The wind has risen—where did it come from? She turned her head just in time to see the main doors slowly closing. Did someone come in, or did someone leave? The bamboo pole in her hand wobbled; she turned her face back to the corpse pool. The female corpse resting on the pole had flipped over, now face up. That face—she knew it all too well.

Fiona Bennett finally heard her own scream, a heart-wrenching cry. The bamboo pole suddenly felt heavy in her hands and slipped, falling into the corpse pool. Her hand hurt; at some point, a splinter had scratched her. She opened her palm and saw blood. She vaguely sensed something was wrong, but it was already too late. The blood spread out and surged toward her, everything began to spin, she lost her balance, and tumbled into the corpse pool.

The floating boards parted, the pool water submerged her. It didn’t feel like formalin, just water—cold, heavy water. She shut her eyes and struggled desperately, but couldn’t command her arms and legs. The lifeless bodies around her closed in. She remembered whose face it was: Susan Wright.

She could see the faces of the corpses around her, their eyes tightly shut, yet she could see them clearly: the young Susan Wright, the old Susan Wright, male Susan Wright, female Susan Wright. Never before had she felt such terror. The fear came from the many Susan Wrights surrounding her, a fear mixed with ferocity and utter despair, yet weak and dying, about to fade away with her own life. One of the many corpses moved, reached out, and grabbed Fiona Bennett’s arm. Fiona Bennett had no strength left to struggle, and let herself be dragged away.

Three: Choice

1

Pain—her eyes were a bit better, but from her nasal cavity and mouth down to her lungs, it felt as if they’d been sanded raw and then rubbed with chili powder. So Fiona Bennett knew she was still alive.

She couldn’t fully open her eyes; they stung, but no tears came, just a dry discomfort. Her vision was blurry, but she could tell she was in a hospital room. Someone was sleeping in a chair by the bed.

“Mom.” Fiona Bennett called out, then realized her voice was so hoarse it was barely a sound, and her already sore throat hurt even more.

Her call was barely louder than a breath, but it was enough to wake Laura Cooper from her light sleep.

Laura Cooper grabbed Fiona Bennett’s hand and started to cry, saying, “Xuyu, you’re awake! Don’t move, don’t talk, just rest and you’ll get better soon.”

Hearing this, Fiona Bennett’s heart sank. In TV dramas, mothers always say this to daughters with terminal illnesses. Laura Cooper rushed out to call the doctor, and after that, Fiona Bennett couldn’t make out what was being said—she soon drifted off again.

When she woke again, Fiona Bennett’s mind was much clearer. Her years in medical school weren’t for nothing; she quickly realized she was actually fine. She’d been rescued from the corpse pool in time, and was hospitalized because of the formalin. Skin can tolerate contact with formalin, but inhaling it burns the mucous membranes of the nose and mouth, which explained the pain in her trachea and esophagus. Luckily, she’d closed her eyes in time, so her retinas weren’t burned, and she hadn’t swallowed a large amount of formalin.

She woke up nearly fifteen hours later, which made the doctors a bit concerned, since formalin doesn’t cause drowsiness. After waking, she underwent a full checkup; there were no other issues, so she stayed in the hospital on an IV, waiting for the internal burns to heal. At first, she couldn’t recall anything—trying to remember brought on near-convulsive reactions, numbness in her limbs, and a racing heart. But every time she closed her eyes, she dreamed of falling into the corpse pool again, waking in fright, over and over. Her last memory of that night was being pulled into the depths by a corpse; now she knew that was the moment she was rescued.

“You’re thinking about it again. Don’t. Have some banana.” Frank Bishop said. He’d also inhaled a bit of formalin when he jumped into the pool to save her, but he was much better off than Fiona Bennett, only staying in the hospital for a day. His voice sounded rougher than usual, clearly his vocal cords hadn’t fully recovered.

A plate of banana pieces, each with a toothpick, was handed over. As Fiona Bennett took it, she glimpsed the bag of apples by the bed—bought that morning by Frederick Bennett—but her throat couldn’t handle anything as hard as apples right now.

He and Dad really are two completely different kinds of people, Fiona Bennett thought.

She ate the banana in silence, her expression finally relaxing. Frank Bishop sat in the chair at the foot of the bed, reading Yu Qiuyu’s "Notes from a Mountain Dwelling," a thick book sent from Taiwan. He’d been carrying it around these days, but hadn’t turned many pages. Fiona Bennett had been pulled from her nightmare by him, but her brows were still slightly furrowed, a delicate beauty. She was often like this, which often drew Frank Bishop’s gaze away from his book.

The distance from the foot to the head of the bed was subtle—just far enough, yet close. Laura Cooper seemed to like this gentle, fair-skinned boy who had saved her daughter, often giving them time alone. Later, Fiona Bennett even suspected the two had coordinated, taking turns to visit. Of course, “alone” didn’t mean the room was empty; Fiona Bennett was in a double ward for hospital staff, specially arranged for students in the commissioned training program. The other bed was occupied by a woman in her forties who’d drunk herself into a gastric hemorrhage.

So Fiona Bennett wondered, after all these years together, what her mother really felt for Frederick Bennett. Because in every way, Frank Bishop was the opposite of Frederick Bennett. If she didn’t regret her marriage, shouldn’t she prefer a boy like Gabriel Adams?

There would no doubt be a new legend at the medical school—a girl falling into the corpse pool at night was already a bizarre and terrifying event. Who knew how the story would evolve? Fiona Bennett didn’t hide the page message she’d received, but said nothing more. When questioned by Harold Rogers on behalf of the school, Frank Bishop added some details. He’d chased after Fiona Bennett with her umbrella, glimpsed her figure under the big light at the entrance to the anatomy building, and followed her inside, tracking her footprints to the corpse pool. But in the lobby, there was another set of wet footprints. Between the handles of the steel doors, a thick tree branch had been wedged. Before he could examine the new footprints, he heard a scream from inside, quickly pulled out the branch, and rushed in.

It sounded like a prank that nearly had serious consequences. Harold Rogers patted his chest and promised a thorough investigation, saying any student found responsible would be expelled. But as he spoke, the branch Frank Bishop had tossed aside was already gone, and the third set of footprints had been cleaned up. As for what those prints looked like, Frank Bishop couldn’t recall—he wasn’t trained, and only caught a glimpse. Harold Rogers pressed him: were they a man’s or a woman’s? Frank Bishop said the size wasn’t large, but his memory was too vague to be sure. So the only option was to check who had the key to the steel doors, but Fiona Bennett had no hope that Harold Rogers would find the person.

It was a strange affair, but when classmates came to visit, none pressed for details. Fiona Bennett felt she’d become, in their eyes, a weirdo—no one wanted to get involved in her secrets. If not for the police report, things might have been different, but now, the barrier between her and the class might never be lifted.

Only Susan Wright quietly asked her what had happened. But Fiona Bennett was now a little afraid to see her, unable to meet her eyes, unwilling to linger on her increasingly distorted face. The deepest trauma from that night, the one that recurred in her nightmares, was the many faces of Susan Wright she saw as she sank into the corpse pool.

Susan Wright noticed Fiona Bennett’s avoidance, and stopped asking.

Frank Bishop was the one most entitled to ask, but after his first visit, seeing Fiona Bennett’s reluctance, he changed the subject and never brought it up again. Maybe he was waiting for her to tell him herself, Fiona Bennett thought. But would that day ever come? Right now, she just wanted to bury everything, as deep as possible.

She had truly smelled the scent of death.

Lying in her hospital bed, between nightmares, Fiona Bennett pieced together the reasons for her hallucinations that night. Yes, it was all an illusion—from start to finish, she was the only one in the corpse pool. There was no invisible child, no ambiguous footsteps, no female corpse turning over in the center of the pool. The source of it all was the handle of the steel door. There was no sample taken, no other evidence, but Fiona Bennett was sure. When she grabbed the handle, it was wet, and it wasn’t her sweat.

There are many hallucinogens, the most common being ether, which is easy to obtain in a medical school. The strong smell of formalin would mask other odors, making it hard to notice in time. Inhaling a hallucinogen before entering the corpse pool, the terrifying atmosphere would naturally induce frightening hallucinations. Even if the ether didn’t work, locking the steel door with a tree branch and trapping Fiona Bennett for an hour or even all night would be enough to scare her out of her wits. This was the ultimate warning that person had planned.

Fiona Bennett, as expected, smelled her hand, and after entering, spent a long time covering her nose with it. The hallucinations came quickly and drove her to the corpse pool. Normally, she wouldn’t have fallen in, but she injured her hand and has hemophobia.