Psychological fragments

A sudden thought flashed through my mind, and I instantly recalled Lin Nian's question during our third consultation: "Do you believe a person can be two people at the same time?"

Did she ask that question because there was another person inside her? The name etched on the back of the sticky note—Xiao Min?

These four words are like a needle, piercing my nerves.

Who wrote this? And to whom was it written?

I held the thin sticky note in my hand and slowly placed it on the table. My mind was racing, like a high-speed gear spinning wildly.

The first six sticky notes were undoubtedly written by the six deceased psychiatrists. They had all discovered He Chunfang's tracking and surveillance, and in their fear, they wrote these warnings, hiding them in their file folders as clues for future generations should something happen to them.

But this last one couldn't possibly have been written by Zhou Jianguo.

Because this "Zhou Jianguo" who came to my clinic for consultation four times never existed in the first place.

The "man" wearing a mask, speaking in a low voice, and wearing a loose sweatshirt to cover his body was He Xiuying in disguise.

So this note was written by He Xiuying herself.

On the back of the sticky note, she wrote, "Xiaomin, don't be afraid." Who was it for? For Zhao Min? Is Zhao Min the "Xiaomin" she was referring to? Then what exactly did "Don't be afraid" mean? Was it a mother's comforting words to her daughter? Or was it a sinister threat laced with absolute control?

After leaving the Municipal Bureau, Fang Jue drove me back to the safe house.

The street scenes outside the car window rushed past. I leaned back in the passenger seat, my mind replaying those seven sticky notes. Six psychologists, all of them had caught a glimpse of He Chunfang in the darkness, all of them had desperately left clues, but in the end, they all died. How terrified they must have been when they wrote those words? Knowing that they were being watched closely, being monitored day and night by an unseen person—that kind of ever-present fear, I now truly understand it.

"Officer Fang," I turned to look at him, "I want to go to Zhou Jianguo's address."

He glanced at me, then turned the steering wheel slightly half a turn: "Which Zhou Jianguo?"

"The address registered in the file. The old family compound in the east of the city, a six-story red brick building, room 302."

He was silent for a few seconds, tapped his fingertips lightly on the steering wheel, and finally nodded.

"Okay. Anyway, there aren't any other breakthrough leads right now, so it's good to go check it out."

The car turned at the next intersection, changed direction, and headed east. Half an hour later, the car stopped at the entrance of the old residential compound.

It is indeed an old neighborhood, with red brick buildings dating back to the 1980s. Large patches of the exterior walls have peeled off, revealing the mottled bricks underneath. The stairwells are piled high with abandoned bicycles and cardboard boxes, leaving very little room to even step. Room 302 is on the top floor. There is no elevator in the entire building, so we had to climb the dusty steps, one floor at a time.

Upon reaching apartment 302, the security door was tightly locked, the rusty keyhole filled with dust. Fang Jue raised his hand and knocked. The heavy door panel made a dull thud, and there was no response from inside; only the echo reverberated in the hallway, reverberating in the empty space. Without saying anything more, he took out a set of professional lock-picking tools from his pocket, inserted them into the keyhole, and gently fiddled with them a few times. With a soft click, the lock opened.

The moment the door was pushed open, a chilly smell mixed with musty and dusty wafted out, making people instinctively hold their breath.

We stepped inside. The apartment wasn't large, a standard one-bedroom, one-living room unit. The furniture was all the oldest styles; the sofa, coffee table, and TV cabinet were covered in a thick layer of dust, without a single footprint. It looked like no one had lived there for a very long time. On the glass coffee table in the living room, a wooden photo frame sat alone, containing a black and white photograph. A middle-aged man stared blankly at the camera, his features indifferent, unremarkable.

"Is this Zhou Jianguo?" Fang Jue squatted down and asked, looking at the photo.

"It should be." I picked up the photo frame, brushing the dust off the glass with my fingertips. The man in the photo looked to be in his forties, with an ordinary appearance that would make him stand out in a crowd. He didn't match the "Zhou Jianguo" in my clinic at all.

I put down the photo frame and turned to walk into the bedroom. The bedroom was even darker, with only a small north-facing window casting a dim light. Inside, there was only a peeling wooden bed and an old double-door wardrobe. The wardrobe doors were ajar, and inside hung a few faded men's jackets and shirts, old-fashioned and covered in dust. On the bedside table sat a lonely old book, its cover worn and its spine thick with dust.

I reached for the book; it was an old suspense novel, nothing special. I flipped through a couple of pages, about to put it back on the bedside table, when a folded piece of paper suddenly slipped out from the pages and fluttered lightly onto the dusty floor. I bent down and picked it up; it was a lined sticky note exactly like the one in the file folder, its edges yellowed and brittle, clearly having been there for a long time.

A line of text was written on it in black ink, the handwriting trembling violently, conveying the same fear as the handwriting on the previous six sticky notes:

If something happens to me one day, please look up this person—He Chunfang.

But there seemed to be more writing on the back of this note! My fingertips trembled as I turned the note over. On the back were several lines of crooked writing, the pen tip tearing through the paper, carrying a dying despair: She came to my house! She knows I live here! She knows everything about me, I can't escape.

I stood frozen in place, clutching the light note in my hand as if it weighed a ton, unable to utter a word for a long time. The real Zhou Jianguo had also discovered He Chunfang.

He put all his effort into writing this warning note. But instead of putting it in the clinic's file folder, he hid it in an old book in his bedroom.

He probably already knew that putting it in a file wouldn't help. That woman would definitely be found, and definitely destroyed.

The official cause of death was a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. But was it truly an accident, or yet another "perfect murder" by He Xiuying? Her ruthlessness, her meticulousness, her omnipresence far exceeded all my imagination.

When I came out of Zhou Jian's house, it was already completely dark outside.

Fang Jue drove me back to the safe house. We didn't speak a word the whole way. The car was eerily quiet, with only the sound of tires rolling over the road and the occasional flickering streetlights outside the window, their glows on our faces.

When we arrived at the safe house, he stepped on the brakes, the car came to a steady stop, and he turned to look at me.

"Dr. Shen, be careful."

I nodded, opened the car door, and got out.

As I walked upstairs, this sentence kept echoing in my mind.

Lin Nian also told me to be careful before she left.

But what exactly should we be wary of? Should we be wary of He Xiuying, that haunting spirit? Should we be wary of the files that hold secrets of death? Or should we be wary of the truth of this whole affair, which even I haven't fully grasped?

I am no longer the ordinary therapist sitting quietly in a sunlit consultation room, listening to my clients' stories. I have become prey in the darkness, watched intently by an unseen hunter, never knowing when that fatal blade will fall.

I took out my keys and opened the door. The house was pitch black. I didn't turn on the light, but relied on the dim yellow light from the streetlights streaming in from outside. I walked straight to the window, carefully pulled back a corner of the curtain, and looked down. Below, Fang Jue's car had just turned on its headlights and slowly drove away from the residential compound. The streetlights cast a dim, yellowish glow; the concrete road was deserted, even the wind had stopped, and the entire neighborhood was eerily quiet.

But just then, my gaze suddenly narrowed, and the hairs on my body stood on end. In the shadow of the unit entrance of the building across the street, stood a person. Small and thin, with a straight back, standing there motionless, like a statue embedded in the darkness.

I couldn't see her face clearly, but I could clearly feel that her eyes were fixed on me, across the distance between the two buildings, and wouldn't look away for a moment.

He Xiuying!

She was right there! She was standing there staring at me!