# New File
If Zheng Yixuan hadn't taken the initiative to mention it, no one might ever have known that he was sensitive to noise. At first glance, he was hardly any different from anyone else, only seeming calmer than most people. His emotions were unusually stable.
Take lunchtime, for example. The restaurant was extremely noisy. Even with the private-room door closed, it was still difficult to block out the sounds. A child kept screaming while several people grumbled, making Feng Yan feel annoyed, yet Zheng Yixuan still looked calm; he silently held his bowl and ate slowly.
Realizing that he'd been disturbing him for so long, Feng Yan felt even more guilty. If there were a ranking of annoying neighbors, he would definitely be at the top. If Zheng Yixuan ever reached his limit and killed him one day, no one would be willing to defend Feng Yan in the news.
Feng Yan was the talkative type, and it was hard for him to stay quiet even while eating. So he put the discomfort in his heart aside and asked another question.
“So, you knew my door password because you could hear the pattern?”
To be honest, Feng Yan had only ever seen something like that on TV dramas. Many door-lock sellers denied the rumor, saying that every button made the same sound. If someone could really hear that in the real world, he could write about the subject in his next novel.
Zheng Yixuan set down his bowl and said slowly, “I could hear that you hadn’t changed the default password. You usually pressed it very quickly.”
“Oh…”
The houses in this community were nicely decorated. Every unit came with the same brand of keypad lock. Some residents replaced theirs, and the locks in rented houses could also be changed. The default four-digit password was the same for all of them.
Feng Yan had registered his fingerprint when he moved in, but he had been too lazy to change the password. He figured he would always be home, and there were no valuables in the house anyway, so it didn’t matter if the password stayed the same.
Besides, the password was only used occasionally. Feng Yan usually just unlocked the door directly with his fingerprint.
At this point, Feng Yan believed that Zheng Yixuan’s hearing really was sharper than an ordinary person’s. Of course, part of the blame lay with Feng Yan for being too noisy and careless. Fortunately, his neighbor wasn’t a depraved psychopath.
Feng Yan put the matter behind him and started asking more questions.
“But do you really not work?”
“I paint.”
“You’re a painter? Wow, that’s really cool! Then how long have you lived in that building?”
“Three years.”
Feng Yan was stunned. “Ah, so you’ve lived there longer than I have.”
“You’ve lived there for quite a while, and you know the building has terrible soundproofing. Why didn’t you move somewhere better?”
“Because it’s cheap there.”
Feng Yan immediately understood Zheng Yixuan’s answer.
So the reason Zheng Yixuan had chosen to live in this community was the same as Feng Yan’s: it was cheap. The buildings in the very back had extremely low occupancy because of their poor location and lack of sunlight. They were isolated and deserted, which was why they were relatively cheaper than the others.
“Right. Since it’s cheap, I guess poor quality is to be expected, huh?” Feng Yan chuckled. “But, hey, why have we never run into each other? You couldn’t possibly have never gone out during these three years, right?”
Zheng Yixuan was about to put food into his mouth, but when he heard Feng Yan’s question, he set his chopsticks down again and spoke.
“After I fell ill, I rarely went out. I have a housekeeper who handles the cleaning and delivers my meals.”
“I see. That explains it.”
While Zheng Yixuan rarely went out and had a housekeeper take care of his daily needs, Feng Yan worked day and night regardless of rain or shine.
It was exactly like the line in a dialogue: You leave in the morning, I come home at night. We’re neighbors, but we never meet.
After several more questions in a row, Feng Yan deliberately refrained from asking about the reason for Zheng Yixuan’s illness.
This was their first time meeting. Feng Yan had already asked Zheng Yixuan so many questions, while Zheng Yixuan hadn’t asked what Feng Yan did for work or anything like that. But perhaps he already knew. After all, Feng Yan often talked loudly with his editor, sometimes discussing ideas and sometimes getting scolded for finishing his deadlines sooner.
After they finished eating, they went home. They also exchanged contact information.
Before going inside, Feng Yan specifically emphasized, “Don’t hesitate to message me if my noise bothers you, okay?”
Once Feng Yan knew that someone lived next door—and that the soundproofing was so poor that the neighbor could hear everything he did—he felt somewhat uncomfortable. He wandered around the room in half-confusion, regretting that he hadn’t asked Zheng Yixuan whether he usually stayed in the living room or the bedroom.
Feng Yan’s rented apartment was medium-sized, with two bedrooms, one living room, one kitchen, and one bathroom.
One room was supposed to be the bedroom and the other a study. But Feng Yan thought cleaning both rooms would be too much trouble, so he moved his desk into the bedroom. In short, he usually spent most of his time in the living room and bedroom.
If the layout of the apartment next door hadn’t been changed, then their bedrooms were separated by only a thin wall. When Zheng Yixuan was asleep, Feng Yan would be typing in the bedroom next door.
‘My sins are getting worse and worse,’ Feng Yan complained inwardly.
Feng Yan turned on his phone to look up soundproofing, but the articles mainly discussed noise between upper and lower floors, not through the wall next door. Some people also said that soundproofing cotton could be added, but the construction noise would be extremely loud.
Construction was obviously impossible. Besides, the noise would surely torture Zheng Yixuan next door, and Feng Yan didn’t have the money anyway.
In the end, Feng Yan decided to order a silent keyboard.
Originally, Feng Yan had more than a dozen mechanical keyboards, each noisier than the last. The one he used for gaming was especially loud—so loud that his mother thought it was the sound of a rifle.
After ordering the keyboard, Feng Yan felt a little more at ease. He wondered again whether he should move his desk so he wouldn’t disturb his neighbor while he was sleeping at night.
‘But I use the keyboard during the day too, and Zheng Yixuan might be in the living room then. He can still hear the sounds in the living room clearly, so moving the desk won’t make any difference.’
After thinking it over for a long time, Feng Yan decided, ‘All right. From now on, I’ll type in the bedroom during the day and move to the living room to type at night.’
This was the sincerity Feng Yan could offer. It was impossible for him to move just because he had a sick neighbor. Besides, he was very comfortable living here. The landlord never took the initiative to collect the rent, only accepting it when Feng Yan came to pay. Even when he forgot, the landlord never pressured him.
Amid his busy thoughts, Feng Yan suddenly realized something.
‘Moving the computer is bound to make noise. Rearranging the desk would make noise too. If the soundproofing is really that bad, why have I never heard any activity from next door?’
Feng Yan began to wonder whether his ears were actually working properly. After confirming that his hearing was fine, he continued thinking.
‘Even if he never has any visitors, everyone needs some kind of entertainment, right? Or is he afraid of hearing sounds, so he doesn’t have any entertainment at all? Has he just been sitting at home doing nothing for three years?’
Once that thought passed through his mind, Feng Yan shuddered.
‘That can’t be, right?’
Not doing anything at all was impossible. Even in prison, there would be time to relax, and prisoners would have entertainment and work as well.
After all, it was a labor reform program, not the kind of place most people imagined where inmates were locked up and did absolutely nothing, which would be unbearably uncomfortable.
When Feng Yan had written about crimes in the past, he had studied some basic information about prisons. To ensure that prisoners could reform after being released, prisons had training programs to develop inmates’ job skills and help them become self-sufficient through their own labor.
Some prisons even had good facilities, including gyms where inmates could play basketball, billiards, badminton, and more. Socializing wouldn’t be a problem.
If Feng Yan’s guess was correct and Zheng Yixuan had done nothing for three years, then it seemed that the man had imprisoned himself. In more literary terms, it was a prison of the soul. He had shut himself away and refused to integrate into society.
‘Come to think of it, he must be very rich, right?’
Feng Yan’s reasoning made sense, because most poor people usually wouldn’t acknowledge mental illness as an illness. Mental problems were the least worth mentioning among all their troubles.
As a writer who primarily wrote thrillers and suspense, Feng Yan could also be said to have a fairly broad reserve of knowledge. He had studied a little about mental health issues. It was obviously nothing compared to a professional’s expertise, but it was enough for him to build a character.
Zheng Yixuan’s mental problems might be so serious that they had robbed him of the desire to socialize and made him extremely sensitive to noise.
Thinking this deeply, Feng Yan couldn’t help feeling sorry that a talented painter who could have saved his strange neighbor had instead become trapped in the swamp-prison of life because of mental illness.