Chapter 327: The Disappearing Child

The female streamer didn't follow me. I went up to the fourth floor alone.

"Child Healthcare Department, Forensic Evidence and Judicial Appraisal Office (Paternity Testing)..." The hospital was built in the suburbs, but the facilities inside were actually quite decent. It was vastly different from the illegal clinic I had initially pictured.

At the very end of the fourth floor, I spotted a door marked 'Director's Office.'

"Bang!"

I kicked the door open. Sweeping the room with my phone's flashlight, I found it completely empty. It looked like no one had been here in a long time.

"The comments I found didn't specify exactly when the director went missing. Judging from the layout and the layer of dust in here, the miserable bastard must have vanished quite a while ago."

The room wasn't large. Rules and regulations covered the walls, and a few pediatric medicine books sat on a display shelf, clearly just for show.

"The books are brand new. They probably haven't even been touched." I walked over to the desk. A framed photograph of a man in his forties sat on it. Despite his elegant attire, he gave off a sleazy vibe. Maybe it was because his eyes were so small and his eyebrows so faint.

"Wang Xiusen?" There were a few signed documents in the drawer bearing this name.

"The most recent signature is from a month ago. If he disappeared back then, someone should have called the police long ago." The document dates only gave me a rough timeframe. "Is he really just missing?"

An able-bodied middle-aged man vanishing for this long... rather than missing, I leaned more toward the possibility that he had been murdered.

Rummaging further through the drawers, I found a plush toy buried under a stack of files.

With a large face and long legs, it didn't look cute at all. It looked like one of those cheap dolls you'd win from a claw machine at a park.

"It's a bit odd for a hospital director to keep a child's toy in his drawer. Even though this is a maternity and children's health center with plenty of kids around, the director's office isn't a place they can just wander into. Did he bring this doll for his own kid?"

As I kept searching, I made another discovery. A white lab coat hung on the coat rack, and from its pocket, I pulled out a box of Ivic.

Light blue pills. I was no stranger to this stuff—I sold it in my Adult Shop too. It also went by a more common name: Viagra.

"The director of a maternity and children's health center? A plush toy? Ivic?" I tossed the lab coat aside. There were no hidden compartments or secret rooms in the office. After a thorough sweep, I gave up. "Well, it's not a total loss. At least I know what kind of character this missing director is."

With too few clues, I couldn't piece together the truth of the case just yet. I could only keep looking for traces left behind in the hospital.

Right next to the director's office was the Child Healthcare Department. It was a massive internal ward, and its door was different from standard hospital rooms—it was painted in bright colors with cartoon characters.

I gave it a push. The door wasn't locked.

"This room is a bit special." Stepping inside, I was greeted by a four-tier shoe cabinet. It was divided into several cubbies, each labeled with a name tag.

"Xu Qin, Wang Xiaohui... Wang Yu." When I saw the cubby labeled with Wang Yu's name, I slowly crouched down. A pair of children's shoes still sat inside. "Knockoffs from a street stall. Judging by the shoe size, this kid must only be four or five years old."

The rest of the cabinet had been cleared out; this was the only pair left. "It doesn't look like they were left behind intentionally. This Wang Yu is worth noting."

The Child Healthcare Department was split into two further sections: the Psychological Health Department on the left, and the Comprehensive Training Department on the right.

I didn't know much about pediatric health, so I headed into the left room first to check it out.

It was a very clean ward, furnished with a few machines I had never seen before. The walls were plastered with psychological health tips and introductions to the department.

This so-called pediatric psychological health involved using machines to track mental dynamics. Through activities like mazes and drawing, professional doctors would provide counseling to treat ADHD, emotional anxiety, and congenital autism in children.

"A third-rate maternity and children's health center in the suburbs, yet they've set up quite the racket here." I had looked into this place before coming. Most of the doctors in this hospital didn't even have medical licenses. If that was the case for the gynecologists and surgeons, a psychologist counseling children definitely wasn't a professional either.

Seeing this made me worry. Human psychology was an incredibly complex field; criminal psychology alone had over a dozen branches.

Likewise, child psychological counseling wasn't as simple as many parents imagined. Before children even learned to express themselves, they were already feeling the world with their hearts. Once a psychological issue arose, no one could help them. They wouldn't even realize how different they were from everyone else.

I had once seen a child with congenital autism at a rescue shelter. At first glance, he looked no different from a normal kid. But if you spent enough time with him, you'd realize that even if you talked to him for an entire afternoon, he still wouldn't know who you were when you stepped out and came back. The kid I met was exactly like that. He would sit in the corner, fully immersed in his own world, playing with a single piece of iron wire all day long.

Psychological treatment for young children required more than just professionals. Parents and everyone around them needed to remain patient. Only then was there a slight chance of breaking through their rigid mental defenses.

They would step out into the world and see the sunlight, and those outside their prison would welcome a beautiful angel.

Given the medical standards of Qicun Maternity and Children’s Health Center, the chances of them curing a child with a psychological illness were zero. From all the reports and comments I'd seen, this hospital was just a money-making tool for investors. A healer's benevolence? They even performed secret abortions for minors. How could anyone expect them to patiently help a psychologically impaired child who couldn't speak or express themselves?

A black-hearted hospital like this was only interested in two things: money, and how to make more money in less time.

On a desk in the Psychological Health Department, I found a price list for psychological counseling. It boasted guidance from famous overseas doctors and charged by the hour. The highest tier was priced at a staggering 120 yuan per hour.

"Surely no one actually fell for this, right?" I didn't understand what those machines did. Pacing around the room, I noticed the trash can hadn't been emptied.

I pulled it closer and found several crumpled balls of paper inside.

"There's no dust on this trash. That's not right. These must have been thrown away recently." Feeling like I had discovered a new continent, I dumped all the garbage onto the desk and smoothed out the crumpled papers one by one.

"Billing receipts, training courses, the First Stage psychological counseling list... Xu Qin, Wang Yu?" I singled out the First Stage psychological counseling roster. It contained two names I had just seen outside. They had their own dedicated cubbies, so they must have been regulars here.

Among the rest of the waste paper were lists for the Second Stage, Third Stage, and Fourth Stage psychological counseling. The names on these papers dwindled until, at the very end, only those two children were left on the roster.

"Three hours a day. Four stages of training over two months. It cost over 20,000 yuan." That amount of money was nothing to a family in a major city. But I had just seen Wang Yu's shoes in the cabinet—frayed at the edges, cheap stall knockoffs. It was obvious his family wasn't wealthy.

"Compared to formal psychological counseling that easily costs tens of thousands, 20,000 really isn't that much, but it might have been a massive sum for Wang Yu's family." The theory in my head was slowly taking shape, though many details were still unconfirmed.

"Xu Qin, Wang Yu... Is the child I'm looking for one of them?" Stuffing the First Stage psychological counseling list into my pocket, I turned and headed into the department on the right.

The Comprehensive Training Department was three times the size of the Psychological Health Department. The floor was covered in puzzle mats, separating the inside from the outside, and there was an independent private room within it.

Walking through, I saw all sorts of toys scattered haphazardly across the mats, as if naughty children had just finished playing and the parents hadn't had time to clean up yet.

The walls were covered in warm wallpaper adorned with cute, playful characters. I took a quick lap around but didn't find anything unusual.

"Is the problem in that separate room?" Just as I was about to walk over, I turned my head and noticed a familiar toy in the corner. I approached it and picked it up. "Isn't this the plush toy I just saw in the director's office? How did it get here?"