It took a full minute before Doctor Pei spoke again. He stared at Jiang Xiaohu on the hospital bed, his expression peculiar.
"I get the sense that every member of that family is unhinged — and I don't mean that as an insult. I mean it in the most literal sense." Doctor Pei stood up and circled the hospital bed. "Three years ago, Jiang Xiaohu's mother brought him and his older sister to see me. I still remember that day vividly. Her name was Zhang Chuyu — she dressed beautifully and reeked of expensive perfume."
"She was head-to-toe in designer brands, but I could tell she wasn't happy. She had something weighing on her mind, and her thoughts seemed to drift. During our conversation, she kept losing focus."
"After a brief exchange, I had a rough picture of her family situation."
"Her older daughter, Jiang Bai, suffered from paranoid delusions — she was convinced someone was trying to kill her. She looked at everyone as if they were a serial killer."
"The younger son, Jiang Xiaohu, had a more peculiar condition. He would frequently do inexplicable, extremely dangerous things — turning on the gas stove by himself, pouring water into electrical outlets, playing with fire at home, that sort of thing."
"Zhang Chuyu had scolded Jiang Xiaohu more times than she could count, but the boy not only refused to listen — he escalated."
"Eventually his father, Jiang Long, found out and beat Jiang Xiaohu several times. But the violence didn't change the boy. If anything, it made his personality even more twisted."
"Impulsive, aggressive — he was always getting into fights at school, breaking things. Sometimes it was almost as if he were possessed, desperately trying to hurt the people around him."
"It was my first time encountering a patient like this. Given Jiang Xiaohu's young age, I decided not to prescribe medication. Instead, I encouraged his parents to communicate with him more."
"I had the boy's best interests at heart, but Zhang Chuyu didn't see it that way. She was extremely impatient — she believed that a sick child should be given medicine, period."
"Our treatment approach clashed. As psychiatrists, we're used to being misunderstood. It was a small matter, and I didn't dwell on it."
"When a child's personality changes drastically after birth, it's almost certainly related to their environment. In my view, a large part of Jiang Xiaohu's condition stemmed from his parents."
"To better understand Jiang Xiaohu, I asked his mother and sister to step out, leaving the boy alone so I could speak with him properly."
"That conversation led me to something deeply unsettling — something almost terrifying."
Doctor Pei made no effort to hide anything from Jiang Xiaohu on the bed. Speaking right in front of him, he continued: "During our conversation, the boy inadvertently let something slip — his mother had been lying."
"Lying?" Chen Ge frowned. "A mother would lie just to get her own child committed to a psychiatric hospital? If anyone was lying, I'd think it was Jiang Xiaohu."
Doctor Pei shook his head slightly. "I couldn't be certain who was telling the truth either. But later, after Jiang Long died in a car accident, I started to think Jiang Xiaohu might not have been lying after all."
"What did he tell you?"
"Jiang Xiaohu confided in me secretly — he said he had never done any of those dangerous things on his own. It was his mother who grabbed his hand and forced him to do them, all to create the illusion that he had gone insane."
"The mother forced her own child to do those dangerous things?" Chen Ge was growing more confused by the second. "But why would she do that?"