Chapter 5

Chapter 5 A Snail Vanishes at the Speed of a Hundred-Meter Dash

Lin Jianyuan hadn’t expected to run into the same doctor as last time, but it turned out Dr. Cen Zheng happened to be on duty today. After queuing forever, it was finally his turn.

“Dr. Cen Zheng, I think my condition’s gotten worse,” Lin Jianyuan said the moment he sat down.

“In what way worse?” Dr. Cen Zheng asked, fingers going to the keyboard.

Lin Jianyuan told him about the vines, the frog, and the whole digestive-system thing: “...For some reason my roommate still looks, to me, like a set of innards. Pink and really fresh-looking. And not pig offal—actual human innards. He’s even got teeth, which just makes it… makes it morbidly freaky, you know?”

And he’s been freezing me out, too!

Thinking of his roommate refusing to add him on WeChat, irritation flared all over again.

He kept laying out the odd and annoying things from the past few days and gradually realized he was really just pouring his heart out.

He stole glances at Dr. Cen Zheng’s face and saw no trace of impatience. The doctor simply nodded now and then while typing.

Like tipping out a bag of beans, Lin Jianyuan spilled every strange thing that had happened. By the time he finished, he already felt better. He asked, “Doctor, is my dose still not enough? I feel like the hallucinations have leveled up from before, and they’re starting to affect the people around me.”

“You do know they’re hallucinations,” Dr. Cen Zheng said with a small smile, clicking around with the mouse, eyes on the screen but his attention clearly still on Lin Jianyuan. “It’s fine—no need to increase the dose for now. You probably skipped your meds the last two days, so your blood level never hit a therapeutic range.”

“Right!” Lin Jianyuan remembered. He’d slept straight through two days; he hadn’t so much as had a sip of water, let alone taken his pills. No wonder the minute he got back to work the whole thing flared up again.

He hurried to say, “I’m sorry, doctor. I’ll take my meds properly this time!”

“It’s okay; don’t beat yourself up,” said Dr. Cen Zheng. “Early on, it’s normal for symptoms to seesaw—you’re still in the acute phase. Think of it like the flu. The first couple of days you’re bound to run a fever, and even with antipyretics your temperature can still yo-yo. We don’t rush. Give the meds and your own immune system some time. It’ll get better bit by bit. The two medications I gave you work well for most people.”

“Okay, okay—thank you, doctor. Hearing you say that really puts me at ease,” Lin Jianyuan felt soothed all over again. “I won’t rush it; we’ll take it slow. So if I see hallucinations at the office again, what should I do—pretend they’re not there? I kind of can’t help myself, especially when I see that vine wriggling in a coworker’s eye. I get so disgusted and irritable I just want to yank it out and stomp it flat, grind it underfoot a couple extra times… Is that too violent of me?”

Dr. Cen Zheng snorted a laugh. “It’s fine. You’re yanking at thin air, not at your colleague. You can still tell the difference, right? You don’t actually have violent urges toward the people around you.”

“Uh, not toward coworkers,” Lin Jianyuan admitted, a little guilty. “But toward my boss…”

“It’s normal to gripe about leadership,” Dr. Cen Zheng snorted. “Sometimes I want to kill that bunch in admin. Fuckers spend all day doing anything but their jobs, just running us in the clinic ragged… Don’t spread that around, yeah? Do me a favor.”

Lin Jianyuan burst out laughing. “Hahaha, deal! Same everywhere! Bosses the world over are dumbasses.”

Cen Zheng said, "You can't lump everyone together. There are normal ones now and then."

Lin Jianyuan said, "Yeah. Now and then."

Doctor and patient exchanged a look, each catching the same weary, wage-slave smile on the other's face.

"I think you're actually in an environment that's very conducive to getting better."

Once the joke had passed, Cen Zheng slipped back into that convincingly doctorly tone. "Your coworkers all know what's going on with you, and they're pretty understanding. That's rare. So here's what I suggest: be upfront and tell them that sometimes you see hallucinations and might act a little strangely. They'll get it. With them around, if you ever do anything dangerous, they can step in in time. The atmosphere in your office is actually quite good."

"It is good. I was really moved when they stood up for me..." Lin Jianyuan thought of everyone going to bat for him against Jiang Chen, and a fresh warmth rose in his chest.

But then he remembered those damned frogs and vines. He hesitated, then decided to speak his mind. "...But my hallucinations are just too real. I mean, I can not only see them—I can touch them. Like that vine wriggling in my hand like a caterpillar, twisting so vividly, so full of life... And the key thing is, how do you explain that after I pulled the vine out, my coworker's eyes stopped hurting? I've been thinking about that ever since..."

"That can actually be explained." Cen Zheng held up a finger. "Watch my hand."

Lin Jianyuan did as he was told.

"Keep your eyes on my hand, follow my finger..." As he spoke, Cen Zheng moved his finger toward Lin Jianyuan’s nose.

Lin Jianyuan went cross-eyed.

Cen Zheng moved his finger away, then closer, repeating it a few times. Lin Jianyuan felt his eyeballs swiveling like a pair of billiard balls.

"How does that feel? Eyes a bit more comfortable?" Cen Zheng asked. "Switching between near and far focus works the muscles inside the eye and helps them relax. When you were 'pulling the vine' for your colleague, for him it was basically a near-to-far focusing exercise. There was probably a bit of suggestion, too—after all, that new coworker of yours looks up to you. As for the vine itself, that was likely your imagination. You heard him say his eyes were dry and he'd been up late binge-watching shows, and your imagination turned that into a vine growing in his eye... I've noticed your hallucinations are quite creative—probably tied to the fact that you work in a creative field."

Come to think of it, that did make sense.

Their company does brand marketing—they're always expected to think up wild ideas. A light went on for Lin Jianyuan. "I get it! The frogs are probably the embodiment of how much I loathe that dumbass boss. He runs his mouth all day—blah blah blah, ribbit ribbit—like a frog... Right, I remember now: when I first came to City A, I rented a place by a river. In summer the whole river was a chorus of frogs, and they kept me up night after night."

"You see? Everything that seems out of the ordinary can be traced back to a cause," Cen Zheng said with a small smile. "Once that clicks, your anxiety will ease a lot."

"Yes! Thank you, doctor!"

As Lin Jianyuan walked out of 700 Jiangchuan North Road, he felt restored, body and mind.

Dr. Cen Zheng wrote him another week’s worth of meds and taught him a neat trick for eye strain: close your eyes, picture each eye as a ball, then keep tossing the ball out and bringing it back.

Lin Jianyuan tried it with his eyes shut and, sure enough, it worked.

What next? The weather was gorgeous, and he’d already taken the day off... He was about to wander somewhere when his phone buzzed. A voice call from Pei Shuo.

“Hey, Lin Jianyuan-ge, you done at the clinic?” Pei Shuo asked, concerned. “How’d it go?”

“Pretty good,” Lin Jianyuan said. “What’s up?”

“Uh, for the Wind Element hair dryer livestream, do you remember which run-of-show we finalized?” Pei Shuo read off, embarrassed. “Was it the ‘final-final, change-it-and-die’ version, or the ‘change it again and we’ll stuff shit down the dumbass client’s throat’ version…?”

Lin Jianyuan answered coolly, “It’s the ‘change it again and we’ll stuff shit down the dumbass client’s throat’.”

Pei Shuo: “Oh, oh.”

Lin Jianyuan: “Did the client try to make you change anything while I was away? There’s plenty of dog shit in our complex…”

“No need!” Pei Shuo said, half laughing, half crying. “Found it—looks like it really is that version. I remember: at eleven that night the client said their marketing director’s cat had just had a litter, and we had to add cat elements throughout the livestream overnight. That’s this one.”

“Mm.” Lin Jianyuan’s face didn’t change. “When you send it over, don’t forget to change the file name. Or don’t.”

“Hahaha, okay. Bro, go back to resting up!”

He grabbed lunch wherever was convenient. In the afternoon he meant to go home for a nap, but something wouldn’t let him.

A nagging wrongness tugged at him. Hadn’t the cat-themed plan been finalized and sent to the client two days ago? Why were they asking Pei Shuo for it again today? No—maybe it wasn’t the client asking.

He rushed to the office; it was lunch break. Everyone was at the cafeteria—except for Pei Shuo, still at his station, wearing a funeral face.

Lin Jianyuan’s heart sank. He called, “Pei Shuo.”

“Bro!” Pei Shuo sprang up like he’d seen a lifeline. “You’re back!”

“What fresh hell now?” Lin Jianyuan glanced up toward the second floor. Jiang Chen’s office door was shut—probably napping inside.

“Not… exactly hell, just a hassle,” Pei Shuo muttered. “You know how that plan is full of cats? The client wants the livestream set decked out with cat elements too. The plushies, stickers, emoji packs, all that—we had it ready. Then Jiang Chen suddenly said he wanted to review the plan. He said you haven’t been in great shape lately, so he’d ‘keep an eye on quality’ for you…”

Lin Jianyuan pulled the monitor toward him. Two minutes later, he kicked open Jiang Chen’s office door.

“Mr. Jiang!” Lin Jianyuan slammed a fat stack of stickers onto Jiang Chen’s desk, anger reined in. “You changed my KV?”

KV—Key Vision—referred to the primary visual design. It covers the brand logo, theme copy, the product’s core selling points, and the visual style, among other elements.

From start to finish, the livestream was Lin Jianyuan’s project. The client was riding him so hard it was murderous; that’s why he’d been pulling all-nighters—three days with only two hours of sleep.

The KV—the key visual—ran through the entire stream: teaser posters, the set background, product displays, ad-read bumpers, and more. The visuals had to stay unified, or it would look like hell.

The stream was at seven tonight; it was already one in the afternoon. And Jiang Chen picked now to change his KV? He had a death wish.

“Easy, easy.” Jiang Chen sprang up from the ergonomic chair, startled, and seeing the fury on his face, hurried to placate him. “I’ve handled everything. You’re still on sick leave, right? Don’t worry—I pulled the old files from the print shop in time and swapped in the new ones, and I’ve already sent people over to redo the set. Just focus on getting better. Please don’t get worked up.”

His “comfort” only poured oil on the fire. Lin Jianyuan saw black; his anger shot through the roof.

“You even swapped out the print materials? For this?!” Lin Jianyuan rapped his knuckles hard on the design spread on the desk.

“Yeah.” Jiang Chen’s mouth quirked up, pride slipping out. “That round-faced black cat you had was so old-fashioned. It just felt a little off. I had a brainwave and made it square-faced. Look—doesn’t this square-faced black cat have real character? Super memorable, right?”

“Oh, it’s memorable all right.” Lin Jianyuan let out a cold laugh, the gloom on his face almost a physical thing, ready to drip. “So it doesn’t look the least bit familiar to you?”

“Huh?” Jiang Chen blinked.

Lin Jianyuan wanted nothing more than to yank down his pants and take a dump to stuff in the man’s mouth. Forcing his temper down, he pulled out his phone and shoved a certain orange shopping app under Jiang Chen’s nose.

Jiang Chen froze, eyes going wide. “Fuck!”

“Get ready to pay out, dumbass.” Lin Jianyuan tossed the line over his shoulder, icy, then turned and kicked the door on his way out.

“Wait! Don’t go! Hold up!” Cold sweat broke out all at once; his legs went weak as he stumbled after and grabbed Lin Jianyuan’s arm. “There’s still time!” he said, voice shaking. “Th-there should still be time, right? Our print run’s small anyway. I’ll have the plant reprint now. I’ll cover the extra cost myself…”

“I’m still on sick leave,” Lin Jianyuan said, flat.

“Lin Jianyuan! You have to help me!” Jiang Chen was frantic. “This could be nothing, or it could blow up! It’s not just my job—our whole studio’s on the line! I’m begging you, okay? After I personally drove you to the psychiatric hospital this morning, for god’s sake…”

The noise grated on Lin Jianyuan’s nerves; he just wanted to boot him away. He turned his head and saw Pei Shuo stranded at the stairwell, at a loss, picking at his nails with both hands.

“Yuan—Yuan-ge… did I mess up?” Pei Shuo stammered, called to him once, then couldn’t go on.

On one side Jiang Chen clung to his leg like a limpet; on the other, Pei Shuo trembled with unease. The three of them stood in a taut three-way standoff. Time stretched, thin as threads of molten glass being pulled longer and longer.

Irritated, Lin Jianyuan raked a hand through his hair and muttered, “Fuck.” Out of the corner of his eye, by the office planter, he caught a snail tearing along—zipping right past him.

Lin Jianyuan: ?

Dumbfounded, he stared at the glistening wet trail the snail had left on the floor.

The snail vanished from sight at a hundred-meter-sprint pace, and Jiang Chen started croaking at him again: “This isn’t a negotiation! You really have to help me! It’s not just for me—it’s for you, too! Stop stalling, Lin Jianyuan! Keep dragging your feet and we’re really going to run out of time!”