Can't you hear me? 】

The patient asked this question when the participants of the surgery were surrounded by unprecedented excitement.

Kraft could imagine the scene, the celebratory crowd cooling down, like a school of fish noticing the crust of ice on the water, not yet fully comprehending the situation, but the environment had changed something as invisible and self-evident as the cold.

The patient who has recovered from a serious illness is very interested, and even drank a glass of wine that day, but every now and then suddenly turns his head to look somewhere, which is the kind of reflex when he hears his name.

He was sure that he had heard voices, and that they were directed at him, and that he could not make out what was being said, even though they were in different lines.

"It's like there's a bunch of uninvited guests blending in." The owner of the note described it.

It is a good idea to interpret this as a fluid imbalance caused by intraoperative blood loss, such as a lack of hot red fluid, which leads to relatively active cold white fluid, causing hypersensitivity in mental perception.

However, short-term subjective feedback from patients does not support the diagnosis, and the direction of those voices becomes clearer.

At a follow-up visit a few days later, they saw that the victim was holding an iron drill and trying to pry open the sewer slate next to the courtyard wall, the scar on the sturdy arm had healed, and the new granulation had almost wrapped the sutures that were ready to be removed in batches.

[They're down there]

Something probably went wrong, the recorder was very sure of this, recorded it in detail and completed the report, and the reply was that there was no need to deal with it, just continue to observe.

This made him have some opinions about his superiors, after all, "that one" used to be known for his meticulousness, never letting go of a single small detail in the experiment, and it was this attitude that made the results fruitful.

Or is this to be expected?

He remains positive about the new surgical materials, and with the result that the patient has regained his ability to work and live, the few psychiatric symptoms that can be controlled are almost negligible.

Compared with this, he is more concerned about where the surgical consumables come from and whether they will become a secret that he refuses to disclose like the previous anesthetic drugs.

It had been his biggest concern until some kind of discordant sound appeared in this very closed circle, because the supply of new materials seemed to be so limited that he didn't wait for a second use.

The observation of the first patient has been going on for another month, and the psychiatric symptoms, which were thought to be recovering spontaneously with the balance of body fluids, show no signs of improvement, and even have a tendency to progressively worsen.

Visible personality changes occur in the patient, who becomes easily agitated, has lost interest in the things around him, and has indescribable psychological discomfort like a mosquito bite consciousness that cannot be driven away.

The familiar life of the past is painful, and I want to follow those voices to find their source, to find the answer to liberation.

Even colleagues who always talked about "regaining the ability to live independently" were shaken. The best guess at the moment is that these side effects are isolated or caused by manual problems that can be resolved with improved technique.

However, the leader of the coterie and two colleagues who had previously raised doubts remained strangely silent.

[No view]

This is another expression of "don't want to say".

The recorder left a full two pages of postoperative discussions, analyzing the pros and cons of the operation, and even involving the debate between the body and consciousness. After a long period of thought, it dawned on him that the current disagreement was most likely caused by information asymmetry.

As for the vague split within the small group, the leader finally gave a solution: since there may be problems, let's take another example.

"Huh?" Kraft read the sentence again, confirming that it was what he understood.

The initial plan is to implant small pieces of special materials to record the whole process of complete and accurate feelings to distinguish whether it is a physical disorder or a mental problem.

Since the patient is not a professional, the subjective symptom description is not accurate, and how to understand the whole process accurately has become the second difficulty.

But that didn't bother them for long, and they chose to skip the hard part with a simple and crude solution – do it themselves.

"Huh?!"

The author offered to be the one who experienced and recorded, and his proposal was granted.

Kraft realized what he had gotten to himself, a true "first-hand book", an intuitive conclusion reached by a very rare professional who had practiced it firsthand.

Of course, he didn't get to the point where he didn't have to leave a way back, in the original idea, he didn't need to go as deep as the first time, as long as a piece the size of a fingernail was buried in the shallow layer under the skin, and he didn't even need general anesthesia in the process.

If something unexpected happens, it can be cut and removed in a short period of time, reducing the risk to an acceptable range.

"What's the matter, your face doesn't seem to be good."

"I have the feeling of seeing an old acquaintance, the style is exactly the same, and I don't believe that it wasn't taught by the same person."

The operation was very successful, or there was no technical reason not to do it, and it was simply too much for them to do it.

"This is the second time I've seen it, it looks like a knocked-down piece of stone, and the color is some kind of white I've never seen before." He recorded that the words were slightly fluctuating, as if it was caused by the inconvenience of one hand after surgery.

"When I came into contact with it, I felt 'vitality', which is difficult to describe, like a piece of broken bone that has not died for a long time after it was removed, and the cooled pulp fluid overflowed from it, with a clammy cold feeling that can be felt even in a frozen arm."

The wound healed the next day, and after a few days, the skin was smooth and the subcutaneous foreign body could only be found by touch.

The first thing that came was some dull pain, between a nearly mild pinprick and a burn, followed by a complex sensation such as cold and itching.

The spirit is surprisingly good, and often unconsciously crosses the usual time to fall asleep in the middle of writing.

The quiet life lasted until a week later in the evening, when muffled human voices interrupted the work.

At first, he thought it was his family reminding him to get off to rest early, but when he went downstairs, he found that they had already turned off the lights and gone to sleep. The empty and dark house was filled with only himself and the candles in his hands, and the sound of them ringing again.

It was a young man, as if it were just a few steps away, and like the street outside the house.

He stood in place, silently counting more than two hundred breaths, and the voice sounded for the third time.

This time the voice was old and tired, coming from below, grunting as if it came from a throat clogged with secretions, and it didn't mean anything, but he was sure it was calling to himself.

[It's like hearing your name on the street and looking back naturally]

There was no basement in the house, and he rummaged through the living room, the kitchen, and the storage room, searching for every space where anyone might be hidden, and an inexplicable panic and an instinct to find the source of the sound drove him to do so, otherwise he would not find peace.

His family was awakened, and with his wife's reassurance, he realized that he had fallen into a state of almost uncontrollable anxiety, just like the patient.

"I need to know what it is, I need to know where the sound comes from." The jumping and twisting notes showed that he had been captured by intense emotions, and that the plan to remove the foreign object never appeared again.

As the accounts of the implants became more and more frequent, he began to describe the sensations in detail, as well as the more frequent voices, counting them by age and suspicion.

When the rainy season arrived, a strange pattern was discovered, and his auditory hallucinations always worsened on rainy days.

As long as the abundant rain flows through the city's ancient waterways, countless sounds float from the ground and murmur all night long.

And the leader of the small circle also promised him an answer, the answer of the voice, and the answer to everything.

(End of chapter)