Nangong felt a dizzying sense of unreality, as if waking from a deep dream, murmuring, "Mrs. Li, Xiao Linghua…" His feet instinctively shuffled backward, retreating all the way past the morgue door before he remembered he was supposed to return to the memorial hall to give the ring to Old Li’s daughter.

Arriving at the memorial hall, Nangong spent the entire morning in a fog, as if drunk, unsure whether to trust the scant memories in his head or the workers who insisted nothing had happened. When you clearly remember experiencing something, yet everyone around you swears it was merely your delusion, you fall into a peculiar trap of self-doubt and self-belief. That trap ensnares your entire heart, preventing you from regaining your former confidence, leaving you in a state of agonizing confusion.

While Nangong was muddled, Old Li’s daughter approached, the ring he had just returned now conspicuously adorning her finger. With a slightly apologetic expression, she said, "Uncle Nangong, thank you! You must have searched through several rooms to find my father's body. Just as you left, I remembered I had the room number wrong. I meant to chase after you, but seeing you enter the morgue, I didn't dare follow inside. When I tried to call you on my phone, it was always out of service. I thought it must be fate, that I shouldn't sneakily retrieve my parents' belongings, so I gave up the idea of getting the ring back. I never expected you to actually retrieve it. It must have taken quite a bit of effort!"

Hearing Old Li's daughter speak, Nangong jolted awake as if struck by lightning. His eyes snapped wide open, displaying sheer disbelief, and he raised his voice, demanding, "What? What did you just say?"

"I said I mixed up the room number. You must have scoured the entire morgue to retrieve the ring; if so, I’ve caused you tremendous trouble, and I am so, so sorry." As she spoke, Old Li’s daughter clasped her hands in supplication, bowing deeply to Nangong in a gesture of sincere apology.

Nangong’s heart plummeted, but a sharp light ignited in his eyes, like spotting a savior on the road. He stepped forward and grasped Old Li’s daughter's hand, anxiously asking, "Say again, what room number did you give me this morning?"

"Twenty-one." Old Li’s daughter instinctively pulled her hand back, startled by Nangong’s sudden intensity.

"Which room is Old Li’s body stored in?" Nangong’s heart pounded violently, threatening to leap from his throat.

"I told you the room number was twenty-one, but in reality, Father’s body is in room eleven. They say the morgue only has sixteen rooms in total. I imagine you couldn't find room twenty-one, so you either used your intuition and went to room eleven, or you checked every single one." Seeing Nangong's agitation, a flicker of confusion crossed the daughter’s eyes; she couldn't quite grasp his actions and expression, mistakenly believing Nangong was blaming her for her carelessness.

In truth, Nangong was thinking that when he was in the morgue corridor, he had definitively found the room marked '21' based on the number Old Li’s daughter provided. He had written the room number and the cold storage unit number on the palm of his hand, and when he spread it open now, he could still faintly make out the fresh ink.

Twenty-one, no mistake! He had absolutely walked through the door of room twenty-one. When he entered, he had even looked up to compare the room number with the notation in his palm. Yet, here was Old Li’s daughter claiming the number she gave him was wrong, and the body was in room eleven. He hadn't gone to room eleven, yet he had brought back the ring—that was the evidence! Evidence that he had truly lived through that horrifying scene!

Nangong drew a deep breath, feeling a profound sense of relief. He then asked Old Li’s daughter, "Look closely again. Is the ring I gave you the same one your parents had back then?"

"Of course." The daughter slid the ring off her finger, angling it toward the light to reveal the inner band, where two capital letters, L and W, were clearly engraved.

"Do you see those two letters? They are the initials of my parents' surnames. This ring was custom-made at a goldsmith’s shop; there isn't another one exactly like it in the world," the daughter said with a smile, sliding the ring back onto her finger.

At that moment, Nangong lost all interest in attending the memorial service. He slipped away amidst the flow of guests and hurried back toward the morgue. He needed to see if, as Old Li’s daughter claimed, there were indeed only sixteen rooms, and confirm whether he had truly wandered into a world that should not exist.