Just as a faint streak of orange-red began to peek through the heavy leaden-gray clouds, the record player upstairs in the clinic finished playing its track, and the alarm clock inside the clinic began to ring.
Benson Yang’s eyes snapped open. It was as if he’d been yanked back to reality from a bottomless pit. He sat up in one swift motion, ripped off his black eye mask, and clenched his fists, swinging them forcefully to produce two sharp, whistling sounds as they cut through the air.
“Phew… Damn it… Goddamn it…” He felt the emptiness in his hands and realized he wasn’t in the middle of a fight. Panting, he looked around the room, then wiped the fine beads of cold sweat from his forehead. His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been rubbing it against sandpaper. “So I was just asleep and dreaming.”
His vision refocused, settling on the teak desk a few steps away. Dorian Yun sat before him, poised as elegantly as an exquisite porcelain statue, yet his complexion was as pale as white porcelain, devoid of color, his brows slightly furrowed as he remained silent.
Benson Yang looked more closely and saw that Dorian Yun’s left hand was splattered with blood, wrapped in gauze and resting on the desk.
“Detective, the way you treat a doctor really makes me feel… quite flattered.” Dorian Yun’s voice remained gentle, yet his handsome face wore a look of deep resentment. “Why didn’t you simply tell me you were carrying a weapon? If something like this happens again—especially if it affects my livelihood—I won’t just charge you the consultation fee; I’m afraid I’ll have to sue you for damages.”
Upon hearing him expose the hidden weapon on his person, Benson Yang’s eyes darkened. His hand twitched like lightning once more, instinctively reaching for his thigh—the switchblade was indeed gone, likely confiscated or discarded by Dorian Yun. His face turned as dark as the bottom of a pot, and he was about to unleash a tirade, but when he heard the words “claim damages,” his expression froze once again.
He twisted his lips, forcing out a few dry, hollow laughs. “Uh… I’m sorry, Dr. Yun. It’s all my professional habit getting the better of me—I’m always convinced someone’s out to get me, and I just can’t relax without something to defend myself. You’re a magnanimous person; please don’t mention any compensation. I promise I’ll cooperate fully with treatment from now on. Can you give me back the switchblade?”
“No, I have to confiscate it. I don’t want to get stabbed again in a moment. Assaulting medical staff is a serious crime in itself; technically, I should report this to the police. I’m still considering whether to do so. Detective, you decide for yourself.”
“You… Ugh, this is such a fucking hassle! Fine, fine, whatever. I don’t want the switchblade anymore. Do whatever you want with it, just don’t report it! ”
Dorian Yun stared at him without saying a word. After a long while, he slowly exhaled, his expression softening.
“Alright, I’ll let this one slide as an accident. I won’t report it, but this is a one-time exception. Detective, you just said you’d cooperate with treatment. Does that still stand?”
“Of course it does!” Benson Yang replied, his face scowling.
“Well then, please tell me the truth. You woke up startled just now and displayed a strong aggressive tendency—did you have a nightmare? Could you describe what you dreamed about?”
Benson Yang fell silent, staring at the wall. It was a long while before he spoke, his tone as if he were recounting a story that had nothing to do with him, one that had taken place far away.
“I dreamed of a comrade… I won’t mention his name.”
Dorian Yun didn’t urge him to continue, merely studying him quietly with his eyes. Under Dorian Yun’s calm yet intensely piercing gaze, Benson Yang felt thoroughly uneasy. He shifted slightly in his chair and reluctantly continued.
“Three years ago, word of an operation leaked. The drug lord suspected that one of us—either me or that comrade—was a mole. That old madman locked the two of us in an abandoned slaughterhouse, tossed a gun inside, and said there was only one round chambered. He gave us one shot, one minute—and only one of us could walk out alive.”
As Benson Yang spoke, his fingers unconsciously dug into the leather armrests of the examination chair, his nails leaving several deep, crescent-shaped gouges in the high-quality leather.
“That operation was of the utmost importance; failure was not an option. Someone had to survive to get the message out, so…” His breathing grew heavy, yet his tone remained shockingly cold. “Before that comrade could react, I acted. I snatched the gun, pinned him to the concrete floor, and pressed the barrel against his forehead before pulling the trigger.”
“You shot him?”
“No, I beat him to death. The chamber was empty; there were no bullets at all. That old madman had never meant us any good from the start—he simply wanted to watch us tear each other apart. But I couldn’t just stop, could I? So I wrestled with that comrade, punching and kicking him, smashing him with the butt of the gun again and again until he was completely lifeless, motionless, his body a bloody, mangled mess from head to toe, no longer recognizable as human.”
Dorian Yun held his breath, a flicker of excitement—one he hadn’t even noticed himself—passing through his eyes. As he scribbled furiously in the medical record, he leaned forward and pressed the question: “What did you feel when you killed your comrade?”
“Nothing.”
The air in the room seemed to freeze at that moment.
“Nothing?” Dorian Yun was utterly stunned. The pen in his hand paused on the paper, smudging a small patch of ink. “Whether it’s a sense of relief, guilt, or perhaps fear, sadness, anger… surely you must have felt something? How could there be nothing at all?”
Benson Yang met Dorian Yun’s gaze calmly. His bloodshot eyes were as lifeless as a barren wasteland.
“If I had to say what I felt, it was probably a bit… nauseating. My face and body were splattered with brain matter and blood, sticky and slimy, with a strong, pungent smell of blood.”
Benson Yang slowly curled his fingers, rubbing his fingertips back and forth as if reliving the sensations of that day.
“Do you know, Dr. Yun? The taste of blood is impossible to wash away. Even though I washed myself every day afterward—using strong soap, medical alcohol—it wouldn’t come off. It just clung to me. I had no choice but to keep smoking—smoking like a madman—just to barely mask that stench of blood.”
“No wonder…” Dorian Yun murmured softly. “That explains it all…”
“Later, the doctor said I was sick. I didn’t understand, and I didn’t want to understand. Anyway, from that day on, I set two rules for myself: one, never touch a gun; two, never touch blood—and if I did, I had to wash it off immediately. Tell me, what good is a detective who won’t touch guns or blood and is sick? Naturally, he gets dumped in a remote place like this.”
“You were diagnosed with a work-related injury. Didn’t the downtown police station compensate you?”
Benson Yang gave a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. “Are you kidding? Of course not. They even launched an internal investigation, accusing me of disregarding discipline and murdering a fellow officer. My wife was hounded by the media until she couldn’t take it anymore, and in the end, she ran off with our son. To them, I’m nothing more than a piece of disposable scrap paper. Doesn’t that sound both ridiculous and tragic?”
Dorian Yun didn’t answer. He slowly stood up, closed the medical chart, walked over to the window, and pulled back the curtains. The faint twilight bathed half his face, highlighting his delicate, handsome features; at first glance, he looked like a flawless marble sculpture.
“Yang…”
“I know you won’t answer. You look down on me just like everyone else.” Benson Yang spat out the words in a huff, stood up to leave, and muttered, “Damn it, what a waste of time. I must be out of my mind to come see a doctor again and pour my heart out about all this…”
“No, thank you, Detective, for sharing that part of your past.” Dorian Yun walked over to Benson Yang, gently pressed his shoulder, and pushed him back into his seat. “I don’t look down on you. Insisting on order is a good thing. After all, the environment you were in before was too filthy, too chaotic. You just want the world to be a little cleaner, don’t you?”
Benson Yang raised an eyebrow and asked Dorian Yun, “Are you saying I’m normal?”
“No, what I mean is that being sick is normal in itself—it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You just need treatment.” Dorian Yun paused for a moment, then tentatively asked, “Detective, would you like to hear my story? As a fair exchange.”
“Whatever you say.”
Memories were a bottomless well, and Dorian Yun fished up a memory from the depths of his six-year-old self.
Back then, he still lived in a grand mansion. The space was vast, but it was always cold and lifeless, so empty that the echo of footsteps could be heard.
The world was gray, and only the parrot he kept was colorful. Its feathers were a riot of hues; it would tilt its head and study him with eyes as black as beans, flutter about in its cage to seek affection, and sing a few lines of a tune in its high-pitched voice. In that prison filled with his parents’ arguments and the servants’ cold stares, it was his only friend.
Yet, disaster struck on a seemingly ordinary afternoon. Somehow, the parrot slipped through a gap in the metal cage. Flapping its wings excitedly yet clumsily, it flew straight into the glass window. There was a dull thud, and its tiny body crashed heavily to the ground.
Its wing was broken, its leg was broken, and who knows how many bones were shattered, piercing through the flesh as warm blood flowed out. It twitched on the ground, feathers scattered all around, its throat no longer able to sing, emitting only a shrill, almost comical “caw, caw” screech.
When his parents discovered it, they paid it no mind. They were too busy exchanging looks of contempt and disgust, sparing Dorian Yun only a fleeting glance out of the corner of their eyes, and refusing to even look directly at the parrot. “Throw it away. We’ll buy you a new one later,” they said.
The six-year-old boy hugged the parrot and shook his head stubbornly.
His mother told him he was wasting his time, then frowned and complained to his father, “Why is he so strange? Is he sick? You say he’s quiet, but what child is so quiet that they never laugh or cry, hardly ever speak, have no friends at school, and treat this pet bird like a treasure? Who on earth did he get that from?…”
“Does he have to be like you, nagging all day long?” Fed up with her constant nagging, his father finally snapped back irritably, “You said you were lonely living far from home. Fine, so you had a child—and look, it’s turned out exactly the same!”
The two of them started arguing again, drifting further and further apart, leaving Dorian Yun standing there all alone, clutching the parrot.
In the days that followed, Dorian Yun hid in his room. He found the fishing line his father used for angling, forcibly spread the parrot’s broken wings, and wrapped the line around them layer after layer, securing them to a wooden board to mimic the pose of an angel spreading its wings in a church.
During the day, he hid it in his backpack and took it to school; at night, he held it close as he fell asleep. He stubbornly believed that as long as he kept it in this orderly, beautiful pose, perhaps in a few days it would recover, return to its cage, and resume its playful singing just as before.
“Hah. You were quite naive as a child, weren’t you?” Benson Yang snorted derisively.
Dorian Yun shrugged slightly, chuckled, and said: “You bet. That parrot was my whole world back then. I loved it, so naturally I wanted to treat it and make it better.”
However, no matter how much a person intervenes, once death and decay begin, they are irreversible.
The parrot eventually stopped its faint breathing, began to turn black, and oozed a foul-smelling liquid. It was only then that Dorian Yun finally realized what had happened. He stood there for a while, holding the dead parrot, before deciding to take the body to a field of sunflowers he passed every day on his way home from school—the sunflower seeds the parrot had loved so much came from there—and then, under the cover of night, bury it in the damp earth.
He stood with his hands at his sides before the small mound, mimicking the solemn silence and prayer of an adult. Then, feeling a sense of relief and contentment, he walked away. The next day, he woke up as usual, went to school, and carried on with his life.
“I want to get another parrot,” he told his parents.
“All right. But what will you do if the parrot gets hurt or sick again?” his parents asked him offhandedly.
“I’ll treat it and make it better.”
“What if it can’t be cured and dies?”
His expression remained unchanged, showing not a trace of sadness: “I’ll hold a funeral for it. Then… I’ll just get another one.”
“It may seem a bit childish, but this is my salvation—and it’s also why I chose to become a psychotherapist in the first place.” Dorian Yun snapped out of his reverie and smiled at Benson Yang. “It pains me to see souls struggling in the darkness of sin. I want to heal them, help them return to order, and embrace eternal peace. “I believe you, Yang, are someone I can confide in. You’ll understand me, won’t you?”
“Oh, ha ha, that really is a noble ideal,” Benson Yang replied half-heartedly.
Dorian Yun’s smile vanished abruptly. His dark pupils contracted slightly as he fixed his gaze on Benson Yang’s face. “That’s not funny at all. I’m serious.”
The air in the room froze solid at that moment. A bone-chilling chill shot up Benson Yang’s spine and pierced the top of his head. He stared at Dorian Yun, his fingertips unconsciously clenching the armrest.
He was certain that, in that split second, he had glimpsed the abyss within Dorian Yun’s calm eyes—an abyss brimming with the most stubborn and crazy belief, the most surging and turbulent desires, dark enough to swallow up all light.
“Disgusting.” Benson Yang sprang to his feet, “Who wants to hear your personal stories? Childhood memories, aspirations… it makes me sick. It’s getting late; I should be going.”
He snatched the gray cotton T-shirt off the coat rack and slipped it on, then pulled on his black stand-up collar trench coat. His movements were crisp and precise, but as he put on his boots, his restlessness caused him to stumble awkwardly.
Dorian Yun watched his retreating figure, his expression softening as a hint of a smile returned to his voice. “Hey, Detective, aren’t you going to take the medical certificate for your sick leave? Also, even if this was a free consultation, you should at least shake the doctor’s hand on your way out—it’s basic courtesy. Let’s meet again on Thursday afternoon, shall we? Same deal—no consultation fee.”
Benson Yang turned back to take the medical certificate, and immediately saw Dorian Yun elegantly extend his uninjured hand.
The skin on that hand was astonishingly smooth and delicate, so thin that under the cold, white light, he could clearly see the pulsing of several blue veins beneath the surface. As Benson Yang took it in his hand, a bone-chilling cold seeped through his palm into his marrow—a temperature almost unhuman.
It reminded Benson Yang, for no apparent reason, of the snakes he’d seen at the zoo as a child.70Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVSVAwF3Dos
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