Fragments of Malice

I wrapped it up in a super-rushed way. If inspiration strikes later, I'll continue the story.

Read at your own risk.

Amaranth, male.

Clinical presentation includes abnormal sensory perception, disordered thinking, and impaired reality testing, consistent with dissociative identity disorder (DID) accompanied by distorted spatial perception. Specific symptoms include: 1. Firmly believing that the room at the end of the hospital corridor moves on its own. 2. Repeatedly experiencing hallucinations in which medical staff vanish into thin air. 3. Being unable to correct these delusions through reality testing.

Chi Xu, an adult male with typical biological characteristics.

Social functioning assessment shows that his use of polite phrases is significantly above the norm (phrases such as "thank you," "you're welcome," "hello," and "it's all right" occur at least 20 times a day on average). Amaranth mistakenly attributes this abnormal speech pattern to symptoms of delusional disorder, but it is actually compensatory behavior caused by social anxiety.

Xia Shuwen, a healthy adult male with a complete set of teeth.

As a practicing psychiatrist, his professional identity is often distorted by Amaranth's pathological suspicions into that of a "medical worker pretending to be a patient." This symptom is a typical manifestation of reality dissociation in DID patients, with a pathological mechanism similar to the "Capgras delusion" described in previous reports.

Theme: Don't assume the worst of other people