This Is How You Use Mental Illness

I’m Lu Changnian, a high school student afflicted with five rare mental disorders.

Fregoli syndrome makes me see the same pair of demonic eyes on everyone’s face.

Cotard’s syndrome tells me I’m already a rotting corpse, and that studying is just a hallucination before death.

Then one day, my alien hand wrote perfect answers for me in the exam hall, and Stendhal syndrome made the scene of a massacre so beautiful that I trembled.

That’s when it hit me: this is how you use mental illness.

A more attractive appearance, a stronger body, soaring grades.

Three years later, rising police star Lu Changnian smiles at a serial killer and says:

“Tell me, can I use Capgras syndrome to make you think your loved ones are monsters?”

As the blade falls, I chuckle. “Just having a laugh at the world.”