Moonlight on a Whale's Back

Gilded Artifact Restorer Rong Yun × Psychiatrist and Department Head Li Chengzhi. Hi. If you understand this, welcome to my world, a pure psychiatric hospital. I’m Rong Yun, a person with schizophrenia. I deliberately made myself ill, worked myself into a frenzy, and brought on symptoms of psychosis and breakdown. That made me stronger, more detached, more terrifying, and wiser. I thought I was right. I jumped in, sinking into the deep sea to seek my freedom, like a little orca. A gentle breeze skimmed over the water, stirring up ripples. The points of light on the surface scattered, like a river full of stars. Clearly, I succeeded. I became the “female body” in a police bulletin. It was a carefully planned suicide, meticulously arranged: I had imagined it countless times. I spent a year saying goodbye to my friends, gave away my Kangxi-era Qing dynasty red-and-gold diamond-rimmed cup and my Song dynasty black-glazed flared-rim bowl, folded my clothes neatly, wrote a suicide note in advance and scheduled it to be sent, chose an uninhabited island, and left my clothes and phone on the shore. Even the police bulletin said that, based on an examination of the scene and a forensic investigation, foul play had been ruled out. One imperial edict in vermilion, and the whole city was stained with my blood. I started over again and again, as if I couldn’t die. Jump into the sea, start over, jump into the sea, start over… I wanted to wait for my lover, who died in the line of duty. But all I got was a replacement from the twenty-third year of the Republic of China. Just like an NPC. The world was full of strange, bizarre, absurd, intricate, neurotic fantasies. Some places repeated themselves, talking only to themselves. Of course, this was a dazzling, grotesque world constructed by a madwoman. So I really was an NPC. The people I tried to save over and over were all NPCs, too.