The crow also flew away into the night.
All around was quiet and desolate.
Chen Ya knelt on the ground, covering her face with her hands. Her earlier shouts had drained the last of her strength. Her intermittent sobs and the scene she had just described leaked out from between her fingers.
“I saw Zhen Huan that day… she was standing alone by the reservoir… I asked her what she was going to do, and she said she wanted to jump and kill herself. Sob… she said it so calmly, even with a smile on her face… I thought she was joking, so I told her the water here was too shallow to die in, and that it was deeper up ahead.”
“She, she…” Chen Ya sobbed intermittently, “she even said thank you to me… I didn’t know, I really didn’t know…”
Ji Xun closed his eyes for a moment. He had never seen the scene of Zhen Huan’s death, but now, that vague and illusory scene was gradually approaching from a distant place, unfolding before his eyes like a scroll painting.
Just as the scroll painting came into focus, the people within it were pulled by strings and began to move.
A hazy mist enveloped the figures in the painting. In his own imagination, Ji Xun saw Chen Ya and Zhen Huan by the reservoir.
The will to die had long been born in her. Repeatedly tormented, she projected her last hope for life onto the last person she saw.
That hope was shattered.
She politely said her thanks, turned her back on the world, and leaped.
Chi Wenlan let go of Chen Ya’s shoulders. He stood frozen in place, more rigid than the streetlamp beside him. He let out a couple of seemingly bewildered laughs. “Why do you all have so much malice towards your own classmate? What did Zhen Huan do to hurt you? To make you so determined to see her dead?”
Chen Ya said no more. Her earlier shouts had drained the last of her strength. She knelt on the ground, covering her face with her hands, with only intermittent sobs leaking out from between her fingers.
After a long moment, Ji Xun let out a long sigh. He broke free from his fantasy and looked at Chen Ya again.
Did Chen Ya have a deep-seated hatred for Zhen Huan, causing her to deliberately provoke her when she wanted to commit suicide?
Probably not.
Just as she herself had said, those words were unintentional… playful… dismissive.
Her eyes had never seen Zhen Huan’s distress. All of the other girl’s pain and confusion were merely noisy and annoying to her. That’s why her final conversation with Zhen Huan was so casual, so careless.
She thought Zhen Huan was bluffing, so she responded casually.
And thus, tragedy was born.
“Alright,” Ji Xun helped the kneeling Chen Ya to her feet. “Stop crying. I’ll take you back to your classroom first.”
However, Chen Ya, who had seemed to have lost all her strength, suddenly regained her spirit. She violently yanked her arm from Ji Xun’s grasp, stared at him with reddened eyes, and said sharply, “Why aren’t you scolding me? Why are you trying to care about me! Do you think I’ll thank you for this? Let me tell you, I don’t think I did anything wrong. I just said one sentence. I didn’t push Zhen Huan. The only reason Zhen Huan died is because her mental resilience was too weak! If she was that fragile, she shouldn’t have come to school!”
After saying this, she turned and ran, extremely fast. She bumped into Zhou Zhaonan on her way but didn’t stop for a second, instantly crossing the lawn and disappearing into the depths of the night.
Zhou Zhaonan took two steps back and steadied himself.
His gaze followed Chen Ya as she ran away. In the distance, there seemed to be a shadow.
An illusory, slender, dark shadow.
He blinked.
One shadow became countless shadows. Countless shadows hid behind trees, in the bushes, under the walls, watching them silently and ruthlessly.
“What’s wrong?” Ji Xun’s voice came from beside him.
He turned his head, met Ji Xun’s gaze, and shook his head. “Nothing, my eyes were playing tricks on me.”
Ji Xun wanted to chase after her, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was better to let her calm down on her own than to lecture her… But would letting such an agitated person go lead to another tragedy similar to Zhen Huan’s?
He hesitated for a moment, then turned his gaze to Chi Wenlan, who was still standing woodenly under the streetlamp.
“Teacher Chi,” Ji Xun said.
Chi Wenlan’s eyeballs moved slightly.
“Teacher Chi, shouldn’t you go after her?”
“What would I go after her for?” Chi Wenlan retorted.
“Chen Ya… she seems a bit agitated.” Ji Xun paused. “Maybe she needs a teacher’s guidance.”
“I’ve been fired. I’m not her teacher anymore.”
“But you could contact her homeroom teacher, explain the situation, or phrase it differently, so that someone responsible can pay attention to her emotional and mental state in a timely manner.”
“Pay attention to the emotions and state of mind of a murderer?” Chi Wenlan sneered. “You people are so kind-hearted. But I don’t think it’s necessary. If a murderer were really that fragile, how could she have said those things to Zhen Huan! How could she have told Zhen Huan to go to the deeper water without batting an eye! These little devils, these vicious little devils… they are demons in children’s skin!”
His voice grew louder and more agitated until he roared, slamming the black leather bag in his hand onto the concrete ground. The bag’s zipper burst open, and its contents spilled out halfway from the opening, lying silently at their feet like a shriveled corpse with its guts spilling out.
“They should pay for a life with a life!”
“…”
Ji Xun opened his mouth to say something, but another voice, much colder than his own, sounded first in the night wind.
“Hearing those words from you is rather surprising.”
Zhou Zhaonan walked over from the lawn, his eyes under his bangs glinting like cold stars.
“Teacher Chi, while you’re righteously condemning others, you seem to have forgotten that you also played a part in Zhen Huan’s death.”
“I was helping Zhen Huan!” Chi Wenlan said angrily.
“How did you help her? By ‘helping’ her from summer vacation until she jumped into the water to kill herself?”
“I helped her—her child was never—”
“Never yours.” Zhou Zhaonan sneered coldly. “How strange. You did something wrong, your conscience is troubled, so you try to fob everyone off with a lie full of holes, seeking peace of mind through a self-righteous martyrdom, which then gives you the high moral ground to condemn others. But Teacher Chi, please realize clearly that ever since summer vacation, if you had possessed even a shred of self-respect and awareness as a teacher, the rumors about you and Zhen Huan would never have spread. Without those rumors, would Zhen Huan, who wouldn’t have had to endure the constant pointing and stares of others, still have killed herself?”
Chi Wenlan’s cheeks twitched. A vein, representing pain and remorse, throbbed beneath his skin, twisting his refined, youthful face. He argued, “That’s not it! In the beginning, she broke up with her boyfriend, so as a teacher, I thought I should show her some concern. It was the other students who started the teasing from the very beginning!”
“Concern? Teacher Chi, how did you show concern for Zhen Huan? As a teacher? Then why wasn’t this concern shown to Chen Ya, who is also your student? Did you really show concern without any selfish intentions?”
His every word was sharp, every sentence dripping with sarcasm:
“If Chen Ya became an invisible accomplice by being indifferent to Zhen Huan’s death, then what about you? What role did you play in this incident? Within the short half-month since the first tragedy, within the minute after the truth of that tragedy was just revealed, you seem to have forgotten the lesson and repeated the exact same mistake. Indeed, the only lesson that man can learn from history is that man learns no lesson from history.”
“Enough, enough, shut up, both of you, stop talking!”
Chi Wenlan squatted down in anguish, burying his face in his knees. A person can deceive others, but not himself. Of course he knew he was wrong. Why else had he been unable to sleep since Zhen Huan’s death? Why else did he hear Zhen Huan’s crying every time he woke from a dream?
Shuddering, he confessed the truth: “I didn’t lie… I didn’t lie too much… The baby in Zhen Huan’s belly wasn’t mine… Zhen Huan was originally dating a classmate, but then they broke up… I went to show her concern. I said, if you’re unhappy about anything, you can tell your teacher, and your teacher will help you… I had selfish intentions… I started a relationship with her…”
Ji Xun had remained silent, a complex expression on his face. Then, the complexity vanished, and he forcefully pulled Chi Wenlan up from the ground. “Teacher Chi, before you formally repent for your past mistakes, you can first take five minutes to call the homeroom teacher of Class A, tell them about Chen Ya, and have them pay close attention to her mental state.”
Chi Wenlan staggered a couple of times.
He was clearly the oldest adult here, but now he was like a helpless child, body trembling, eyes darting around, looking at Ji Xun with a lost and fearful expression. It wasn’t until he met Ji Xun’s severe gaze that he spoke as if scalded:
“I, I understand…”
He fumbled for his phone.
But after patting his pants pockets and jacket pockets, he couldn’t find it.
The phone was on the ground, in the black bag, hidden by lesson plans, invisible from a normal angle. Zhou Zhaonan saw it. But he stood with his arms crossed, silent, only occasionally letting his gaze fall on Ji Xun’s face.
This person said he was a police officer from the start. Although it was a disguise, he probably really wants to be a police officer in the future. That’s why he investigates these matters that have nothing to do with him, without asking for reward and without tiring. Along the way, no matter what absurd things he encounters, he always carries a kind of understanding sympathy and compassion.
And these were two emotions he couldn’t experience.
How could you experience something you don’t have?
He looked indifferently at the phone hidden under the lesson plans.
The phone was found after all. After seeing Chi Wenlan fail to find his phone on his person, Ji Xun immediately crouched down to search the briefcase and, sure enough, found his target.
The call was made immediately.
“Teacher Duan… it’s Chi Wenlan… I have something to tell you… about Chen Ya…”
Listening to him speak incoherently, Ji Xun, standing beside him, resisted the urge to snatch the phone and speak himself several times. The homeroom teacher wouldn’t take a stranger’s warning seriously. This was something only Chi Wenlan could do.
However, as his explanation neared its end, the person on the other end of the line said something that made Chi Wenlan freeze.
“Huh?”
He stared blankly.
“You’re saying, Chen Ya isn’t back in the classroom? Then she…?”
Where did she go?
The three people present all thought of the same question.
A speck of coldness began to spread through his veins, then attracted more, gathering and solidifying into sharp, frosty ice flowers. Ji Xun shuddered. He suddenly turned to Zhou Zhaonan.
“Something might happen. We need to find her, quickly! Along the direction she just ran. You know the school, you lead the way!”
Author’s note: Mwah~
Note: “The only lesson that man can learn from history is that man learns no lesson from history” should be an internet slang phrase. I looked it up, and it seems to be adapted from Hegel’s words: “What experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history.” The extended meaning is not quite the same as the original.
