She will come to see her. Fiona Bennett finally realized this.

She wanted to turn over, facing away, but didn’t dare move, afraid of making a sound.

Fiona Bennett closed her eyes, trying hard to make her face look peaceful, just like when she was truly asleep. But who knows what her face actually looked like—her cheek muscles were so tense they began to ache.

Counting the time, Susan Wright should be here by now.

Is my expression right? It must be obvious I’m pretending to sleep. Are my cheeks already twitching? Maybe I should just open my eyes and ask directly. We’re friends, after all—what’s there to be afraid of?

Truly afraid, though. She didn’t dare. Useless girl, just like Dad always said.

She heard a sound. Not at her bedside, not the sound of pulling the bed curtain, but louder, a little farther away, near the door—a rustling, shuffling noise.

“Ding.”

A crisp collision. Actually very soft, but startlingly loud.

Fiona Bennett opened her eyes and saw Susan Wright with her back to her, standing in front of the cabinet by the door, her shoulders moving slightly.

She didn’t dare look any longer and closed her eyes again. After two minutes, the sound stopped, and she sensed Susan Wright walking back.

Fiona Bennett’s bed curtain was pulled open.

The muscles in Fiona Bennett’s face stopped twitching, her skin icy cold. She heard breathing—not her own. Fiona Bennett tried desperately to stay calm, afraid her eyeballs would move involuntarily, which could be seen even through closed eyelids.

Think of something else, anything else. Think of Susan Wright standing in the sunlight, smiling healthily; think of her running around enthusiastically, helping arrange the dorm change. This lower bunk was given to her in a tone that brooked no refusal, and she, always so timid, actually accepted. Someone who radiates such warmth—what is there to be afraid of?

A strand of hair silently fell, landing on Fiona Bennett’s face, stretching from her left cheek across her lips. Fiona Bennett’s breath fluttered the long hair, which then was pinched at the tip by two fingers and lifted away. A breath of air from the lips, and the hair was gone.

Fiona Bennett was frozen. Don’t scream, don’t tremble, don’t.

Of course she knew what it was—a thin, brown, withered hair. Fiona Bennett had often seen Susan Wright in the mornings, after combing her hair, spending a long time removing the fallen strands tangled in the comb’s teeth. Just a few months ago, that hair had been jet black and shiny. As her hair dried up, so did she—of course, that was just a feeling. In reality, Susan Wright had even gained some weight lately… or rather, she was puffy. Susan Wright wasn’t as pretty as before; it was as if a small hole had been poked somewhere in her body, and her vitality was slowly leaking away.

Fiona Bennett, eyes closed, saw Susan Wright’s image in the darkness—features twisted, face swollen, hair falling out strand by strand. Don’t think of your friend like this, she scolded herself. Then, at last, the fear receded.

The bed curtain was pulled shut again. Compared to others, Susan Wright spent the shortest time at Fiona Bennett’s bedside—just over a minute. The bed frame shook lightly as Susan Wright climbed back into her own bed.

At 2:35 a.m., Fiona Bennett finally couldn’t hold it anymore and got up to use the bathroom. On her way back, she gently closed the half-open door and glanced at Susan Wright’s bed. The curtain was pulled tight, with almost no gap.

Following the smell of alcohol, Fiona Bennett leaned against the wall and slowly squatted down, bringing her face close to the trash can. By the light filtering through the frosted glass above, she saw the wad of cotton inside. The smell had another source: the top three shelves of the cabinet were open, and on the first shelf were seven cups. The one belonging to Susan Wright, thirty-five minutes ago, had been carefully wiped inside and out with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball.

Fiona Bennett returned to her bed, bent down to climb in, and pulled the curtain tight. Ten minutes later, she turned over; forty minutes later, she turned over again.

Were those earlier things a dream, she wondered at some point, or is this the dream?

She stayed in this hazy state until dawn. When she opened the bed curtain, she saw white wall dust along the edge of her left palm.

In the morning light, Susan Wright sat at the long table by the window reading, smiling as she greeted her. The trash can by the door had already been emptied.

2

In front of the anatomy teaching building, which housed many corpses, there was a pine forest shrouded in strange legends. Late at night, dark figures would emerge from the depths of the otherwise empty woods. These were students climbing over the wall, heading for the long row of food stalls on Chifeng Road and Siping Road outside the school—wontons, barbecue, or northwestern hand-pulled noodles, all delicious. So after midnight, the woods became a passage for crossing the boundary. But many people wondered how there could be so many students sneaking out at night—implying that not all the shadows coming out of the pine woods were students.

However, the medical students, used to seeing all kinds of organs and bones, were full of youthful energy. They told ghost stories while having trysts in the woods—of course, not staying too late, balancing both fun and safety, with a unique charm.

The sun was mildly warm, the wind cold. Susan Wright wore a beige woolen sweater, hands in her pockets, walking along the woods toward the anatomy building at an unhurried pace. Her face was pale, but her back was very straight, so she didn’t look particularly sickly; instead, there was a kind of resolute beauty. Her long hair was tied back with a band, but a loose strand at her temple was lifted by the wind, brushing across the cheek of Fiona Bennett walking beside her. Fiona Bennett shivered, remembering the hair that had fallen on her face the night before.

When they met familiar teachers or students, Susan Wright would smile and nod gently, just the right amount—neither rude nor overly eager. So poised, Fiona Bennett thought. She could never manage that; she always got nervous greeting people she didn’t know well, often saying awkward things. Compared to Susan Wright, she felt like an ugly duckling. Is this what they call aristocratic bearing? They say it takes three generations to make a noble, and she’d never catch up.

What was even more admirable was Susan Wright’s consistent frugality. She even did pharmaceutical experiments to earn her living expenses, just like a poor student. It was said that during military training, her family had an emergency one day, and a black Red Flag sedan pulled up at the camp gate, the uniformed driver bowing to open the door for her. Many people were shocked at that moment.

Wealthy yet virtuous—that’s a true aristocrat, Fiona Bennett thought.

Once again, a strand of hair brushed her face. She couldn’t help glancing at Susan Wright’s profile. What should have been a graceful curve now had some odd bulges, and her hair was turning yellow and frizzy.

A sudden pang of pity struck Fiona Bennett.

“Are you really okay?” she suddenly asked her companion.

“I’m fine.” Susan Wright turned and smiled at Fiona Bennett.

Fiona Bennett felt awkward, so she took out her pager, looked at the weather forecast, and said, “Oh, it’s going to rain this afternoon.”

“Mhm,” Susan Wright replied, suddenly stepping to the other side of the road. There was a stray Pekingese dog on their original path. There were several stray dogs near the pine woods, some fed by students, all chubby.

“You’re afraid of dogs?”

“Yeah, I was bitten before.” As she spoke, Susan Wright quickened her pace.

When they were almost at the anatomy building, Susan Wright told Fiona Bennett to go in first, saying she’d be there in a moment. Fiona Bennett agreed, wondering where she was going at this time.

The smell of formalin filled the entire anatomy building. The first time Fiona Bennett entered, she couldn’t get used to it, but now it was much better. The special training class’s anatomy room was on the second floor, with six corpses inside. As a special class, they had different resources from regular clinical students—two people per corpse instead of four, a dedicated study room, and if they graduated successfully, they could all enter the hospital. There was a price, though: a full year of military training, and in the second, third, and fourth years, one person would be eliminated each year. Fiona Bennett had just joined this semester as a replacement; after this, only people would be eliminated, not added. The student eliminated last semester became famous—he jumped off a building.

Four fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling in groups, illuminating six stainless steel dissection tables. The tables were large, with plenty of space around the corpses, and scattered nearby were the tools they’d need: scalpels, forceps, scissors, clamps.

The corpses’ heads were wrapped in thick black plastic bags—the kind used for fish at the market. You couldn’t see their faces, so it felt more like handling material than people. But on Fiona Bennett’s table, the black bag had been removed, revealing the deceased’s face. Fiona Bennett looked at the face that had haunted her for days, and felt it wasn’t as bad as in her dreams.

“How are you today?” Susan Wright asked. She came in a minute after class started, which had never happened before. And Fiona Bennett felt she didn’t look as calm as usual.

“A bit more relaxed,” Fiona Bennett replied.

During the first anatomy class, Fiona Bennett’s face was deathly pale, sweating buckets, clutching the scalpel and shaking from head to toe. Even the teacher was surprised that someone so timid would choose medicine. Susan Wright said, “Let me help you,” then removed the plastic bag from the corpse’s head and guided her hand for the first cut. Fiona Bennett knew it was exposure therapy, but she was still so scared she nearly broke down. She gritted her teeth and made it to today, falling behind in progress, but gradually improving. As an outstanding student transferred into the special class, if she failed anatomy and became the second person eliminated, she couldn’t imagine facing her father—most likely, jumping off a building would be her only option.