Xu Shuo stood in the bathroom, unaware of the time.
He looked around and then towards the mirror in front, straightened his clean white coat, and listened quietly to the screams outside.
The hospital was darker than usual, and in the gloomy mirror, the young man's face seemed to become ghostly and distorted.
Doctor Chu in the mirror smiled.
"The sound outside is so beautiful. Why not join in?"
Doctor Chu had split from Chen Chu's personality, the darkest and most indulgent side of him, having worked in this hospital for years and encountered countless patients.
Whether treating any kind of mental patient, doctors always needed to be cautious, adhering to a treatment that would not stimulate the patient's emotions.
But this truly was a dark cage, bleak and barren in all directions, with patients comforted, nurtured, and imprisoned by them in the darkness.
Yet, why was it not the patients who restricted the doctors?
The chaotic and unordered thoughts affected everyone here, whether doctor or patient. At some point, they were all the same.
Normal people waste half their lives on sin and pain, and their only issue is that they just shouldn't reveal they are demons, just shouldn't show their abnormalities. They learn to grow by emulating the emotions of normal people.
Pity, unease, fear, obsession—they might not understand these emotions, but they can learn the appearance of them.
They can also disguise their own abnormalities.
And as they learn to express like normal people, others unconsciously learn from them too, everybody performing in such pretense, learning from and resembling each other. So, in the end, how can they be distinguished?
You can no longer tell the difference between yourself and them.
You have also long been one of those thirteen people.
"Do you want to leave this place?" Doctor Chu asked.
"Destroy the place that made you lose control, and you can still return to the life of a normal person."
He had so fervently desired this... Chen Chu had been driven to madness, but in the end, the only difference from the patients was that his identity as a healer kept him rational.
He held onto his sanity as a doctor, and so Doctor Chu could only become the second personality.
He never became a patient.
...
No matter how many times the timeline restarted, none of the nurse and patient NPCs in the hospital ever noticed the resets!
Only players... players...
Director Zhang thought this and suddenly pressed a hand to his aching head. Wait, why did he care about these things?
It didn't matter who they were, as long as he completed his mission!
Why had he become so obsessive?
"Doctor Zhang, the 'ghost' in this hospital seems to be doing a number on your mental state, huh?" Xu Shuo's low voice came through at that moment.
He approached, bent slightly to look at Director Zhang, who was staring down with an inexplicable expression. The young man had an extremely amused look on his face, as if observing something interesting.
There was light from the ceiling, but it was dim and gloomy, casting only shadows.
This stifling hospital affected people's thoughts. The longer one stayed, the less normal they became, as it assimilated everyone into something like itself.
"Do you know..."
He suddenly said softly, "Everyone has a dark side. The dormant madness is like gravity at the earth's core; with just a slight push, one would fall forever into chaotic Abyss, unable to climb out, so don't indulge yourself easily."
This was just a game world, but games were best at luring people into the depths.
At the end, it didn't matter who was the patient and who was the doctor.
So, this hospital indeed no longer had any reason to exist.
Whoosh—
Flames rushed in again, bursting through the opened fire door into the second-floor corridor, blazing fiercely, gilding their faces with a hazy golden glow.
Watching Director Zhang's struggling expression, Xu Shuo chuckled lightly and turned to walk out of the restroom.
Luo Kun still stood at the doorway, his intense gaze fixed on Director Zhang, who was struggling to regain his sanity. His facial expression was ferocious and twisted, as if he intended to do something at this moment.
"If you don't want to end up as one of those corpses right now, follow me to the next act," Xu Shuo uttered languidly, casually pointing with the knife at the nurses and orderlies Director Zhang had killed earlier in the hallway.
"Doctor Chu, you indeed haven't killed me yet..." Luo Kun suddenly turned his head to look at him; his eyes, wide and bright, were unnervingly strange.
So much time had passed since the game started; why hadn't he killed him yet?
Xu Shuo couldn't be bothered with him and, facing the burning flames, turned to ascend the stairs.