"I am curious about everything related to this child, yet there is a faint sense of unease. He is like a swamp — the closer you get, the more dangerous it becomes."
"The child's mother suffers from bipolar disorder. She only becomes somewhat less anxious when she sees her own child. For the sake of treatment, the doctors here would always bring the child to visit her, primarily to help ease her condition."
"The child has an innate dependence on his mother. Despite being so small, he can already recognize her."
"But what struck me as strange was this: the first word the child ever spoke was not 'Mama,' nor his own name — it was 'door.'"
"At first, I thought I had misheard, or that it was an unconscious sound the child had made. But when the nurse picked him up to leave, he pointed his tiny, rosy little finger at the door behind which his mother was being kept, repeating the same word over and over — door."
"He seemed to be trying to communicate something to us. He wanted to get close to that door."
"This was the part that unsettled me the most. I interrogated every single person in the hospital — not one of them had ever taught him that word!"
"No one had taught him, yet he spoke it, and he clearly understood its meaning. Who had told him these things? Was there something else existing in my office?"
"What happened afterward was even more terrifying. When the nurse carrying the child and I entered Ward Three to visit his mother, the child stared toward the end of the corridor, waving both hands as though greeting someone."
"I saw it plainly — there was no one else in the corridor besides us."
"Had it stopped there, I might not have been so worried."
"But then the nurse also noticed something off and asked him what he was doing — who he was waving to."
"The child stammered out three words — He Yajun."
"The nurse didn't understand the significance of those three words, assuming the child was just babbling aimlessly. She didn't give it much thought and carried him deeper into the corridor."
"The truth is, I had wanted to stop her right then, because He Yajun was a real person. Before the construction of the Third Ward, a worker had died in an accident. His name was He Yajun."
"Not even the doctors or nurses in the hospital knew about this — so how had the child happened to call out He Yajun's name?"
"I stood in the doorway of the ward, watching the nurse carry the child away. When she reached the stairs, the little boy once again waved at an empty corner beside the nurse."
"I have to be honest — I've encountered countless lunatics suffering from bizarre afflictions, and I've never once been afraid. But that day, standing in that corridor, I felt fear for the very first time."
"After that incident, I became even more watchful of him."
The first letter ended there. Up to the very last line, the director never mentioned who the letter was addressed to.
"Surname Chen? Could it be my father? But he runs a haunted house — what does that have to do with being a doctor?" Chen Ge had been filled with joy, thinking he'd found a clue left behind by his parents, but now it seemed he'd been a bit too optimistic.
He opened the second letter. The contents inside were even more eerie.
"Doctor Chen, we need to meet. Things are starting to get out of control."
"As soon as the child learned to crawl, he would actively seek out his mother. No one in the Third Ward has any idea how the child managed to leave the office and make his way to the door of Ward Three on his own."