Chapter 38

Chapter 38: Bone Resonance

Xiao Liu looked embarrassed, his ears red as he repeated, "I took a dump on his desk. Of course, I waited until everyone was gone and did it in secret."

"Legendary," Lin Jianyuan grinned, eyes alight. "And then?"

"Then he totally lost it," Xiao Liu started laughing too. "He was nearly choked to death by the smell. I couldn't stop laughing."

"Did he know it was you?"

"He did. There are cameras in our classroom."

"Damn, you went for it even with cameras? You must've really wanted to do it. So what happened next?"

"Then the homeroom teacher called me in and asked why I did it. I told him about the bullying, but he didn't believe me because I had no proof. I said, if the cameras caught me pooping on his desk, they must've caught him tearing up my homework too."

"Exactly."

"But the teacher said the footage only lasts a week. So now all they have is me pooping on his desk, nothing about the bullying. Plus, he said I disrupted the whole class and needed to be punished."

"What's wrong with this teacher?" Lin Jianyuan frowned. "Does Red Hair have some kind of pull? Why's the teacher covering for him? Is he blind or just stupid? Who'd crap in a classroom unless they were pushed to the edge?"

"Exactly! I was furious. Why did I have to be the one everyone picked on when I did nothing wrong? It hurt so much. So I took a dump on the teacher's desk too."

Lin Jianyuan: "?"

Wait, how did we jump straight to another poop story???

Lin Jianyuan laughed so hard he nearly cried, and quickly asked, "And then?"

"Then the teacher lost it too, of course. The whole office freaked out. They dragged me to the principal's office, and the principal got furious, said I was out of control and needed to be expelled immediately. I was losing my mind. Why was I the one getting expelled when I was the one being bullied? I was miserable..."

Lin Jianyuan said smoothly, "So you pooped on the principal's desk too."

Xiao Liu scratched his head, embarrassed. Honest kid.jpg

Lin Jianyuan couldn't stop laughing. He didn't know what to say, so he just gave Xiao Liu a big thumbs up. "Dude, you're incredible. You did what I've always wanted to do but never dared."

Xiao Liu blushed. "Aw, don't praise me, I'm embarrassed. Honestly, I'm in a tough spot now—the principal really is expelling me. I had no choice but to pretend to be crazy."

"So you're on medical leave now?"

"Yeah."

Lin Jianyuan nodded. "That's for the best. You're a senior, getting expelled now would ruin you. Better to take a year off, get your head straight, then come back. Red Hair will have graduated by then, so you won't have to see him again."

"Exactly, that's what I thought too. But even after hiding out in the psych ward, he still won't leave me alone. Seriously, do you think he's crazy too?" Xiao Liu sighed.

"Ignore him," said Lin Jianyuan.

"Mm." Xiao Liu suddenly remembered something. "By the way, how did you know I was faking?"

"Because you kept watching how everyone reacted," Lin Jianyuan said. "When someone's truly out of it, they don't care about anyone else. They're lost in their own world."

"Oh, I see. You've got experience," Xiao Liu looked like a student taking notes.

Lin Jianyuan couldn't help but laugh. "And even when you pretended to go wild, you held back when you bit people. You never went too far. Once Red Hair was scared enough, you eased up and let him go. For a 'crazy' person, you were pretty restrained."

"Huh?" Xiao Liu blinked. "I didn't let him off on purpose."

"I mean when he kicked you. If you hadn't let go, would he have dared to kick you? Otherwise, you'd have taken a real chunk out of him."

Xiao Liu's expression suddenly turned very strange.

Lin Jianyuan eyed him suspiciously. "What?"

"Um... that wasn't letting him off..." Xiao Liu mumbled.

"What do you mean? What wasn't?"

Xiao Liu hesitated, then finally said, "I didn't let go on purpose. It's just... uh... he, well, he... responded."

Lin Jianyuan: "???" Who am I, where am I, what did I just hear? Responded? Who responded? Responded to what???

Seeing Xiao Liu's embarrassed, half-laughing, half-awkward face, Lin Jianyuan realized he hadn't misunderstood.

In an instant, he understood why both of them had frozen at the same time. Why Red Hair had freaked out and kicked Xiao Liu away, and why Xiao Liu just pretended to fall and didn't go after him for another bite.

Typical high school boys. Even getting bitten turns into something else.

Speaking of students, Lin Jianyuan suddenly remembered another one—Pei Shuo. Right. How was Pei Shuo doing?

Lin Jianyuan immediately called Pei Shuo.

He'd tried calling after being admitted yesterday, but Pei Shuo hadn't woken up yet. Even though Qin Shi and the others said it wasn't serious, Lin Jianyuan couldn't shake the worry.

Luckily, this time the call went through right away. On the other end, Pei Shuo's voice was bright and energetic.

"Hey, bro!"

Hearing that voice, Lin Jianyuan could almost see a golden retriever bounding toward him, tail wagging in the sunset.

His mood instantly lifted. He let out a breath. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine now, bro. But I get to rest today, feels like I scored a bonus, heh." Pei Shuo sounded like he'd lucked into something big.

Lin Jianyuan was speechless. "You fainted, of course you should rest. What, were you planning to just dust yourself off and go back to work?"

"It's really nothing," Pei Shuo said sheepishly. "I didn't expect a guy my size to get low blood sugar just from missing breakfast."

Lin Jianyuan blinked. "Low blood sugar? You?"

"Yeah," Pei Shuo said. "I overslept yesterday and skipped breakfast. Then I was rushing and missed the elevator. I thought, crap, I'm going to be late and get docked pay, so I ran up the stairs. Next thing I know, I passed out... Man, back in school I could run two or three kilometers no problem. How did I get so out of shape after just a few days of work?"

Lin Jianyuan felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Not long ago, he'd had a similar experience. It all sounded so reasonable.

But what about those ghosts he'd seen? He'd watched Pei Shuo get swallowed by that giant mouth in the stairwell. They'd even talked in the dump.

Lin Jianyuan tried to probe. "Do you remember what you were doing before you passed out?"

Pei Shuo sounded confused. "Huh? I was running up the stairs before I fainted, wasn't I?"

So Pei Shuo really had no memory of what happened.

Lin Jianyuan frowned, troubled. What was going on?

He thought back over all the strange things at work these past days. First, everyone kept losing things for no reason. That wasn't the weirdest part. The real kicker was how the owners would suddenly forget what they were looking for, as if their memories had been wiped.

Then Pei Shuo disappeared. It seemed like Lin Jianyuan was the only one in the whole company who remembered him. Everyone else just looked blank and asked, "Who's Pei Shuo?" No one even noticed he was gone.

And then there were the things he saw in the stairwell—the gaping mouth, the giant rolling eyeball. And his roommate. Right, how had his roommate shown up at the office? And swallowed that eyeball whole!

Remembering that scene, Lin Jianyuan's face twisted. He knew his roommate had an appetite, but this was ridiculous. Eating random eyeballs off the street?

He could almost imagine the eyeball popping, juice squirting everywhere. The more he thought about it, the more uncomfortable he felt.

If he kept going, he'd never see his roommate as cute and harmless again.

Lin Jianyuan had wanted to ask Pei Shuo about all the crazy things from yesterday, but that was clearly impossible now. Pei Shuo's memory had a gap. All he remembered was fainting and waking up in the hospital. Everything in between was gone.

So what about everything Lin Jianyuan had experienced? Was it all just a hallucination? But at the end of it, his roommate had really shown up, taken a ride with him to the hospital, even met with Dr. Cen.

If his roommate was a hallucination, why could Dr. Cen see him? If not, then what the hell had happened yesterday? What was real, and what wasn't?

Lin Jianyuan couldn't tell anymore. He raked his fingers through his hair, scanning the room for some kind of clue. Then he looked up at the furnishings in his hospital room.

He slapped his thigh. Of course! How could he forget? He was mentally ill. Not being able to tell reality from hallucination was perfectly normal. Wasn't that why he'd been admitted in the first place? Why was he still torturing himself over it? If he could figure it all out, he wouldn't need to be here at all!

With that thought, the weight in his chest vanished. He felt completely at ease.

"Yuan-ge?" Pei Shuo's voice came through the phone, a little puzzled. "Hello? Is the signal bad? Can you hear me?"

"I hear you," Lin Jianyuan replied. "Sorry, I just zoned out for a second."

"Oh, okay," Pei Shuo said. "You focus on getting better. I'm really fine. Just low blood sugar—they gave me some glucose and I was good as new. Qin Shi-jie just wants me to stay another day for observation. I'll be back at work tomorrow. What about you? How are things on your end?"

Lin Jianyuan answered honestly, "I still can't tell what's real and what's not." For all he knew, this phone call with Pei Shuo could be a hallucination too.

Pei Shuo sighed, sounding like he wanted to say something comforting but didn't know how. Then someone grabbed the phone, and Qin Shi's cheerful voice came through.

"Alright, Lin Jianyuan. You can relax now, Pei Shuo's fine!"

Lin Jianyuan chuckled. "You went to see Pei Shuo again. Why aren't you visiting me?"

Qin Shi replied, "No, it's just me today. I'm here to help the kid get discharged."

Calling him "the kid" made Pei Shuo immediately embarrassed.

Lin Jianyuan heard Pei Shuo's awkward protest in the background—"Jie!!!"

Lin Jianyuan found it funny. He chatted a bit more with Qin Shi, who told him to focus on getting better and not worry about work.

But even so, after hanging up, Lin Jianyuan couldn't help thinking about all the work he still had left unfinished.

He was losing track of what's real and what's not, and he probably wouldn't be discharged anytime soon. The company was definitely shorthanded, but that was their problem, not his. No matter how short-staffed they were, they couldn't expect him to work through medical leave.

Still, someone had to handle the mountain of work. That someone would probably be Pei Shuo. Lin Jianyuan didn't care about the company, but he did care about the people around him.

With a sigh, Lin Jianyuan pulled his laptop from the bedside table.

He'd asked Qin Shi to bring it when she visited yesterday. Normally he used a desktop at work, but he took the laptop when traveling or working offsite, so it had backups of his projects.

Qin Shi had joked, "Seriously? You're still working from the psych ward? That's some real determination."

Now, as he pulled down the little tray table and set his hands on the flimsy keyboard, only one thought echoed in his mind: This isn't perseverance—this is how you work yourself into a breakdown.

He'd planned to write a handover document, so whoever took over—Pei Shuo or anyone else—wouldn't be lost. But as he mentally reviewed all his tasks, he realized with dread just how much there was. If he wrote everything down, it would run thousands of words, not counting the images and videos that couldn't be described in text.

Lin Jianyuan's head throbbed. He wanted to throw in the towel right then, but knowing Pei Shuo would probably inherit the mess, he grumbled and got to work.

Pei Shuo always seemed so energetic; Lin Jianyuan thought he was tough as nails. Who knew work would wear him down so fast? Just showed how brutal office life could be. Better not overload him—what if he fainted again?

There was no desk or chair in the hospital room, so Lin Jianyuan sat on the bed, hunched over the tray table, typing with difficulty. The posture was torture. Soon his back ached, his spine felt like it was set in concrete—stiff and heavy.

He massaged his aching neck and knocked at his stiff lower back. Somehow, in that miserable position, he managed to finish the handover.

Finally done, he closed the laptop and collapsed onto the bed. His spine cracked and popped all the way down.

Damn, he thought. His back felt like it was rusting solid.

He remembered a "dragon spine stretch" he'd seen online. He spread his arms, twisted one leg over the other, kept his upper body still and turned his lower half ninety degrees to stretch his back.

Crack.

Crack, crack, crack—

In an overgrown, abandoned warehouse, somewhere in the darkness, came the sound of bones cracking. The noise grew denser, impossible to pin down.

The only certainty was that the maddening sound was drawing closer, closer. It hammered right against the eardrum, rattled the skull and spine, echoing down the marrow.

"What do we do? I can't move!" In the suffocating darkness, a comrade's terrified voice rang out, close enough to touch.

The shout hit like a stone dropped in a lake, sending ripples of fear through everyone.

"I can't move either!"

"Why? I didn't touch anything!"

"Me neither! I can't see a thing—where are you guys?"

"I can't move anything below my chest—I can't feel my hands or feet! Wait, something's crawling up my spine... Help! Someone, if you can move, help me!"

"Help!"

"Help!!!"

The desperate cries rose and fell, then faded into silence in the dark.

In the vast, empty warehouse, the team members in their combat gear froze in place, as if encased in cement. Their bodies twisted into grotesque, inhuman shapes.

If anyone had been there, they'd have seen that the darkness was an illusion. Sunlight slanted through the windows, green vines climbed the walls, and birds sang sweetly nearby.

If you ignored the twisted, frozen statues in the center, it would have seemed peaceful, almost idyllic.

Crack, crack. The eerie rattle of bones played out like an ancient melody. The human body as instrument, agony as overture. That strange music echoed through the empty, ruined warehouse.

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TL/N: So excited for next chapter!!!! (˵ ¬ᴗ¬˵)