Rong Jinzhen Leaves the Hospital Without Permission to Search for His Notebook in City B

Rong Jinzhen Leaves the Hospital Without Permission to Search for His Notebook in City B marks the moment Rong Jinzhen’s private distress becomes an urgent public search. The missing notebook has become so bound up with his sense of himself that he abandons hospital care and travels to B City, convinced that the thief may be there. His departure is both an act of pursuit and the consequence of a realization: something he treated as an inseparable part of his life could, after all, be lost.

The Notebook Becomes Visible

Rong Jinzhen first tries to understand why he failed to put his notebook away. The question opens, in his mind, into a labyrinth without an answer. At first, the darkness of that uncertainty brings vertigo; as he gradually adapts to it, however, the darkness becomes a means of finding light. His explanation is not that the notebook mattered too little, but that he may have prized and hidden it too deeply to see what was happening to it.

The notebook had become more than a possession or a solitary companion. Rong Jinzhen understands it as something necessary that had entered his blood and become like a bodily organ: present without requiring his attention, like his heart or blood. Its loss makes that otherwise unnoticed dependence perceptible. He compares this recognition to discovering the need for glasses only when they are missing. That analogy is made startlingly immediate when, in his haste to leave, his own glasses fall on the hospital stairs. The notebook’s disappearance has turned an intimate, habitual attachment into a crisis he can no longer ignore.

Departure from the Hospital

Rong Jinzhen leaps from his bed, dresses, and hurries out with a desperation that shocks his wife. She has never seen him act this way. She follows him, but on the dark staircase his eyes are unaccustomed to the conditions; he stumbles and tumbles down to the ground floor. His glasses fall, though they do not break. The delay gives his wife time to catch up, but not the understanding of what has driven him out.

She has hurried from Unit 701 because she was told that the stresses of travel had made her husband ill and that he had been sent to hospital and needed care. Believing that rest is what he requires, she urges him to return to bed. He refuses. The scene sets her practical knowledge of his condition against the undisclosed purpose of his journey: she knows he is unwell, but does not know that the missing notebook has become the reason he will not stay.

A Truthful Excuse and a Change of Destination

Outside the hospital, Rong Jinzhen finds a jeep parked in the courtyard. Its driver is asleep, hunched over the steering wheel, and the vehicle appears to have been brought for his use. Rong Jinzhen tells his wife that he left his briefcase at the station and must retrieve it. The account is built from a truth—the briefcase was left behind—but directs her toward a destination he does not intend to visit. He goes straight to B City instead.

His reasoning is narrowed by the disappearance: the thief must be either on the train or in B City. If the thief is still aboard, Rong Jinzhen believes there is nowhere for him to escape; if not, B City is the necessary next place to search. He contrasts A City, which does not need him, with B City, which might need its entire population. The sudden enlargement of the stakes gives his personal search the scale of a civic emergency, while preserving its immediate cause: the notebook is missing, and he believes the person who took it may still be within reach.

The Search Expands in B City

Three hours later, Rong Jinzhen reaches the courtyard of the city garrison. He is directed to the Special Incidents Task Force, based in the garrison guest house. A deputy minister dispatched from General Headquarters is in charge but has not yet arrived. Five deputy heads below him divide responsibility among relevant military departments in A City and B City; one of them is Zheng the Gimp, who would later become Director of Unit 701.

At the guest house, Assistant Director Zheng gives Rong Jinzhen the first decisive report: the train has been searched from top to bottom, and the thief is not there. The evidence therefore points to B City. Those involved are dispatched into the city without delay. Vasili arrives that evening. Director Feng had initially ordered him to escort Rong Jinzhen back to hospital, but had also anticipated that Rong Jinzhen might refuse. The supplementary instruction is that, if he insists on remaining in B City, Vasili must accompany him everywhere and keep him safe.

The action ends not with the notebook recovered, but with the search redirected and Rong Jinzhen’s refusal to return to hospital accommodated under supervision. His departure has altered the terms of the crisis: a missing notebook has drawn him out of medical care and into an organized search involving the garrison, military departments, and a personal escort. The glasses that fall on the stairs briefly embody the vulnerability of the person pursuing the notebook; the notebook itself remains absent, the object whose loss has made his dependence on it impossible to overlook.