"Additionally, I also found some medical staff who had worked at the hospital at the time, just like you, they were employed by someone who claimed to be a secretary, but within just three to four years, they were all dismissed. They also still remember The Seventeenth Hospital, but any written records that mentioned the Seventeenth Hospital, such as letters or text messages, have been completely erased."
"It’s as if, aside from human memory, no information related to the Seventeenth Hospital has been left anywhere."
After listening, Professor Lin’s expression turned solemn, and he raised his hand and said, "Wait a moment."
He walked into the inside room and soon came out holding a dust-covered box. After wiping off the dust, he opened it and took out a blue-covered notebook, "I had the habit of writing records while I was working. This one is from when I was writing at the Seventeenth Hospital... Let me see..."
After flipping through just two pages, Professor Lin’s face changed, "This is really strange, why is it gone?"
He pointed to several blank spots on the pages, "I remember very clearly, this is what I wrote on my first day on the job, including the name of The Seventeenth Hospital."
To prove his memory hadn’t failed him, he flipped through other notebooks continuously, "Look, there’s no mistake, I would always write it when I joined."
Xu Huo looked through the notebook; any segment that mentioned the name of the Seventeenth Hospital in this one had become blank.
"Ink fading wouldn’t just make these few lines disappear..." Professor Lin looked shocked and continued to rummage through the box. Eventually, he pulled out an old photograph, "It’s gone, the hospital in the picture is gone..."
Xu Huo took the photograph from him. It was a group photo of Professor Lin with other staff members, apparently taken on the steps at the entrance.
"It was taken at the entrance of the hospital," Professor Lin pointed at the area of the photo that had turned into a backdrop of greenery, "Here is the main entrance, and behind it were the words ’The Seventeenth Hospital.’ Look at this, all the staff members are here."
"Who is supposed to be at this spot?" Xu Huo pointed to the position at the far left of the front row.
"There’s nobody there," said Professor Lin. "At the time, the hospital had only six doctors. Have you met the other doctors?"
Six doctors, four male and two female... these faces had all appeared in his memory, but the one in his dream wasn’t any of these six. The posture of the female doctor on the far left was a bit strange; her outer arm was bent as though she was hooking onto someone else’s arm, although it wasn’t clearly visible.
Someone was missing from the photo.
"Can I have this photo?" Xu Huo looked up and asked.
"Take it," said Professor Lin, patting his head, and then he murmured after a long moment of thought, "Should I take some medicine too..."
Xu Huo paused for a moment, "Director, I am very normal, I am not sick."
Professor Lin gave a "hehe" laugh, chiming in, "Right, right, you were discharged a long time ago."
"Tell me about the other kids who were sick," Xu Huo said. "How much do you remember?"
"It’s been too long, I can only remember a rough outline," Professor Lin said evasively. "They were like you, very intelligent; I don’t know if they are doing well now."
"They’re all dead," Xu Huo said. He also remembered that there had been a few kids in the hospital, but for self-protection, he had not initiated contact with those kids.
"They were discharged from the hospital much earlier, just like me. Roughly ten years ago, those four kids went missing and died one after another, two disappeared on an adventure and their bodies were never found, and two died in car accidents, burnt beyond recognition."
Professor Lin looked at him in shock, his mouth open for a good while before he managed to say, "Their families..."
"Apart from Chang Bei, the families of the other three all died from various accidents over ten years ago, including one family where more than twenty relatives died from food poisoning during the New Year’s Eve dinner, sparing none, neither adults nor children." Xu Huo pushed a glass of water towards Professor Lin, "Have some water, take a moment to calm down."
Professor Lin shakily took the cup, "It was him, that child..."
"When I resigned, I mentioned it to the other doctors; that kid shouldn’t have been discharged. The older he got, the better he was at concealing himself."
Xu Huo remained silent, quietly waiting for him to continue speaking.
Professor Lin didn’t seem intent on hiding anything anymore, speaking as he recalled, "Besides you, there was a child with a high IQ and antisocial personality disorder at the time. Compared to you, his symptoms were much more obvious; he had no compassion or empathy, and even occasionally showed sadistic tendencies. But his IQ was very high. He could learn anything quickly and became very good at controlling his emotions after being in the hospital for a while. There were five incidents of medical staff accidentally taking medications that were connected to him, although no one ever caught concrete evidence."
"You’re talking about the family of twenty-plus that was poisoned, aren’t you?"
Xu Huo nodded. Not only that, his family’s deaths were the most tragic among the three; his father had been crushed from the waist down and crawled on the road for more than ten minutes before he died, his mother was dismembered by a serial killer, and his sister was made into a doll by the murderer.
Professor Lin let out a long sigh, "Part of the reason I resigned from the hospital was because of this."
"Chang Bei, he is the kid with hyperthymesia. You must have heard of hyperthymesia, it’s the ability to remember every event of one’s life without any mnemonic strategies. This kid was too young to cope with it, so he frequently lost control of his emotions and hurt people."
"He and you, you weren’t brought in by your families; instead, you were brought in by doctors from the Seventeenth Hospital."
"It was he who told me about the medical staff being poisoned. He said another kid was collecting pills to poison me, claiming that if there were no director, they could all be discharged from the hospital."
"He didn’t tell me who the kid poisoning people was, but having been a doctor for many years, I could feel it. During that time, I was restless at the hospital. Coupled with some family issues, I decided to just resign."
"When I left, I warned the other doctors, but there was nothing incriminating on the hospital surveillance, and with the poisonings appearing to be coincidental, the doctors didn’t take it seriously. However, I later inquired with other hospitals and learned that there hadn’t been any further incidents of accidental medication intake at the hospital; instead, a nurse with mental problems was confined. As time went by and I got caught up with family matters, I gradually let go of the issue."
"I never expected... are they really dead?"
"I want to know as well," Xu Huo said, looking into his cloudy eyes.
Professor Lin’s eyes gradually welled with tears, "I’m partly to blame, I should have taken it more seriously back then..."
So many tragedies couldn’t simply be chalked up to coincidence, but what was more frightening was the possibility that those children hadn’t truly died, and after so many years, what had they become?
"Maybe it’s not as bad as you think," Xu Huo said. "At least I am relatively normal."