When I'm on the night shift, all the department heads can't sleep.

The queuing screen is temporarily empty.

Lin Ye glanced at the to-do list; the results of the remaining tests hadn't come back yet.

He picked up his phone from the table and opened the listing for the one-bedroom apartment on the first floor in his favorites.

The page also displays the words "Available anytime".

He sent a message to the landlord.

Hello, is the house still available? I'd like to go check it out tomorrow afternoon.

The landlord returned a few minutes later.

[Still here. Is 3:30 PM okay? I'll wait for you at the entrance of the complex.]

Sure. Could you please send me the name of the residential complex and the building and apartment number?

Lin Ye checked the map and walked there from the emergency room staff exit; the page showed twelve minutes.

After Ma Hao finished seeing off a patient, he pulled out a chair next to him and sat down. Lin Ye then casually sent him his location.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

Ma Hao took it out, glanced at it, and looked up to ask, "You made a date?"

"Tomorrow at 3:30 PM. Are you going?"

"Go ahead, leave at three o'clock tomorrow, and buy a bottle of water on the way."

Lin Ye looked up at him: "It's only a ten-minute walk, why did you leave half an hour early?"

"Let's get here a little earlier. We can't keep the landlord waiting." Ma Hao leaned back in his chair. "Besides, this route is for daytime walking times. If you're really staying here, the time you take after get off work at night will count. You'll have to grab some barbecue or something along the way."

Lin Ye glanced at the clock in the lower right corner of the workstation: "Shall we go through it after get off work tonight?"

Just as Ma Hao was about to respond, someone knocked on the door outside the second consultation room.

He shoved his phone into his white coat pocket and stood up: "Okay, I'll go with this one first."

The second half of the night segment left almost no gaps.

It was nearly 11:30, and only two beds had test results left to report.

Lin Ye wrote down the blood test results for the bed that had not yet been returned, the completed treatments, and the time for the next re-evaluation in the handover column, and handed it to the night shift doctor who was already on duty.

The other person circled the bed number with a pen: "Besides me keeping an eye on things, are there any others on your side?"

"I'm out."

Lin Ye logged out of his workstation account, and Ma Hao also submitted his last medical record.

Nurse Zhu was checking observation spots with the night shift nurses at the triage desk. As they passed by, she said, "Once you've finished checking, hurry up and go home. Someone will be here to take over for the night shift."

Ma Hao took off his white coat and hung it on a hook: "Don't worry, we're leaving quickly today, we have important business to attend to."

"What important business could you two have in the middle of the night?" Nurse Zhu glanced at him.

"Let's scout it out and see how easy it is to walk around there at night."

Nurse Zhu lowered her head to continue checking the bed numbers, then waved her hand: "Go quickly, don't dawdle until after 1 a.m."

The staff exit is much quieter at night than during the day.

As soon as the automatic door opened, the lights at the emergency room entrance cast a bright glow behind the two of them. Further ahead, only the streetlights and the scattered signs of shops along the street remained.

Lin Ye turned on the timer and walked forward along the navigation route.

You have to wait for a traffic light at the first intersection.

After crossing the street, there is a 24-hour convenience store on the right, with two folding baskets still inside.

Further ahead is an old wall. The streetlights on the street side are far apart, but not so far that you can't see your feet.

Several delivery scooters were parked on the roadside, and a porridge shop still had its lights on.

Ma Hao glanced through the glass door: "At least I can have a hot drink when I get off work on Monday morning."

"First, let's see what time it opens in the morning."

Lin Ye raised his hand and took a picture of the store name and the opening hours posted on the door.

The sign on the door said it opened at 6 a.m., which coincided with the time he finished his night shift.

Ma Hao glanced at the map as he walked: "Twelve minutes? Is that based on your walking pace?"

"It hasn't even been ten minutes yet."

"This isn't walking home after get off work, it's rushing to the cafeteria for food after your outpatient shift."

Lin Ye slowed his pace upon hearing this: "And now?"

Ma Hao caught up and walked alongside him: "That's about right, let's keep it at this speed."

When the timer reached 12 minutes and 17 seconds, the two stopped outside the side gate of the residential area marked on the map.

The iron gate was locked, and a sign next to it said it would close at 10 p.m.

Ma Hao knocked on the cold lock: "These two minutes don't count. You can only come back through the front door at night."

The two walked around the wall and reached the main gate just fourteen minutes later.

"It's alright." Ma Hao put away his phone. "Fourteen minutes is acceptable."

"What about on a rainy day?" Lin Ye looked back at the road he had come from. From the hospital to the residential area, apart from the sunshade in front of the convenience store, it was almost entirely open air.

"Take a taxi when it rains."

"That's more like it."

The guardhouse was still lit up, and the barrier gate for the driveway was rising and falling intermittently.

The neighborhood is small, consisting of just a few old six-story buildings, and the streetlights between the buildings are all on.

Building No. 3, as indicated by the location, is on the inside side; the building number can already be seen from the main entrance.

Lin Ye didn't call the landlord at this time.

He showed the security guard the address of the property and said he would come to view the property the next day and wanted to confirm the building location first.

The security guard had him register his phone number and pointed inside: "Building 3 is inside, just follow this road to the end. Don't go upstairs and knock on doors, I don't know if anyone lives there now."

"Let's take a look outside."

The unit door of Building 3 is an old-style intercom door, with two faded locksmith cards pasted on the glass, and the corridor lights inside are still on.

The curtains of the apartment on the right side of the first floor were drawn tightly; that's the apartment we're going to see tomorrow.

There was a narrow drainage ditch next to the window, and a small dark water stain on the cement surface of the ditch.

The windows are fitted with security bars, the top edge of which is barely higher than a person's head.

There are no parking spaces in front of the building, but a row of shrubs has been planted there, with the branches and leaves almost touching the security bars.

A car drove by on the path behind the building, the sound carrying through the building, though not loud.

After the car drove away, Ma Hao looked up at the second-floor window and said, "The car noise is alright, but I'm worried about the soundproofing upstairs. I'll listen to it again when I go inside tomorrow."

Lin Ye nodded.

For someone who has just finished a night shift, the sound of footsteps upstairs and cars behind the building is much more important than whether the paint on the living room walls is new or not.

Ma Hao crouched down and stared at the base of the wall for a while in the light from the unit door.

About twenty centimeters up the exterior wall from the ground, there is a ring of old marks of varying depths. They don't look like water that has just been splashed, but rather like water that has been damp and dried repeatedly over the years, extending outwards from under the window of this house.

"In the floor plans you've saved, which room is inside this exterior wall?" he asked, turning around.

Lin Ye pulled up the floor plan on his phone and compared it with the windows and hallway: "Bedroom."

Ma Hao stood up and gestured with his hand against the wall: "Then when we enter tomorrow, we'll check the baseboards and the area under the windowsill first."

Lin Ye noted this down in his memo, then looked up at the window with the curtains drawn.

The dark, old water stain on the exterior wall was right at the bottom edge of the bedroom windowsill.