Sheldon and Leonard trudged heavily up the apartment building stairwell.
One was a PhD in theoretical physics, the other a PhD in experimental physics. Both had originally been fully confident in their own IQs. They had gone to the sperm bank intending to donate, only to regret it the moment they started filling out the forms.
“Are you still angry about the sperm bank?” Sheldon broke the silence first.
Leonard was still a little depressed. “No.”
Sheldon said, “Would you like to hear an interesting fact about stairs?”
Leonard: “…Not really.”
Sheldon went on regardless. “Even if the height of a single step differs by only two millimeters, most people will trip.”
Leonard: “I don’t care!”
……
Leonard: “Two millimeters? That doesn’t seem very likely.”
Sheldon: “No, it’s true. I conducted a series of experiments when I was twelve. My father even broke his collarbone.”
Leonard: “Is that why they sent you to boarding school?”
Sheldon: “No, that was because of my experiments involving lasers.”
After finally making it up to the fourth-floor apartment, Leonard took out his key to open the door, only to find that the door of the neighbor across the hall was open. Inside, a smoking-hot blonde beauty was tidying things up.
Leonard’s eyes widened. “New neighbor?”
Sheldon didn’t particularly care. “Obviously.”
Leonard swallowed. “A significant improvement over the last one.”
“The two-hundred-pound transvestite with the skin condition?” Sheldon recalled thoughtfully. “Indeed. She is much better.”
Sheldon felt nothing in particular. To him, women were nowhere near as appealing as Star Wars or the Flash.
“Hi! I’m Leonard, and this is Sheldon. We’re your neighbors.”
“Hi! I’m Penny. I just moved in.”
Penny greeted them with a smile, silently judging them in her heart: “These two look like socially awkward nerds. Pretty safe.”
Just then, the door of the apartment opposite was pushed open, and a young man walked out.
He had a tall, slender build and steady steps. He wore a well-tailored gray suit, the collar of his shirt left undone by two buttons, faintly revealing the line of his collarbone. His short light-brown hair was casually brushed to one side.
“Sheldon, Leonard?” the young man asked, somewhat puzzled. “You just got back from the sperm bank?”
“Ah—” Leonard hurriedly cut in. “Ethan! Why are you still here? Didn’t you have patients to see?”
“Mm.” Ethan smiled. His gaze swept unintentionally over the dazed Penny, and he suddenly understood something. “Our new neighbor? Hello, I’m Ethan Rayne.”
It took Penny several seconds to come back to herself. With a bright smile, she reached out, took his hand, and shook it while stroking it. “Hi, I’m Penny. You are?”
“Ethan Rayne,” the young man answered again, shaking her hand politely and with restraint.
She felt the temperature of that hand was a little strange—not hot, not cold, but as if wrapped in some gentle force. It was very comfortable. And in the instant they shook hands, Penny suddenly felt a faint warmth in her chest, and even her breathing became a little smoother. She thought it was an illusion, unaware that at that very moment, Ethan’s fingertip had moved ever so slightly—a faint, almost invisible white glow flickered in the air, quietly soothing the shoulder she had twisted while moving the night before.
“You’re a doctor?”
“Something like that. I opened a small clinic, specializing in helping patients ordinary hospitals aren’t willing to treat.”
Ethan answered with a smile, then looked somewhat helplessly at the hand Penny still refused to let go of.
“Hm? Oh—oh~~~”
Only then did Penny realize she was still holding his hand. She hurriedly let go and began acting reserved.
Sheldon, standing to the side, raised an eyebrow. “By ‘aren’t willing to treat,’ do you mean rare diseases, psychological suggestion, or pseudoscience not yet verified by mainstream science?”
Ethan kept smiling. “None of those. It’s just that sometimes, before the body falls ill, the soul has already developed problems.”
Sheldon frowned. “You’re a doctor of souls?”
Leonard quickly changed the subject. “We need to go in and clean the place up. We’ll talk later, talk later!”
“All right.” Ethan smiled. “Leonard, Sheldon, I’ll be going first.”
With that, he turned and hurried downstairs.
Penny watched Ethan leave, her heart racing as she muttered softly, “There’s actually such a handsome doctor in this building?”
Watching Penny’s lovestruck expression, Leonard felt a little deflated. He whispered to Sheldon, “If we live with Ethan, we may never find girlfriends.”
Sheldon looked completely indifferent. “From a biological perspective, he has greater reproductive advantages than we do.”
Leonard sighed. “Sheldon, please don’t use the word ‘reproductive.’”
Only when Penny could no longer hear Ethan’s footsteps did she let out a long breath.
“Wow—” she couldn’t help exclaiming under her breath. “Your roommate is really… insanely handsome.”
Leonard instinctively began to explain. “Strictly speaking, he isn’t our roommate. We’re just sharing a rental.”
Sheldon immediately added the finishing blow. “More strictly speaking, he rents the room next to our apartment. He merely knocked down the wall for easier sharing.”
“Isn’t that just being roommates?” Penny asked back with a smile.
Sheldon said solemnly, “No. He exists somewhere between roommate and neighbor. I call it a ‘boundary-ambiguous group under a cohabitation system.’”
Leonard looked helpless. “Sheldon, nobody wants to hear your sociology lecture.”
Leaning against the doorframe, Penny still couldn’t help thinking back to Ethan’s face, the kind that made one’s heart race.
“He doesn’t look like an ordinary doctor,” she said, blinking. “He’s kind of like that mysterious type who knows hypnosis, understands psychology, and can also prescribe you medicine on the side.”
Sheldon nodded gravely. “I noticed that as well. He claims he can treat ‘people whose souls have problems,’ which is a false proposition in modern medicine. Unless what he studies is mental quantum entanglement.”
“Mental… what?” Penny was completely lost.
Leonard quickly explained, “Ignore him. He means the guy is a little mystical.”
Penny shook her head with a smile. “Then why would he move here? This building is so old even the elevator is on strike.”
Sheldon immediately replied, “Economic reasons are not the principal contradiction.”
Leonard was surprised. “You actually know the theory of contradictions?”
Ignoring him, Sheldon analyzed on his own. “Ethan claims he ‘wants to be close to people.’ That in itself shows his clinical sampling strategy is very strange. A normal doctor would live near a hospital, not in an apartment building whose average IQ is lower than that of a California state prison.”
Leonard couldn’t help retorting, “Maybe he likes quiet.”
Sheldon: “Then he should move into a library.”
Penny was amused by their bickering. “Maybe he wants to save money? Doctors sound like they make a lot, but it can’t be easy starting a private clinic.”
Leonard nodded. “He did mention that the clinic has been open for less than a month. He mainly takes on complicated and unusual cases—the illnesses other people can’t cure, he accepts them all.”
Penny: “Then his medical skills must be amazing.”
Sheldon: “Or the patients just happened to recover on their own. Statistics tells us that among every ten thousand cases of spontaneous recovery, there will always be one case mistakenly regarded as a ‘miracle.’”
…………………………
Ethan walked out onto the street, looked left and right, then began hailing a cab.
Soon, a taxi stopped in front of Ethan.
Ethan got into the taxi and casually said, “Rayne Clinic, at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Hudson Street.”
The driver turned his head. “There’s a clinic there?”
Ethan smiled. “Yes. A small clinic. It hasn’t been open long.”
The driver shrugged, shifted into gear, and the car slowly pulled away.
The street scene outside the window flashed past. Ethan leaned back in the seat, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the silver ring as his mind replayed the new neighbor from earlier, who was more than beautiful and sexy enough.
“Has the plot of The Big Bang Theory started?” he murmured to himself.
Ever since he was reborn here twenty years ago, Ethan had discovered many things different from the real world.
His childhood neighbors were surnamed Cooper, and they had a super-genius named Sheldon.
His high school chemistry teacher was named Walter White, and there was also an underclassman named Peter Parker.
How was this reality? This was clearly a composite universe of American TV shows and Hollywood movies!
This discovery left Ethan both frustrated and nervous.
He was frustrated because it seemed he could never go back, and he no longer had to pay off his mortgage or car loan.
He was nervous because he had no system, yet possessed skills that did not belong to an ordinary person.
Before transmigrating, he had been at home running a dungeon in World of Warcraft. In the final second before the raid wiped, his priest character was casting “Prayer of Healing.” Then the screen flickered with a “crack—!”
The monitor exploded in a shower of sparks, and his consciousness seemed to be yanked away by some force.
When he opened his eyes again, he had already become the current Ethan Rayne.
For many years, he had believed he was only an ordinary person. Until one time, when he reached out to save a passerby in a car accident, white light surged from his palm and directly stopped the other party’s bleeding.
—Heal.
At that moment, he finally confirmed it:
He had brought the skills of his priest character from the game into the real world along with him.
“Heal, Renew, Power Word: Shield, Dispel Magic, Fade… even the most bug-like Mass Resurrection is there. I’ve just never dared to try it.”
He murmured softly.
It was a strange feeling.
It came neither from faith nor from energy. It was more like a kind of resonance flowing through the air.
“If Sheldon and Leonard knew I was a priest, would they still make me tank when we ran dungeons?”
He let out a soft breath, looking at the flickering streetlights outside the car window, complex light reflected in his eyes.
“Sir, we’re here.”
The driver’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
Ethan came back to himself, took out his wallet, and handed over a twenty-dollar bill.
“Thank you.”
He pushed open the car door and got out.
The dim neon sign on the street corner flickered. Ahead stood an old two-story brick building. On the brass plaque at the entrance was engraved a line of words:
Rayne Clinic—Healing Beyond Medicine
“Rayne Clinic, healing beyond medicine.”
Ethan raised his head to look at the old wooden door and took a deep breath.
“All right, the daily life of a little priest… begins.”
He gently pushed the door open and walked inside.