Li Huowang spent three years working as a caregiver on the third floor of the psychiatric ward at the Municipal Third People's Hospital. Those years were good: he had a steady job, a gentle girlfriend named Yang Na, and a regular routine of night shifts.
Then Chen Jianshe from Bed 42 vanished into thin air. He hadn't died or been transferred. Everyone simply forgot he had ever existed. His medical records were blank, his family's phone number was disconnected, and a page was missing from the meal log. It was as if the world had never accepted him in the first place. Only Li Huowang remembered.
He secretly stopped taking his medication and began keeping a “Vanishing List,” obsessing over every detail: an entire shelf would go missing, a subway train would gain an extra carriage, the old woman in Bed 41 would mutter, “The incense smells wrong. The official's daughter didn't add salt,” and Yang Na's chopping always kept the exact same rhythm.
The world was growing thinner, little by little. And every clue pointed to the ward where he had worked for three years, but had never truly entered.
“Wuxiang” didn't erase people. It erased data. And he was the only glitch in the System that had not been erased.
