At 39, Zhang Jianguo is an ordinary office worker with a belly bigger than a basketball. His mortgage is still unpaid, his child needs tutoring, and the pressures of daily life leave him gasping for breath. His only pleasures are grabbing some barbecue after work and lying on the sofa, scrolling through his phone.
Then one day, he is dragged into an endless-loop instance: [Midnight Hospital: Rules of the Strange]. Every morning at three, the “white-clad ghost” inside kills him, time resets, and it all starts over.
Others break down and go mad after three loops, their Sanity draining away. But Zhang Jianguo, fat as he is, stays remarkably calm.
“What’s the rush? I’m going to die again anyway. I’ll take a break and think about the loopholes in the rules.”
While others rely on fighting skills or supernatural powers, he gets by on a middle-aged man’s hard-won perspective and patience, his knack for seeing through human nature, and his hefty body’s ability to take a beating.
Loop after loop, he reviews what happened each time. The once laid-back, middle-aged slacker somehow goes from a nobody in the instances to the pillar all the other loopers rely on.
“Remember, in a loop, keeping your cool matters more than anything. Your Grandpa Fat is going to fight his way through every instance and get home to pay off the mortgage!”
