Chapter 68 is over, something bad is about to happen.
Sleep disturbances and somatization of anxiety started last February or March.
Ji Tong could understand all the words when they were broken down, but when put together, they became extremely distorted.
Song Zhenshu's voice rang out again from inside the room.
"Are you sure it's Gu Lin?"
The person on the other end of the phone said, "Can you find another person named Gu Lin here?"
"The home address matches, and the time matches too. Gu Lin was still in Germany on the fifth and sixth days of the Lunar New Year, right?"
“Yes,” Song Zhenshu said, “He returned to Anjing on the seventh day of the month.”
The man said, "That's it."
“The person was confirmed, but I only glanced at the medical records before Anton came in.”
"I don't fully understand what exactly is going on."
“But judging from the two pages I turned to, he’d been taking medication for a while, intermittently from February or March of last year until September,” the man hissed, “You…”
"Wait a minute," Song Zhenshu finally regained some awareness after the initial shock subsided, realizing he was still in Haiyuan. He said, "Tongtong is next door. Let me grab a cigarette and talk to you later." He then turned off the speakerphone, put down the towel he was using to dry his hair, grabbed a cigarette and lighter, and headed towards the balcony.
There were no other sounds around him, yet Ji Tong couldn't move an inch.
His mind was cleared, and he could not perceive anything, only the conversation he had just heard kept flashing through his mind.
I took the medicine on and off from February and March until September. Each word felt like a heavy, dense pile of pebbles hitting me.
Ji Tong stood there for a long time before stiffly raising her phone, her fingers trembling rapidly with small movements.
He opened the search box and entered the symptoms of sleep disorders and somatization of anxiety.
On the day his uncle mentioned his psychological regression and separation anxiety, Ji Tong had actually already done some research.
Even though he knew exactly what the symptoms of anxiety somatization were, he still mechanically and repeatedly looked at them.
Difficulty falling asleep, poor sleep quality, and frequent awakenings.
When falling asleep, symptoms include a rapid heartbeat, difficulty breathing, and muscle tension, often accompanied by anxiety, frequent headaches, back pain, or joint pain, with the intensity of pain correlated with emotional state, creating a vicious cycle...
With each new story he read, Ji Tong's tinnitus worsened.
He recalled once again that early morning when he had a nightmare about going to Ping'an Park to find Gu Lin, and how Gu Lin chased after him to the elevator.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, his lips were tightly closed, and his palms and forehead were as cold as ice.
At that time, Ji Tong only felt that Gu Lin's gaze was very intense, and Gu Lin seemed not to hear what he was saying. He thought that he had caught a cold from Gu Lin.
It turns out it wasn't a cold, but an illness.
That nightmare in the early morning was real.
However, it wasn't Gu Linlin who got hurt, but Gu Lin himself.
Ji Tong thought he would cry and make a scene with Gu Lin like he did last time when he found out why Gu Lin was beaten, but he didn't.
With her nose blocked, Ji Tong could only breathe through her mouth. Her hands were still trembling, and each breath felt scalding hot, as if it could burn through her throat. Yet, she remained calm, calmer than ever before.
Ji Tong was so calm that even after half a year, he could clearly remember the scene of the first time he applied medicine to Gu Lin.
After he finished putting away the cotton swabs and iodine, he opened the drawer to put away the ointment, and there was another box of medicine inside.
The bottle is in German; it says it's a multivitamin tablet.
He wanted to open it, but Gu Lin stopped him, diverting his attention by saying that his clothes were stained with ointment, and then took the medicine bottle away.
Ji Tong later saw the bottle of medicine in the kitchen and opened it; it was indeed vitamin capsules.
But now, a voice in Ji Tong's heart tells him that the medicine bottle wouldn't have appeared in the kitchen for no reason.
"Okay, that's all for now." Song Zhenshu pushed open the French windows, walked in from the balcony, and ended the call.
Ji Tong turned her head slightly and looked at the crack in the door.
If he had simply pushed the phone away, he could have gotten his uncle to call back after hanging up. He wouldn't have needed to cry or make a fuss; his uncle would have agreed, and he could have heard firsthand what was written on the medical record. But he didn't.
Ji Tong wanted to read it himself, word by word, and not listen to what others said.
Ji Tong lifted her foot, as calm as a machine, and returned to her room to make a phone call to Uncle Kang.
At one o'clock in the morning, Uncle Kang drove the car to the bottom of Haiyuan Villa. Ji Tong didn't bring anything and got into the passenger seat.
Uncle Kang had never seen Ji Tong look like this before.
He remembered the phone call at nine o'clock—
"Uncle Kang, I'm sorry, something urgent has come up and I need to go back to the peninsula to get something."
Uncle Kang didn't ask anything and said he would come right away, but the person on the other end of the phone said not now, but in the early hours of the morning, and that he wouldn't stay there either, but would leave immediately after taking his things, and told him to get some sleep first.
Ji Tong's voice on the phone sounded strange, completely unlike his usual tone.
Uncle Kang is used to driving at night. He used to be Song Jiahe's personal driver. Song Jiahe spends nearly 200 days a year flying all over the world, and the time for picking him up and dropping him off at the airport is never fixed. Uncle Kang drove for Song Jiahe for ten years. Later, he moved to Haiyuan and became Ji Tong's driver, earning a high salary and living a semi-retired life ahead of schedule.
Ji Tong never made him drive in the early morning. He treated the temporary helpers at his home very well, let alone people like them.
Given Tongtong's personality, the situation must have been very urgent for me to call him. But even though he could have left at nine o'clock, he stayed up until the early hours of the morning.
Uncle Kang looked at Ji Tong, hesitated, and finally said nothing more, only saying, "It will take some time on the road, take a nap first."
A feeling of exhaustion kept surging through him, and Ji Tong's attention was somewhat scattered, but he didn't sleep, nor did he feel sleepy at all.
During those few hours in the room until dawn, any rest was futile. It felt like he was trapped in a cubicle with very little air for a long time, and all information filtering became very slow.
For several moments, Ji Tong wondered if Gu Lin's sleep disorder was similar to what he was feeling now.
During those few hours, Ji Tong did nothing but send Gu Lin a WeChat message saying that she had drunk some wine with her grandfather that night, was sleepy, and was going to sleep. Then she closed her eyes and lay down on the bed.
Ji Tong knew he definitely wouldn't be able to sleep, and it would all be in vain, but that was exactly the kind of "in vain" he wanted.
The more "wasted" it is, the closer it gets to Gu Lin of that time.
For the first time, Ji Tong realized that sleeping could be a terrifying thing. The more he forced himself to sleep, the less he could fall asleep, the more anxious he became, which triggered even deeper emotions. Then he opened his eyes and sat by the bed until dawn.
The car proceeded smoothly toward the peninsula, and the route to the destination on the navigation system kept shrinking, from tens of kilometers to a dozen kilometers, and then to a short, winding green line.
The car's voice announced that they were about to arrive at their destination. Ji Tong said, "Uncle Kang, take a detour and drive to the back door. There are no security guards there."
Uncle Kang was stunned for a moment, and only now did he finally realize what was going on—
Tongtong seemed to not want anyone to know that he had gone back to the peninsula.
"Okay." Uncle Kang didn't ask anything else and turned the steering wheel to drive towards the back door.
After stopping the car, Ji Tong unlocked his phone, opened the monitoring software, remotely controlled the camera, and changed the mode to "sleep".
The camera flashes red three times in succession before shutting down.
Ji Tong unbuckled his seatbelt, opened the passenger door, and said, "Uncle Kang, I'll be down soon, in about twenty minutes. You can close your eyes and rest for a bit."
"Okay, it's fine. I slept for two hours before, so I'm not sleepy. Take your time."
Ji Tong got out of the car, scanned his face to enter the community, walked straight to Building 21, and stepped into the elevator.
His steps were not slow or hesitant at all, but when he reached the door of room 2104, it was as if something had grabbed his heart, and a sour feeling forced him to stop.
But Ji Tong only paused for a moment. He unlocked the door with his fingerprint and entered. The instant he stepped inside, he raised his hand, pressed the copper bell on the door, and casually picked up an ornament from the shelf to block the half-open door.
Ji Tong didn't even change into slippers, and walked towards the kitchen next to the entrance hall on the floor.
He opened the top cabinet based on his memory.
Next to the bucket of oatmeal he had put away, a box of medicine bottles, about two finger joints wide, stood quietly.
Ji Tong raised his hand, forcefully cupped the medicine bottle in his palm, then closed the cabinet and walked out of the kitchen.
The surveillance camera in the living room, which was in sleep mode, hung down quietly on the wall and did not detect anything unusual.
Ji Tong didn't step into the living room. Before leaving, she stood by the entrance, glanced at the bedroom door, turned around, bent down to pick up the ornament blocking the door, put it back in its place, and quietly closed the door.
The apartment remained quiet in the night, unchanged except for the absence of a tiny medicine bottle in the cupboard.
Ten minutes later, Ji Tong returned to the car.
Uncle Kang closed his eyes and dozed off for a while, but he was already quite alert. As he turned the car around, he asked, "Back to Haiyuan?"
Ji Tong shook his head, clutching the medicine bottle in his hand, and said, "Go to Botai Sanatorium."
"It's a bit far, Uncle Kang, drive slowly. Once you get there, go to Yinsuilou to rest. The room is ready."
Botai Sanatorium, a high-end private sanatorium, is located on the shore of Poyang Lake in eastern Anhui. It was originally a specialist hospital and has been developed and integrated through various renovations and expansions.
Uncle Kang was very familiar with this address because the elderly Song and Ji families would go there every year.
The owner of the sanatorium is Song Zhenshu's childhood friend, whose name is Fang Chengyue.
Uncle Kang didn't care about the distance; he was worried about Ji Tong's health and quickly asked, "What's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?"
Ji Tong: "No, I need to talk to Brother Yue about something."
Ji Tong addresses Song Zhenshu, his childhood friend, almost without regard to seniority, just like he calls Zhu Xuyao "brother".
Botai is located in the suburbs, and the Peninsula direction is actually closer to it than Haiyuan. Uncle Kang changed his destination and drove towards the sanatorium.
Uncle Kang felt that Ji Tong's mental state was not very good, so he said, "The journey takes about two hours. If you are sleepy, you can take a nap."
Ji Tong responded, leaned back in his chair, looked out the window, and didn't close his eyes.
At four o'clock in the morning on a spring night in March, as a thin mist began to rise, the car stopped in front of the sanatorium, and Ji Tong sent her ID to Uncle Kang.
"Uncle Kang, you've worked hard today. Brother Yue has arranged a room for you. Go to the 9th floor of Yinsui Building and rest for the day. I'll take the sanatorium's car back to Haiyuan later."
Uncle Kang was also worried about the possibility of accidents caused by fatigued driving, so after agreeing, he added, "Have you asked your uncle? Is he going to take you back to school tomorrow... no, today? If he doesn't have time, then Uncle Kang should go back early, and I'll take you."
"I don't need my uncle to take me, and I don't need you to tell me. I'm not going back to school for the next few days."
Haven't you been going back to school for the past few days?
Uncle Kang was stunned for almost half a minute before he came to his senses: "Tongtong, what do you mean by this..."
Ji Tong had already gone far away.
Uncle Kang: "?"
What on earth is going on?
Fang Chengyue received Ji Tong's message at 9:30. He had just returned from New York a couple of days ago and was still jet-lagged. Ji Tong asked him for help with a small matter, but since it was Ji Tong who sent the message, he didn't ask anyone else to help. He took a nap in his room on the top floor, set an alarm for 3:30, and went downstairs 20 minutes early to wait.
Fang Chengyue saw Ji Tong's figure in the distance and walked towards him.
Ji Tong called out "Brother Yue." The two had already chatted on their phones. Ji Tong didn't say anything else and directly handed over what he was holding: "There are vitamin capsules inside now. I want to check the medicine that was put in there before."
"The medicine bottle has been kept in the kitchen. In addition to mechanical wear and cross-contamination from vitamin capsules, there may also be some moisture. However, it hasn't been long, about six months. There should still be trace amounts of drug residue on the inner wall of the bottle."
"Brother Yue, I don't need to know exactly what kind of medicine it is. Just help me check if it contains benzodiazepines, non-benzodiazepines, melatonin receptor agonists, orexin receptor antagonists, or propranolol hydrochloride."
Fang Chengyue took the bottle.
Benzodiazepines and orexin receptor antagonists are both ingredients in sleeping pills. Propranolol hydrochloride is mainly used for hypertension, but it can also treat symptoms such as nervous system abnormalities and heart rhythm disorders.
Fang Chengyue's heart skipped a beat, but she didn't show it on her face. She just said, "Okay, I'll take it and expedite it."
Ji Tong: "When can we expect to get the results?"
Fang Chengyue: "It will take at least a day. It's Sunday now, so I can get it to you around Monday morning, is that okay?"
Ji Tong nodded: "Okay, thank you for your trouble, Brother Yue. I'll head back now."
Fang Chengyue's car, which she had arranged for Ji Tong, was already parked at the door, but she still stopped him: "It will take another 3 hours to get back to Haiyuan. Why don't you go upstairs and get some sleep?"
Ji Tong shook his head and said, "No, my mother's flight to Anjing is at 9 a.m. tomorrow."
Fang Chengyue replied, "Then send me a message when you get home. I'll go to Haiyuan for dinner in a couple of days."
Ji Tong smiled slightly and said, "Okay."
Fang Chengyue paused for a few seconds, then finally asked, "Tongtong, does your uncle know about this?"
"have no idea."
"How could he possibly know?"
Ji Tong lowered her eyes and said, "It's okay, he'll find out."
Ji Tong returned to Haiyuan, and it was already broad daylight.
The car was parked at the back door as well. Ji Tong thanked the driver, went back to her room, washed her hair, took a shower, and lay down on the bed in exhaustion, covering herself completely with the blanket.
Ji Tong only slept for three hours and woke up at 10:30.
Gu Lin sent him two messages.
[The person under guardianship: Are you awake?]
[09:28]
[The person under guardianship: Let me know when you wake up.]
[10:05]
Ji Tong stared at the two text messages for a long time before replying.
[JT: Just woke up.]
[Child under guardianship: Why are you sleeping for so long?]
JT: I drank a bit too much last night.
[The person under guardianship: Did you vomit?]
JT: No
[The person under guardianship: Where's my stomach?]
[The person under guardianship: Where does it hurt?]
Ji Tong paused for several seconds before continuing to type the next sentence.
[JT: I'm not feeling unwell, I just haven't been sleeping well.]
JT: I'm going to take a nap at home this afternoon.
[The ward: Okay]
JT: I'm not going back today.
[JT: My mom's flight is at 9 o'clock, I just got home]
Gu Lin took a minute to reply this time.
[The ward: Okay]
Ji Tong threw back the covers and sat up in bed.
Feeling incredibly heavy, Ji Tong sat on the edge of the bed, feeling like a ship suddenly loaded with cargo, the waterline sinking a little deeper with every breath.
Ji Tong sat for several minutes before getting up and walking towards the bathroom on the carpet.
After he finished washing up, he came out of the bathroom and went to draw the curtains when there was a soft knock on the door.
"戈戈."
Ji Tong turned his head and saw that it was Aunt Yang.
"Aunt Yang, what's wrong?"
"You've been sleeping too long, so Aunt Yang came up to check on you. What would you like for breakfast?"
"I'm not eating. Let's wait for Mom to come back so we can have lunch together," Ji Tong said, walking over and opening the curtains. "Did Dad go to pick up Mom? Where is he?"
“We’ve already brought him back,” Aunt Yang said. “He just arrived, but it seems he had something to discuss with your uncle. He went straight to his room as soon as he got back, and he seemed to be in a hurry. He didn’t even take off his clothes.”
Ji Tong stopped halfway through drawing the curtains.
After that conversation at the dinner table yesterday, Mom bought a ticket for the next available flight to Anjing.
Ji Tong knew that Song Jiahe had already guessed what was going on.
I never expected that my mother would contact my uncle first.
Ji Tong turned around, picked up the phone from the bed, and without any hesitation, walked straight towards Song Zhenshu's room.
He didn't knock; he simply pressed the doorknob and pushed the door open.
Song Zhenshu and Song Jiahe stood in front of the French windows on the balcony, with their backs to the bedroom entrance.
Neither of them noticed the suddenly opened door.
And so, Ji Tong heard Song Jiahe and Song Zhenshu talking.
Song Jiahe: "You've met Gu Lin."
Song Zhenshu: "Yes."
Ji Tong stopped walking and stopped all her movements.
Song Jiahe: "When?"
Song Zhenshu: "During Tongtong's final week."
Song Jiahe: "What did Gu Lin say to you?"
Song Zhenshu's crisp and decisive voice finally paused. He took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled.
"He didn't say anything, he just showed me a document."
"What document?"
Song Zhenshu fell silent again, and finally uttered two words briefly.
"will."
"Bang."
The sound of something falling to the ground came from the wooden floor of the bedroom entryway.
The sudden noise finally startled the people inside the house, and Song Zhenshu and Song Jiahe turned around at the same time.
Ji Tong stood at the door.
His phone fell to the ground.
The phone, which was perfectly intact when it fell from the second floor to the courtyard on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, shattered into pieces on the floor several tens of centimeters above.
After a moment of stunned silence, Song Zhenshu's facial muscles began to twitch and harden.
He looked at Ji Tong's expression at that moment—
over.
Something bad is going to happen.
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