Chapter 482 Secret Realm 2

"Dr. Mand, I've been hearing voices lately."

Perhaps unaccustomed to the clinic's clean, orderly environment, Old Mark sat perfectly straight with his hands resting on his knees, like a student in a classroom.

Mand paused. A long-absent look of interest flickered in his eyes as he asked, "What kind of voices?"

"Well... I can't really explain it," Old Mark stammered. Uneducated and accustomed to dealing mostly with dead fish and seawater, he naturally struggled to articulate himself.

"It's just—it's just a lot of people talking."

"Sometimes men, sometimes women. The voices get loud and soft."

"What are they saying?"

"I... I can't hear them clearly." Working himself into a panic, Old Mark's tone grew urgent. "But I know they're—they're all talking about me!"

Mand sat across from him, his expression unchanged, but internally, his excitement was mounting.

After two years in Fishhook Town, it seemed his true profession as a psychiatrist finally had a chance to shine.

Displaying immense patience, he continued his questioning in a gentle tone he hadn't used in a long time. "Is there anything else?"

"There are... there are also some strange things." Old Mark hesitated, glancing nervously out the window.

Mand followed his gaze but saw nothing.

"They're always on the edge of my vision, like shadows. When I turn to look, they're gone, but everyone else says they don't see anything."

"Later, I stopped turning my head. I'd just stare straight ahead and watch out of the corner of my eye, and they were still there."

Visual and auditory hallucinations.

Mand gripped his fountain pen and jotted it down on the medical chart.

"Have you experienced any recent stress? Insomnia? Changes in appetite?"

"I can't sleep," Old Mark said. "In the middle of the night, when it's darkest, I always wake up for a while."

"I... I don't dare open my eyes..." Sudden fear mingled with deep exhaustion on the man's face. "Because I know it's standing by the bed, watching me."

Mand talked extensively with Old Mark that day. He prescribed a few mild, relatively inexpensive medications the man could afford, and they agreed he would return to the clinic in a few days for further diagnosis.

His symptoms were complex: visual and auditory hallucinations, sleep disorders, paranoia... For a moment, even Mand struggled to pin down the specific illness.

And this, for the first time in a long while, ignited Mand's enthusiasm.

After work, he simply grabbed a handful of dog food for March, let the dog out into the backyard to play, and hurried to his study. Digging through the bottom shelf, he pulled out the psychiatric texts he had brought from the city, searching for a condition that matched the symptoms.

Three days later, at two in the morning.

When he finally closed the last book, his notebook was densely packed with symptom analyses and differential diagnoses.

But the conclusion column remained empty.

Mand stood up and walked to the window.

He looked at the reflection of his young yet haggard, stubble-covered face in the glass. Yet his eyes were incredibly sharp, gleaming with an inexplicable light.

He hadn't seen that light in a long time. The last time it had appeared was when he graduated from the Royal Medical Academy with top honors.

A brand-new case.

An unrecorded, unnamed psychiatric illness.

If he could fully document the course of the disease, propose a reasonable hypothesis for its cause, or even find a cure... the name "Mand" would appear in medical journals, on the Academy's wall of fame, and on his mentor's lips.

Mand turned around to look at the desk covered in notes and books. Suddenly, the small town he was stuck in didn't feel so unbearable after all.

"Rustle..."

A faint, indescribable noise suddenly reached his ears, and out of the corner of his eye, a dark shadow seemed to flash by.

He abruptly whipped his head around to look out the window.

But all that met his eyes was the deep, profound darkness.

Perhaps it was the wind blowing the branches, or a playful stray cat.

Chalking it up to his recent exhaustion and lack of rest, he didn't pay it much mind.

Mand returned to his bedroom and lay down. Harboring fantasies of a bright future, he drifted into a beautiful dream.

...

Of course, it wasn't that the residents of Fishhook Town were so mentally healthy that a psychiatrist like him should rarely see a case in two years.

In fact, according to the theories Mand had studied, the modern medical community generally believed that even the most outwardly cheerful and open-minded individuals harbored mental issues deep down, just to varying degrees of severity.

This place was different from the big cities, where well-fed, well-educated nobles had gradually become aware of the dangers of mental illness through the Medical Association's campaigns.

The ordinary residents of Fishhook Town didn't even know what a so-called "psychological illness" meant.

Even if Mand promoted his services vigorously, these commoners—dressed in patched linen and constantly worrying about rent—were obviously not going to waste their precious rest time visiting his clinic for insomnia, overthinking, persistent low moods, or a loss of interest, much less spend money on medication.

Under these circumstances, the complex symptoms found in Old Mark and the possibility of discovering a brand-new psychiatric illness undoubtedly thrilled Mand, who desperately wanted to leave this small town and realize his grand ambitions.

As long as he could become an official member of the Medical Association, everything he desired would fall right into his hands.

Over the next few weeks, Mand felt a sense of hope and brightness that he hadn't experienced since being assigned to Fishhook Town.

It was as if every passing moment was filled with drive.

He even stopped caring about his appearance. With a thick beard covering his jaw, he saw patients during the day while discussing Old Mark's condition, exhaustively recording the voices, the shadows, and the feeling of being watched in the medical chart without missing a single detail. When he returned home at night, he would leave March in the yard and sit alone in his study, organizing the day's notes and consulting the medical texts he had brought from the city until the early hours of the morning.

And as his conversations with Old Mark deepened, he gained a clearer understanding of the man's experiences.

"They don't like light. Just like how you might hate a certain smell, it won't cause any substantial harm to your body; it's just an instinctive aversion."

"Those shadows always appear when you're exhausted. At three in the morning, like I said before, even if you close your eyes, you'll see things squirming in the dark."

"At first, I only sensed those strange voices and shadows when I was alone, but now they're appearing more and more frequently."

"Sorry, I mean no offense, but Dr. Mand, there happens to be one standing right behind you right now."