But she said nothing.
She followed the stone path up to the door where someone was already waiting.
"Jin’er," Mr. Gu greeted her with a small smile. "You made it."
Gu Jin nodded. "Of course. You said it was important."
Mr. Gu gestured toward the door. "Come on. I’ll introduce you."
They entered the mansion together.
The inside was just as white and clean as the outside—so white it almost hurt her eyes.
The walls, the floor, even the ceiling glowed with pale light. It felt like a hospital pretending to be a home.
In the living room, a middle-aged man sat on a cream-colored armchair, reading a thick book.
He looked to be in his fifties, with neatly combed gray-streaked hair and sharp eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.
His posture was relaxed, but something about him felt... alert. Watchful.
Gu Jin glanced at the book in his hands. The title was in an old dialect—one she recognized immediately.
Her brow furrowed, but she said nothing.
"Jin’er," Mr. Gu said. "This is my friend, Dr. Yuan Shen."
The man stood and gave her a polite, warm smile. "It’s good to meet you, Gu Jin. I’ve heard a lot about you."
"Not all bad, I hope," she replied coolly.
He chuckled. "Only the impressive parts."
He gestured toward a set of sofas that surrounded a low table. Each one was a different color—red, green, blue, yellow, even purple. A strange choice for such a sterile-looking house.
"Please, make yourself comfortable," Dr. Yuan said.
Gu Jin looked over the sofas.
She could’ve chosen the calm blue or the peaceful green.
But her eyes landed on the red one.
Bright. Bold. A little too intense.
She walked over and sat down without a word.
Dr. Yuan took his seat across from her, choosing the blue one, and Mr. Gu settled nearby on the yellow.
"Before we begin," Dr. Yuan said, folding his hands in his lap, "let’s just talk. No notebooks. No tests. No couches. Just conversation."
Gu Jin crossed one leg over the other and leaned back into the red sofa.
The material was softer than she expected—almost too soft, like it wanted her to sink in and stay. She didn’t like that.
She kept her posture stiff, guarded.
Dr. Yuan Shen gave her a thoughtful look. He wasn’t writing anything down, but his eyes were sharp, like they didn’t miss a thing.
"So," he began, voice calm and even, "how are you feeling right now?"
Gu Jin tilted her head. "Right now?"
"Yes," he said. "At this moment."
She considered lying. Saying something casual like "fine" or "tired."
But something in his gaze made her pause. He didn’t look like someone who would accept an easy answer.
"...I don’t know," she admitted after a few seconds. "Neutral. I guess."
Dr. Yuan nodded. "Not happy. Not sad. Just... in between?"
Gu Jin gave a small shrug. "That’s how I usually feel."
"Do you ever feel much of anything anymore?"
His voice was still gentle, but the question landed hard. Gu Jin looked away, eyes tracing the edge of the coffee table.
"Sometimes," she said quietly. "But it’s like... it’s far away. Like I’m watching my emotions through a window. I know they’re there. I just can’t reach them."
Mr. Gu’s face tightened, but he didn’t speak.
Dr. Yuan rested his elbow on the armrest and leaned forward slightly.
"When did this start, Gu Jin? Do you remember the first time you noticed something had changed?"
Her eyes dropped to her hands, resting in her lap, fingers curled slightly like she was holding something invisible. Her breath slowed, just a little.
The question echoed in her mind louder than Dr. Yuan’s calm voice.
She thought back—not to this life, but to the other one. The first one.
She was five years old again, sitting in the back seat of a small car, watching the rain slide down the window in long silver lines.
Her mother was driving, her father beside her, both tired but smiling. She had been humming a song. Something soft. Safe.
Then came the sound of crushing metal. Screams. Shattered glass. Blood.
She remembered her mother’s last words as she bled out beside her.
"Jin’er... live. No matter what, live."
But maybe... maybe something inside her had died that day.
Was that when it started? Was that the moment her emotions began to fade, piece by piece?
She tried, after that. Tried to smile, to laugh, to act like a normal child. She played pretend, just for her grandfather’s sake—the old man who had raised her after the accident.
She would fake joy, fake sadness, fake fear. But it never felt real.
Then came the betrayals.
Each betrayal chipped away at her, until there was nothing left but steel and silence.
In the end, she had stopped pretending.
But she had already said all of this once—to a psychiatrist she had previously consulted before.
And that psychiatrist had looked at her like she was broken beyond repair.
"There’s nothing more I can do for you," he had said. "What you’re experiencing... it’s permanent. You’ve built walls too high to climb."
Gu Jin had walked away from that session colder than ever.
Now, sitting here in this quiet, white room, on a red sofa too soft for her liking, she looked up at Dr. Yuan Shen.
He was waiting. Patient. Gentle.
But she couldn’t tell him. Not this time.
Because her father—Mr. Gu—was sitting right there on the yellow sofa.
And in this life, she hadn’t lost her parents in a car accident.
Though she had grown up alone, she hadn’t been betrayed again and again.
If she spoke the truth now—her truth, the one from her past life—he would hear it.
He would frown. He would think.
He would investigate.
And he would find nothing.
No death. No trauma. No tragedy.