Doomsday Wonderland

When Deng Yilan was in elementary school, there was a girl in the class who was described by the teacher as "naturally rebellious."

The girl was very beautiful, with big eyes, and her hair could never be combed neatly. When the whole class lined up according to size and kicked their legs to the cafeteria, she would disappear on the pretext of going to the toilet. During class, she would lower her head and draw on the textbook. When writing essays, she would criticize school education as cramming; if she had to join a group, she would feel like she was being tortured. Deng Yilan watched her throughout elementary school and listened to her repeating it countless times: "Why? I don't want to. Aren't my ideas important?"

"Just watch,"

When Deng Yilan, as the team leader, went to the office to hand in her homework, a middle-aged female teacher said to other teachers, "She is young, has such a strong personal consciousness, and is free and loose. She will suffer a lot in the future!"

That tone sounded like he couldn't wait to see the girl regret it.

Is individual consciousness a bad thing?

Deng Yilan always felt that she and the girl were completely different people. If personal consciousness was a bad thing, then she was good. She made the teacher cry every time she said a word, she was never late for class, and she obeyed her parents and acted as a well-behaved cashier - until that day, she suddenly heard herself yelling angrily: "But I don't want to!"

For a moment, she seemed to be thrown back more than twenty years ago, back to the classroom on that sweltering afternoon. The girl with always messy hair was crying and standing outside for punishment.

She didn't have time to think about it. The first sentence shook the room, and the next words came out like a tide: "Even if I am sick, even if I feel like there are two suns in the sky, I don't want to be locked up. What power do you have to restrict me?" personal freedom?”

The male doctor held his watch and looked at her. He didn't say the words "There's no use if you don't want to", but they echoed loudly in the room.

"If you say that I have a tendency to hurt others or that I have suicidal tendencies and that I need to be protected, well, you can do the evaluation. But I don't have such a tendency. Any serious psychiatrist will come to the same conclusion. I don't hurt people and I don't. Self-harm, why are you still locking me up? Just say that a person is mentally ill and send him to the hospital regardless of whether he wants it or not. This person will never see the light of day again. Isn't this a horror movie? "

The male doctor lowered his head and wrote a few lines on the paper.

Deng Yilan stretched her neck, squinted her eyes, and saw words such as "manic-depressive," "impulsive," and "uncontrollable." She almost laughed angrily.

However, this is the way the world is. No matter what skin a person wears, you have to go if they tell you to go, and you don’t have to let you go if they tell you not to. Whether it is a school teacher, a doctor in a mental hospital, a shopping mall security guard, or a neighborhood committee meeting that is not over yet... Deng Yilan's anger, in the eyes of others, further proves that she is indeed mentally ill - she does not have to go to work, Your employer pays for your medical treatment. Where can you find this good thing? Only mentally ill people can be so angry and resentful.

Deng Yilan secretly vomited all the medicine prescribed for her. After her parents came to see her and advised her to take good care of her illness and reflect on her mistakes, she simply let go: anyway, she couldn't escape the supervision of the male nurses, and no one was willing to let her out of the hospital; then she could say whatever she wanted. You can say whatever you want, and you no longer have to worry about the consequences of what you say. She is a mentally ill person anyway.

Facing the doctor who assessed her condition, Deng Yilan said: "You know I'm not sick, so what are you assessing? Why don't you assess your own professional ethics?"

When encountering a nurse with an arrogant attitude, Deng Yilan said: "Am I an adult? Do I have the capacity to act? Can't I make my own decisions? Do I need you to do my best?"

A month ago, she would have been scared to death by herself, but now she felt liberated. Looking at the other party's ugly face, she felt very happy.

However, the nurse easily hit her rock bottom with just one sentence the next day.

"Are you still happy?" The nurse's tone was the same as that of the female teacher in elementary school. She stared at her and said with a smile: "Your dead husband was found to be related to the theft of the museum. He tried to steal things but failed. He was eating for nothing. Heicai is dead, they haven’t caught the culprit yet.”

Deng Yilan didn't eat anything that day, but got up and vomited twice in the evening.

Less than a week after being admitted to the hospital, she felt that she might really become mentally ill. There was a patient who kept saying "they can hear me" and "their eyes are everywhere" all day long; they said he suffered from delusions of persecution - but Deng Yilan thought he was right.

By the fifth day, discharge from the hospital had become a slim hope. The outside world has degenerated into a dream, and it feels very far away when you think about it. In just a few days, the more than thirty years she had lived outside were blurred, like a cloud of ashes blown away bit by bit by the wind.

She rarely spoke anymore and always stared at one place in a daze. It seems like I have nothing to think about, and I am always tired from thinking about it.

During lunch that day, she sat in the canteen like other patients with milder conditions. She was looking at her tray in a daze when a man came and sat down opposite.

It's the uncle who has been silent.

It is said that he has been in this hospital for a long time. He never speaks and has no violent tendencies. He takes medicine, eats and sleeps when the time comes. Over time, everyone in the hospital turns a blind eye to him, treating him as a table or chair in the hospital. It was as if he had already become part of the background of the hospital.

"Zhang...Uncle Zhang?" She wasn't sure if she remembered it correctly.

"My surname is not Zhang." This was the first time Deng Yilan heard him speak, with a thick and strange accent, and she couldn't tell where he was from.

"Ah, right-"

"They called me Uncle Zhang because there is a syllable in my real name that is similar to Zhang." He lowered his head, took a spoonful of porridge, and looked at it without eating.

"Then your real name is...?"

After a while, Uncle Zhang spit out a long string of sounds with strange syllables, unlike any language Deng Yilan had ever heard of. This is truly a mental hospital, too much paranoia.

"I heard you talking to the carer yesterday."

Deng Yilan said "Oh". She had no means of contacting the outside world, so she could only talk to the nursing staff if she had anything to say; she told them about the blood stains on the corner of the cabinet over and over again, and asked them to contact and follow up on her behalf, but no one seemed willing to pay much attention to her. A mentally ill patient mistook paint for blood, what’s all the fuss about?

"What happened?"

"You asked her a lot, asking her why no one went to trace the blood stains, and..."

Uncle Zhang pushed the bowl away, clasped his hands and raised his head. His eyelids were slack and drooped to cover half of his eyes; however, the light that suddenly gathered in his eyes at this moment made Deng Yilan secretly startled. "Also, why no one cares about what the Twelve Realms are."

"Twelve Realms", this word made her heart beat loudly. At that moment, the past life in which Han Jun existed floated up again like a ghost; from the ashes that had not been blown away by the wind, something like a spark was about to jump.

"I know you are not an evolver," Uncle Zhang said, "Where did you hear about the Twelve Realms?"

Something flashed in Deng Yilan's mind and she leaned forward. "Evolver? What evolver?"

"you answer me first."

Deng Yilan stared at him blankly, with goosebumps all over her body.

"Are you... are you an evolved person?" What she really wanted to ask was stuck in her throat and she couldn't say it - was Han Jun also a so-called "evolved person"?

Uncle Zhang nodded without hesitation.

He seems to be as sane as a normal person...but that doesn't mean anything. Many mentally ill patients look no different from ordinary people when they are not having an attack.

Seeing her hesitation, Uncle Zhang suddenly smiled: "Do you think you are the first normal person to be imprisoned?"

Deng Yilan opened her mouth, but her guard was broken by his next words. "They insist on labeling you a psychopath, do you want to label me too?"

...Of course she doesn't want it.

Han Jun was quick to talk for a moment, and the advertisement made by the man named Lin Sanjiu was actually finished very quickly; when Uncle Zhang heard that someone was recruiting companions to return to the Twelve Realms, his face that looked like a wood carving suddenly became more expressive. The color and popularity are as if someone suffering from a terminal illness has heard about a medical breakthrough. It was just his questioning about other things that made Deng Yilan almost unable to hold back her emotions several times - if going crazy can forget the injustice that happened to Han Jun and the injustice that happened to herself, then what if you are crazy?

"He's naive."

After she finished speaking, Uncle Zhang snorted softly, "He felt the discomfort of being stared at, but he didn't realize the risk of escaping... No wonder he ended up like this."

"If you talk like this again, I won't talk to you anymore." Deng Yilan said.

Uncle Zhang laughed, and the doctors and nurses passing by turned a blind eye to them. "You're a pretty good girl. Although you're an ordinary person, you have a bit of a temper."

"What exactly is an evolver? Han Jun is an evolver, right?"

She didn't expect that Uncle Zhang's answer would give her a shock far beyond reality.

Uncle Zhang's words were too bizarre and unscientific. She really couldn't say that they didn't look like something a delusional patient had imagined after seeing the words "Twelve Realms". Her mind was filled with thoughts about the end of the world, and she didn't even hear Uncle Zhang's last words clearly: "If I can find them... maybe they will be willing to let me follow them."

It wasn't until midnight that day, when she was tossing and turning unable to sleep, that she suddenly thought of this sentence and sat up suddenly.

Deep down in her heart, she still doesn't believe in the end of the world, UU Reading www. uukanshu.net Because the end of the world is a very common delusion among mentally ill patients. But regardless of what happened to Uncle Zhang, he had already made his meaning very clear: he wanted to leave here.

Deng Yilan didn't want to go to the Twelve Realms, just like she didn't want to step on the Rainbow Bridge to see what was at the end of the rainbow. After all, she was not really crazy. But she really wants to escape from this mental hospital. She didn't know what to do after she got out; even though she felt that every direction was blocked by invisible boulders, and the forces from all directions did not allow her to take another step forward, she also wanted to find an explanation for Han Jun.

Even if Han Jun is indeed related to the theft of the museum, does he deserve to die? Can we just ignore his death?

She once heard someone say, "It seems that the sky is very high, and if you jump a little, you will knock your head." But she was stubborn. Before she hit her head so badly that she could no longer survive, she wanted to keep jumping and hitting her head against the sky to test how hard it was.

...Because everything in this world must be fair.

The next day, Deng Yilan stopped Uncle Zhang in the yard.

"Let's run away together," she whispered.