Chapter One. The Plot Begins
Sheldon and Leonard trudged up the apartment stairs.
One a theoretical-physics Ph.D., the other an experimental-physics Ph.D.; both had once been supremely confident in their IQs and had marched to the sperm bank to donate—only to chicken out the moment they saw the forms.
"Still mad about the sperm-bank thing?" Sheldon broke the silence first.
Leonard was still a bit gloomy. "No."
Sheldon: "Want to hear something interesting about stairs?"
Leonard: "…Not really."
Sheldon plowed on: "If a single step is off by just two millimetres, most people will trip."
Leonard: "I don't care!"
…Leonard: "Two millimetres? That can't be right."
Sheldon: "It is. When I was twelve I ran a whole series of experiments; my dad even broke his collarbone."
Leonard: "Is that why they sent you to boarding school?"
Sheldon: "No, that was because of my laser experiments."
When they finally reached the fourth-floor apartment, Leonard fished out his key—only to see the neighbour's door across the hall standing open. A stunning blonde was inside unpacking.
Leonard's eyes went wide. "New neighbour?"
Sheldon couldn't care less. "Obviously."
Leonard swallowed. "Significant upgrade from the last one."
"The two-hundred-pound cross-dresser with the skin condition?" Sheldon mused. "Yes, she's much better."
Women simply couldn't compete with Star Wars or The Flash in Sheldon's book, so the sight left him cold.
"Hi! I'm Leonard, this is Sheldon—we're your neighbours."
"Hey! I'm Penny, just moved in."
Penny greeted them with a smile while silently sizing them up: total shut-in nerds—harmless.
Just then the door of the opposite apartment swung open and a young man stepped out.
Tall and lean, he moved with sure strides, a perfectly tailored grey suit hanging from his frame, the collar unbuttoned just enough to show the line of his collarbones. Light-brown hair was casually swept to one side.
"Sheldon, Leonard?" he asked, puzzled. "Back from the sperm bank already?"
"Ah—" Leonard jumped in. "Ethan! You're still here? Don't you have a Patient to see?"
"Mhm." Ethan smiled, his gaze flicking to the dumbstruck Penny. Realisation dawned. "Our new neighbour? Hi, I'm Ethan Rayne."
It took Penny several seconds to reboot. Beaming, she offered her hand, shaking—and subtly caressing. "Hi, I'm Penny. And you are…?"
"Ethan Rayne," he repeated, shaking her hand with polite restraint.
His touch felt oddly neutral—neither warm nor cold—yet wrapped in a gentle force that soothed her. In that instant a faint, almost invisible white glimmer flickered from Ethan's fingertip, quietly mending the shoulder she'd wrenched while moving in the night before. She took it for imagination; she had no idea the Heal had already worked.
"You're a doctor?"
"In a way. I run a small clinic for Patients ordinary hospitals won't take."
He answered with a smile, then glanced—slightly embarrassed—at the hand she was still stroking.
"Hmm? Oh—oh~~~"
Penny finally realised she hadn't let go; she snatched her hand back and tried to look demure.
Sheldon raised an eyebrow. "By 'won't take', do you mean rare diseases, psychological suggestion, or unproven pseudoscience?"
Ethan's smile never wavered. "None of the above. Sometimes the soul falls ill long before the body does."
Sheldon frowned. "You're a soul doctor?"
Leonard hurried to change the subject. "We'd better go clean up—talk later!"
"Sure." Ethan smiled. "Leonard, Sheldon—I'll head off then."
With that he turned and jogged down the stairs.
Penny watched him go, heart racing, and muttered, "A doctor that gorgeous… in this building?"
Leonard, seeing her star-struck look, whispered to Sheldon, "Living with Ethan, we'll never get girlfriends."
Sheldon shrugged. "Biologically speaking, he has the reproductive advantage."
Leonard sighed. "Sheldon, please don't use the word 'reproductive'."
Penny didn't exhale until Ethan's footsteps faded away.
"Wow—" she breathed. "Your roommate is seriously hot."
Leonard reflexively clarified: "Technically he's not a roommate, we just share the rent."
Sheldon delivered the coup de grâce: "More precisely, he rents the unit next door; we only knocked the wall down for convenience."
"So basically a roommate," Penny replied with a grin.
Sheldon said solemnly, "No. Between roommate and neighbor, I call it the 'cohabitation-system boundary-blur group.'"
Leonard looked exasperated. "Sheldon, nobody wants your sociology lecture."
Penny leaned against the doorframe, still unable to stop replaying Ethan's heart-racing face in her mind.
"He doesn't look like an ordinary doctor," she said, blinking. "More like one of those... mysterious types who know hypnosis, psychology, and can still write a prescription."
Sheldon nodded gravely. "I noticed too. He claims he can treat 'people whose souls are broken'—a pseudoconcept in modern medicine, unless he's researching psychic quantum entanglement."
"Psy... what?" Penny was lost.
Leonard hurried to explain, "Ignore him. He just means the guy's a bit mystical."
Penny laughed and shook her head. "Then why move here? This building's so old the elevator's on strike."
Sheldon answered at once, "Economic factors aren't the principal contradiction."
Leonard was surprised. "You actually know contradiction theory?"
Sheldon ignored him, continuing his analysis. "Ethan says he 'wants to be close to people,' which already shows his clinical-sampling strategy is odd. Normal doctors live near hospitals, not in an apartment whose average IQ is lower than that of a California state prison."
Leonard couldn't help retorting, "Maybe he likes quiet."
Sheldon: "Then he should move to a library."
Penny chuckled at their bickering. "Maybe he wants to save money? Doctors sound rich, but a private clinic's tough at the start."
Leonard nodded. "He did mention the clinic's been open less than a month. Mostly weird cases—illnesses no one else can cure, he takes them all."
Penny: "Then his medical skills must be amazing."
Sheldon: "Or the Patient just happened to recover. Statistics tell us that among ten thousand spontaneous recoveries there's always one that gets mistaken for a 'miracle.'"
...Ethan stepped onto the street, glanced left and right, then began hailing a cab.
Soon a taxi pulled up in front of him.
Ethan climbed in and casually said, "Raine Clinic, corner of Seventh Avenue and Hudson Street."
The driver turned around. "There's a clinic there?"
Ethan smiled. "Yes, a small one. Opened recently."
The driver shrugged, shifted into gear, and the car rolled away.
The streetscape flashed past. Ethan leaned back, unconsciously rubbing the silver ring on his finger, replaying the image of that strikingly pretty and sexy new neighbor.
"Does this count as the plot starting?" he murmured.
Since being reborn here twenty years ago, Ethan had noticed many things different from the real world.
The family next door in childhood were the Coopers, with a super-genius kid named Sheldon.
His high-school chemistry teacher was Walter White, and there was a junior student named Peter Parker.
How was this reality? It was clearly a mash-up universe of American TV shows and Hollywood movies!
The discovery left Ethan both depressed and tense.
Depressed because it seemed he couldn't go back—no more mortgage or car payments.
Tense because he had no system, yet possessed skills that weren't ordinary.
Before transmigrating he'd been raiding in World of Warcraft. In the last second before the wipe, his priest character was casting Prayer of Healing when the screen flashed and—pop!
The monitor spat sparks, and his consciousness felt yanked away by some force.
When he opened his eyes again, he was now Ethan Rayne.
For years he thought he was just an ordinary person—until once, when he reached out to help a car-crash victim, white light poured from his palm and stopped the bleeding on the spot.
—Heal.
Only then was he sure:
He had brought the priest skills from the game into the real world.
"Heal, Renew, Power Word: Shield, Dispel Magic, Fade... even the broken Mass Resurrection, though I've never dared try it."
He recited softly.
It was a strange sensation.
Not from faith, not energy—more like a resonance flowing through the air.
"If Sheldon and Leonard knew I'm a priest, would they still let me tank the dungeon?"
He exhaled gently, watching the flickering streetlights outside, complicated reflections in his eyes.
"Sir, we're here."
The driver's voice interrupted his thoughts.
Ethan came back to himself, took out his wallet and handed over fifty dollars.
"Thank you."
He pushed the door open and stepped out.
Neon flickered dimly at the corner. Ahead stood a two-story brick building; a bronze plate by the door read:
Rayne Clinic—Healing Beyond Medicine
"Raine Clinic—healing beyond medicine."
Ethan looked up at the weathered wooden door and took a deep breath.
"All right, a little priest's daily life... begins."
He gently pushed the door and walked in.