Chapter 3

As soon as I returned home, I contacted Daniel and asked whether he’d found anything about Evelyn.

He told me to wait a little longer, so I smoked restlessly.

This situation wasn’t as simple as I’d imagined.

The Ethan I’d seen at dinner really seemed to have become someone else. I could tell he wasn’t pretending.

But was it because of his mental illness, or had Evelyn truly influenced him?

The next day, Ethan called again.

“Mr. Carter, save me!”

“There’s something wrong with what my mom’s been feeding me. After I confronted her, she stopped pretending and forced me to take it!”

“I’m losing my memory more and more often. There are more and more strange memories in my head. I can’t hold on much longer!”

Before I could reply, Ethan hurriedly hung up, as if his mother had discovered him.

I clenched my teeth, my heart heavy.

Ethan really did seem to have developed another independent personality—the “someone else” he claimed he was becoming.

After struggling with the decision, I decided to visit the apartment again.

I’d already taken Ethan’s down payment. I couldn’t simply sit back and do nothing.

If everything was caused by Ethan’s persecutory delusions, I’d confront Evelyn and recommend a more qualified psychiatrist.

If Evelyn was hiding something, I’d find evidence and call the police. If I saved Ethan, perhaps I could still collect the rest of my fee.

“Bang, bang, bang…”

After I knocked for a long time, Evelyn finally opened the door. An unnatural smile tugged at her lips.

“Dr. Carter, what brings you here?”

“Ethan and I agreed that I’d come by today. Didn’t he tell you?”

I peered through the gap in the door.

“May I come in?”

Evelyn hesitated, then stepped aside.

She followed me inside and locked the door behind us.

A flash of tension rose in my chest.

Then Ethan burst out of the study.

“Save me! Mr. Carter, save me!”

“Look at what she gave me! It’s medication—psychiatric medication!”

“This isn’t the first time she’s fed it to me. There’s something strange in the water I drink every day. The taste was too strong this time, so I noticed. She pulled out the pills and forced them down my throat. She isn’t even pretending anymore!”

Ethan had completely broken down.

I instinctively looked at Evelyn.

She was clutching her head and sobbing.

“My son, I’m your mother. How could I hurt you?”

“You’re sick, but you refuse to believe it. I didn’t dare force you to take your medication, so I had to use this method—”

Ethan screamed over her, his eyes bloodshot.

“That’s bullshit! If I’m sick, you’re the one who made me this way! You imprison me, monitor me, and control my freedom! You’re using sinister methods to turn me into someone else!”

“I know everything! I know it all! I studied history, but you forced me to study business. I got sick of winter melon when I was little because they served it to us every day at preschool. I hate it more than anything, but you make me eat it at every meal!”

“What are you trying to do?”

After shouting himself hoarse, Ethan collapsed onto the floor. He clutched his chest and struggled to breathe.

I hurried over to help him. The pill he’d been holding fell from his hand.

I recognized it. It was a psychiatric medication with sedative and sleep-inducing effects.

Perhaps the medicine was taking effect. Ethan gradually calmed down, but the panic and terror in his eyes remained intense.

Evelyn’s eyes were now red from crying. She wiped away her tears and slowly approached him.

“My son, you say you studied history? Fine. I’ll ask you a few questions.”

Twenty minutes later, Ethan had fallen asleep under the effects of the medication.

I had calmed down as well. I could basically confirm that Evelyn was simply a desperate mother.

Ethan, meanwhile, had been destroyed by severe mental illness.

The history questions Evelyn asked were simple enough that even I could answer them. Ethan, however, couldn’t answer a single one.

He claimed to hate winter melon so much that one bite would make him vomit. Yet when Evelyn forced a bowl on him, he swallowed every last bite.

In the living room, Evelyn and I sat across from each other.

The tears on her face hadn’t dried. Her eyes were vacant.

“How am I imprisoning him? I’m protecting him.”

“And he’s a grown man. How could I control him? He has persecutory delusions, so of course he’s afraid of me.”

“You saw it yourself. His perception is completely confused.”

“Mr. Carter, if you can’t treat him, then please stop hurting him and upsetting him, all right?”

As she spoke, Evelyn pulled up security footage on her phone.

“I have cameras installed throughout the apartment. I know he hired you to go after me behind my back.”