Players, Please Board the Train-Chapter 249: Other Children in the Hospital

"Additionally, I found some medical staff who worked at the hospital back then. Like you, they were hired by someone claiming to be a secretary, but were all dismissed within just three to four years. They also remember the Seventeenth Hospital, but any written records mentioning it—like letters or text messages—have been completely erased."
"You could say aside from human memory, there isn't a single place that retains any information related to the Seventeenth Hospital."
After hearing this, Professor Lin looked grave. He raised his hand and said, "Wait a moment."
He then went into the inner room and soon came out carrying a dusty box. After patting off the dust, he opened it and took out a blue-covered notebook. "I had the habit of keeping records while working. This one is from my time at the Seventeenth Hospital... Let me find it..."
After flipping through just two pages, Professor Lin's expression changed. "How strange, how did it disappear?"
He pointed to several blank spots on the pages. "I remember clearly, I wrote this on my first day of work, and it included the name Seventeenth Hospital."
To prove his memory wasn't faulty, he quickly flipped through other notebooks. "Look, it's true, I always wrote it when I started a new job."
Xu Huo examined the notebooks. In the one about the Seventeenth Hospital, every fragment mentioning the hospital's name had turned blank.
"Ink fading wouldn't only affect these few lines..." Professor Lin looked shocked as he rummaged through the box again, finally pulling out an old photograph. "Gone, the hospital in the photo is gone..."
Xu Huo took the photo. It was a group photo of Professor Lin and other staff members, taken what seemed to be on the front steps.
"It was taken right at the hospital entrance," Professor Lin pointed to the area in the photo that had become a background of greenery. "This was the hospital's main gate, with the words 'Seventeenth Hospital' behind it. Look, all the staff are here."
"Who is in this position?" Xu Huo pointed to the far left spot in the front row, to his left.
"There's no one there," Professor Lin said. "There were only six doctors in the hospital at the time. Have you seen another doctor?"
Six doctors—four male, two female. Their faces all appeared in his memories, but the one from his dream wasn't among these six. However, the posture of the female doctor standing on the far left seemed somewhat odd. Her outer arm was slightly bent, as if linked with someone else's arm, though it wasn't very noticeable.
There was someone missing from the photo.
"Could I have this photo?" Xu Huo looked up.
"Take it," Professor Lin said, patting his head. After thinking for a while, he muttered, "Maybe I should take some medication too..."
Xu Huo paused briefly. "Dean, I'm perfectly normal. I'm not sick."
Professor Lin chuckled dryly, chiming in, "Right, right, you were discharged long ago."
"Tell me about the other sick children in the hospital," Xu Huo said. "How much do you remember?"
"It's been too long, I can only recall the general details," Professor Lin said vaguely. "They were all very smart, just like you. I wonder how they're doing now."
"They're all dead," Xu Huo stated. He also remembered several children appearing in the hospital, but for self-protection, he hadn't actively interacted with them.
"They were discharged early like me. About ten years ago, those four children went missing or died one after another. Two disappeared during explorations—their bodies were never found. Two died in car accidents, burned beyond recognition."
Professor Lin stared at him in shock, his mouth agape for a moment before he managed to say, "What about their families..."
"Except for Chang Bei, the other three families all died in various accidents over ten years ago. One family even had over twenty relatives who all died from food poisoning during a New Year's Eve dinner—not a single adult or child survived." Xu Huo pushed the water cup toward the professor. "Have some water, calm down."
Professor Lin tremblingly picked up the cup. "It's him, it's that child..."
"When I resigned, I mentioned to the other doctors that child shouldn't have been discharged. The older he got, the better he became at hiding his true nature."
Xu Huo remained silent, quietly waiting for him to continue.
Professor Lin didn't intend to hide anything more. As he recalled, he said, "Besides you, there was another child with high-functioning antisocial personality disorder. Compared to you, his symptoms were much more obvious—completely lacking empathy and compassion, occasionally even showing signs of sadistic tendencies. But his intelligence was extremely high; he learned everything very quickly. After staying in the hospital for a while, he became very skilled at controlling his emotions. Five incidents of medical staff accidentally ingesting medication were related to him, but no one ever caught proof."
"The family with over twenty members dying from food poisoning—that was him, wasn't it?"
Xu Huo nodded. Not only that, but his family also suffered the most tragic deaths among the three families. His father was run over, severing his lower body, and crawled on the road for over ten minutes before dying. His mother was dismembered by a serial killer active at the time, and his younger sister was turned into a doll by the same murderer.
Professor Lin heaved a long sigh. "That was partly why I resigned from the hospital back then."
"Chang Bei was the child with hyperthymesia. You've probably heard of it—the ability to remember every detail of daily life without any memory techniques. That child was too young to handle such a condition, so he frequently lost emotional control and hurt others."
"Both he and you weren't sent by your families; you were brought in by doctors from the Seventeenth Hospital."
"He was the one who told me about the medication poisoning incidents involving the staff. He said another child was collecting pills to poison me, claiming that if the hospital had no dean, they could be discharged."
"He didn't reveal which child was planning the poisoning, but after years as a doctor, I could sense it. During that period, I felt restless and uneasy in the hospital. Combined with some family issues, I simply resigned."
"When I left, I warned the other doctors, but the hospital's surveillance footage didn't capture anything suspicious, and the accidental ingestions seemed like coincidences, so the doctors didn't take it seriously. Later, I asked doctors from other hospitals, and no more accidental medication incidents occurred at the hospital, though they did confine a nurse who developed mental health issues. As family matters piled up, I gradually let it go."
"To think... they're really dead?"
"I want to know too," Xu Huo said, looking into his clouded eyes.
Tears welled up in Professor Lin's eyes. "I'm partly to blame for this too. I should have taken it more seriously back then..."
So many tragedies couldn't simply be dismissed as coincidences. But what was even more frightening was that those children might not have truly died. After all these years, what might they have become?
"Maybe it's not as bad as you think," Xu Huo said. "At least I turned out relatively normal."