Paintings of Terror

Chapter 125: I Want To Stand Behind You to Protect You

Kang Lai had a boyfriend.

In the past, homosexuality was regarded as a heresy, a crime, and a mental illness.

Therefore, they had to be very careful and could only communicate secretly and fall in love silently.

On the road of scientific exploration, if there was ingenuity, there was perversion, and if there was a right path, there was a wrong way.

In the era when frontal lobotomy was popular, a large part of it was applied to homosexuals. The “normal” people were committed to “curing” homosexual “patients.” After frontal lobotomy was gradually abandoned by the medical community, electroshock therapy became the best tool for “treating” homosexuals.

“He was reported. Every time he walked outside, he would be ridiculed, insulted, and even beaten by other people,” Kang Lai wrote in his autobiography. “He could only stay at home, and even then, the doors of his house would be splashed with feces and swill. The hallway outside was filled with curses in red paint, scolding him and demanding that he commit suicide.”

“…At that time, the phone line to his home was cut off, and so I lost contact with him while studying abroad.”

“…One day, a few scholar-like people found his home. They said they could help him and relieve his troubles. They asked him to sign an agreement to voluntarily become a test subject.”

“There was a confidentiality clause in the agreement, but he still left me a secret letter, hidden in the compartment under the desk drawer of his home. Only he and I knew about that place.”

“After I asked for leave, I rushed back to China from abroad. I searched everywhere I could think of, but I couldn’t find him. I tried every means to find out and finally found clues that he was taken away by those people.”

“I thought that he would have left me a message, so I found the secret letter in the compartment…But I couldn’t enter the institute as an outsider. It was a secret research base. I didn’t know who it belonged to and I didn’t know what projects were being researched there.”

“I had to find him. I already had a bad feeling, but I didn’t want to believe it.

“…I took my doctorate of medicine certificate I received from abroad, pulled all the useful connections I had, and was finally able to enter the institute.”

“…I couldn’t believe what I saw with my own eyes.”

“…This was inhumane. This was against society, a heinous evil experiment that wipes out heaven and humanity!”

“They bought babies from their parents at a high price and carried out inhumane experiments on them. They put soft, cute, harmless hamsters and little white rabbits in front of the babies, and banged metal objects hard enough to be piercing to the ears. They created sharp, irritating, unpleasant sounds until it scared the babies into crying.”

“They wanted to make the babies fearful of all white things, such as pets, clothes, tissues, and even white beards, by associations. This experiment was repeated again and again, just for the purpose of how humans establish fear.”

“…They conducted sensory deprivation experiments in another laboratory. The purpose of these experiments was to verify that people’s psychological growth was dependent on their environment. Once people were taken out of this environment, their psyche became deficit.”

“Those poor experimental test subjects who became guinea pigs, after they were deprived of all their senses, successively experienced various problems such as confusion, emotional restlessness, and intellectual impairment. 40% of the subjects also had hallucinations, and even some had committed suicide.”

“…They were like the devil troops. They found lovers, couples, mothers, and children, and used electric current to do abnormal experiments. Under the guise of testing human nature, they satisfied their curiosity about human psychology.”

“…I couldn’t find my person in Laboratory D. The experimenters told me that many people died from frontal lobotomy. They didn’t know how the corpses were handled, but they had seen… A handsome young man went from lively and stubborn to an emotionless walking dead.”

“…I didn’t know how I managed to survive that period of time. I was immersed in extreme grief and hatred. I wanted to burn down this demonic, hellhole prison, but the remaining trace of reason within me told me that the greatest revenge would be to expose the perversions of these devils to the world.”

“I gritted my teeth and stayed there to collect evidence and gain first-hand information.”

“… However, my identity as a homosexual was eventually exposed.”

“They sent me to the operating table for a frontal lobotomy. Fortunately, I was one of the few people who underwent the operation and remained normal.”

“So I was arranged to continue receiving electric shock therapy.”

“They wanted me to change and to make me feel ashamed of my identity as a homosexual, but how was this possible?”

“In any age, there was no shortage of fearless heresy. And I, I am willing to be the sacrifice of the ‘abnormal love’ of this age.”

“I had never been so brave, even if the electric current made my flesh and bones suffer from convulsions.”

“I became stronger than ever under their insults and trampling. I declared that I loved him. I sneered and told those ‘normal people’: I am homosexual. I will never back down and never fear, and never change.”

…

“Kang Lai delivered his evidence to the relevant departments and newspapers,” Mu Yiran said softly. “However, the newspaper was instructed by the people above to suppress the incident, and they did. The research institute was seized and most of the materials and files were destroyed.”

“Kang Lai was still alive at that time. He wanted to find his lover’s body; however, the research institute was closed and out of reach, and he was being monitored for fear that he would get the matter out, causing irreversible turbulence in public opinion. Therefore, his freedom of movement was restricted.”

“Constrained like this, Kang Lai could only rely on painting to resolve his depression and give him reason to live. The Human Studies painting was his one and only work.”

“He poured all his feelings and regrets into this painting, and what caused him to die in depression was that he was never able to find the body of his lover.”

Ke Xun was silent for a long time. Holding the cup, he looked down at his blurry reflection on the water.

“Where was the original site of the research institute?” he asked.

“Square Box Art Gallery,” Mu Yiran said.

“They didn’t find the remains or anything like that during the demolition?” Ke Xun looked up at him.

“A piece of paper was found.” Mu Yiran looked back at him calmly. “It listed all the names of the deceased test subjects, as well as the place where their ashes were buried and the storage number of each urn.”

“Where’s the urn now?” Ke Xun asked.

Mu Yiran stood up and said in a low voice, “I’ll go through the formalities tomorrow. When I was in the painting, I promised Kang Lai that I’ll bury them next to each other.”

“I’ll go with you,” Ke Xun said.

Mu Yiran didn’t object, because even if he didn’t bring this guy along with him, he would jump over by himself.

Mu Yiran took a step away, intending to leave. Suddenly, he heard Ke Xun stand up. Taking a few steps forward, Ke Xun hugged him from behind.

“The road in front of people like us is actually very difficult,” Ke Xun’s voice came slowly from behind his shoulders.

Mu Yiran didn’t move.

“So, even if you refuse to lift your walls for me, I won’t make it hard for you.” After saying this, Ke Xun suddenly released him. “If keeping a distance can protect you, then I—” He retreated to the floor-to-ceiling window. When Mu Yiran turned his head to look, he saw him framed by the sunlight, raising a wide smile at him. “I am willing to stand this far behind you to protect you well.”

Mu Yiran looked at him. The sunlight draped over him, making him look sun-drenched in warmth.

Mu Yiran looked at him for a long time, and suddenly moved his long legs, walking up to him in slow, casual strides.

“Ke Xun.” There was a subtle magnetism in his cold voice. “You,” he said, raising his hand to hold Ke Xun’s chin with slender fingers, “talk too much.”

Ke Xun was pressed against the windowpane, his eyes wide open.

A timely knock sounded at the door, and Mu Yiran let go of his chin. While doing the buttons on his cuffs, he turned to open the door.

It was Wei Dong and Qin Ci. They seemed to have just woken up and taken a shower, still a little tired and a little damp.

“Is Ke’er awake?” Wei Dong entered the room and looked at the bed. “Huh, where is he?”

He looked around, glanced at the man standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, and asked Mu Yiran, “Is this your friend?”

Mu Yiran spared Wei Dong a single glance, opted to ignore him, and turned around to answer a phone call.

Qin Ci looked at Ke Xun for a moment and finally reacted. “…I didn’t even recognize Xiao Ke, wearing a suit was like changing a person.”

Wei Dong was startled. “Fuck! You’re Ke’er?! Fuck! What are you doing?! Have you been possessed?! What the fuck are you wearing?! Are you changing to the office seduction route?”

“…Shut up.” Ke Xun tore himself away from the French window and brushed his fingers over his chin, which still carried the breath of Mu Yiran. He was still in a dreamlike trance. “Then what…Are you hungry for dinner? Let’s go.”

“Okay, okay.” Wei Dong rubbed his stomach. “This father has never eaten in such a high-class hotel. I haven’t even eaten for a whole day so let’s hurry up.”

Ke Xun stepped forward, with his head still in the clouds. He stopped in front of Mu Yiran and looked at him dumbfoundedly. “I’ll treat.”

“I’ll treat.” Mu Yiran looked at him and his lips lifted slightly. “What do you want to eat?”

Ke Xun became even more confused and couldn’t speak for a long time.

“What?” Mu Yiran buttoned up the second button on his collar and continued to look at him as if there was all the time in the world. “Don’t you usually talk a lot?”

“…Ah.” Ke Xun scratched his head.

It wasn’t that he was too stupefied but that the enemy’s offensive was simply too strong…

They went to the next two rooms to wake up the still sleeping Li Yaqing and the just-showered Zhu Haowen. After leaving the painting, Qi Qiang and Huang Pi had disappeared, and Qin Ci wasn’t so kind as to chase after others.

Although Zhu Haowen’s brain was almost pierced by a surgical awl in the painting, this minor injury was weakened once he left the painting, leaving almost no traces behind. Therefore, after some sleep, he was able to recover enough to sit in the hotel restaurant with everyone else.

Qin Ci told Li Yaqing about the follow-up precautions, and Ke Xun also asked her to take Zhang Hanrui’s phone to her parents.

During the meal, Ke Xun remembered to ask Zhu Haowen, “There’s a letter you wrote to me in your drawer. What did you write?”

Zhu Haowen picked up a piece of vegetables, his face expressionless. “Some personal arrangements that I could only rely on you to complete.”

“Then what kind of letter did you write? Tell me now. I’ll record it down if it’s impossible to send a Wechat message,” Ke Xun said.

Zhu Haowen looked down at the tip of his chopsticks. “Without that letter, Kang Li would never have been able to reunite with his lover once more. When the memory fades, when the phone is damaged, when electronic data disappears, a letter would still remain.”

———–

The author has something to say:

The four experiments described in this article have all existed in history. Of course, the details and process of the experiments have been exaggerated through spiritual dissimilation and dramatic rendering, but perhaps the cruelty and abnormality of the nature of these experiments described herein could not even compare to the horror of them in reality.

Human studies is the study of human beings, and perhaps the most difficult one in the world. After all, human nature is complex and will always refresh our cognition and three views in different fields and stages.