Chapter 32 On the Thirty-Second Day

Chapter 33 On the Thirty-Third Day

Chapter 35 On the Thirty-Fifth Day

Chapter 66 On the Sixty-Sixth Day

On the thirty-second day, Feng Bujue welcomed his second “regular checkup.”

As with the one a month ago, he was brought to Doctor Yuan’s office by the orderlies and secured to a chair.

“Hello, 3232, long time no see.” After the two orderlies left, Doctor Yuan greeted Jue-ge with an indifferent attitude.

To Feng Bujue, Doctor Yuan’s “long time no see” had a hint of trying to cover something up; it was as if he instinctively used that phrasing because he didn’t want the patient to know that there were sleeping pills in their dinner and that the doctors checked on them every night.

“Yeah, it’s been about a month,” Feng Bujue replied, keeping his composure. “At least, that’s how long I remember it being…”

“Oh? Have you been counting the days recently?” Doctor Yuan asked, following his line of thought.

“Yeah, I have,” Feng Bujue replied with a nod.

“Why… did you suddenly start paying attention to these things?” Doctor Yuan asked again.

“Because…” In that instant, Feng Bujue switched to movie star mode, wearing a rather complex expression. “I feel like… my memory has been getting worse and worse recently, so I wanted to try and remember some things.”

“Oh…” Doctor Yuan responded, but didn’t continue the topic.

Feng Bujue knew that the other party didn’t care about the patients’ conditions, and the regular checkups were just a formality.

But relatively speaking, at the very beginning of these conversations… the doctor’s attention was probably more focused, so if he wanted to convey any information, now was the best time.

“Also…” Jue-ge only waited two seconds before immediately continuing the conversation, rambling on, “I’ve been feeling thirsty lately… I’m weak all over, and my mind is a little hazy… Oh, and the worst thing is constipation…”

When accurately stating these signature “symptoms,” he had deliberately used a speaking pace that was neither too fast nor too slow, creating the illusion that he was “thinking as he spoke.”

This would make the words sound more real and natural, rather than something he had prepared in advance.

“Hmm…” Doctor Yuan was a professional after all. After doing this job for so long, when he heard a string of “symptoms,” he would almost reflexively make related judgments, and he was no exception. “…I understand.”

After saying those four words, his gaze shifted slightly to the lower side; several seconds later, Doctor Yuan raised his hand again and wrote something on a record sheet next to him.

At that moment, Feng Bujue knew… his plan had succeeded.

The conversation then returned to a “normal” pace and ended with a bunch of routine questions and meaningless answers.

Feng Bujue basically didn’t need to lie and could answer fluently anyway… he wouldn’t let slip anything related to his “escape plan.”

…………

On the thirty-third day, it was lunchtime.

“It’s getting shorter…” Feng Bujue happily ate the lunch laced with marijuana and muttered, “Good, progress is going quite smoothly…”

The thing he was talking about, the thing that was “getting shorter,” was none other than the time of “memory loss.”

This showed that his “performance” during the checkup had been effective—after hearing that series of typical symptoms, Doctor Yuan had naturally made the judgment that “the drug dosage is too high, and the side effects are too severe.” Combined with Jue-ge’s “very cooperative” performance during the Q&A, the doctor made the decision to reduce Jue-ge’s dosage.

So, after breakfast on this thirty-third day, although Jue-ge still experienced a “blanking out” reaction, the time he was without memory had been greatly reduced.

Using lunchtime as a baseline, and relying on his precise sense of time (which he had trained), Feng Bujue quickly deduced that… today’s blanking out time was nearly halved compared to before; from three hours and forty-some minutes, it had become less than two hours.

“So… as long as I ‘pretend to sleep’ for a few more days, and confirm that they’re doing the same checks every night… everything that happens while I’m ‘unconscious’ will basically be clear,” Jue-ge thought as he ate. “In order to minimize sudden situations when the plan is implemented, I still need to confirm these trivial matters…”

…………

On the thirty-fifth day, two hours after dinner.

Feng Bujue’s caution had paid off…

That night, Doctor Yuan and the orderly still came to Jue-ge’s room on time, but today, Doctor Yuan was doing more than just measuring his blood pressure, heartbeat, and breathing…

He also drew Jue-ge’s blood.

A syringe was used to draw the blood, and the amount taken was not much.

Doctor Yuan’s technique was very skilled, and even though Feng Bujue was actually awake, he didn’t feel much pain during the needle stick.

It was over in less than ten seconds.

Afterward, the orderly assisting the doctor also skillfully treated the bleeding point.

After the two left the ward, Feng Bujue opened his eyes and saw the tourniquet and disinfectant cotton swab on the inside of his left elbow.

Later that night, Jue-ge was awakened by a sound while he was in a “real sleep.”

He knew that this was the orderly coming to retrieve the hemostatic supplies, so he pretended not to know… and went back to sleep.

On the morning of the thirty-sixth day, when Feng Bujue got up for his “morning exercise,” he looked down at the almost invisible needle hole on the inside of his elbow and muttered to himself, “In the end, I was still careless…”

At this point, Jue-ge had naturally deduced a lot of information related to what happened last night: “Yesterday was the thirty-fifth day. Assuming they draw the patients’ blood on a monthly cycle, then… the last time they drew blood was exactly one or two days before I started pretending to sleep (starting from the seventh day); and at that time, I was still struggling in the first wave of continuous ‘hangover pangs.’ Because I was in pain all over, plus the needle hole was extremely small and well-treated… I ignored it.”

Thinking of this, Feng Bujue had already done dozens of sit-ups, and his breathing became slightly rapid. “Huff… luckily, I was also observing on a ‘monthly’ cycle, otherwise, I might not have known about this ‘opportunity’ by the time I carried out my escape plan.”

…………

On the sixty-sixth day, in the evening.

Doctor Zhang, along with the orderly that Jue-ge had met when he first arrived here, walked into his ward together.

This Doctor Zhang had been transferred here five days ago. Feng Bujue’s “regular checkup” four days ago had also been taken over by Doctor Zhang, so Feng Bujue knew his surname.

If the previous Doctor Yuan had been working in his position with the mentality of “not seeking merit, but seeking no fault,” then this older Doctor Zhang was almost working in a “holding down a job without doing any work” kind of way.

Through the conversation with Doctor Zhang a few days ago, Feng Bujue had already obtained a lot of information from him…

Anyone could see… this man was extremely unwilling to be stationed at this Baisa Mental Hospital; from Doctor Zhang’s words, one could hear that he felt like a “talent” like him being placed in this place for two months was practically like being exiled.

And his working principle was basically—“If it’s not something that has to be done, then it must not be done.”

Faced with such an unfamiliar new face, Feng Bujue had to test and observe him. Therefore, starting four days ago, he had once again stopped taking his sleeping pills (starting from the thirty-seventh day, Jue-ge had started eating dinner normally, no longer pretending to sleep), in order to obtain more information about Doctor Zhang when he checked his body.

As a result, these past few days, Jue-ge hadn’t even heard a single useful word…

In the past, Doctor Yuan would occasionally ask the orderlies about the patients’ conditions while checking their bodies, but the current Doctor Zhang… completely ignored those things. The most that Jue-ge had heard in these four days were complaints like, “Wouldn’t it be enough to just find a nurse to do this kind of thing?” It sounded like having Zhang do these things was a waste of talent.

However… tonight, Doctor Zhang happened to notice something.

“Eh? I say… has 3232… gotten stronger?”

As soon as these words came out, Feng Bujue’s heartbeat and breathing immediately increased. Luckily, the other party wasn’t listening to his chest cavity with a stethoscope at the moment, but was measuring his blood pressure; otherwise, Jue-ge’s pretense of sleeping would have been exposed.

“Oh! That’s right,” the orderly replied immediately. “I’ve also felt that he’s been a little different these past few days. Now that you mention it, it’s true.”

As mentioned earlier, the staff at this mental hospital were rotated on a certain cycle.

The doctors and orderlies who had been in charge of Jue-ge in the past two months had been in contact with him every day, so they inevitably overlooked the changes in his body shape; but the Doctor Zhang in front of him had last seen 3232 about ten months ago; and the last time the orderly had seen Jue-ge was also a full two months ago… In their memories, Patient 3232 was a very weak person. How could he be like this now, where you could feel the muscles on his arms even through his clothes?

“Hmm… strange,” Doctor Zhang said. “The previous doctors’ reports didn’t say that Patient 3232 was exercising…”

“So, you still read the reports, huh…” At this moment, Jue-ge, who was lying on the ground, was furiously complaining in his heart.

“Ah?” In the next second, the orderly also questioned, “Don’t you basically never read the patients’ reports?”

“Hey hey… is it really okay for you to say that in front of him… he’s a doctor after all, and his position is higher than yours, right…” Hearing this, Jue-ge also felt a little worried for the orderly.

Who knew, Doctor Zhang didn’t care at all. “Ah… I don’t read them.”

From just this half-sentence, one could know that Doctor Zhang’s “slacking off” working style was already known to everyone, and he himself had no intention of hiding it.

“But…” Half a second later, Doctor Zhang’s second half of the sentence was even more shocking. “Only 3232’s report… I still read it, because the delusional part is quite exciting and can be used as a novel to pass the time.”

“You son of a…” Before the other party could finish speaking, Jue-ge cursed inwardly.

“Hmm… I also didn’t hear Old Chen, who switched shifts with me, say that 3232 was exercising,” the orderly uncle also muttered thoughtfully.

While they were talking, Doctor Zhang had already finished measuring Jue-ge’s blood pressure and was preparing to listen to his chest cavity with a stethoscope.

“This isn’t good…” Feng Bujue thought. “My heartbeat is a little too fast right now. I need at least a minute to adjust it to a state close to sleep. If he listens now…”

Whether it was luck or misfortune… at this moment, Doctor Zhang, who was about to put the stethoscope on Jue-ge, suddenly did something that Jue-ge didn’t expect.

“Hey, how about we take off his clothes and see?” Doctor Zhang said to the orderly, as if on a whim.

“Huh?” The orderly uncle was stunned for two seconds after hearing this suggestion, but he quickly understood the doctor’s meaning. “Oh oh, okay, I also want to see… if he’s really been exercising.”

“What the hell?” Feng Bujue, who was lying there, was shocked at the time. He roared in his heart, “What are you two doing? In broad daylight, in a bright and clear world, is there still any law?”

Unfortunately, Feng Bujue’s inner screams couldn’t change anything.

Doctor Zhang and the orderly skillfully unbuttoned Jue-ge’s hospital gown one by one and opened it up.

“Whoa~ what’s going on?” After taking a look, the orderly uncle exclaimed in surprise, “He has abs?”

Doctor Zhang not only looked, but also pinched Jue-ge’s arm. “The chest muscles and biceps have also exceeded the level of ordinary people. This is obviously exercising… and it’s high-intensity exercise.”

In this way, the things that Feng Bujue had worked so hard to hide for two months were so easily exposed.

Now, Jue-ge could only pray that the two of them wouldn’t associate this with his plan to “escape from prison”…

But… unexpectedly…

“Speaking of… how would a mental patient suddenly start exercising?” The orderly uncle’s next sentence was, “Could it be that he wants to get stronger and then run away?”

“You’re a goddamn genius!” Feng Bujue’s heart roared again. “Are you the legendary Sleeping Kogoro Mouri!”

“Ah… maybe he deliberately used some method to cover up the fact that he’s exercising, to make us lower our guard,” Doctor Zhang then added casually in a very calm tone.

“Okay, okay, okay… you’re something else…” Feng Bujue was already speechless.

Just as he was considering whether he should immediately explode and execute his escape plan in advance…

“Pfft… hahahahahaha…” Suddenly, Doctor Zhang and the orderly uncle both burst into laughter.

“Hahaha… Doctor, you’re so good at joking.”

“Haha… likewise…”

“If this were true, then we wouldn’t be locking up a mentally ill person here, but a 007…”

“They’re not mentally ill, I wanted to correct you just now, it’s psychological illness… the two are different.”

And so, the two of them changed the topic in this pleasant atmosphere.

Obviously… they didn’t take Jue-ge’s exercising seriously at all.