Conan: What alias? That's my struggle!

A bad feeling, like a cold needle, creeps up the spine from the tailbone.

"Get other doctors!" Lin Ye quickly took off his gloves and threw them into the sharps bin. "Any team will do, just finish this surgery first."

The circulating nurse was stunned. "Dr. Hashimoto, aren't you going to do it?"

"I have something to do."

Lin Ye had already reached the door. He glanced back at the patient on the operating table—vital signs were stable, and hemopneumothorax wasn't an emergency; any thoracic surgeon could handle it. "Tell the doctor taking over to repeat the chest X-ray after closed drainage, and maintain the negative pressure in the drainage bottle at 15 centimeters of water column."

Lin Ye still understands some theoretical knowledge.

Before the nurse could answer, he had already pushed the door open and left. Several nurses in the corridor saw Lin Ye striding towards them and instinctively moved aside to make way for him.

Dr. Hashimoto usually walks slowly, always with a calm and confident gait.

But now he walks very fast, the hem of his white coat fluttering around his knees, as if he were being pushed forward by an invisible wind.

"Dr. Hashimoto?" a bolder nurse called out to him. "What are you looking for?"

"Dr. Miyagi." Lin Ye's voice came back from ahead without stopping, though he was already some distance away. "Who was the last to see him?"

The nurses exchanged bewildered glances. Some said it was outside the operating room at eight in the morning, others said it was the doctor's office on the seventh floor, and still others said it was the cafeteria on the basement level. Lin Ye memorized every answer, but none were reliable eyewitness accounts. The true last sighting remained unknown.

Lin Ye stopped in the middle of the corridor, closed her eyes, and began to examine every corner of the hospital. The thoracic surgery office—no. The operating room—no. The doctors' on-call room—no. The wards—no.

There's no coffee shop. There's no cafeteria.

There is no gym.

With each place he ruled out, the needle pierced his heart a little deeper. There was one place he hadn't been to, not because he'd forgotten it.

It's not because he doesn't want to think about it.

The hospital's storage room. Located on the lowest floor of the inpatient ward, at the far end of the basement, it has no windows, no security cameras, and is almost never used. It's a place where expired medical records, discarded medical equipment, and dusty old cardboard boxes are stored.

Lin Ye opened her eyes and turned to walk towards the stairwell.

He didn't wait for the elevator; it was too slow. His footsteps echoed in the stairwell, from the seventh floor to the sixth, from the sixth to the fifth, and from the fifth to the fourth. The sound of his shoes on the concrete steps mingled with the rhythm of his heartbeat, indistinguishable from one another.

Fourth floor. Third floor. Second floor. First floor. Basement.

The lights in the hallway didn't turn on when the stairwell door closed behind him.

The motion-activated light was broken, or perhaps no one had ever changed the bulb. Lin Ye took out his phone and turned on the flashlight. A white beam of light swept across the dark corridor, illuminating the water pipes on the walls, the dust on the floor, and the labels on the doors. Offices, changing rooms, equipment rooms, warehouses, storerooms.

The warehouse. It's this door.

Lin Ye shone the flashlight beam at the doorknob.

There was a padlock hanging on the doorknob, and the lock was open.

"No way, no way, is this really Ke Xue?"

His heart sank.

The warehouse lock is usually kept locked; the key is in the general affairs office, and someone only opens it when something needs to be retrieved. An open padlock means two things—someone has been here and hasn't left yet, or someone came and forgot to lock it when they left. Which is more unsettling?

Lin Ye picked up the padlock and examined it by the light of his phone. There were no pry marks on the lock body, no scratches around the keyhole, and it could be opened normally with the key. He put the padlock down and gripped the doorknob. The warmth of the metal seeped through his gloves into his palm; it was cool and heavy.

The door opened.

The beam of the flashlight pierced the darkness, like a knife cutting through the stagnant air. It swept across the space behind the door, illuminating the shelves against the wall, the stacked cardboard boxes, and the dusty old instruments. Everything seemed normal, as normal as an ordinary storeroom.

Then the beam of light lifted up slightly.

Lin Ye saw Dr. Miyagi's toes. Gray leather shoes, dark blue suit trousers, white socks. His toes were pointing downwards, about thirty centimeters off the ground, as if he were tiptoeing to reach for something. But a person's toes wouldn't be dangling thirty centimeters off the ground unless there was nothing under their feet.

Lin Ye moved the flashlight beam upwards.

Calf, knee, thigh, waist, chest.

Dr. Miyagi's body was suspended straight in mid-air, with a rope around his neck, the other end of which was tied to a fire pipe on the roof.

The man's face was bluish-purple, his lips black, his eyes half-open with unfocused pupils, and his tongue slightly protruding, bitten down on his teeth. The expression on his face wasn't fear, nor pain, but rather—confusion. It was as if he hadn't understood why he was there, even in death.

"Damn it!"

Lin Ye stood still, the beam of the flashlight fixed on Dr. Miyagi's face, motionless.

His hand was so steady that the beam of light didn't shake at all.

But his fingers holding the phone had turned white, not from fear, but from a delayed, slowly spreading chill that seeped into his bones.

The good news is that the patient suspected of being the killer wasn't targeting Dr. Miyagi. The bad news is that Dr. Miyagi is dead—if it were a professional killer, they wouldn't have used such a crude method.

Of course, regardless of the circumstances, the person who pulled Gin back from the brink of death on the operating table, the assistant doctor who was temporarily put in the lead surgeon position, was also a figure of respect.

The junior who had been suppressed by Lin Ye for who knows how long is dead.

The doctor was found hanged in the hospital's storage room, his toes about 30 centimeters off the ground, with a rope around his neck that looked like it came from somewhere.

"This damn world."

Lin Ye turned off the flashlight.

Darkness swallowed everything again. He stood in the darkness, listening to his own heartbeat. Thump, thump, thump, one beat after another, unhurried and steady.

He turned and walked out of the warehouse.

The padlock was put back on the doorknob and locked.

Lin Ye didn't look back, nor did he need to. He found the distance between Dr. Miyagi's toes and the ground to be remarkably precise. Not because it was physically special, but because it was precisely a height that made it impossible for anyone to reach the ground.

A perfect, precise, cruel height.

"We have no choice but to hand it over to the police."

Lin Ye walked up the stairs, her footsteps echoing in the empty stairwell.

On the second floor, the door to the stairwell was suddenly pushed open.

A nurse poked her head in, saw Lin Ye, and visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

"Dr. Hashimoto, I've finally found you! The surgery in the emergency room is finished, and the patient is doing very well. Also, you just told us to look for Dr. Miyagi—"

Lin Ye stood on the steps, his phone clutched in his hand, screen facing down, blocking the light.

"Keep the change, please."

He interrupted the other person.

"I know where he is."

With that, Lin Ye dialed the police.