System Message: "Defendant No.12, please take your seat."
The lights flickered one last time. Before the courtroom shrouded in deathly silence, a figure slowly stepped forward.
Unlike all the previous defendants, this man wore a pale grey hospital gown. His head was shaved close, yet his eyes were startlingly clear. There was no anxiety, no resistance, not even a hint of defiance in his expression. It was as if he had known this moment would come all along.
Name: Cui Zhou
Identity: Former attending psychiatrist; currently registered as Patient No.036 at the National Center for Psychiatric Control.
Accusation: Under the guise of treatment, manipulated psychiatric patients into performing ethically deviant acts, ultimately leading to the mental collapse, self-harm, or suicide of eleven individuals.
Note: The majority of victims in this case were patients lacking the capacity for independent social functioning. The central controversy lies in the boundary between a patient's autonomous will and the physician's power to influence that will.
Shen Yan felt a slight tightening in his chest the moment he laid eyes on him.
—He could sense something was wrong with this man at first glance.
"Good day, Arbiter."
Cui Zhou stood still and spoke first. His voice was gentle, his pace unhurried—like a kindergarten teacher telling a bedtime story.
"My name is Cui Zhou. 'Zhou' means boat, because my mother once said I was a drifting vessel in her heart."
His self-introduction stood apart from all previous defendants—no arguments, no emotion, only extreme gentleness and a calm, rational tone.
Shen Yan: "Do you know why you're on trial?"
"Of course," he nodded, his tone as fluid as water. "Because you believe I controlled my patients—led them to act against morality. But I'd like to clarify… it wasn't control. It was assistance."
"Assistance?"
"Assistance in becoming who they truly wished to be." He smiled softly, faint lines forming at the corners of his eyes. "You underestimate psychiatric patients. They are not helpless beings devoid of consciousness. They simply… have a different structure. A different reality."
"And I merely offered them a path into that reality."
Shen Yan narrowed his eyes slightly as the system began generating a conceptual overlay for "Free Will" and "Mental State" behind him.
---
System Annotation:
> Judgment Focus: Whether the will of psychiatric patients constitutes a "genuine choice." If not, then their actions are considered externally manipulated.
Judgment Focus: Whether the physician exceeded the bounds of "intervention rights." If so, this is deemed "invasion of consciousness."
---
This was no simple ethical dilemma—it was a confrontation between reality and the subjective mental world.
"Why did you do it?" Shen Yan asked in a low voice.
"Because reality is too painful," Cui Zhou answered, looking at him with a strange, gentle calm. "They were already trapped in the corners of this world. Since society denied them an exit, I became their door."
"Even if what lies beyond that door is an abyss?"
"At least the abyss is free."
Silence filled the courtroom.
And for the first time, Shen Yan felt an inexplicable resonance with the man.
—Because long ago, he too had stood before such an abyss. Only, no one had ever opened a door for him.
Shen Yan was silent for a long time before speaking again.
"You said you helped them. But the result was self-destruction."
"Yes," Cui Zhou admitted frankly. "But have you ever thought—they were destroyed not because of me, but because reality itself rejected their existence?"
He lifted his gaze. There was no madness in his eyes, only a stillness that transcended conventional reason.
"I once treated a girl with severe dissociative identity disorder. She had four personalities. Do you know what she wanted most?"
Shen Yan didn't answer.
"She said she wanted to live just one day in this world—truly live. Not under medication. Not locked in a ward. Not dragged back into 'normalcy' by her family. But to live, fully and completely, on her own terms."
"What did you do?"
"I wrote her a temporary discharge note. On that day, I dressed her beautifully and sent her to the seaside. She watched the sunset."
"She drowned herself that very night."
Cui Zhou smiled, as if relieved.
"She was happy."
"You treat death as a form of therapy?" Shen Yan's voice was cold.
"I treat respect as the final form of healing." Cui Zhou's gaze held no guilt. "In a society that systematically suppresses all that is abnormal, 'cure' essentially means 'eliminate all that is non-standard.' All I did was refrain from forcing them to conform."
Shen Yan didn't respond.
He knew this trial was fundamentally about choice. But the real question was—when one's mental state has already deviated from normative cognition, do their choices still possess legitimacy?
And if not, does that make any who assist them—culpable accomplices?
The system projected its ruling queries:
---
[System Inquiry]
Question 1: Do you acknowledge that psychiatric patients possess the right to independent existence and the right to refuse forced treatment?
Question 2: If a person's "freedom" ultimately leads to destruction, should those who aided them bear ethical responsibility?
---
Shen Yan didn't rush to respond.
He turned back to Cui Zhou and found him watching silently, as if waiting for an overdue understanding.
"I'll ask you one last question," Shen Yan said.
"Do you regret it?"
Cui Zhou remained quiet for a long time before slowly replying:
"I don't regret letting them make a choice.
But I do feel sorrow—
that from the very beginning, they were never allowed to choose."
---
[System Verdict Pending...]
[Defendant No.12: Cui Zhou]
[Final Verdict: Not Guilty]
Reasoning:
The core of this case lies in the boundary between "conscious manipulation" and "free choice." The system has determined that the defendant did not directly control the patients' will and that, given the unresolved legal and ethical context, his actions fall under "extreme but not malicious" exploratory conduct.
> Note: This ruling does not reflect universal ethical values, but is a philosophical and contextual interpretation within the framework of this simulation.
---
Shen Yan looked at the man's retreating back as the system announced its decision. In that moment, he suddenly felt a strange sense of release—
Perhaps not all roads leading to the abyss are wrong.
Sometimes, just opening the door—is already an act of mercy.