ryethenovel Chapter 44 The Closest Person
Chapter 44 The Closest Person
Jiang Yu's pupils suddenly contracted.
He slammed on the brakes, and the A8 came to a screeching halt at the roadside.
The tires left two black skid marks on the concrete, emitting a piercing screeching sound.
Jiang Yu pushed open the car door and rushed out.
He ran to the landscape stone and reached out to touch its surface.
Rough, cold
There really is nothing there.
It's as if this stone has always been just an ordinary stone.
Like countless other stones, it has nothing special about it.
"impossible…"
Jiang Yu muttered to himself, then turned to look at the foot of the mountain.
"..."
What about that arched doorway?
Where's the ticket window?
What?! They're all gone?!
The foot of the mountain was deserted, with only a narrow dirt road winding its way to the mountainside.
The dirt road was overgrown with weeds, some as tall as a person, which rustled in the wind.
There are no boardwalks, no cable cars, no viewing platforms...
There wasn't a single piece of trash to be seen on the ground.
This is a barren mountain.
A barren mountain with no signs of development whatsoever!
"How could this happen..."
Jiang Yu stood there, his legs feeling as heavy as lead.
He wanted to walk further and see things more closely.
But I can't lift my legs.
It's not that I lack strength, it's that my brain gives the instructions, but my legs won't obey.
He was rooted to the spot.
They were frozen in place by this absurd reality.
Lin Wei and Nagi also got out of the car and stood not far behind him.
Nagi leaned against the car door, arms crossed, the hem of her trench coat swaying gently in the wind.
Lin Wei walked over, her eyes behind her gold-rimmed glasses displaying a complex expression.
"Jiang Yu, are you alright?"
Jiang Yu remained silent.
He took out his phone and opened his payment history.
The bill clearly shows "Today's expenses: 100.00 yuan".
However, the recipient of the payment is not Yushan Forest Park.
Instead: Picking Garden (*Plum)
He stared at the words, his fingers beginning to tremble.
I clearly paid 100 yuan to the "Yushan Forest Park ticket office"...
When did it become a "picking garden"?
"What's going on with this picking garden?" Jiang Yu's voice trembled uncontrollably.
That trembling wasn't from fear.
It's anger.
It's the anger that comes from being tricked.
Nagi spoke from a distance.
Her tone was relaxed, as if she were talking about something completely ordinary.
"Strawberry, what's wrong with you?"
"On your way here, you saw an old lady selling strawberries by the roadside and felt sorry for her, so you bought 100 yuan worth of strawberries from her."
She pointed to the trunk of the car.
"The strawberries are still in the trunk."
Buying strawberries?
Who the hell bought strawberries?!
The old lady is pitiful, what does that have to do with me?
I'm having trouble even feeding myself, how could I possibly buy strawberries to help others?
Jiang Yu felt as if a string in his mind had snapped.
He rushed to the trunk and ripped it open.
Several plastic bags were neatly arranged in the trunk.
The transparent plastic bag was filled with strawberries.
The strawberries weren't very big, but they were a vibrant red, glistening enticingly in the sunlight.
Jiang Yu stared at the strawberries, feeling as if he had fallen into a carefully designed trap.
Each strawberry is like an eye, watching him…
Laugh at him!
He opened his mouth, as if to say, "I've never bought strawberries."
But he swallowed the words back down his throat.
"I'll go up and take a look."
He turned and ran up the mountain.
"Jiang Yu!"
Lin Wei called out from behind.
But he didn't turn around.
He wanted to go up and take a closer look.
Take a look at that "core".
Those things couldn't have disappeared too, could they?
Otherwise, where did Nagimitsu get the mud and grass pulp on her body?
Where did her exhaustion come from?
The road up the mountain is very steep…
The pebbles rolled under my feet, making a crunching sound as I stepped on them.
The roadside was covered with bushes that were more than half a person tall.
Just like the one Nagi Hikari jumped in.
He was moving very fast, and the branches kept scraping against his clothes, making a hissing sound.
When he arrived at the "core" following the route he remembered...
The barbed wire is still there.
It stands over five meters tall, its top adorned with coiled, snake-belly-shaped spikes that gleam coldly in the sunlight.
But things are a little different here than before.
A seal was affixed to the barbed wire fence.
A white seal with red lettering: "Binhai City Urban Planning Bureau ○ Seal"
Below that is a line of smaller print, which is today's date.
The seal is very new; the glue on it hasn't completely dried yet.
Jiang Yu stood there, staring at the seal, his mind buzzing.
Inside the barbed wire fence, the dense patch of grass was gone.
Instead, there was a square, dilapidated object resembling a transformer box.
"Jiang Yu".
Lin Wei's voice came from behind.
She and Nagi Hikari arrived beside him at some point.
Next, Lin Wei calmly recounted the correct "storyline" to Jiang Yu.
"The patrol team members who worked overtime last night discovered this place while scouting the area."
"A power station has been illegally built on this Gengo Mountain, which is an unauthorized construction."
"Considering the circumstances of the alternative construction and the time constraints, the bureau has decided to resolve the issue today."
"Let's take this opportunity to let Sister Guang show you the routine procedures of the patrol department."
"After Sister Guang reported it to the bureau online, we arranged for its handling."
"The relevant departments did come to support you because they were worried about potential dangers during the process."
"It's true that the relevant department head added you on WeChat."
"Because Hikari has a bad memory, she said you were a trainee clerk in the Special Investigations Division."
"Our city planning bureau does indeed have a special investigation department."
"But the requirements for entering the Special Investigations Division are very high, such as education, qualifications, family background..."
"It's practically impossible for anyone to get into Tchaco in their early twenties."
"The person in charge of the relevant department may be curious about you, which is why they added you as a friend."
"This is what happened today."
After speaking, Lin Wei adjusted her glasses.
"From beginning to end, there was no Yushan Mountain, no scenic area, no crazy tourists, and none of the sci-fi movie-like dialogue you mentioned."
"This is just a typical privately built power station facility."
That's all.
Jiang Yu stood still, motionless.
He looked at the barbed wire fence in front of him, which was sealed off...
Looking at the square, somewhat rusty transformer box inside the wire mesh.
There was a tattered spider web on the box.
A gray spider is trying hard to repair its web, which has been torn by the wind.
Round and round...
Not too fast, not too slow.
Jiang Yu stared blankly at the spider web, somewhat lost in thought.
There is no scenic area called "Yushan" in this world...
There is only this desolate mountain called Gengo Mountain.
Leaving work in the morning…
The things he said to Nagi in the car, and the things that happened here, are all fabricated.
Or rather, most of them don't exist, and only a small portion do.
However, its existence is completely different from what he imagined.
Lin Wei's voice continued.
"Jiang Yu, I know it's hard for you to accept right now."
"But that's the truth."
"The things you experienced this morning were all fabricated by your brain."
"Actually, I noticed your resume yesterday, which mentioned a history of mental illness, so I've been paying close attention to you ever since."
"My major in college was psychological counseling, and I've seen far too many cases like yours."
"Delusional fabrication, accompanied by fabrication memory disorder."
"I believe that what I am saying now is something your attending physician must have said to you back then."
"Because you suffered severe psychological trauma and failed to receive timely and effective psychological intervention, the post-traumatic stress response combined with long-term emotional deprivation led you to develop a psychological defense mechanism centered on 'fictitious memories.'"
Simply put, when a reality becomes too painful, consciousness chooses to refuse to accept it.
"This is not weakness, nor is it a flaw..."
"This is the brain's most basic protective mechanism."
"Your brain does something for you without you even realizing it, something you've never thanked it for."
"That means helping you fabricate memories that don't exist."
"But have you ever noticed..."
"These fictional memories all have one thing in common."
"They are all proving 'you are right'."
Lin Wei walked up to Jiang Yu and looked him straight in the eye.
"Your brain is trying to build a system."
"In this system, you have a special identity, a special master, a special mission, and a special truth."
"You're not the patient, you're the protagonist."
"You are not an excluded person; you are one of the minority who have the truth."
"You have transformed an ordinary barren mountain into a nationally certified forest park."
"You portrayed the illegally constructed equipment discovered by your colleagues as the 'core'."
"You portrayed Guangjie's fall in the grass as her entering some mysterious space."
"You've turned a simple patrol mission into a hierarchical operation involving the elimination of 'anomalies'."
"Everything you created was a figment of your imagination."
"Of course, you made these things up not because you wanted to deceive people."
"It's because you don't want to admit that you're sick."
Lin Wei's voice was very soft and gentle.
But every word felt like a needle pricking Jiang Yu's ears, causing him pain.
"But have you ever thought about...?"
"What does your insistence that you're not sick mean to those around you?"
"Your family, your friends, the people who like you..."
What have they been enduring?
"You're not just suffering from your illness, but also from your forgetting them."
"Every time you have an episode, you forget certain things or fabricate things that don't exist..."
"They were treated like complete strangers."
"Can you imagine that feeling?"
What would it feel like if your closest person looked you in the eye and asked you who you were?
The closest person?
I'm an orphan, and my closest relative is Ji Mao.
and many more…
It seems like we have it now... right?
Jiang Yu's mind conjured up the image of Jiang Ning.
That little girl in her school uniform, with a high ponytail, whose eyes crinkled into crescent moons when she smiled.
But somehow…
He couldn't see Jiang Ning's face clearly.
That face was as blurry in his memory as a photograph that had been soaked in water.
The facial contours were still there, but the features were all blurred together.
It looks like it's been pixelated.
There was a moment...
Jiang Yu had a very absurd idea.
The image of her younger sister in her mind seems a little different from Jiang Ning's...
Could it be two people?
Why was it easier for him to accept that Jiang Ning was his sister after she covered her face?
Or…
Do you have two younger sisters?