CH 44.2

“Ning Sha is an Extraordinary.” There is a fourth voice here, ending their discussion entirely.

“Supervising Physician, sir?” Xi, Dee and Yi all rise to stand at attention, putting their fists on their heart, and bow forty-five degrees in deference.

“Have a seat.” Cang Wendong stands in front of table, and flips the heavy files a little, explaining, “if Jiang Yiyi wants to take them to the fifth floor with him, then we will accommodate them.”

He is straightening up each of the files strewn across the place, putting them squarely and precisely in place, in order.

“The more weaknesses he shows, the more openings we have.” Cang Wendong has finished organising, and smiles at Xi, Dee and Yi, “worry not, and remember, every prisoner approved to be incarcerated beyond the second floor deserve their punishment, even if they were to die.”

Xi appears to furrow his brow slightly, but Dee interrupts before he can say anything, “Supervising Physician, is the Warden still away?”

Cang Wendong adjusts his glasses, “he is still busy. Is anything the matter?”

“Not exactly. It only seemed that the Warden has been away for quite the long time…”

“They are taking their time in the sweeps, since we did just find someone like Jiang Yiyi who appears to have slipped past the net entirely.”

Cang Wendong glances at them, “you may continue now. I will be visiting Ei and Bee.”

After Cang Wendong has left, Yi finally lifts his boot off of Xi’s foot, “calm down. That was the Supervising Physician.”

“So what if he was?” Xi raises his voice, “what did he mean ‘deserve their punishment’? If the Observers all followed his example, it’d be better if we were simply disbanded.”

“Do not forget what the Warden carved into the door of the Control Centre in the past.”

“Act on Our Conscience! Act on Behalf of the People!”

“Fine, fine, we get it, and stop crying about it. You know the Supervising Physician has always held that view about the prisoners.” Dee is keeping his voice quite low, “his loyalty to Warden is clear for all to see. You don’t doubt him, do you?”

“Of course not.” Xi is lowering his voice as well, “I just don’t think the attitude is appropriate. It’s like he’s saying all those prisoners are all some unforgivable…” He pauses, though, and the other two are looking at him slightly odd. Well, yes, the prisoners there definitely are completely unforgivable.

“But still, didn’t the Warden establish the Observers in order to reduce any unnecessary injustice?” Xi makes his point, “even if they have all committed unforgivable felonies, but they have already faced their justice in court. If we can simply decree that they ‘don’t deserve to live,’ does that make us any different from them?”

“Upholding the lives of any person also means upholding the lives of prisoners. They are the same weight.”

“Wait, wait, wait…” Dee sighs, “Xi, do you know why you’ve always been unlikable?”

“Unlikeable? Me?” Clearly, Xi lacks the self-awareness.

Dee helplessly glances at Yi.

Yi sighs, “what, you think just you have your morals and ethics here? We need you to remind us of our conviction?”

“I don’t mean that.” Xi’s voice weakens, “I just…”

“It’s fine. Low EQ is terminal. No treatment. Leave him.” Dee tries to soften the mood, “he’s capable and wilful, you know. He is even able to take over Jiang Yiyi’s evaluation…”

Though Dee then immediately reveals his intentions, “but Jiang Yiyi really appears to be quite an interesting person. I wonder if I…”

“By the way,” Xi quickly puts a stop to Dee, “Cang Wendong just said Ning Sha is an Extraordinary. How? Yi, did you not notice anything during the evaluation?”

Is Xi really that dense, or just pretending to be that dense? Dee, interrupted, decides to kill time by pondering this question instead.

Yi shakes his head, however, “I did find Ning Sha to be severely mental. He had the nickname Lunatic as well…” He gets back to his file, and points to a page, “but from the records, I don’t see anything he did that was out of the ordinary. I do not know on what basis the Supervising Physician concluded that either.”

“Now that makes me curious. Has Ning Sha always been an Extraordinary? Or, did he become one after meeting Jiang Yiyi?” Dee is still burning with curiosity.

“If the Supervising Physician said that, there is no question that Ning Sha is Extraordinary.” Xi cannot be bothered with Dee’s curiosity, and simply says, “then presumably, we assent to all three of their transfers. I’ll send the approval notices over to Ye Wang.”

“Dismissed.”

Ye Wang has been waiting far too long for this approval notice. Yes, it hasn’t been that long since Jiang Yiyi came to the fourth floor – in fact, he hasn’t even been here for as long as he was on the third floor, but the feeling of the end of an era is quite strong, so much so that Ye Wang finds how he felt during the first meeting with Jiang Yiyi quite foreign.

Was it disbelief at ‘how did they get spooked so hard by a single prisoner’? Or the confidence of ‘he’ll be dancing to my tune now that he’s on the fourth floor, no matter how amazing he thinks he is’?

Those thoughts seem so distant, that he finds even trying to recall them is like wading through a heavy fog. He cannot see clearly.

Did he really think like that? Why? How? Was he hit in the head?

Ye Wang is taking the time to reflect deeply on his mistake——Instead of taking the opportunity and electing to complicate an even more complicated scheme, he should have just isolated Doctor like he was warned to.

Look at the third floor. All was well, and the sun still shines brightly. Now, the fourth floor… The death quota is completely used up already. He is still scratching his head over all the reports he has to file. Not to mention the coming evaluation, the performances indices that will take a nosedive for sure, and temporarily deducted pay and the bonuses? Just completely obliterated into oblivion…

Yes. That is life as an adult. It’s filled with nonsense bureaucracy and tragedies.

“Are you quite finished with your emotional breakdown yet?” Magician has been waiting for a long time now, and hurries Ye Wang along when he fails to return to business after a while, “you can take all the time to mope after we’re done with our work.”

Ye Wang quietly turns to Magician, and he can’t help but feel like he’s looking at the next victim to be. He can’t help but say, “hey, listen. Just listen. When Doctor goes to the fifth floor, keep him away from any other people at all costs…”

Magician shows a dramatic smile, “looks like there were quite a lot of deaths during the riots a few days ago?”

“‘A lot’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.” Ye Wang has already packed up his emotions, “death quotas for the next two quarters are completely overbooked. All factions suffered immense losses. Now the fourth floor is a much quieter place.”

“How nice. if Doctor would have this efficiency on the fifth floor, I’ll be the first to thank him.” Magician blabbers on, “prison cells are already in short order on the fifth floor, and a truckload of them all require single cells. I need a few more deaths or we’d be out of space!”

Ye Wang glances at him, then asks, “you get no deaths on the fifth floor?”

“Stay a while on the fifth floor, and you’d know what best to do to survive.” Magician is dismissive, “the fifth floor is not like the fourth, you know.”

He tells Ye Wang with a smile, “we have a teeny bit more rules there.”

“Sounds like you’d be happy to see Doctor there.” Ye Wang shows a business-like smile, “I wish that is an optimism I’ll still see in a few months.”

Magician finds Ye Wang’s warning laughable——These stuck-ups from the floors above haven’t the faintest idea what the bottom floor of Stargaol is like. Would Hell be any more terrifying with the addition of another demon?

“Let’s go, then. To see the very mysterious Doctor and his little, innocent friends, and show them the sights on the bottom floor.”

“I bet he’ll like it there.” Magician raises his hand to push the brim of his imaginary cap down like a gentleman, “there, he will find countless like-minded friends, after all.”

Author’s notes:

I’m going through the advance chapters saved up like a wildfire through lush forests. I’m crying so much, oh no!

I scream, but I have no voice.