Someone in My Heart

Jiang Yao has suffered from autism since childhood.

Like a plant – quiet, well-behaved, showing no interest in anything, never expressing pain.

His parents worried constantly, taking him everywhere seeking medical help, but saw little improvement.

They raised him with such careful attention.

One day when he was 20, he suddenly disappeared.

Jiang Yao was missing for exactly one year. His family and police exhausted all resources but could never find his whereabouts.

A year later, he appeared at their doorstep in tattered clothes.

There was blood on him. But the DNA didn’t belong to him.

After mysteriously disappearing and mysteriously reappearing, Jiang Yao had lost all memories of that year.

But suddenly, he was willing to speak.

He could cry, laugh, and express “I want.”

Though still quiet, he now resembled a normal person.

His parents wept with joy, asking how he became willing to communicate.

Looking in the mirror, Jiang Yao said:

“There’s a voice in my heart that constantly tells me the world is beautiful, urging me to live well.”

That voice in his heart always accompanied and encouraged him.

Even when he was caught up in strange incidents, it would gently tell him:

“Close your eyes, let me handle this.”

Jiang Yao trusted that voice unconditionally.

So when foul-smelling, sticky fish-people grabbed his ankles to drag him into the deep sea, when pale, skeletal corpses cornered him at a cliff edge.

He would obediently close his eyes.

Count in his mind: one, two, three.

Count to one hundred, open his eyes, and find nothing but scattered, broken corpses around him.

While he himself stood before a thicket of thorns.

Holding in his hand the most beautiful rose.

Jiang Yao always thought he merely had a mental illness that created a second personality.

Until one day, he passed by a high-end custom suit shop.

He, who never wore suits, unconsciously caressed the smooth, soft premium fabric.

In that instant, he recalled the sensation of sweat-dampened skin nestled in someone’s embrace.

—So he had once had a lover.

“I want to go back, back to the deepest, darkest abyss.”

“To find you.”

One-line summary: After being caught up in strange incidents, I discovered there’s someone in my heart

Theme: Always maintain human moral boundaries no matter the circumstances