Chapter 4: False Alarm

6:00 a.m.

The clear, delicate chirping of birds came from outside the window.

As soon as the alarm rang, it was silenced by a large, cold, pale hand. Fu Yingcheng had a very stable routine: no matter what time he went to bed or whether he slept well, he would wake up promptly at six o’clock.

At this hour, Ji Fanling was clearly still asleep.

Perhaps feeling uncomfortable treating herself as a guest, the door to the second bedroom hadn’t been closed the night before.

Fu Yingcheng stopped in his tracks.

Looking into the room from outside, the 1.8-meter bed was more than spacious enough for two people, yet the girl was curled up in just one corner of it.

The morning light was faint, with a thin, golden sunlight filtering through the gap in the curtains, gently enveloping the small figure beneath the blanket.

With each breath, it rose and fell.

So incredibly real, even the strands of dark hair spread across the pillow were clearly visible.

…

Yet at the same time, it felt incredibly surreal.

As if reality and dream were crudely pieced together, with the familiar room and a person who shouldn’t have been there.

Fu Yingcheng gazed silently for a moment, then quietly closed the door for her.

*

In another corner of the city, the thin morning sunlight filled the private clinic.

Yang Mingzhe quickly parked his car, walked through the corridor, and entered the consultation room. He casually hung his coat on the rack, pulled out the session notes with the patient name “Fu Yingcheng” from the cabinet, and sat at the desk, flipping through them.

Normally, this was someone who would always be in a rush, grabbing his medication and leaving. Yet today, he had urgently requested a meeting.

— This was truly unusual.

At exactly 7:00, the door to the consultation room was pushed open.

The man who entered had a handsome face, tall with long legs, dressed in a pitch-black wool coat. He walked in quickly, exuding an air of cold reserve. His brows were dark, and there was a faint shadow of exhaustion under his eyes.

“Long time no see, Mr. Fu,” Yang Mingzhe looked up, smiling warmly.

“Do you remember Ji Fanling?” Fu Yingcheng cut straight to the point.

Yang Mingzhe was stunned.

It was about four or five years ago, when the man had been working around the clock for the company’s development for several months. One rainy night in late autumn, he stepped into Yang Mingzhe’s clinic.

At that time, his condition was very different from usual.

Exhausted, defeated, like a towering building on the verge of collapse.

The man sat on the sofa, his elbows resting on his knees, the taut muscles of his shoulders and back visible beneath the tightly stretched white shirt. His face was deeply, deeply buried in his large hands.

“I haven’t really slept this week.”

After a long pause, he spoke in a hoarse voice.

“…I just slept for a bit, and I dreamed of her again.”

Yang Mingzhe asked, “Who?”

That was the first time he heard the name Ji Fanling from Fu Yingcheng’s mouth.

Yang Mingzhe keenly sensed that she might be the root of all of Fu Yingcheng’s psychological issues. The accident report of Ji Fanling’s death in a car crash wasn’t hard to find online.

Unfortunately, Fu Yingcheng only revealed a few brief details and had been unwilling to discuss it further ever since.

Yang Mingzhe said, “I remember.”

“I saw her yesterday,” Fu Yingcheng stated calmly.

What???

Yang Mingzhe’s pen abruptly stopped, though he maintained a calm facade as he looked up, “And then?”

“I took her home, made her a bowl of noodles, and let her stay over.”

“This Miss Ji… is she someone who just resembles the person in your memory, or…?”

“Exactly the same,” Fu Yingcheng replied, his voice devoid of any emotion.

“She looks exactly like she did in her third year of high school, wearing the same clothes as that day. She knows everything from back then, and everything she does is what she would have done.”

“—She is Ji Fanling,” the man said finally.

In a psychology clinic, he spoke these chilling words in such a calm, emotionless tone. It felt like the beginning of a low-budget horror movie.

Yang Mingzhe remained silent for a moment, then set down his pen. “First, let’s establish some basic understanding between us…”

“Ten years ago, Miss Ji died in a car accident while acting bravely. Do you agree with what I’m saying?”

“She disappeared.”

“Alright.”

Yang Mingzhe didn’t argue over the difference between ‘disappeared’ and ‘no trace of the body.’

“Let’s come to another agreement: If Miss Ji didn’t die back then, today she still wouldn’t look exactly the same as she did back then, would you agree with that?”

This time, Fu Yingcheng remained silent for a long while.

“…I agree.”

“Good. Setting aside any supernatural explanations, we can propose two hypotheses.”

“First, this girl is real, and she closely resembles Miss Ji. Your brain, in some way, has confused the differences between the two, making you believe she is Miss Ji.”

“Second, this girl doesn’t exist at all.”

Yang Mingzhe left the rest unsaid.

— From head to toe, entirely, she is a figment of your imagination.

“For now, let’s hope it’s the first scenario,” Yang Mingzhe said tactfully.

Clear consciousness, normal intelligence, yet experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations, claiming to see the dead—these were classic symptoms of schizophrenia.

Fu Yingcheng shot him a dark glance, and said with an unfriendly tone: “Are you planning to prescribe me Olanzapine and Risperidone?” Both are medications used to treat schizophrenia.

Yang Mingzhe: “…”

Please, patient, don’t act like you know more than I do.

Although Fu Yingcheng wasn’t a doctor, he had graduated from B University’s Biomedical Engineering program and single-handedly founded Kyushu Medical, a leading domestic medical device company, which successfully went public on the New York Stock Exchange just last year.

The new transcranial magnetic stimulation device in Yang Mingzhe’s clinic had been purchased from Kyushu Medical.

“I won’t make any hasty diagnoses,” Yang Mingzhe had no choice but to say.

“Try to set aside last night’s experience for now. Reflect on the real Miss Ji in your memory, and from your heart, accept the reality that she’s already gone. Maybe then, you’ll be able to see that the person from last night and Miss Ji are not the same.”

“Or perhaps, when you return home, she will have already disappeared.”

Yang Mingzhe dimmed the lights in the room, slowly guiding him:

“Now, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and slowly relax…”

*

The black car sped over the speed bump and entered the underground garage of the residential complex.

Fu Yingcheng parked the car, turned off the engine, and sat inside for a while. He then picked up the medication he had just opened from the passenger seat, lowering his eyes to inspect each one carefully.

Yang Mingzhe’s parting words echoed in his ears:

“One psychological session won’t be enough. Let’s plan to meet twice a week for now.”

“No matter which scenario it is, it’s best not to interact with this current Miss Ji anymore.”

“Holding on to illusions will only drag you deeper.”

“Mr. Fu, you’re a rational person.”

Fu Yingcheng’s fingers paused for a moment before tossing the medication into the storage compartment. The lid slammed shut with a bang as he turned and got out of the car.

As soon as he entered the house, he sensed that something was a bit different from when he had left.

It was too clean.

It had rained yesterday, and when Ji Fanling came into the house, she inevitably left a few muddy footprints. But now, the entryway was spotless… just as it usually was.

In his memory, she had taken off those old, worn-out sneakers and neatly placed them by the shoe cabinet, but now they were gone as well.

A sharp pain, like being pricked by a needle, shot through Fu Yingcheng’s head.

He called out, “Ji Fanling?”

No one answered.

He walked further into the house, with each step, his heart sank deeper.

The water glass she drank from on the dining table, the new toothbrush he had opened for her on the sink, the towel she had just used once yesterday… every trace of her was gone.

The door to the second bedroom was wide open.

Fu Yingcheng stood at the doorway of the second bedroom and looked inside.

The large bed was neatly made, without a single crease, as if no one had slept in it for a long time.

“She’s really gone,” Fu Yingcheng’s voice was so low that it was almost inaudible.

…

“What’s gone?”

A clear, crisp female voice suddenly sounded from behind him.

The wind chime hanging high in the room was stirred by the breeze, letting out a sharp “ding” as it collided.

Fu Yingcheng’s back tensed instantly as he slowly turned around.

The girl was wearing his pajamas, her head tilted slightly, and her dark eyes gleaming with curiosity as she peered at him suspiciously. “What are you looking for?”

After a brief pause.

Fu Yingcheng asked in a deep voice, “I called you earlier, why didn’t you respond?”

“Huh, did you call me?” Ji Fanling nodded toward the direction of the balcony. “I was washing my shoes and just now, I was hanging them out to dry.”

“What about the other things?”

“You mean these?”

Ji Fanling pulled out a plastic bag from behind the doorknob of the second bedroom, filled with a toothbrush, hair ties, pen refills, and various miscellaneous items. Scrawled on the bag in messy black marker were the words “Ji Fanling.”

“I packed them all up.”

Back in high school, Fu Yingcheng was not only famous for his grades but also for his cleanliness.

Most high school boys were rough around the edges, often playing basketball and getting sweaty, then flopping down anywhere. But Fu Yingcheng was different; he was always impeccably clean.

The girls who secretly had crushes on him would often say in private that he was like the moon—pure and untouchable, always distant and out of reach.

During the first-year high school sports meet, Fu Yingcheng won first place in the 3000-meter race, leaving the second-place runner a full half-lap behind. As he walked off the track, the boys in his class excitedly shouted, ‘God Fu, you’re amazing!’ and ‘God Fu, great job!’ Noisily, they cleared a spot on the bleachers for him to sit down.

Even though he was clearly exhausted, the young man glanced at the dust-covered bleachers and replied coolly, “No need. It’s too dirty.”

…

It was as if getting even a speck of dirt on himself was something utterly unbearable.

Considering she was staying at someone else’s house, Ji Fanling decided to adapt to the situation, keeping herself busy all morning.

Trying hard to minimize her presence.

Even though she was living there, it was as if she didn’t exist at all!

Surely, that would move him to tears.

…

Fu Yingcheng didn’t seem particularly moved.

The man kept his head lowered, his profile sharply defined. His dark gaze moved from the miscellaneous items in the plastic bag, up to the girl’s fingers hooked around it… Winter hadn’t even arrived, yet her pale knuckles were already chapped with fine cracks.

His gaze lingered on her face for a moment longer. He closed his eyes briefly, and his Adam’s apple moving slightly.

He gave in.

When he spoke again, Fu Yingcheng’s voice had returned to its usual cold and detached tone. He lifted his chin slightly, “Put your things where they belong.”

Ji Fanling: “…Okay.”

Fu Yingcheng walked through the living room, and his gaze fell on the clothes hanging on the balcony. He frowned, “Use the washing machine for laundry. You’ve got water all over the balcony.”

Ji Fanling followed the sound of his voice, gritting her teeth. “Where’s the water…?” Is it the water leaking from your brain?

“And another thing,” Fu Yingcheng glanced at the floor, “did you mop the floor?”

“No, I used my head,” Ji Fanling replied with a deadpan expression.

“Mops are expensive. Don’t use it next time.”

Fu Yingcheng shot her a look, his dark eyes beneath his glasses cold and distant, and the tone of his last words carrying a touch of indifferent arrogance, “…Don’t break it.”

Ji Fanling: “…”

What the hell.

How expensive can a mop even be!!!

*

Ji Fanling felt that Fu Yingcheng’s obsession with cleanliness had only intensified since his youth.

He wasn’t just making casual remarks; he insisted she take down the clothes from the balcony and put them in the dryer. Though, in a rare display of kindness, he briefly explained how to use the dryer.

Ji Fanling had no choice but to comply, though she didn’t forget to press him, “Have you contacted Zhou Sui?”

“I asked her this morning, but she hasn’t responded,” Fu Yingcheng replied. “Just wait.”

It rained heavily in Beiwan last night, and the air was very humid. The clothes that had been hung out to dry overnight were not only still wet, but even more soaked.

While waiting for the clothes to dry, Ji Fanling grumbled to herself, thinking that if she could stay with Zhou Sui, she definitely wouldn’t be staying with Fu Yingcheng.

After all, Zhou Sui had a good temper, soft-natured, as easy to handle as a bun.

But Fu Yingcheng? Even while she was using the dryer, he stood by the window like a supervisor, coldly watching her every move.

Sitting there, Ji Fanling could only see the sharp lines of his black trousers. Below the pant legs, a bit of his ankle was exposed. It was clean, well-defined, and strikingly neat.

His intense gaze fell on her from above, more scorching than the faint sunlight outside, making even the top of her head feel slightly warm.

Ji Fanling had been resting her chin in her hand, sitting on a small stool, zoning out.

She glanced at him once, then again.

Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she lifted her eyelids and said in a flat tone, “Do I look like an idiot to you?”

Fu Yingcheng: “?”

“Your dryer has only two functions, and both are before the drying starts,” Ji Fanling said expressionlessly.

“Please tell me—among these three steps: opening the door, taking out the clothes, and closing the door.”

“…Which step, exactly, do you think I’ll mess up?”

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Author’s Note:

Fu Yingcheng: (Staring at his wife)

Ji Fanling: He’s supervising (confirmed)

Author Chichi: This book is more of a slow burn, and I was fully prepared for it to not do well when I started writing. I didn’t expect so many precious readers to show up, and the comments section is full of familiar usernames. Wuwuwu, Chichi loves you all!!! (Hugs everyone and gives kisses)

Thank you so much for your support, I will continue to work hard!

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Translator’s Note:

Please remember that Fu Yingcheng is A tsundere who says one thing but means another. (It’s in the novel description)