Chapter 1

Chen Mo had been sitting in the waiting area for forty minutes, and by the time his number was called, he almost wanted to get up and run.

"Number 23, Chen Mo, please go to Treatment Room 3."

The woman’s voice over the intercom was soft and clear.

He clenched the patient card, already damp with sweat, and walked down the corridor.

On both sides were frosted-glass cubicles. Through them, he could vaguely make out shifting silhouettes, and now and then he caught low voices, or some wet sound he couldn’t quite identify.

The door to Treatment Room 3 was left ajar. He knocked three times. No answer. He knocked twice more. Still nothing. Just as he was about to turn around and look for the nurse’s station, the door was pulled open from inside.

A girl stood behind it, barefoot, a head shorter than him, looking up at him.

She wore some kind of white skin-tight outfit that looked vaguely like a swimsuit. The material was very thin; beneath it, the fine lines below her collarbone were faintly visible, and there was the slightest hint of color through the gentle rise of her chest.

She wore matching shorts on the lower half, pulled so tight that the lines of her hips were sharply defined.

Her hair was gathered at the back of her head in a low ponytail, with a few loose strands stuck against her cheeks.

"Chen Mo?" She glanced at the tablet in her hand. "Number 23, right? Come in. Close the door behind you."

He slipped inside sideways, and the door shut automatically behind him with a click.

The treatment room was small, around twenty square meters. There was a bed in the middle, and beside it a machine with several data curves flickering on the screen.

There was a sink in the corner, with a motion-sensor faucet.

The air carried a faint smell of disinfectant, mixed with something sweet and vaguely bloody that he couldn’t identify.

He stood by the door, not knowing where to put himself.

"Sit on the bed." The girl was already washing her hands at the sink, her back to him. "First time here?"

"Yeah."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-four."

She turned off the water, flicked the droplets off her hands, pulled a tissue from the box on the wall, and wiped her hands dry before turning back to him.

That was when he finally saw her face clearly.

Round eyes, a short nose bridge, lips a little dry, with a thin peeling layer on them.

She looked even younger than he did, at most twenty-two or twenty-three.

"My name’s Jiang Tang. Jiang like ginger, Tang like candy." She walked over and sat on the chair beside him, resting the tablet on her knees. "I looked over your chart. The condition’s been going on for about eight months, right? What kind of treatment did you have at the other hospital?"

"None," he said. "I didn’t think much of it. Then... it got worse and worse, so I came in."

"Worse how?"

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Jiang Tang didn’t press him. She lowered her head and swiped a few times across the tablet, murmuring, "Complete inability to expel, eight months ongoing, normal at night, normal in the morning, erection function intact under stimulation, ejaculation reflex absent..." She looked up. "When was the last time you had a wet dream?"

"Four months ago."

"How much was there? Any change from before?"

"I don’t remember."

She nodded, tapped something on the tablet, then set it down and stood up.

"Lie back. I’ll do an exam first."

Chen Mo hesitated, but still lay down on the bed. A disposable sheet covered the mattress, slightly cold, pressing against his back.

Jiang Tang put on a pair of disposable gloves and came to the bedside. Her face was just above his waist, and he could make out the curve of her eyelashes.

"Pull your pants down to your knees."

He didn’t move.

"Hurry up. There are other people waiting." Her tone was flat, like she was commenting on the weather.

He slowly unfastened the button, pulled down the zipper, and slid his pants off.

The feeling of fabric brushing over his skin made him tense up.

Jiang Tang didn’t look at him. She was adjusting the machine by the bed, placing a probe attached to a cable against his lower abdomen. It was cold.

"Relax. I’m checking your baseline data first." She pressed a few keys, and the curves on the screen started moving. "Your heart rate is a little high, over one hundred. What are you nervous about?"

He said nothing.

She attached a few more probes, one on the inside of each thigh and another near his perineum. Her fingers, covered by the thin rubber of the gloves, carried body heat, and when she pressed them against his skin, he couldn’t stop his legs from tightening.

"Don’t clench up. Relax." She looked up at him. "If you keep doing that, I can’t get a clean reading."

He took a deep breath and tried hard to loosen up. With her head bowed, her gaze fixed between his legs, her expression focused, she looked like she was examining a perfectly ordinary part of the body. He closed his eyes and tried not to think.

After about a minute, she removed the probes from his body and pressed a few more keys. A string of numbers popped up on the screen. She stared at them for a few seconds, then peeled off her gloves and tossed them into the trash can in the corner.

"All right, confirmed. Stage-three emission disorder." She turned around and looked at him. "Do you know what that means?"

He sat up, tugging his pants back up as he shook his head.

"It means your ejaculation reflex is still there, but the final execution mechanism has a problem. In simple terms, you can get hard when you should, you can feel pleasure when you should, but at the very last step, you can’t get it out." She paused. "This condition is pretty common now. Environmental hormones are the culprit. You got unlucky."

He was silent for a few seconds, then asked, "Can it be treated?"

"Of course. Why else would you come here if it couldn’t?" She took a file folder from the cabinet. "But you may need to get used to the process. Our department is a special medical unit, and the treatment methods are a little different from a normal hospital. Read this informed consent form first. If everything’s fine, sign it."

He took the folder and skimmed through it.

Most of the words on it he recognized, but put together they didn’t make much sense.

Things like "oropharyngeal intervention therapy," "cavity-assisted drainage," "in-situ bodily fluid sample testing," along with a lot of other technical medical terms.

He looked up at her.

"In simple terms," she said, meeting his eyes with a calm expression, "I use my mouth and the lower half of my body to help get the blocked material out."

His face flushed red at once.

"Don’t be embarrassed. We’re professionals." She pointed to her ID badge. "I graduated in special medical nursing. I’ve been doing this for two years, and I’ve cured at least eighty patients, probably more like a hundred. A stage-three case like yours counts as mild. Usually two or three treatment sessions are enough to restore your autonomous function."

He was still red-faced and couldn’t get a word out.

"If you really can’t accept that, you can choose conservative treatment and take medication instead. But the effectiveness rate is only thirty percent, and the side effects are severe. It could affect your future function in that area." She looked at him. "You decide."

He lowered his head and stared at the consent form in his hands. The words on the page swam before his eyes, and he couldn’t focus on a single line.

After a long while, he heard himself ask, "During treatment, is it just you?"

"Just me." Her voice came from above him. "This is private treatment, one-on-one. Don’t worry, the whole process is recorded. The equipment monitors your vital signs, and see that camera in the corner? It uploads in real time to the medical database. There won’t be any problems."

He looked up at the camera in the corner of the wall. The red indicator light blinked on and off.

She added, "If you’re still worried, you can call a stop at any time. We never force anyone."

He lowered his head again, staring at the consent form for a long time before finally picking up the pen from the bedside table and signing his name on the last page.

Jiang Tang took the form, glanced at it, and put it into the drawer. Then she stood up and walked over to him.

"All right, don’t be nervous. Just do what I say." She looked down at him. "Now take your clothes off and lie still."