Restrictive Zone

RA 10 - Strawberry

The psychiatrist's professional report was sent back to the prison late the next afternoon, by which time Zheng Mingyi had completed a full 24 hours holed up and was released from the confinement cell.

Luo Hai still believed that the report had underestimated how dangerous Zheng Mingyi was, but professionals were professionals. Also knowing that his own opinions were not as important, he could only go over to Jiang Chijing's to chat with him for a bit.

Seeing that it was almost time for the inmates' afternoon break, Luo Hai didn't linger any longer and returned to the opposite infirmary.

Jiang Chijing picked up the latest copy of the weekly newspaper, idly flipped to a fun little column, and found that the puzzle for the column this week was sudoku.

Sudoku was a mini-game that required mathematics and logic. The player had to fill in the remaining numbers in a nine-by-nine grid, making sure that the numbers in each row, column, and box contained 1 to 9 without any repetition.

Jiang Chijing had solved a fair number of sudokus before, but the difficulty for today's was evidently on the higher side; after completing half of it, he was unable to use elimination to solve it, and had to test the possibility of each number individually.

The afternoon break time wasn't a suitable time to work the brain anyway. Jiang Chijing simply placed the newspaper aside, picking up the A4 psych report that Luo Hai left behind.

It stated on the report that Zheng Mingyi had an ISTJ (Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judgement) personality type with all the polarity indexes above 85%. He was rational, calm, and innately slow to anger or irritation. He had a more passive nature and did not show tendencies of violence, but this didn't eliminate the potential that he would turn to extreme action when threatened.

A result like this wouldn't have any effect on Zheng Mingyi's treatment in prison. After the settle-in period, he would still be assigned to either Block A or B depending on his performance.

As he thought this, someone suddenly held a book in front of Jiang Chijing.

Some inmates would borrow books to read in their cells, and after reading, take them back during their afternoon break.

Jiang Chijing routinely took the book, then found that the title of this book was Strawberry Planting Techniques. If he wasn't mistaken, this book was never loaned out to any inmate before.

He unconsciously lifted his head and ended up locking eyes with Zheng Mingyi.

"You want to borrow a book?" Jiang Chijing's eyebrows raised in surprise. "I thought you can't read books."

Wasn't it some form of masochism for a dyslexic to actually read a book?

"I'm not borrowing it," Zheng Mingyi said. "I'm reading it here."

"You don't have to notify me if you're just going to read it here."

"But I need you to read it to me."

In a twinkling, the air in his work area stilled. Zheng Mingyi's tone was too matter-of-fact, such that Jiang Chijing even suspected for a split second that he had missed some kind of detail, causing him to be unable to keep up with Zheng Mingyi's logic.

"What did you say?"

Jiang Chijing remained polite as he asked this, but the expression on his face had already exposed his inner thoughts: excuse me?

"I need you to read it to me," Zheng Mingyi repeated once more, "I can use my phone to read books outside prison, but I can't do that here."

Jiang Chijing tempered himself to say, "That's why this is prison, it isn't somewhere that you can do whatever you please."