The moment He Yuanqiu finished speaking, her eyes closed again, as if every scrap of strength had been drained from her. Her breathing was so shallow that Fang Runing had to press a fingertip under her nose to be sure she was alive.
There was no time to digest what she'd said. The drainpipe below trembled faintly—He Yuanxia was climbing, faster than before. Fang Runing glanced down: the girl clung to the wall like a gecko, blue skirt snapping in the wind, thin white legs alternating against the gray concrete, every toe landing precisely in a joint between bricks. She tipped her face up and smiled at Fang Runing. In the morning light her face was nearly transparent, only her eyes black and bottomless.
"Where are you two going?" He Yuanxia's voice floated up, light as paper. "The third floor doesn't welcome grown-ups. Only children can come in."
Fang Runing didn't answer. She looked up at the barred window, then down at He Yuanqiu in her arms. He Yuanqiu's breath suddenly quickened, brow knitting, like someone had pricked her in a dream. Fang Runing cradled her head a little higher and said quietly: "He Yuanqiu. Tell me—what does 'take her with us' mean? Who is she to you?"
He Yuanqiu didn't open her eyes, but her lips moved. Fang Runing bent close and caught a thread of voice, faint and broken: "Not... not my child. My sister. My own little sister. They brought her here. I came for her. I didn't get her. They said she died. I don't believe it."
Fang Runing went rigid.
Not a child. A sister. Her own sister.
The puzzle pieces flew together. The month He Yuanqiu was twenty, she'd taken a month's leave—family matters, she said. The medical record said thirty-two weeks of pregnancy, premature rupture of membranes, emergency surgery, no family signature. He Yuanxia said the record was fake. If it really was fake, then He Yuanqiu had never been pregnant at all. She came here for her sister. Her sister was brought here. And then? What happened?
"Keep going," Fang Runing said, her voice dropping without her meaning it to, like coaxing someone on the edge of shattering to finish the last of the story.
He Yuanqiu's fingers curled, catching the front of Fang Runing's clothes. Her voice was weaker still, dug up from somewhere very deep: "They hid her. This hospital... sells children. I found the third floor. I heard her crying. They found me. They gave me an injection. After that I don't remember."
Fang Runing looked up at the sealed window. The row of empty cribs stood silently behind the glass, the names on the tags perfectly legible: Yuanxia. Not Yuanqiu. Yuanxia. And suddenly she understood; a chill crawled up from her tailbone and climbed her spine all the way to the base of her skull.
He Yuanqiu's sister was named He Yuanxia. That girl—the one in the blue skirt, digging in the courtyard, chasing them down the corridor—was He Yuanxia. Not an NPC generated by the system, not a monster. A child who had died here. She couldn't have been more than six when she died, maybe younger. And He Yuanqiu's last conscious thought before her coma was—she was going to take her sister away.
Three years later, He Yuanqiu took a knife for Fang Runing and fell into a coma. That was when the system chose her, "connected" her to Ward Two. She bound Fang Runing into the game, but her own consciousness was trapped here. And her sister—the child dead all these years—had been waiting here for her, all this time.
"She isn't your sister," Fang Runing said quietly. "She's your child. Did you forget? You came in looking for your sister, but then you stopped remembering, and thought you'd carried a baby. The system mixed two sets of memories together."
He Yuanqiu didn't answer. Tears welled at the corners of her closed eyes and slid down her cheekbones onto Fang Runing's hand.
"Or maybe she remembers everything," Fang Runing corrected herself, very softly. "Maybe she remembers all of it."
The drainpipe lurched. He Yuanxia was less than two meters below them now, both small hands gripping the lip of the ledge, her whole body hanging in the air. She tipped her face up, black eyes fixed on Fang Runing, mouth stretched into a smile that looked painted on.
"You guessed wrong," she said, squeezing the words out through the smile. "I've seen the baby. On the second floor. It was much cuter than you. But it wouldn't obey me, so I locked it up."
Fang Runing stared at her, and the fragments in her head began to rearrange themselves. He Yuanqiu had been pregnant. Six years ago she had come here, and there had been a child. Sister and baby—both existed. Both were real. The infant wrapped in white cloth on the second floor was He Yuanqiu's child. He Yuanxia was the sister. Both of them had died here.
"Did my big sister forget both things?" He Yuanxia kept climbing; one leg was already over the ledge. "That's fine. If she forgot, I'll remember for her. I've been here six years. I remember every single day. She promised she'd come take me away. She didn't come. She forgot me. Then she died, and didn't die, and came back, and became a cat."
Her tone slid from smiling to resentful to a calm that was worse than either: "So I have to make her stay. Stay here. That way she'll never forget again. I'm not waiting anymore."
Fang Runing tucked He Yuanqiu behind her. He Yuanxia had already reached the top, crouched at the edge of the ledge, less than two meters away. Wind tore her hair into a mess; rust and dust streaked the blue skirt. Her eyes were terrifyingly large, black as two wells.
"Move," He Yuanxia said. "Leave my sister here, and I'll let you go."
Fang Runing's hand closed around the hemostatic forceps at her waist. She knew the thing meant little against something that could crawl on walls—but holding it made her feel less than helpless. She looked at the girl and, without planning to, asked: "The day your sister came in—what actually happened?"
He Yuanxia's smile froze. Her lips trembled, and the smile cracked like a mask, showing something underneath that was more real, and softer. She said nothing. Slowly, she raised one hand and pointed at the window behind Fang Runing.
"Come in," she said. "See for yourself."
The barred window lit up from within. Warm yellow light spilled between the bars onto Fang Runing and He Yuanqiu. Not lamplight—images. The whole window became a screen, and pictures began to surface: blurry, swaying, like an old film projected out of someone's memory.
Fang Runing turned—and saw the fourteenth of July, six years ago.
He Yuanqiu, in a soaked sundress, charging through the hospital's front doors. In her arms, something wrapped in a bedsheet—small, baby-sized. Her face was young, hair plastered to her cheeks, eyes blazing. She took the stairs, ran down corridors, burst through door after door. Nurses blocked every one; her hands got cut, someone slapped her across the face, and she kept climbing. Third floor. At last, the third floor. She shoved open the soft-padded door. The room was full of empty cribs, and in the very last one sat a small child. Blue skirt, two braids.
"Big sister." The girl turned and called to her.
He Yuanqiu rushed over and swept her into her arms. The sheet slipped—and showed the true newborn inside: a tiny bundle, blue-purple all over, long past breath.
Fang Runing could barely breathe.
She watched He Yuanqiu hand the dead infant to her sister, then go for the door. It burst open from outside; a crowd in white coats closed around them. He Yuanqiu was shouting, struggling. Someone drove a needle into her arm. Her body sagged—but her hand still gripped her sister's wrist.
Then the picture went black. Voices remained—nurses, blurred, only fragments clear: "...no breath... what about the big one?" "Keep her locked up... shipping her out tomorrow... no—the inspectors are coming. Bad luck." "Then... get rid of it."
Out of the black screen, a little girl's voice: "Big sister, run."
Then a dull, heavy sound.
The picture vanished. The window was only a window again—dark, cold.
Fang Runing turned her head toward He Yuanxia. The girl wasn't smiling anymore. Nothing at all was left on her face, just a thin shell, and beneath it a churning dark tide. She looked at the unconscious He Yuanqiu behind Fang Runing and said, slowly:
"When she came back, she didn't know me. Her memories had been taken apart and scattered all through this building. The second floor keeps the part of her that was a mother. The third floor keeps me. All she remembers is that there was someone she had to take away—and she forgot why. She thought finding her was enough, that finding meant leaving. But does she know? You can't leave. No one who comes here gets to leave."
Fang Runing held He Yuanqiu tighter.
"Then we leave together," she said.
He Yuanxia didn't move. Her eyes widened slowly, as if she'd heard something that couldn't exist. And then the shell finally broke; her lips shook beyond her control. She tried to speak and got out only something very small, like a voice with a hand around its throat.
"You... lied to me."
"I don't lie," Fang Runing said. "You and your sister—I'm taking you both."
The wind swept through the buildings and the whole wall moaned. In her coma, He Yuanqiu's brow creased faintly, as if she'd heard the promise inside a dream. And the red thread on Fang Runing's wrist, as if set alight by something, began to blaze.