to worry about her exam.
After turning off the communicator, Shu Tang was dazed for quite a while.
She thought: Finally, I don’t have to worry about the mermaid catching a cold or sitting in a corner waiting for her and getting a herniated disc.
The first night they were apart, Shu Tang did not sleep well.
…
Inside the Bastille.
The monster was in the washroom, practicing in front of the mirror all night long.
Its naturally terrifying hiss, due to excessive practice, became even hoarser, making it sound even stranger and more terrifying.
When the morning sunlight finally shone through, the monster seemed to realize the passage of time and felt the stiffness in its limbs from maintaining the same position for so long.
Remembering Shu Tang’s instructions, the monster left the washroom.
Have breakfast, take medicine.
Shu Tang said: A person should drink eight glasses of water a day.
So the mermaid developed the habit of drinking eight glasses of water after breakfast every day.
Next, the mermaid should go to the sea to hunt, patrol his territory, have lunch, dinner, sleep; then repeat the above process for three days, until Shu Tang returns.
But in reality, watching Shu Tang leave yesterday, the mermaid felt an indescribable restlessness. The intense loss and anxiety caused by the dispersal in the rain were so overwhelming that the monster could hardly control itself.
In the end, it was only by repeatedly practicing speaking that it could barely suppress the desire to immediately go find her.
However, once idle, its longing would surge wildly.
Especially in this place, her scent was slowly fading away.
Thus, the last bit of placebo also disappeared.
The monster’s calm facade was also slowly shattering.
Almost compromisingly and calmly, the monster accepted a fact: “He” could not bear the idea of being away from her for three whole days.
Although, it sounds, very extreme.
*
That afternoon, at the entrance to Chen Sheng’s duty room, that tall figure appeared again.
Just like the last time, the mermaid brought a large fish infested with pollutants.
Chen Sheng thought the Founder was here to trade something, so he took out the food he had prepared: “Founder, is there anything else…”
But the mermaid merely glanced at Chen Sheng and put down the pollutants.
He didn’t take anything but calmly walked outside.
Although the mermaid appeared calm, when “he” started walking towards the outside, the screen in the hall that displayed the psychic power values began to fluctuate incessantly.
At first, Chen Sheng didn’t realize there was a problem—
Not until he noticed that this time the mermaid was not moving within the sanatorium but was heading outside did he realize the seriousness of the situation.
Zone 01 immediately sprang into action.
The doors of the sanatorium were also closed at once.
When footsteps sounded behind him.
The mermaid stopped.
“He” turned around calmly, his dark pupils lifting, looking precisely at Chen Sheng in the crowd.
It was just a gaze, very calm and very cold.
For a moment, Chen Sheng thought that their great leader was standing not far away.
But quickly, Chen Sheng came to his senses, this was definitely not the gaze of the great leader.
It was a calm threat.
This monster was even telling them in a serene and calm manner: Do not stop “him,” it’s useless.
Chen Sheng realized something, hesitated for a moment, and the mermaid had already calmly left.
In fact, compared to before, this time, although the mermaid’s psychic magnetic field was turbulent, it didn’t destroy any equipment or even cut off any signals, seeming much less lethal.
But Chen Sheng had a premonition of danger, a feeling that drove him not to follow immediately.
He signaled to his deputy: “Release the psychic entities to have a look.”
Upon hearing this, everyone released their own psychic entities.
Subsequently, the people present saw the familiar colossal entity.
At this moment, the mermaid’s psychic entity was continuously expanding, expanding, a blue psychic entity slowly brushing over the city’s skyline, almost covering half of the city.
In the eyes of the people, it was a feeling of the sky being obscured, a sense of suffocation as if the sea had completely submerged the top of their heads.
Yet, what was even more suffocating was that the blue psychic entity seemed to have no end.
After a long time, they slowly exhaled.
Someone uneasily said:
“My goodness, it’s still getting bigger.”
“The last time it expanded to cover the entire sanatorium, how much further can it expand this time?”
“Do you think, can this still be called a psychic entity?”
Amidst various noises, no one felt like pursuing any further.
Even Chen Sheng slowly sighed.
As Chen Sheng turned to make a phone call, he suddenly remembered Shu Tang.
He thought that perhaps Shu Tang’s approach was the most appropriate: not to rashly disturb this behemoth, and to treat “him” normally was the best way.
“Check his location, don’t just go disturbing him.”
In fact, it wasn’t that the sanatorium had actually locked up this terrifying creature; it was that “he” considered the forbidden area his den and didn’t want to leave.
However, in reality, if this creature decided to move, no one could stop “him.”
*
In the humid rainy season of South Island City, the monster walked the streets under a blue umbrella.
Unseen by others, a blue aura engulfed the entire sky behind him.
The monster had changed into a new set of clothes that Shu Tang had bought for him and carried some money.
Because of the rain, everyone had their umbrellas up, and the mermaid-like fins on his ears were hidden in the shadow of the umbrella, so no one noticed the tall creature slowly moving through the crowd.
Shu Tang said, “The subway costs five yuan, the bus costs one yuan.”
Thus, at night, the cashier at the subway station of South Island City discovered five antique banknotes.
Where “he” passed, communicators blacked out, cameras showed static, and security systems immediately emitted a beeping sound due to malfunctions.
Amidst the surprised looks of others, the monster silently boarded the subway.
Then he stared at the address for “Hua University.”
The entire subway car was enveloped by some eerie aura.
Despite standing in a corner, the nearly two-meter-tall monster had a strong presence.
Out of some instinct, as the communicators lost their signal, people kept quiet.
They couldn’t help but cast fearful, frightened glances toward that corner.
In fact, only Shu Tang would see “him” as a pitiful little thing; others, whether they knew him or not, felt a chilling dread after seeing this creature.
Especially when this massive being indifferently swept over them, one could distinctly feel that calm gaze, as if observing mere ants.
This creature only appeared clumsy in front of Shu Tang.
The people on the bus heard the protagonist of the ghost stories emit some hoarse, eerie hisses.
It was as if a whisper from an ancient god.
Everyone felt a tingling in their scalp.
However, no one knew that the protagonist of the eerie tale was repeating someone’s name.
Three thousand six hundred times of practice.
…
At eleven o’clock at night at Hua University, the lights in the teaching buildings and library were off, leaving only a few scattered students on the streets.
For the mermaid, all electronic devices would fail in “his” presence, thus electronic door systems naturally posed no obstacle.
Due to exams, the dormitory lights were off, leaving only a few windows where students were cramming at the last minute.
The monster stopped under Shu Tang’s dormitory window.
The monster didn’t go upstairs or appear inside Shu Tang’s room as before.
Instead, it merely stood in the dark corner downstairs, looking at Shu Tang’s small window.
When the light turned on, the monster’s black-and-white world lit up as well.
This expressionless, emotionless creature finally showed the first emotion of the day: a very subtle smile.
…
Today was the first day of exams. Shu Tang was lucky; she hesitated when she received the bonus question—it was a case study on amnesia following a psychic outburst.
Shu Tang and the therapists in Zone 01 had read a lot of materials during their meetings, and, by sheer coincidence, had guessed the exam question correctly.
Her writing flowed divinely, and at the last line, she concluded:
As long as therapists maintain enough patience and provide proper guidance, amnesia can be cured…
Shu Tang paused.
Amnesia caused by psychic outbursts could gradually be healed. Memories are like puzzles; as “he” learns more, the pieces will slowly come together. Over time, he may remember past events and return to normal.
Just like the mermaid’s gradually stabilizing psychic values, the amnesia was also getting better.
The illness would slowly heal.
Would one person always depend on another?
When Shu Tang returned to her dorm, it was already late.
She passed by a neighbor listening to the weather forecast and turned her head subconsciously, then remembered it was not the mermaid.
After checking her answers that night, Shu Tang was confident that she had nearly aced the exam.
Shu Tang usually doesn’t think too much about things, but it seems that after meeting the mermaid, she has become much more pensive, even her sleep quality has deteriorated. Previously, she would feel sleepy as soon as she saw a bed, but now she can even sacrifice her precious sleep time to sigh.
On a rainy day, she found a pitiful little one and considered herself the guide for this poor soul.
A proud little cat stood in front of the pitiful one, emphatically describing how the world is.
But as the pitiful one gradually got better, “he” learned to use electrical appliances, learned to write, and maybe soon, he might not even need her to accompany him outside, he could live like a normal person.
—Little Rose no longer needs a big chicken leg.
After Shu Tang wrote this sentence on her draft paper.
She turned off the lights, climbed into bed, and went to sleep.
After a long time.
In the darkness, someone neatly refuted her under that line of text: needed.
…
Maybe because she went to bed late last night, Shu Tang got up early and started worrying that she wasn’t in the best shape for her exams.
But it seems, her luck today had been augmented.
While Shu Tang was having breakfast, she didn’t hold her soup steady, yet it didn’t spill;
While writing her exam halfway through, she realized her pen wasn’t showing, and just as she was about to raise her hand, she found a water-based pen just appeared inside her desk;
When it rained, her seat was right next to the window, and just when she wanted to put away her paper, the window was blown shut by the wind.
Shu Tang looked at that strangely closed window and fell into deep thought.
She remembered the two bottles of Wangzai milk she placed in front of the statue at Hua University, known as “Exam God,” on her first day back at school.
After the exam, Su Yin heard about it and was very envious: “If I had known, I would have done the same, I would have also paid my respects.”
Because phones had to be turned off during the exam, Shu Tang hadn’t checked her communicator all morning.
So, she received the news of the mermaid’s disappearance half a day late.
Su Yin was asking her if she wanted to queue for the spicy hotpot in the cafeteria.
Usually, Shu Tang was always the most enthusiastic about eating, but who knew she suddenly stopped and hurriedly said, “My marker pen is broken, I need to go outside to buy a new one, Su Yin you go back first.”
As her words fell, Shu Tang picked up an umbrella and ran outside.
Shu Tang was a bit anxious.
When she heard the news of the mermaid’s disappearance, her first thought was that Little Rose had come looking for her.
Indeed, Shu Tang had told the mermaid she was returning to “Hua University,” but at that time, she only mentioned a place name and didn’t tell the mermaid how to get there.
Shu Tang thought about how the mermaid couldn’t take a bus and wondered how long it would take if he had to walk. Besides, the mermaid can’t speak or ask for directions, making it very likely for them to get lost.
She wandered around the school like a headless fly. Only after circling around did she remember to call Chen Sheng. Learning that they had no leads, Shu Tang hung up and headed straight for the bus stop outside the school.
…
In the morning, the mermaid had heard her and Su Yin say they wanted to eat buns, but it was too far to walk.
So, even though it didn’t know what buns were, the mermaid still went out to look for them.
However, breakfast time had long passed.
The mermaid came back empty-handed.
When it found Shu Tang again, she had already been searching for “him” in the drizzling rain for a long time.
As she called out “Little Rose,” she kept walking forward.
The mermaid paused.
A bit stiff.
In reality, having promised the kitten to wait for her, the mermaid shouldn’t have been inconsistent and come looking for her not even ten hours later.
But the mermaid simply couldn’t bear to be apart from her for three days. So, “he” came to her side, but instead of staying by her bedside as before, he watched her from a distance. That way, she wouldn’t realize how the creature was uneasy and unwilling to leave her.
…
Tired from walking, Shu Tang rested on a bench by the street.
She remembered the rain from the night before and worried that if the mermaid was outside looking for her all night and couldn’t find her, where would it stay at night? She recalled news stories of people spending the night on the streets, some using newspapers as blankets, and suddenly became restless.
She began looking around, worrying that some corner might harbor an unconscious, miserable mermaid.
She firmly ran towards every dark corner that seemed like it might hide someone.
However, just as she was about to sigh in despair once again, suddenly, she heard a somewhat hoarse voice.
She looked up and saw a blue umbrella reflected in the glass.
Just like every time, following behind her.
Shu Tang was momentarily stunned.
She struggled to control the urge to cry.
In fact, at the moment he appeared, the monster knew that the kitten might be angry.
But the monster couldn’t defend himself. Because he was just like that, hopelessly wanting to see her all the time, to stay by her side.
The monster, waiting in place, would be overwhelmed by unease.
Fear, like that of being drenched by the heavy rain, “liking.”
With a turn, she would disappear from his world.
“His” pale lips were a bit dry, he opened his mouth.
Shu Tang sighed in her heart, just as she was about to turn around.
Suddenly, she heard from behind her, the monster very awkwardly and clumsily made a sound:
“Tang.”
—This was the three thousand seven hundredth time.