Chi Qing had seen many psychiatrists, but this was the first one who got handsy right from the start.
The black glove was held in the man’s hand. Even though it was a very simple action and genuinely had no other meaning behind it, when done by him, it seemed thoroughly indecent.
That person: “Don’t move around. I’m not going to eat you. What are you nervous about?”
Chi Qing: “Get lost.”
That person: “If you keep this up, when will your germaphobia ever be cured? When coming to a clinic for treatment, you first have to set your attitude straight. Endure it a little.”
Chi Qing: “…”
The glove was peeled back to the finger joints by the other party. These hands hadn’t seen much sunlight, presenting a near-sickly pallor. The finger joints were very slender, prompting the other person to take an extra look.
Silently chanting “murder is illegal” in his heart, Chi Qing endured the discomfort and looked up at him.
His half-long hair over his forehead covered his eyes, and his pupil color was bottomlessly black. The weather today was actually very good, but the sunlight from outside the window shining on him couldn’t disperse that sense of continuous, gloomy-rain-like decadence in the slightest, seemingly causing the light inside the room to dim a few degrees along with it.
Sensing his gaze, the person across from him took two seconds to realize he was waiting for him to provide feedback.
Holding his hand, the person examined it and said: “Hmm… your hand looks very nice.”
Chi Qing’s eye twitched.
This was a hundred and eight thousand miles away from the feedback he had imagined.
That person continued: “Very pale. There’s a light brown mole on the second joint of your ring finger.”
“…”
“Your fingers are quite slender, the circumference shouldn’t exceed fifty-six. Has anyone ever told you that your fingers are very long?”
Tell my ass.
This guy is a fucking psycho, isn’t he.
“No,” Chi Qing’s knuckles remained tense. “After all, psychos are a minority in this world.”
That person didn’t mind. Hearing this, he even chuckled: “Angry?”
“If you can’t tell,” Chi Qing twitched his knuckles and said, “I can make it a little more obvious.”
However, his knuckles had barely moved a fraction before they were pressed back down. The person’s tone was clearly very ordinary, yet it sounded like he was coaxing someone: “Alright, don’t be angry. I’ll let go.”
That person seemed very adept at testing others’ psychological defenses. Stepping right on Chi Qing’s bottom line, he unhurriedly let go at the very last moment.
“It’s been almost five minutes since you walked in, you finally have a bit of expression on your face.” Subsequently, he extended two fingers and pointed toward the left, as if knowing exactly what he was going to do: “Go out the door and turn left for the restroom, it’s at the very end.”
Chi Qing washed his hands twice.
He pressed the water switch, and the sound of flowing water in his ears stopped. Chi Qing thought to himself, That person truly doesn’t seem like a doctor.
That shirt, that personality completely not matching the description, and those unconventional methods.
The suspicions in his heart hadn’t ceased, with several clues all pointing toward the same conclusion, but they were all blocked by the person’s overly natural attitude and his undeniable display of understanding psychology.
A few minutes later, the two returned to their face-to-face positions.
“This symptom of yours, approximately when did it start?”
“Ten years ago.”
“Did anything special happen ten years ago? Of course, if it’s inconvenient to talk about it, that’s fine.”
Chi Qing didn’t hesitate: “Inconvenient.”
“…”
That person rested his fingers on the paper pages. The corners of his eyes were slightly lifted. When looking at others, his gaze inexplicably carried a hint of affection, as if indulging the other party’s bad temper: “Alright, if you don’t want to talk about it, then don’t.”
He didn’t persist on this topic, changing the subject: “Would you suggest I play some music?”
A soothing piano melody slowly flowed through the consultation room.
The indoor aromatherapy diffuser emitted a faint fragrance.
“Psychology generally believes that music can play a role in relieving emotions. Music is another language, capable of making people feel peace in their souls.” Tapping his fingers on the desk to the beat, the person said, “Close your eyes and try it.”
Chi Qing wanted to say that he actually didn’t feel much toward music.
This kind of trick had been attempted by a mentor during acting classes back at the film academy.
The image of that acting mentor earnestly advising him to change majors seemed to surface before Chi Qing’s eyes: “We don’t want to delay your future either. You truly are not suited for acting. We asked you to act out a scene of reuniting with a father you haven’t seen in many years, and standing there, you looked like you came to seek revenge. Several of us teachers have discussed it, and none of us know how to teach you… As the saying goes, the sky is high enough for a bird to fly freely; why must you stubbornly cling to this small acting department of ours?”
Just as Chi Qing was about to close his eyes, he caught a glimpse of half a photo frame peeking out from the desk out of the corner of his eye.
It was a photo of a little girl blowing out cake candles. The date taken displayed in the bottom right corner of the photo was the 25th of last year.
He looked at the photo for a few seconds, then swept his gaze over the other furnishings on the desk. A freshly opened box of goji berries was placed at the corner of the desk. Not a single ornament on the desk was a valuable item. A calendar stood next to the computer, with a circle specifically drawn around the 25th of this year with a pen.
Chi Qing rubbed his thumb against his black glove and asked impassively: “Let me ask a question. When is the next consultation time?”
The person across from him didn’t seem to care much: “Anytime works, mainly depends on when you have time.”
“The 25th,” Chi Qing said.
“I am only free on the 25th,” he repeated again.
The person across from him still had the leisure time to show concern for him: “Seems like you are usually very busy with work.”
He had absolutely no reaction to the date of the 25th.
Looking at him, Chi Qing had his answer in his heart. Just as he was about to say, “You are not a doctor here”.
Before the words left his mouth, the door to the consultation room was gently pushed open.
A man wearing a white wool sweater and holding a thermos cup in his hand stood at the door. A work badge hung on his chest, and from afar, Chi Qing’s gaze swept over the words on it—“Jiakang Psychological Clinic, Dr. Wu Jingyu”.
The real Dr. Wu was just like the rumors. The hot steam rising from the thermos cup made him look even gentler at this moment. Even though the situation inside the consultation room bewildered him, his voice remained soft and gentle when he spoke: “Excuse me, what… are you guys doing?”
He had only left halfway to go to the restroom, brewing some goji berries and getting a cup of hot water along the way.
How come when he came back, he could no longer understand the situation in his own office.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Wu,” Hearing the commotion, the receptionist hurriedly came over to check, apologizing profusely. “I made a mistake. I thought your consultation with Mr. Xie was already over before I let Mr. Chi in.”
So this was that “Mr. Xie”, the previous consultant who had made the receptionists’ hearts flutter.
The consultation room was completely silent for a moment.
Dr. Wu was a typical Southerner, carrying a bit of a local accent. He asked slowly, “Mr. Xie, earlier when I said I was stepping out for a bit, you said it was fine and that you’d sit and read a book for a while. How did it…”
How did it develop into this.
The man surnamed Xie tapped the cover of that Personality Psychology book with his finger and explained, “I was reading a book. The chair over there was uncomfortable to sit in, so I borrowed your chair to sit for a while. If you don’t believe me, ask him.”
Right.
If covering your face with a book counts as reading.
And with such an arrogant sitting posture at that.
Chi Qing suspected he had forgotten to check his almanac before leaving the house today. He had guessed right that this person wasn’t a doctor here, but he hadn’t expected this person was also here to see a doctor: “You have a sickness yourself, yet you’re treating others?”
“You might have misunderstood,” the man surnamed Xie seemed to truly not mean it that way. “I didn’t say I was a doctor.”
“Then why did you spout so much nonsense.”
The man surnamed Xie’s brow bone twitched slightly: “You suddenly pushed the door open and came in. Since Dr. Wu wasn’t here, I had to politely host you. I thought we were having a friendly exchange.”
“…”
Friendly exchange my ass.
This misunderstanding was resolved very quickly. Specifically, it manifested as the man surnamed Xie resolving himself. First came a “Sorry, offended you, it was my fault for not making it clear,” along with comforting the receptionist that it wasn’t her fault. On his way out, he even handed Dr. Wu a mint candy. “Dr. Wu, your voice sounded a bit hoarse just now, take care of your throat,” and even thoughtfully helped close the door.
Dr. Wu stood frozen awkwardly in place for a while: “I’m sorry, Mr. Chi. Could you give me a few minutes to prepare? Our consultation will begin immediately.”
To be honest, he didn’t really want to stay at this clinic any longer.
Sitting on the side waiting, Chi Qing took off his gloves and turned on his phone wanting to check the time.
As a result, the first thing he saw when turning on his phone wasn’t the time, but a string of messages sent by Ji Mingrui.
Ji Mingrui was on duty today. Still thinking about Chi Qing saying he was going to the hospital, he couldn’t help but voice his opinions.
-Did you see the doctor?
-What did the doctor say?
-After I went back yesterday, I deliberated on it again. I feel like this germaphobia of yours, is hard to cure.
The string of words that followed was quite long.
-Do you still remember when we first met? That entire first year of high school, a whole year, and I had never seen what your hands looked like. At the time, our whole class thought you might have some hidden physical ailment, like missing a finger or something.
Chi Qing replied: You’re the fucking one with a hidden ailment.
A moment later, he sent back a few more words.
-Ran into a psycho.
The actual consultation process went quite smoothly. The genuine Dr. Wu truly deserved the description “like bathing in a spring breeze.”
Before the consultation began, Dr. Wu put down his thermos cup and flipped open the file folder again.
On top of Chi Qing’s file was another file stacked over it. He had no intention of prying into someone else’s file, but as the page flashed past, it was hard to ignore—it was a completely blank file paper.
A psychiatrist would write down their diagnosis and assessment through every conversation with the consultant.
However, there wasn’t a single sentence on this piece of file paper. The entire page was completely empty without any traces of handwriting, with only two characters filled in the name column at the very beginning: Xie Lin.
In the corridor outside the office.
Xie Lin followed the receptionist out. After the receptionist returned to her workstation, she sighed repeatedly again: “What kind of problems could a person like Mr. Xie possibly have?”
“Last time I overheard Dr. Wu on the phone,” another receptionist lowered her voice and said, “He said that in nearly ten years of practice, he had never encountered a situation like this. He can’t see anything wrong at all. It seems like he clearly has no problems whatsoever, but he insists on coming once a week.”
The central figure of their topic was currently sitting on the sofa in the guest area waiting for a car.
The cat lying beside him happened to wake up, sleepily sticking out its tongue to lick its paw.
Xie Lin glanced at it and reached out, wanting to stroke the top of its head.
The man sat there looking smiling and affable, belonging to the type of person who easily made others feel favorable toward him. However, it was as if electricity surged through that cat’s entire body. While Xie Lin’s hand was still paused mid-air, the cat’s fur puffed up instantly, and it bolted away like a wisp of smoke.
The consultation lasted a total of one hour, consisting of commonplace topics, except they were repeated again from the mouth of one psychiatrist to another.
Dr. Wu also didn’t know if his consultation had any effect this time. That Mr. Chi sat across from him the entire time without a single bit of expression on his face.
“The consultation time is up,” Dr. Wu stood up out of habit, shaking hands with the client to say goodbye. “I hope this consultation was helpful to you. I have great confidence in you, and I hope you can also have full confidence in yourself.”
Chi Qing was planning to call a car on his phone and happened to have one glove off.
Thus, he clearly heard this Dr. Wu sighing in his heart: [Sigh, actually I don’t have that much confidence… but giving encouragement is never wrong.]
After Dr. Wu finished speaking, he noticed that there was finally a slight change on this Mr. Chi’s face.
Dr. Wu: “What’s wrong? Do you have any other questions?”
Chi Qing slowly pulled his hand back: “Nothing, I need to go wash my hands.”
Dr. Wu: “…”
Dr. Wu soon thought of something else: “I heard you wanted to schedule your next consultation on the 25th of this month. Um, I’m sorry, I—”
“I know,” Chi Qing pushed open the door and walked out. “The 25th is your daughter’s birthday. You don’t have time.”
Dr. Wu was dumbfounded: “—How did you know?”
Chi Qing didn’t have the patience to resolve his confusion: “We’ll schedule for another day. I will notify you of the specific time.”
It was exactly high noon when Chi Qing walked out. The residual rainwater on the roads had already mostly evaporated.
Ji Mingrui was still waiting for his reply on the other end of the internet.
-What psycho?
-Bro, did you go to the psychiatric department to treat your germaphobia?
-So what did the doctor actually say?
Getting into the car, Chi Qing looked at the chat box. Recalling Dr. Wu’s words, the distorted voices buzzed continuously in his ears. Amidst this buzzing noise, he suddenly took off his glove and took a look at his own hand.
On the second joint of his right ring finger, there was indeed a mole that even he himself had never noticed before. That mole was very small; if it weren’t for his excessively pale skin, it would be very hard for anyone to notice.
—“Your hand looks very nice.”
—“Has anyone ever told you that your fingers are very long?”
“…”
Staring at that light brown mole, Chi Qing tried to recall if he had heard anything else besides this unnutritious nonsense when that man surnamed Xie was holding his hand just now.
The scenery outside the car window slowly retreated.
Chi Qing looked for a while before finally realizing—just now, that psycho had touched his hand, but he hadn’t read a single thing.
