KN | Chapter 5

Highs and Luts

According to the feng shui master’s reading, the “ghosts” would not be sent off until the Hour of the Pig had fully passed.

Everyone else stayed the night at the Chen residence. Chen Wan went out into the rain to get his car. Cao Zi stepped out as well. At the dinner table earlier, he had half-jokingly, half-deliberately let slip something about Chen Wan’s whereabouts. Now, whether he was merely heading the same way or had come on purpose to block him, it was hard to say.

“You didn’t go there just to park a car that day.”

It was a statement, not a question.

No one needed to wear a six-figure suit just to valet a car. Whenever Chen Wan came back to the Chen residence, he was always dressed carelessly in a shirt and jeans, the sort of outfit that showed utter disregard, low-key, ordinary, and with no look of ambition at all.

Chen Wan turned his head and gave him one calm look. He spun the car keys lightly in his hand and held the line without wavering. “I went there to park a car.”

Cao Zhi let out a soft laugh in the night. “If you say so.”

Chen Wan kept up the same false politeness, said goodbye, and turned to leave.

Someone had thrown a rusted dog chain onto the open ground in front of the security booth.

Chen Wan stepped over it neatly, without looking sideways, his heart still as water.

He was no longer that illegitimate child from years ago, the one people used to shackle with a dog chain and bully for sport.

Families of wealth and privilege looked glamorous on the outside, but in truth they were the filthiest places, hiding the most rot and foulness. The deformities and cruelty of the rich were beyond what ordinary people could imagine.

Who would have thought that, born into a family like this, Chen Wan had once spent his childhood chained beside a dog hole, hungry, half-naked, and never properly fed?

When he was little, the people he envied most were the beggars on the street.

At least they were free.

A human hell. Not worth living through.

The Volkswagen Chen Wan had driven here was completely unremarkable among the Chen family’s lineup of luxury cars. Only when he got closer did he see several new scratches on the body, all low down. He guessed the boys who had bullied Judy tonight had done it.

He did not know whether the tires had been punctured too.

The rain started coming down harder again. Not wanting to alert the people in the house, Chen Wan crouched down and checked that the tires were intact before getting into the car.

After he shut the door, a deep weariness welled up inside him. He did not switch on the light. He simply folded over the steering wheel and stayed like that for a long while before recovering a little.

Fat raindrops hammered against the windshield. Even inside the sealed car, he could still hear the wind and the sea from far away, and the palm leaves scraping against the windows.

Chen Wan lit a cigarette. Only after taking two hard drags did he feel air finally rush back into his lungs, easing the suffocating sense of being drowned by the rain and the night. In the dark, his hand groped for the radio switch and turned it on, letting some sound into the car.

A Haishi oldies station was playing a millennium diva compilation.

“You live your life in happiness

I struggle desperately just to survive

So many stand upon the mountain peak, looking down on my exhaustion

You defined what life is

I disgraced survival

I am only fit to linger in the valley below, sorting through my disorder

No end in sight, no grace in sight, and I am very far from you”

The phone on the center console vibrated.

Chen Wan startled awake. His fingers twitched, then clenched. It took him a little effort before he picked up.

“Good evening, Mr. Chen.”

“Monica.”

“I’m sorry for calling so abruptly. You didn’t come in for your follow-up last week, and that prescription can’t be used continuously, so I had to call.”

Last week, all Chen Wan’s thoughts had been tied up with Zhao Shengge’s return to the country, and he had forgotten. He apologized at once. “I’m sorry, Monica. I missed the appointment. Add last time’s consultation fee as well. That’s my fault.”

Monica paused for a moment, then said helplessly, “Mr. Chen, that’s not what I meant.”

This patient of hers had strong empathy for other people, but he paid very little attention to himself.

As his doctor, she could not simply let that continue. “Do you have any time in the next few days? Could you try to come in for an in-person session? This stage of treatment is rather delicate, and it’s best not to interrupt it.”

Monica had been Chen Wan’s attending psychologist for many years. Chen Wan himself had never thought there was anything wrong with his mind. It was Zhuo Zhixuan who felt that something about his friend was off at certain moments, and after hearing him occasionally reveal some disturbingly extreme thoughts, found Monica for him.

Monica had been Zhuo Zhixuan’s senior at Columbia. Chen Wan was not especially invested in his own condition, but he did not want to disregard his friend’s good intentions, nor did he want to trouble the doctor, so he said that, if it would not inconvenience her, he could come over right now.

Monica let out a breath of relief. Patients like Chen Wan, the kind who looked cooperative but in fact were the least cooperative of all, were the hardest to handle. “All right,” she said. “I’ll wait for you in the office.”

Not wanting to keep her working too late, Chen Wan overtook several cars on the way. When he reached Admiral Street, it was not yet ten.

Monica poured him a glass of water and asked, “How have things been recently?”

On the surface Chen Wan was very cooperative. As in previous sessions, he described his recent circumstances and symptoms in detail. Monica then conducted a hypnosis session.

Under the effect of the medication, the diseased, real personality inside him was able to wake and surface.

“I cut open their arteries.”

Monica’s hand paused over her notes, and she gently soothed the patient.

“Severed the right limb.”

“Even the dogs wouldn’t eat their bones.”

In a state of complete relaxation, his speech was disordered, only a rapid description and true projection of conceptual fragments and isolated words buried deep in the psyche. It jumped wildly, with no logic to it.

“Bullet speed, 6.8. It can go faster.”

“Working late. Overtime.”

After a long while, Chen Wan said, “He didn’t look over.”

About twenty minutes later, Monica ended the hypnosis.

Other than Zhuo Zhixuan, Monica was the only person who knew about Chen Wan’s emotional situation. Now that this name had reappeared in the record, she said, “Mr. Chen, you didn’t tell me he’d come back.”

Under the bright white light, it was only at this moment that Chen Wan truly realized Zhao Shengge had really returned. He was not a dream Chen Wan had in the hypnosis room, nor one piece of data from an old EEG or psychological scan.

So Chen Wan smiled and said, “Yes. He’s back.”

Monica nodded. Nothing in her eyes showed either joy or concern.

Because a new variable had appeared, Monica arranged a fresh round of psychological testing for Chen Wan.

Since taking over his case, she had watched him move from reactive depression into masked depression, showing many traits rarely seen even in clinical settings. His psychological state and his behavioral patterns were profoundly complex and contradictory.

Most people would probably think he was an exceptionally considerate and gentle person. But many of the tests reflected his self-destructive tendency, the way he used a gentle exterior and the proprieties of a normal person to suppress the world-weary, oppositional side of his personality.

Behind his extraordinarily strong empathy and capacity for emotional attunement lay neglect and indifference toward his own desires and needs.

At present, he was only just barely maintaining a relatively stable state.

“Do you think his reappearance will have a major impact on the treatment plan we originally set?”

Although Chen Wan did not think of himself as ill, he would not slight someone else’s work. After considering it carefully, he answered with equal care. “Not that much, I think.”

“Why?” the doctor asked softly. From all these years of knowing him, she understood very clearly how much weight that name carried.

“My life probably won’t change very much.” Chen Wan spoke word by word, slowly. “The emotions you asked me to record in daily life, happiness and sadness, fulfillment and unwillingness, those are still mine. I give them to myself. I can control them myself. Everything is decided by me.”

“Doctor, we can continue according to the previous plan. There’s no need to treat this as some new variable or new turning point.”

He said it lightly, but Monica felt even more uneasy. It only further confirmed how completely Chen Wan neglected himself. He would never seek outward.

Still, she did not directly refute him. She only made a tactful suggestion. “Perhaps you could…”

Chen Wan slowly but firmly shook his head. “I didn’t get sick because of him, and…”

“I believe I need to, and absolutely can, control my own emotions by myself.”

“Please help me do that.”

Monica did not persist. Among all her patients, Chen Wan belonged to the category with the strongest will. He was the most cooperative, the easiest to speak with, the very image of a gentleman, and also the most stubborn. External force rarely moved him.

“All right,” Monica finally said. “I respect your wishes. But if possible, I would like you to take at least a week off. I need a more detailed and comprehensive observation of your state during an active episode, and I need to put you through systematic, continuous treatment and training.” People who remained lucid while carrying self-destructive impulses found it hardest to control them in the end.

Chen Wan looked troubled. “I’m sorry, doctor. My work schedule is extremely full lately. I really can’t make the time.”

“If not a week, then three days?”

Chen Wan was still apologetic, but his tone remained firm. “Not recently. I can make time later.”

Monica was silent for a while, then sighed. “Then you must take your medication on time and come in for your follow-ups on schedule.”

Chen Wan agreed with a smile. It was not that he was hiding his illness or deceiving the doctor. Kexiang had a new project it was trying to win, and Chen Wan had very little time to rest each day, with even less time for actual sleep.

At ten o’clock on Thursday night, Chen Wan drove alone to the Pulei Casino. Even on a weekday, the casino was packed.

Author’s Note:

Today’s golden radio pick from Haishi: “Highs and Lows”