Knowing I'm Safe

Knowing Peace

The Jiang Group collapsed overnight. Jiang Zizhi woke up burning with fever, barely able to think straight. His attending doctor handed him a blurry brain CT scan. “Your central nervous system is damaged, and you show signs of delusion.”

When he turned around, he saw his mother holding a bowl of “calming soup.” Her voice was cool and detached. “Listen to the doctor and spend some time at the rehabilitation center outside the city. Don't get in the way of your father handling the assets.”

Only then did he understand that this so-called “rehabilitation center” was the psychiatric hospital his parents had chosen for him together.

When an orderly tossed striped hospital pajamas at his face, he clutched the pills he'd secretly hidden and thought, I'm not sick.

The patient in the next bed, A-Zhe, kept saying, “The lion is coming.” The orderlies scolded him: “Stop talking to the lunatics.” But one night, Jiang Zizhi heard A-Zhe whispering to the wall, “I saw the director taking bribes.”

Then Xie Ping'an arrived.

The new nursing assistant wore the cleanest gray uniform. When he handed Jiang Zizhi warm water, his fingertips hovered without touching him. Yet when someone tried to snatch his steamed bun, Xie Ping'an shielded him, his long, well-defined fingers gripping the other person's wrist. In a low voice, he said, “Don't confront them head-on. I'll teach you how to break the rules here.”

Jiang Zizhi took out the old book hidden under his pillow. Between its pages was the line his father had taught him when he was little: “Read an old book a hundred times without tiring; read it well, ponder deeply, and you will know yourself.”

He began to feel confused. Was his mind really broken if he could understand what the “lunatics” truly meant, or was the world itself just absurdly insane?

Later, they fled into the mountains. The fog outside the cabin was so thick it swallowed the light. Xie Ping'an pressed Jiang Zizhi's hand against his own chest, where his heart beat steadily. “You're not sick. You just happened to meet me.”

No one knew whether the people pursuing them waited beyond the fog, or whether a way to survive lay ahead.

But at least now, he had someone to hide with and wait for daylight.

Theme: Trust and salvation. When the whole world turned against Jiang Zizhi, Xie Ping'an's arrival broke through his desperate isolation. As the two went from testing one another to fleeing side by side, Jiang Zizhi was not the only one to find salvation. In standing up for Jiang Zizhi, Xie Ping'an also found an unspoken way to answer for his sister's “accident.” Their mutual trust became the only light in the darkness.