MCU: No Limits

Since the last days of the previous month, Dr. Joyce Phillips was at home, resting after experiencing severe flu symptoms and fever, stemming from an epidemic outbreak that had emerged in the region where she lived.

However, she would not forget the last words she heard from the last patient she had up to the present moment.

"How big is your dream, exactly?"

The stoic face of that child really scared her, and that question won't leave her mind.

Initially, Joyce thought the boy was mocking something about her.

However, gradually, she realized what that response meant.

It was a simple analogy related to the last question Joyce asked Keiji.

An analogy consists of directly and explicitly comparing different entities such as beings, objects, concepts, actions, or experiences.

"How big is your life, exactly?"

Even though it was a response given in a truly frightening way, Joyce understood what that boy was trying to imply, even though it took her a while and she misinterpreted those words.

Basically, Keiji was saying that lives are the same size as dreams.

However, lives are not measured in dimensions such as size, width, length, or height.

Thus, Keiji was also saying that his dream, whatever it may be, is so immense that it cannot be measured in any way.

"Does he have an immeasurable dream, then?" She said, filling a mug with coffee before sitting in a chair and taking a sip. "Ha... This is new, honestly."

Joyce doesn't know what's going on in that child's head, and she's not interested in finding out.

She has been at home, resting, for a few weeks now. And her two new patients, Keiko and Keiji, are probably also at home.

Internally, Joyce thinks that the two are lamentable. However, she would never say that out loud. That would do more harm than good.

The sister attempted suicide, and the brother who woke up in the middle of the night called emergency services as quickly as possible.

She saw some photos that Sandy sent to her computer. The child did not leave his sister's side at any moment.

Even though Keiji was truly terrified, he was really very quiet, only speaking when spoken to. He was polite, too.

"An angelic child!" Sandy had told him over the phone, during a call.

However, on that day, there was an elderly man who had been run over by a tractor in the same room, among other people who had been injured in one way or another.

According to Sandy, that guy was a total pervert.

And apparently, he was looking at Keiko in a not-so-friendly way.

And during the afternoon, the cameras in that room stopped working for some unknown reason.

And when the cameras started working again, the old man was breathless, lying on the floor and writhing in intense pain, but with no strength to scream or ask for help to get up.

Apparently, this man was kicked repeatedly in a sensitive area. However, no one really saw or heard anything.

And Keiji, who could be the person who would have beaten that guy until he couldn't even form a word, was sleeping when the cameras started working again.

The old man, on the other hand, quickly averted his gaze and mumbled illogical and incoherent things, completely terrified, at the moments when Keiji looked at him with a confused expression. Apparently, Keiji was wondering what was wrong with this man.

And whether her patient is the aggressor or not, Joyce agrees that this old man deserved to be beaten up.

And about her 5-year-old patient, Joyce would honestly say that she doesn't know what to expect.

For her, it was truly unexpected that Keiji would ask such a poorly interpreted counter-question.

Moreover, she doesn't know how to proceed with his psychological treatment.

Some of Joyce's patients were children, yes. But she admits that they weren't children who were, let's say, "abnormal." 

But most of her patients were adults, like Keiko. However, even those people did not exhibit such strange behaviors.

At some point, when she returned home on the night of January 29, Joyce turned on the computer and researched the meanings of her name, truly in doubt.

She realized that Keiji was lying about this matter.

According to some articles, Joyce is a name of English origin that dates back to the Middle Ages, with some of its meanings being "joy" or "joviality."

There are other meanings, of course. However, none of the meanings is "old woman."

Knowing this, Joyce ended up realizing something about Keiji.

He somehow knew that she had no knowledge about this harmless subject. So, he boldly lied.

Probably, Keiji was really trying to distract her, just as she had suspected.

And looking at the sheet of paper that had the meanings of the variations of the name Keiji, she decided to research something about it.

A few minutes later, Joyce was staring at the computer monitor, unable to say a single word.

She just discovered that this child could excel in a career that requires cleverness.

Basically, Joyce discovered that the vast majority of the kanjis on this piece of paper are not real kanjis.

They are just meaningless scribbles that, if observed by someone without sufficient knowledge, would be mistaken for kanjis.

Apparently, Keiji just scribbled several lines in different directions until they formed characters that closely resemble one of the forms of Japanese writing.

However, the only things that were actually kanji were the two characters where he placed the fingerprint.

The human eye always focuses on the center of a text or an image.

When Keiji pressed his ink-stained finger in the center of the page, he made Joyce's attention focus exactly on that spot, giving an impression of importance.

Therefore, Joyce did not look at the other sides of the sheet of paper for more than a few seconds.

Apparently, Keiji realized that Joyce had little knowledge about a subject like kanji writing. At least, that's what Joyce thinks.

Knowing this, she assumed that this boy drew all those scribbles that were similar enough to this form of writing to make her think they were really kanjis.

These scribbles are arranged in these rectangles just to confuse her, making her believe there is some order in a sea of disorder.

However, Joyce saw that Keiji did not lie when he said that his name has more than a hundred variations. She researched it more deeply and saw that his name had various spellings that have different meanings.

So, Joyce looked at the piece of paper that was on her arm and raised an eyebrow when she noticed something suspicious.

She took the sheet and moved it horizontally until the sheet was inverted. Thus, at that angle, she was able to read a sentence that was written from the bottom to the top of the page, with one letter in each rectangle.

"GO DRINK WATER, DOCTOR."

Joyce wouldn't admit that she laughed when she read that.