Baishi discovered that, all along, he had lived like a string pulled taut on a flexed bow—tense to the point of sharpness. If someone were to brush against the string, their hand would be sliced open; if they touched the bow, their skin would be scorched. He was the bow and the string: white-hot, poised to fire, somber and piercing, casting a shroud of gloom over everyone around him.
This was the temperament he had harvested from his family. He had once thought that only Bai Jiang and the others were too weak, resulting in their flawed personalities; now it seemed he was no better.
Baishi came to this realization because he was currently observing other mental patients.
He had arrived at the Lizhi Institute on a dark and windy night. He had struggled and thrashed wildly the entire way, pinned down by two men who eventually had to swap out with a fresh pair. Yet Baishi had roared, kicked, and fought as if tireless, until their family doctor arrived to give him an injection.
While Baishi was screaming and kicking, he hadn't been thinking of anything at all. His mind was a total blank. To use a metaphor: the string had snapped.
He had never felt such pleasure. With a raspy throat, Baishi had craned his neck and wailed—meaningless bellows, incessantly tearing at his own hair. He cried even as he screamed, yet the ability to shout so loudly brought an unprecedented sense of relief to his heart. He didn't care how anyone looked at him. In his frenzy, he even felt as though he were no longer inside his own shell, but standing to the side, coldly watching his own rampage.
He was carried off the car, still twitching from the effects of the drugs. His eyes were wide, his fingers spasming. He watched a woman in her fifties exchange a few pleasantries with the butler before ordering men to carry Baishi to a room. On the way, he passed through the nighttime hall of the Lizhi Institute. There, a few people in hospital gowns looked over, then turned away.
The drug lasted for three hours. Once it wore off, Baishi resumed his biting and thrashing. He would be pinned down, given another injection, fall asleep, wake up, and repeat.
This went on for several rounds.
The following afternoon, Baishi woke up feeling famished, exhausted, and parched. He sat on the bed amidst a scene of total wreckage. He looked up; a security camera was blinking with a red light.
A group of people rushed in, armed with sedatives and handcuffs, prepared to meet Baishi’s next outburst.
But Baishi didn't move. He wiped the dried saliva from the corner of his mouth and looked at the group as they stood poised as if facing a great enemy. He opened his mouth, only to find his voice so hoarse he could barely make a sound: "Hungry..."
The afternoon was the scheduled activity time for the other patients. Some who were in better condition took walks in the courtyard under the watch of guards. Most, however, were scattered throughout the hall, each at a small table, finding something to do for themselves.
Baishi, the amateur human observer, was eating three slices of dry bread, a glass of milk, a cup of pudding, and a bowl of cream of mushroom soup. The raisins in the bread had a strange odor, the milk was thinner than water, the pudding tasted like wax, and the soup resembled human vomit, emitting a sour stench. The food was nothing to boast about, so Baishi fed himself with little interest, instead turning his enthusiastic gaze toward the people in the hall. What place was better suited for observing humanity than a psychiatric hospital?
Of the dozen or so tables, three were empty. People sat at the others, mostly alone, dressed in oversized deep-blue hospital gowns, sitting expressionless like puppets with severed strings. There was a woman with messy hair; a nurse was combing it for her. The nurse had a stern face, her frowning expression reminding Baishi of Liu Yaosheng. The combing wasn't going smoothly; the brush got stuck somewhere. The nurse gave a hard yank, and the woman’s head jerked with it, but the woman gave no reaction. The nurse tossed the clump of torn-out hair onto the floor, and a short old man with a limp shuffled over to sweep it up. The nurse frowned again: "Don't move." The woman still didn't react.
At a neighboring table, a man was playing chess against himself. He scurried back and forth between the two sides, playing two roles. One was more mature—when sitting on the right, the man would frown. The other was more lively—when sitting on the left, the man would swing his legs and tell his opponent to hurry up. The left side was about to lose, and the man burst into tears. Wiping his face, he began to pick up the chess pieces, starting with the King, and swallowed them one by one. He wept as he ate, forcing them down his throat. It wasn't until he had finished the Knight that the nurses rushed over, snatched the pieces away, and dragged the howling man back to his room.
At another table sat a tall, young man. Baishi felt they might be around the same age. The moment Baishi looked over, he felt the other's gaze snap toward him. The young man had a sharp, fierce look in his eyes; he seemed to look at Baishi only to give him a warning. Seeing that Baishi made no further move, he turned back. He was using his fingernails to scrape the tabletop, putting the dust in his mouth to dampen it, molding it into lumps, and lining them up in a row.
At the table behind that one, a short man stared at a semi-naked middle-aged woman on a nearby sofa. His hand was moving rapidly beneath the table, his tongue lolling as he panted, whimpering like a dog. Before long, a nurse walked over, a leather belt snapping in her hand: "188, you should be tied up." The man began to pant even faster, leaning toward the nurse with a look of grievance. The nurse frowned in disgust, and several men stepped forward, took the belt, bound the short man, and dragged him across the floor with a rope. The nurse, wearing pristine white shoes, stepped on the man's face and ground her heel into it a few times: "You should learn how to apologize." One of the short, stout male nurses noticed Baishi and turned his way; Baishi looked away.
The middle-aged woman the short man had been staring at pulled her clothes down below her shoulders, exposing a breast. She beckoned to anyone passing by, calling out indiscriminately: "Come here, come..." No one went to her, save for a nurse who scolded her to dress herself. The woman's cracked lips were bleeding; she squeezed them, spreading the blood evenly across her lips. She held up one hand to serve as a mirror, singing a melodious little tune as she looked left and right, practicing a seductive gaze. Suddenly, a man pulled her down from behind, grabbed her skirt, wrapped it over her head, and dragged her by her feet toward the back of a pillar. The woman’s cries of "Come" quickened, her nails leaving scratches on the floor. But the man didn't get to "come" before he was beaten by nurses with batons. The woman was slapped several times by a nurse as punishment for her shamelessness. The people around them looked over for a moment, then, finding it uninteresting, turned back.
*Yes, lunatics.*
If that was the standard, Baishi felt he had been cheated by coming here. He finished his soup and thought to himself: *It turns out I'm not crazy at all.*
Then whose fault was it?
First, there was Bai Jiang, who had spoken to Pei Cangyu. Then there were Bai Yilong and Yan Beihua... No, put those aside for now. He still hadn't given Pei Cangyu those practice workbooks...
Baishi scratched his hair. He needed to think of a way out. The soup here was too foul; he couldn't stay here forever.
A female nurse who wasn't wearing a cap seemed to be the one in charge. She was in her fifties, wearing light makeup, with extremely high cheekbones. She was very pale, with a slender neck and a frail body, but she stood ramrod straight. Her features were plain, but her eyes were icy, making her entire presence seem extremely unapproachable. She always clutched a riding crop in her hand. She never got close to any patient; her eyes held a complex mix of both compassion and loathing.
She called for everyone to be quiet. With her hands behind her back, she gave a speech filled with nothing but belittlement and well-wishes. Baishi, naturally, didn't listen much, but several patients looked at her as if she were the Virgin Mary.
Baishi scoffed inwardly.
He loathed all those who revered others, as well as those who were revered.
***
Baishi didn't speak to anyone, and no one came to speak to him. He spent his time observing the place and the people. Newcomers arrived, just as he had that night, carried or restrained as they passed through the hall. Baishi, like everyone else, would look over and then turn back.
He estimated the number of people based on the amount of food served and combined that with the people he saw at different times. He discovered that about a dozen people never appeared. The silence here always flowed with a bizarre aura; people either didn't look at each other at all, or when they did, their gazes were unfathomably deep. Baishi attributed this to the black-hole-like mental worlds of psychiatric patients and refused to investigate further.
The Lizhi Institute had a sophisticated security team. These men served as male nurses, and it wasn't hard to see they had military backgrounds. Baishi had seen certain tattoo patterns on the security guards in the villa district as well. Aside from them, the female nurses were mostly very strict, with an average age around thirty-five. The highest-ranking person was the woman who had received him the night he arrived, but she rarely appeared. Next was the woman who often gave speeches in the hall; she seemed responsible for the daily operations of the entire institute. Other female nurses handled different matters.
Everything Baishi owned had been taken away. Now, he had only a room that didn't belong to him.
The place was large, but he wasn't allowed in the courtyard. He could only move between the hall and his room, and even going to the toilet required a nurse to accompany him.
This was disadvantageous for Baishi. If he wanted to leave, he at least needed to know what was outside.
In the afternoon, a nurse selected a dozen people to form a group. She led them to another large room and had them sit in a circle on chairs to talk about what they had learned at the Lizhi Institute.
Someone raised a hand: "I've only been here a week..."
The nurse frowned: "Please do not speak when you have not been asked to."
This person was seventeen or eighteen. It wasn't clear why he was here, but he was clearly out of place. He stood up, knocking over his chair: "This isn't fair! Why am I here? You took my phone—give it back! You have no right to take my things; I can sue you! This is a violation of human rights... If I expose you... I'm a minor... family conflicts aren't an excuse for your crimes..."
The nurse stood up impatiently, walked to the door, and summoned a male nurse.
The young man followed her: " I'm talking to you! Don't pretend you can't hear me. This is a serious matter. Do you think you're above the law..."
The male nurse entered and slammed a fist into the young man's mouth, cutting off his "legal lecture." He then pinned the boy to the floor, yanked out his tongue, tied a string around it, and stuffed it back into his mouth. He snapped the fingers of the boy's left hand, stripped off his shoes, his pants, and his clothes. He led the naked boy to the hall, placed a chessboard in front of him, and sat down. "Play. If you win, I'll take you back. This is to hone your patience."
The young man recovered from his dizziness and tried to struggle, but men and women crowded around to watch. Someone touched his neck. The young man jerked his head around, but couldn't tell who had done it. When he turned back, he felt hands stroking his neck again. Someone's foul breath sounded in his ear, intentionally blowing on his hair. The young man trembled with fear. In this clamor, he could feel no trace of the civilized world. He looked to the male nurse for help, but the man merely made his first move.
Back in the room, the nurse sent the young man off and sat back down, smiling apologetically at the group: "77 is just like that. He has an excessive amount of self-esteem." She brandished the folder in her hand as if announcing a diagnosis and a treatment plan.
Baishi heard someone beside him let out a cold sneer. He turned to look; it was the fierce-eyed boy he had seen before, one of the few close to his age.
The boy kept his head down, his hands behind his back, one hand gripping the fingers of the other and yanking them with neurotic force.
The nurse said, "Now then, tell us about yourselves."
No one spoke.
The nurse looked at the boy next to Baishi: "99, you've been here the longest. You go first."
The boy spoke, but did not look up: "I learned to concentrate. I couldn't concentrate before. Now I can."
His tone was dry, devoid of any inflection.
Baishi, however, caught a piece of information: he said he had been here a long time.
"Then," the nurse turned to Baishi, "13, tell us what you've learned, even though you haven't been here long."
The nurse was smiling.
Baishi felt a phantom ache in his teeth at the mention of the number. Although he didn't particularly like his own name, being addressed as a number to his face made someone like Baishi want to lung forward and bite her to death.
Baishi was suddenly startled by his own thought. Such violent ideas no longer required any brewing; they surged up as naturally as drinking water.
"13?" the nurse asked again.
Baishi looked at her. In that moment, he felt everything around him go silent. Sound vanished, forms dissolved. In a vast, white space, there was only him and this nurse. In his fantasy, he had already torn open her throat and ripped that smiling face off entirely to mount it on a cat.
Yet she remained unaware, sharpening her tone, thinking she could threaten him. Baishi smiled. He only had to recall the wonderful sound of the porcelain pot shattering against Bai Jiang's head, and it was like drinking from a cool spring—a feeling of total refreshment.
He understood now what he was.
He also understood what he had to do.
This taut bow had finally fallen into his own hands. From this day forward, he was no longer the bow; he was the archer. His somber thoughts had been born of hesitation; his countless moments of wavering were because he hadn't realized his true self; his myriad negative thoughts were due to self-reproach. He understood why his teeth ached, why his hands ached, why his head ached. His bones were screaming, telling him secrets he hadn't listened to closely before. He should accept himself. Some people were born as a piece of "bad code," part of the batch that was broken upon leaving the factory. When they were being made, the DNA controlling their psyche had suffered a translation error, creating unique points of excitement.
Some doctors called this "mental illness." Now, Baishi disagreed.
This wasn't a disease; it was a weapon.
Baishi was a clever person with immense talent. If he hadn't been trapped in the self-attrition of his own mind, perhaps he would have become an enviable young genius. But there was no need to mention that now; being able to locate himself was already a great merit.
"What have you learned?"
The nurse asked with a smile, but the smile was gradually fading.
It was Baishi's turn to smile: "I used to be crazy."
He told the group, "Now, I'm better."
***
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 丽治所 | Lizhi Institute | A high-end facility for "problem children" of wealthy families. |
| 77 | 77 | Patient number for the young man who protested his rights. |
| 99 | 99 | Patient number for the fierce-eyed boy who learned "concentration." |
| 13 | 13 | Baishi's assigned patient number. |
| 188 | 188 | Patient number for the man staring at the semi-naked woman. |
| bad code | bad code | Used in the text to describe Baishi's self-realization of his nature. |
