Chapter 14 He's Not Real

Gao Cang sighed deeply, turned his head, and said to the tape recorder beside him, "0098 has developed a new personality, calling himself Mr. F, a mystery novelist. Mr. F has surreal delusional symptoms that are very different from Hirata Shuichi's primary personality. He believes that he is a spiritual entity from a higher dimension, possessing this body."

After Feng Bujue waited for him to finish speaking, he asked what he wanted to know, "Doctor, since it's 2005 now, Hirata's case must have been closed long ago, right? What was the final verdict?"

Gao Cang replied, "Two counts of premeditated murder, one of whom was a police officer, the circumstances were very serious, but considering your motive and mental state, the final sentence was life imprisonment."

"Is this a mental hospital?" Feng Bujue asked.

"This is a prison for the mentally ill." Gao Cang continued, "Every quarter, we conduct a new assessment of all prisoners." He paused, "Which is why we are talking now."

"How has Hirata been in the past fifteen years?" Feng Bujue said.

"More normal than you are now." Gao Cang replied, "When Hirata-kun is lucid, he tells me that whenever he recalls what happened that year, he enters a black and white world, and no matter how many times, he still sees memories of ghosts. Sometimes, the Watanabe and Tachibana personalities appear, and Hirata-kun will talk to himself at this time. I have also tried to communicate with these two personalities. The details of the case they described are consistent with the police records. I don't think these two personalities really remember what happened at the time. They just took the details of the case that the police later told Hirata as their own memories." He moved his eyes from the file to Feng Bujue's face, "What about you? Mr. F, you seem very interested in that case, which means you don't know what really happened, do you?"

"Yes, I was just about to ask, fifteen years have passed, and since the verdict was two counts of premeditated murder, then… Yamada's body should have been found, right?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Yamada's body was found seven years after the incident." Gao Cang replied, "I started contacting you around that time."

"How… could they convict him of 'two murders' even without finding Yamada's body back then?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Well…" Gao Cang said, "Given the circumstances at the time, the case was very clear. Hirata-kun was already mentally disturbed and had no relatives to speak for him. The lawyer assigned to him by the court was also making a guilty plea, so… basically, whatever the prosecutor said was the truth. All the evidence pointed to one fact: killing a police officer, seizing a gun, and then killing someone and going crazy."

"Absurd." Feng Bujue said, "How can you assume that's the truth before ruling out all possibilities? Maybe Yamada killed Fukui, then hid the gun in Hirata's house, strangled Sato Haruko in the tenement house and disguised it as suicide, and then fled… Then, Hirata going to work at the company on the 27th without incident can be explained."

Gao Cang looked at him for two seconds, "Hehe… Mr. F, if you could have appeared fifteen years ago and defended yourself as Hirata Shuichi, you might really have been acquitted." He picked up a document on the table, "Unfortunately, today, there are at least two points that can overturn your hypothesis. First, Yamada had no connection with Fukui, Hirata, or Sato Haruko. The police had already checked, and they were completely unrelated in terms of relatives, friends, interests, etc., so he had no motive to do these things; second, Yamada's body was found under the ruins of Hirata's old house that had been destroyed by the typhoon. The land was not sold by the government until seven years later, and the body was dug up when the foundations were being laid for the building. The estimated time of death was seven years ago. Although the body had turned into bones, there were obvious signs of trauma causing death, which was undoubtedly a murder and concealment of the body."

"Hmm…" Feng Bujue was silent for a few seconds and replied, "Okay, actually, I was just dissatisfied with the initial trial process and just casually came up with a hypothetical case that could be used as a defense."

"Hirata-kun's crimes are beyond doubt, Mr. F." Gao Cang said, "Now, since I have satisfied your curiosity, why don't you cooperate with me and answer some of my ques…"

"Sure enough, you're not real either." Feng Bujue interrupted Gao Cang, thinking, I finally understand a little bit about what this script means.

Gao Cang's face darkened, and he suddenly stopped talking.

"You said that you started contacting Hirata shortly after Yamada's body was found. I understood when I heard that sentence." Feng Bujue said, "Seven years after the incident, when Hirata learned that Yamada's body had been found, he developed another personality… you."

Gao Cang said, "Heh… are you saying that I am the same kind of existence as Watanabe and Tachibana?"

"No, you are on a higher level than them. In my opinion… Hirata's mental world should have a total of four layers." Feng Bujue said unhurriedly, "In November 1990, Hirata Shuichi went crazy after committing two homicides and witnessing his wife's suicide. Since then, his thoughts have been imprisoned in the deepest layer most of the time, a terrifying and chaotic world."

"A month later, as the investigation of the case became clearer, Hirata underwent repeated interrogations and obtained some information in court, so he developed two new personalities - Doctor Watanabe and Detective Tachibana. These two personalities can bring him out of the black and white chaotic and twisted memories, bring him to the second layer of the world, allow him to have some breathing time, and help and urge him to deny those memories about ghosts and try to restore the true memories."

Feng Bujue licked his dry lips, "Psychologists at most hypnotize prisoners to interrogate them, but they wouldn't go so far as to film videos. I should have known long ago that the space where Watanabe and Tachibana are located is also a mental world… that is a deeper layer of the subconscious than here, between rational thinking and twisted memories." He stared into Gao Cang's eyes, "And you, or rather, this cell we are in now, is the third layer."

Gao Cang said, "Then what do I represent?"

"Also memory." Feng Bujue said, "You represent the normal, credible memories in Hirata's mind for the past eight years…" He leaned back in his chair, raised his head, and wanted to touch the bridge of his nose as a habitual action, but realized that his hands were still cuffed, so he continued, "Time has diluted some things. After seven years of psychiatric treatment, and the other two personalities helped him relieve stress, plus learning about Yamada's exact death and location in prison, Hirata came to this third layer."

"In this layer, he can talk to you, analyze some things calmly and objectively, and accept and recognize the status quo. If Hirata can stay with you all the time and not return to the deeper two layers, even if he cannot restore those memories, at least he can recover into a normal person." Feng Bujue's gaze shifted to the mini tape recorder, "The tape recorder contains his conversation with you… or rather, the memory he has sorted out by himself, so I say that these memories are normal and credible, and he doesn't want to confuse them with others. But the existence of the tape recorder also shows that Hirata's time here is limited."

A helpless expression appeared on Gao Cang's face, "Mr. F, you are basically right, but I have to tell you regretfully that there are only three layers here." He sighed, "My place is the layer closest to the real world." He glanced around, "The tape recorder… and the documents on the table are all Hirata's memories. And this room is roughly a projection of the real cell where Hirata lives, but there are no tables, chairs, or lamps in the real cell."

"Only three layers?" Feng Bujue said, "How could that be…" He looked suspicious, thinking, Hirata's memory of the motivation was restored, his memory of killing Fukui was restored and distorted, and although his memory of witnessing Sato Haruko hanging himself was also distorted, it was also restored. These should have gradually emerged around the time he was arrested, but why does he have no memory of killing Yamada? Even seven years later, when he learned about the relevant circumstances of Yamada's death, this Gao Cang personality only revealed some limited information and knew nothing about the murder process…

"Impossible, if there is no previous layer, it means that Yamada's death has nothing to do with Hirata." Feng Bujue said decisively, "That memory does not exist in his brain at all, so it cannot be found in any layer."

Gao Cang shook his head, "But the facts all point to…"

"Give me a mirror." Feng Bujue interrupted.

"What are you going to do?" Gao Cang asked.

"I want to leave here." Feng Bujue replied.

"At most you will return to the real world, and when you get to reality, it means that Hirata will return to me here, or fall into the deeper two layers." Gao Cang seemed to be advising him.

"I'm not going up." Feng Bujue said, "I'm going next door."

"Next door? What do you mean?" Gao Cang asked.

"You won't understand." Feng Bujue finally put on some airs of a higher-dimensional being, "Just give me the mirror."

In the blink of an eye, Doctor Gao Cang disappeared, leaving only Feng Bujue alone in the room, and on the table in front of him, there was a small framed mirror with a plastic stand behind the frame, supporting it and standing facing diagonally upwards.

Feng Bujue dragged the chair forward a few times, came to an angle where he could look at the mirror at close range, and he saw that the man in the mirror was not himself, but a man who looked to be in his forties, with a stubble beard and a pale face.

"Hirata Shuichi, we finally meet." Feng Bujue said to the face in the mirror. He had seen Hirata's resume in the initial black and white world, which had a photo on it. Although the face in front of him was a dozen years older, he still recognized it.