Stop It

The doctor had told me I was fine — but that was the doctor in my dream who had said it. If it wasn't a dream, then I had genuinely traveled through time. Twice. How could I prove it? I thought back carefully: if the bathhouse visit had been a dream, the purple-haired girl shouldn't exist. A quick check at the bathhouse would settle that. But thinking of the blood-carved words on her forehead made every hair on my body stand up. I couldn't bring myself to go back there.

There was one other person who could confirm it: Dr. Xu. I had never met her before any of this. If it was a dream, the real Dr. Xu couldn't look exactly like the one in the dream.

With that thought, I walked straight out of the office, ignoring the stares of my colleagues and manager, and ran all the way to the clinic in that low-rise office building.

"Do you have an appointment?" The receptionist at the front desk stopped me. I hadn't seen her before — which meant the earlier visits had been a dream, hadn't they?

"No appointment. I need to see Dr. Xu."

The receptionist checked her computer. "Not today — I can book you in for tomorrow morning."

I wasn't going to wait until tomorrow. "I just need to confirm something. One look at Dr. Xu and I'll go." I started walking.

The receptionist was more diligent than I expected. She stepped around the desk and planted herself in front of me. "I'm sorry. Dr. Xu's schedule is full today. You can't go in."

"Let him in. My next patient isn't here yet."

Every hair on my body stood up again — but with something other than fear. It was exactly Dr. Xu's voice. The receptionist stepped aside, and I walked into that room.

One bed. Two chairs. One desk. Identical.

Behind the desk sat Dr. Xu — white professional suit, face mask, black-framed glasses, and behind the glasses those sharp, knowing eyes. It was her. Everything I'd experienced had been real.

"Dr. Xu, I've been back in time — twice — I've met you before, last time you said I was dreaming — then I went to the bathhouse and a purple-haired woman had blood-text on her forehead, my handwriting, but I didn't carve it on her — I didn't — someone else did it, it just looked like mine—"

I was incoherent, pouring out panic. She didn't interrupt. She listened steadily, and as she did, she took out the dripping-water device and set it on the desk.

"Yes — that device! I've seen it before! You had it last time too!"

I stopped speaking. The device: water dripping from the bottle, falling into the model palm, pumped by the tubing back up to the bottle. An endless loop — wasn't that exactly what my existence had been?

She noticed my silence and, presuming I had finished, spoke: "So — do you think this is bad? What do you want?"

I blinked, then suddenly felt a rush of anger. "Are you treating me like a madman? Is this bad? What do I want? I obviously want the loop to stop!"

Her expression didn't change. "Then let's stop it." She reached over and pressed the switch. The water stopped moving, frozen in the transparent tubing.

In that moment she seemed to have reclassified me — not as a madman, but as an idiot. "Dr. Xu — are you playing games with me? I'm saying I've been trapped in a loop. Every time a phone rings, I snap back to the same moment. I came here hoping you could help me. I didn't expect to be treated like a fool."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Don't misunderstand — I don't think you're a fool. I believe everything you've said. Because all of this — I made it happen."

She reached below the desk and produced a bottle of water. "Drink this. Calm down."

My throat was genuinely dry. I took a long swallow, then gripped the bottle. "How could you have made it happen?"

"I put you under hypnosis just now. The experience at the bathhouse was part of my hypnotic treatment."

I pulled out my phone immediately: February 22nd, 11:30 AM. I had broken out of the loop. "Hypnosis can do that? But I never fell asleep. When did it begin?"

She pointed at the dripping device. "It began when I switched it on, and ended when I switched it off. You came in unable to express yourself, so I had to use this method to treat you. I apologise if it was intrusive."

I didn't mind. "You're the doctor. Whatever treatment you use, I accept it. I just need to know — is something actually wrong with me?"

"In what I saw of your hypnotic state, two words kept appearing: choice."

She adjusted her glasses. "The bathhouse was a place you chose. The purple-haired girl was a figure you created. The location and the character — terrifying, yet full of temptation. That is your subconscious. So in your real life, there must be something you are simultaneously drawn to and afraid of. Your subconscious is struggling to make a decision."

"What something? I'm not sure what you mean — I don't know what I'm deciding."

"It could be your work. Your family. Your entire life. Your subconscious isn't always easy to accept. Whether to clarify it, and how to choose — that's up to you. That's as far as I can take you."

The session was over. At the front desk, as I was paying, I heard the door to Dr. Xu's room open and close behind me — the next patient going in, a man by the sound of it, his voice very old. As I finished paying and was leaving the building, I caught fragments of what that patient was saying to Dr. Xu, his thick regional accent barely comprehensible: "…why did he stop…why let him go…" His voice was deliberately low, but I could hear the anger underneath it. The hoarseness was like sandpaper drawn across the inside of my ear, carrying a disquieting familiarity.

Outside on the pavement I turned it over in my mind, and the more I did, the more it reminded me of my late grandmother's speech — that same slow, drawn-out regional lilt. A chill went through me. The blurred syllables began to assemble: Why did you stop it for him? Why did you let him go?

I stopped walking. My heart clenched. Behind me, the glass face of the clinic building showed a blurred reflection — something that looked like countless heart-shaped leaves shifting in the wind.