Psychological fragments

I slumped back onto the sofa, my fingertips trembling violently, and managed to snap a picture of the hastily written note. I opened the chat window with Fang Jue and sent it. Then I clutched my phone, staring at the darkened screen, waiting motionless.

The living room was eerily quiet, save for the second hand of the wall clock, ticking away, each tick like a hammer blow to my temple. Ten minutes felt like an eternity.

My phone suddenly started vibrating wildly, and the screen lit up abruptly. The words "Fang Jue" pierced my eyes in the darkness. I almost immediately swiped to answer and held the phone to my ear.

"Where did that note come from?" His voice came straight at me, tense and serious like I'd never heard it before, making even the sirens in the background sound muffled.

"It was tucked inside the file." My voice was a little shaky. "It was in the fold of the cover; I only found it when I turned to the last page."

He was silent for a few seconds on the other end of the phone, his breathing coming through the receiver, frighteningly heavy. Then he spoke, each word like a block of ice, crashing into my heart: "I've read that file at least ten times from beginning to end, and I've never seen this note before."

My heart clenched suddenly, and my blood seemed to cool down instantly.

"You mean...?"

"I mean," he said in a low, unequivocal voice, "either someone looked at this copy before I gave you the file and slipped this note in, or someone came into your house after I left."

They've been to my house.

Those five words struck me like a thunderbolt, sending chills down my spine. I jerked my head around, staring intently at the living room's floor-to-ceiling windows. The heavy blackout curtains were drawn tightly shut, but I clearly remembered that when Fang Jue came in that afternoon, the windows were closed, and I had personally drawn the curtains. But now, the hem of the curtains was swaying gently in the breeze blowing in from outside.

I rushed to the window and ripped open the heavy curtains.

Sure enough, the window was ajar, just wide enough for a hand to reach in and unlock it. On the smooth marble windowsill, a thin layer of dust settled, and within the dust was a clear, small footprint. The shoe was very small, covered in damp mud from the green belt outside—clearly a woman's footprint.

A bone-chilling cold instantly shot up my spine, making the hairs on my back stand on end, and even my teeth began to chatter uncontrollably.

"Officer Fang," I said, my voice trembling as I held the phone to my ear, "someone came. Someone really did come into my house."

Fang Jue arrived half an hour later.

He brought two police officers from the technical team, carrying forensic kits. As soon as they entered, they turned on all the lights, and the bright beams of flashlights swept through every corner of the living room, casting flickering shadows in the closed house. They carefully examined all the doors, windows, locks, and every corner where traces might have been left. In the end, they came to only one conclusion: there were no signs of forced entry on the doors and windows, and nothing was missing from the house. Only the French windows had been unlocked from the outside using professional techniques, leaving only a lone footprint on the windowsill.

"Are you sure you closed the windows when you left this afternoon?" Fang Jue squatted by the window, watching the police officers from the technical team take pictures of the footprints, and then turned to ask me.

I nodded vigorously, my mind perfectly clear: "It's closed. I remember it clearly. Before Fang Jue came, I opened the window to ventilate the room because it was stuffy. I closed it when he came and locked it. I haven't touched the window since he left."

"That means someone used professional tools to pry it open." He stood up, dusted off his hands, and said, "The technique was very clean, leaving almost no fingerprints or traces. It wasn't done by a novice."

I looked at him, opened my mouth, but couldn't say a word.

In this house I've lived in for five years, in a heavily guarded neighborhood, someone slipped in silently, right under my nose, and slipped that death notice with my name on it into the case file, then left just as quietly.

He walked to the window, leaned over to look at the footprint, and said in a slightly somber tone, "Shoe size 36, female, very light pressure, probably a petite person." He paused, then looked up at me, "It perfectly matches He Xiuying's physical characteristics."

During those hours I sat in the living room, trembling with fear as I looked at the case file, she stood in this house, perhaps even in the shadows behind me, watching me finish reading the entire file, watching me find that note, and then silently leaving.

"Why didn't she kill me?" When I asked that question, I realized that my voice carried a despair that I myself was unaware of.

Fang Jue turned around, looked at me, and his eyes held a hint of reassurance that was barely perceptible.

"Maybe she doesn't want to kill you so quickly," he said. "Maybe she wants to see you scared first, see you break down little by little, before she makes her move."

I stood in the center of the living room, looking at this house I had lived in for five years, a house I could walk through with my eyes closed, and for the first time felt utterly unfamiliar. Behind every closed door, in every corner where no light could reach, in the shadows of every window, it was as if a pair of eyes were hiding, staring intently at me, never looking away for a moment.

"Dr. Shen," Fang Jue broke the silence, "you can't stay here any longer."

"Then where should I go?" I looked at him blankly.

"We've arranged a safe house for you," he said. "You'll be protected by police officers on 24-hour shifts; you'll be absolutely safe. Come back when the case is completely closed."

I nodded immediately. Now was not the time to be reckless. The death knell was already in my hands; if I stayed here any longer, it would be no different than staying in a slaughterhouse.

Fang Jue walked to the side, made a phone call, gave a few instructions, and then turned to me: "The car is already waiting downstairs. Pack your things and let's leave now."

I walked into the bedroom, my mind blank. I haphazardly stuffed a few changes of clothes into my backpack, then shoved my laptop and charger inside. As I walked out, a thought suddenly flashed through my mind, and I abruptly stopped in my tracks.

"Officer Fang," I called out to him, "may I take a look at those file folders?"

"What file?" He was taken aback.

"It's the files of those seven patients corresponding to the digital chain. Although the ones in my records room were switched, your police definitely seized the originals, right?"

Fang Jue lowered his head and thought for a moment, then nodded.

"Tomorrow. It's too late today. Go to the safe house and get some rest. I'll pick you up tomorrow morning so we can go to the bureau's archives to see the original documents."

I followed him downstairs and got into the police car parked at the entrance of the building. As the car slowly drove out of the complex, I couldn't help but look back at my window. On the fifth floor, the living room light was still on, and the heavy curtains were drawn tightly. From the outside, it looked no different than usual.

But I know that just a few hours ago, a woman stood behind that window, watching me.

The safe house was in an old residential compound in the east of the city, a six-story red brick stairwell building. We were in room 302. The house wasn't big, just one bedroom and one living room. The furniture was all the simplest old-fashioned style, with little decoration, but it was kept very clean. The windows had security bars, and the door was a new, thicker security door. A young policeman in plainclothes stood guard at the door, working 24-hour shifts, never leaving our side.

Fang Jue settled me in, gave the police officer at the gate a few instructions, and then prepared to leave. Before leaving, he patted my shoulder: "Don't worry, it's safe here. I'll come pick you up at nine o'clock tomorrow morning."

The door was gently closed, and I was left alone in the entire house.

I didn't turn on the lights, just sat on the sofa in the living room, shrouded in darkness. Outside the window was the cement road of the old neighborhood, where residents occasionally walked by late at night, their footsteps amplified in the quiet night, each step feeling like a blow to my heart.

I took out my phone and tapped on the photo of the note. The cold light from the screen illuminated my pale face, and the words stood out starkly in the darkness: *April 20, 2023. Silence in this city?*

She wrote down today's date, but the day isn't over yet.

I glanced at the time in the upper right corner of my phone: 11 p.m.

There's still one hour left before today ends.

Will she come?

I stood up, tiptoed to the window, carefully pulled back a corner of the curtain, and looked outside.

It was quiet downstairs, with only an old streetlamp casting a dim yellow light on the empty concrete road. A plainclothes policeman stood guard at the entrance, leaning against his car parked in front of the building, smoking. The red glow of his cigarette butt flickered in the thick darkness.

There was no one there, and nothing seemed amiss.

I drew the curtains and sat back down on the sofa.

Those scenes started replaying uncontrollably in my mind again: Lin Nian's pale face, the questions she asked me with her eyes downcast, the sudden change in her gaze as she looked out the window, her fleeting smile before she left, and that recurring phrase.

If someone told you that there's someone in your life who isn't the person you thought you were, would you believe them?

She asked me that question twice.

Once last week, and once on the day she died.

Who exactly is she asking?

Was she asking herself? Or was she reminding me?

There's someone next to me, but not the person I thought it was. Who is it?

I closed my eyes, forcing myself to calm down, and went through every detail and every word of our five consultations in my mind. Those scattered fragments, like a pile of scattered puzzle pieces, swirled around in my mind, but I couldn't piece them together no matter what I did.

Until a detail I had overlooked for a long time suddenly popped into my head.

During the third consultation, she lowered her eyes and asked me, "Do you believe that one person can be two people at the same time?" I instinctively asked her if she was referring to dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder. She shook her head and said softly, "I don't know what it's called, it's just... she's here, and yet she's not here."

But later, in the archives, in that strange chain of numbers, I found the last name—Zhou Jianguo.

Zhou Jianguo, ID 0318, the end of that digital chain, only had a note with He Chunfang's name on it in his file, with no complete consultation record. Moreover, his last consultation date was March 15th. Zhao Min, also known as Lin Nian, first appeared at my clinic on March 23rd.

There was only an eight-day difference between them.

What exactly happened during those eight days?

Who exactly is Zhou Jianguo? Why is he on this death list? What is the connection between him and Zhao Min?

I suddenly remembered that when I was looking for Zhou Jianguo, I asked an elderly neighbor in the same community. She told me, "Zhou Jianguo? He died three months ago! He had a brain hemorrhage and was only discovered several days after he died at home. It's so pitiful."

I opened my eyes abruptly, grabbed my phone, and opened the calendar. The screen clearly showed that today was April 20, 2023. March 15th was only 36 days, one month and five days, away from today.

It wasn't three months at all.

Was the old lady just too old and remembered the time wrong? Or...?

My hands trembled uncontrollably as I dialed Fang Jue's number. The phone rang for a long time before being answered; the background noise was loud, as if he was still working overtime at the bureau.

"Officer Fang, have you investigated Zhou Jianguo's case thoroughly?" My voice trembled as I spoke.

"Zhou Jianguo?" He paused, clearly not understanding. "Which Zhou Jianguo?"

"It's the name on the file folder number 0318, the one I told you about, the last patient in the digital chain. You said before that he had died from a brain hemorrhage, on March 15th at home."

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone, and then Fang Jue's voice came through, carrying an indescribable strangeness: "Dr. Shen, the person who died in that house on March 15th was not Zhou Jianguo."

I froze on the spot, as if struck by lightning, my mind going completely blank.

"Then who is he?" I almost screamed the question.

"I don't know." Fang Jue's tone turned somber. "The deceased had no identification, no ID card, no cell phone, no bank cards, nothing. We searched for a long time, comparing him to the missing persons database, but we still couldn't find out who he was. Later, the community hospital issued a death certificate for cerebral hemorrhage based on the neighbors' testimonies, and the body was cremated quickly."

No identification.

There were no identification documents.

The person who died in that house on March 15 was not Zhou Jianguo at all.

Who is Zhou Jianguo?

Who is that man who came to my clinic for consultations every week for four consecutive weeks, wearing a thick mask, saying he had a cold, with a hoarse voice, and complaining of workplace anxiety?