Chapter 206: Chapter 170: Jin Xueli: Meeting an Old Acquaintance in a Foreign Land
Jin Xueli forced herself to a stop, just a few steps away from Chaisi’s hospital room.
The room that had suddenly gone dark was down the hallway to her right; to her left was a doctor’s office.
The doctor who had just hurried out of Chaisi’s room, a grim look on his face, was the one who had crossed the hallway to enter that office—that part wasn’t strange in itself.
What was strange was that, as she rushed over, she realized the doctor hadn’t gone inside.
Jin Xueli slowly turned her head.
The doctor was still frozen at the office doorway, his back to her, unmoving, with his hands hanging at his sides.
Looking past his shoulder into the room, she could only see a small part of a simply decorated office, not what had made him suddenly stop in his tracks.
The guards downstairs, the nurses’ station... it seemed they had all fallen into the same frozen state...
Jin Xueli glanced back quickly and saw that the Hunter of Love was now half-risen from her chair, craning her neck to stare at her from a distance with a suspicious look on her face.
"What are you doing?" Jin Xueli couldn’t help but ask, glancing again at the doctor’s back.
"Nothing," the Hunter of Love replied, not sitting back down. She kept staring. "What are *you* doing?"
’She just wants to see if I’m going after Morando, doesn’t she?’
’I don’t have time to get into it with her right now.’
Jin Xueli glanced at the doctor’s back, and without another word, strode to the hospital room, pushed the door open, and rushed inside. After a brief moment of darkness, light returned to her eyes. She had already plunged into the room, and the door slammed shut behind her with a CLANG.
...Huh?
Jin Xueli blinked hard a few times.
It was, for all intents and purposes, a hospital room. Anyone would have to dutifully call it a hospital room.
But somehow, it just felt... odd. It was completely different from what she had expected to see—even if she’d found a Chaisi-themed slaughterhouse behind the door, she wouldn’t have been this surprised.
The room was larger than she’d imagined, holding a full six beds, three to a side. Each bed was surrounded by a light blue privacy curtain. In a far corner near the ceiling hung a small television, unwatched and silent under a layer of dust.
The room was dim; only two of the ceiling lights were on.
Jin Xueli spotted Chaisi at a glance—he was lying in the middle bed on the left. He was still unconscious, but his chest was rising and falling faintly. At least he wasn’t dead yet.
Besides him, two other beds were occupied.
On the bed opposite Chaisi, the patient was likely asleep, their curtain drawn completely shut. On the bed next to Chaisi—the one furthest from the door—the curtain was only half-drawn, revealing a pair of bare, bluish-white feet at the end of the bed.
It was too strange. Jin Xueli stared at the feet, unable to shake the stubborn, insistent feeling that something was wrong.
’Since it feels wrong, the sooner I get out of here, the better.’
Not wanting to spend another second here, she walked over, grabbed Chaisi’s arm, and pulled with all her might. A grunt escaped her throat, but she only managed to drag his upper body up at a forty-degree angle.
’Now this was a problem Jin Xueli hadn’t considered before coming in.’ Chaisi was nearly two meters tall, packed with heavy, lean muscle. He had to be over two hundred pounds, nothing like the skinny Westley. If he wouldn’t walk on his own, would she need a tractor to get him out of here?
"Hey,"
She slapped Chaisi’s cheeks. Remembering how he’d gotten her wrapped up in this mess at the Central Police Station, she didn’t hold back at all. Each slap was loud and crisp.
"Get up! Stop sleeping and come with me. Hey, Chaisi! Don’t tell me you can’t bear to leave this—"
Jin Xueli’s head snapped up.
’That’s right—’ Her mind was so cluttered with information tonight that she hadn’t thought of it right away.
’Isn’t this place for the rich and powerful? The one with the whole whitelist system?’
’So... would the rich and powerful really be crammed into a six-person ward like this?’
’It couldn’t be that the hospital specifically set up a six-person ward for people who can’t afford the high prices, could it?’
’No matter how she thought about it, that explanation made no sense.’
"Hey, I’m begging you, wake up,"
Jin Xueli lowered her voice, shaking Chaisi even harder. If he didn’t wake up, she wasn’t even confident she could lift him into a wheelchair. "Something isn’t right here—"
"...Little girl."
She froze beside Chaisi’s bed, still bent over.
After a second, she realized it was the patient with the exposed feet talking to her. His voice sounded like something was churning thickly in his throat, making it unpleasant to listen to. It was like a resident’s—
Wait.
’Holy crap. It can’t be, can it?’
’But I didn’t jump off a building!’
"Where are you trying to take him?" the patient asked.
"Um... he can’t afford the hospital fees," Jin Xueli lied on the spot, her eyes scanning the room for more clues. "The hospital is kicking him out, so I’m taking him home."
"You’ve come at the perfect time."
The patient behind the curtain said flatly, "You see, I’m sick. I can’t move very well, and I happen to need someone to do me a favor."
As he spoke, the patient behind the curtain rustled and turned over. But the feet outside the curtain remained frozen in place, as white as if they’d been dusted with powder, toes splayed to the left and right.
’Can anyone turn over without moving their feet?’
Jin Xueli stared at the feet without a word, secretly pinching the inside of Chaisi’s arm a few times.
"You shouldn’t be so rude, little girl. I’m asking you for help. Aren’t you going to answer me?"
"...Wh-what favor? You really can’t move?"
"It’s inconvenient for me; I’m a patient. Help me with him... hmm, who is he to you?"
Hesitating between abandoning Chaisi and running, and giving it one more try, Jin Xueli chose the latter. "My... my cousin."
"Help me pry your cousin’s mouth open, will you?"
Jin Xueli froze. "What?"
"Pry his mouth open. Now."
The patient’s patience seemed to be wearing thin. The sticky, churning quality of his voice grew stronger, as if he were about to use his throat as a blender to whip up a smoothie of flesh and worms.
Although she didn’t know what kind of trick Morando had used, at this point, Jin Xueli had no more doubts.
"Why?" She silently reached into her backpack, fumbling for something as she stalled for time with questions. "What are you going to do?"
"Sigh, why does everyone I meet have so many questions? That old lady last time was just endless..."
The patient behind the curtain grumbled but answered her anyway. "There’s something in your cousin’s mouth. I find it rather interesting. Pry his mouth open for me, let me get a good feel for it... Now."
The last word was suddenly sharp, like a wasp’s stinger jabbing into a nerve. Jin Xueli’s vision swam, and she nearly bent over and threw up on Chaisi.
"O-okay, okay, I get it. Don’t get excited."
Using her free hand, she squeezed Chaisi’s cheeks, forcing his mouth open. "Is this okay? What now? What is it you want?"
"A small, pink thing."
The patient’s speech slowed, as if his tongue were slowly swelling inside his mouth, sloshing around in a pool of saliva.
"How to describe it? There’s nothing else... it’s just I wantit I wantit I wantit I wantit so bad and if anyone tries to stop me this time I’ll really lose control lose control lose control lose control"
’Go to hell, you piece of shit Morando.’
Jin Xueli’s hand finally found the heavy, cold handle. Just as she yanked it from her backpack, the bed curtain was ripped open—a pair of feet still lay on the bed, but rising from the front half of the body was a tall, slender black shadow that touched the ceiling.
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