December 13.
Thursday.
Zhang Shutong let out a yawn, pulled last night's homework out from his desk slot, and handed it to Lu Qinglian.
The homework would normally go from the group leader to the study secretary, but since Lu Qinglian was the study secretary herself, sitting next to her saved him a step in the process.
The downside was that if he hadn't done his homework, it was an immediate death sentence with absolutely no room to wiggle out of it.
"Classmate Lu Qinglian, if I don't have time to do my homework tonight, could you help cover for me?"
"Classmate Zhang Shutong, it seems the fried chicken was delicious. Going again tonight?"
Zhang Shutong looked up at the girl beside him. Her high ponytail hung low behind her head, and her eyes were fixed carelessly on her textbook. If one ignored the actual content of her words, her flat, clear voice was actually quite pleasant to hear.
But he didn't have the energy to talk much today. Whether the fried chicken was good or not, Zhang Shutong didn't know either; he just nodded as a tacit admission.
"What did you do last night?" Lu Qinglian asked instead. It seemed she hadn't taken the fried chicken comment seriously either.
"How did you know I had something going on last night?"
"Your dark circles are very bad."
"Is that so."
Zhang Shutong instinctively touched his eyes. He had noticed them when washing his face this morning, but he hadn't expected them to still be there. "Oh, I went to the basement again."
"Curiosity killed the cat."
"There's some truth to that, but I discovered a few things related to 'that.' By the way, I have serious business to talk to you about at noon. See you on the rooftop."
Lu Qinglian simply nodded her chin.
Zhang Shutong didn't know how the version of himself on the stray dog timeline had overcome that sudden difficulty breathing, but for his current self, there wasn't a great solution except to talk and think about it less.
Otherwise, suddenly looking like he was suffocating in the middle of the classroom would be incredibly embarrassing.
Besides, it was currently morning reading, which really wasn't a good time to talk.
Setting aside the loud sounds of reading, the homeroom teacher was sitting right at the front podium, scanning the room like a hawk. Once Zhang Shutong finished his sentence, he held up his textbook to block his face.
The rooftop key wasn't in his hands now either. After yesterday's mix-up, it was no longer safe to hide the key under the floor tile. He had originally wanted to stick it in the gap between the desks—the crevice between the two desks was like King Arthur's Sword in the Stone, ready to be taken and used whenever needed. But as soon as Zhang Shutong had tucked it in upon entering the classroom this morning, Lu Qinglian had casually taken it away.
Zhang Shutong didn't press the matter with her; he didn't go up there often anyway.
He forced his spirit up to recite the text, his eyelids drooping bit by bit.
If his body were compared to a phone, Zhang Shutong had already entered power-saving mode.
He never would have thought that just because he had kept talking about the energy-conserving doctrine for a day, he would actually be forced to conserve energy.
Some things simply couldn't be hidden no matter what.
He was referring to Teacher Song's dormitory and the photo wall in that secret chamber.
When they had first walked into the secret chamber, only Zhang Shutong himself had browsed through the photos. At that time, his three best friends were investigating other things, so he managed to keep it hidden for the moment.
But later, when everyone opened that door and went up to Teacher Song's dormitory together, Qingyi turned on the lights, and the photos of Teacher Song's ex-girlfriend were finally exposed to everyone's sight.
Anyone would think that was a bizarre room. If one didn't understand the underlying logic, judging strictly by the behavior, it actually looked a lot like a twisted serial killer's place.
Leaving them to guess wildly on their own, there was no telling what might have happened.
Zhang Shutong knew that trying to keep it a secret from others at this stage was practically treating them like fools.
So he gave the three of them a rough explanation about the clay figures.
Afterward, he led them to the basement, telling them about Teacher Song's secret and his own conjectures.
Of course, he only spoke about the ex-girlfriend. When they came to the photos of the long-haired woman, he simply said he didn't recognize her either. As for whether they could see a shadow of Gu Qiumian in the woman's face, that remained unknown.
Perhaps they were too astonished at the time to notice, or perhaps they had a faint suspicion but chose not to say anything.
Zhang Shutong increasingly felt that expose everything actually made things uninteresting; it was better for everyone to maintain a tacit, understanding silence.
As for the final photograph of Lu Qinglian, he had taken it down in advance.
It wasn't that his obsession with protecting Lu Qinglian's privacy was that deep, but rather she had clearly said at the time not to tell anyone else about this. Since Zhang Shutong had promised her, he would help keep the secret under conditions where it was possible to do so.
That was enough.
Therefore, no one was in the mood to mention the gathering again. Perhaps that Wednesday was already crazy enough without needing to go to Keng de Ji for another round of craziness.
They cleaned up the scene and talked all along the way as they walked. Fortunately, Zhang Shutong had already given his three best friends a heads-up when he was hospitalized, and had also mentioned that Teacher Song and Lu Qinglian were both searching for the "clay figures," so they accepted it relatively quickly.
But the facts were ironclad proof; they had no choice but to accept it anyway.
This impulsive adventure had started with a mystery and ended with a mystery.
But it wasn't completely without gain. For instance, when Du Kang left, he hadn't forgotten to carry that small dog along—they had left the dog inside the room when they went into the tunnel. Thinking about it, it was raining outside and the dog had nowhere to go. Although the four humans were terrifying, getting drenched in the rain was even more terrifying? Zhang Shutong couldn't fathom what the small dog was thinking either.
In short, that small black dog was jointly adopted by the four of them.
It was something that had never happened in his original life.
Du Kang was the guardian in name.
The guardian hadn't come to school today.
He had a fever.
Yesterday, he was the only one who had wiped out into the water, and he had walked against the wind in the cold, gloomy tunnel for a long time. After going back, unlike the other three who took hot showers, he had built a kennel for his canine son. If he didn't get a fever, who would?
Du Kang's current nickname was "Zorro."
Because of this, Ruoping asked in the group chat early in the morning:
"Why didn't Zorro come?"
Qingyi said, I didn't see Zorro either.
Du Kang then sent a weak voice message: Why do you guys care about the dog instead of caring about me?
Zhang Shutong thought to himself, is there a possibility that they were talking about you?
This was one of the few things that brought a pleasant mood.
If midnight on Thursday was taken as the dividing line.
Before midnight, Zhang Shutong thought more about who exactly the person in that secret chamber was, and where they had gone.
After midnight, he found it difficult to find an answer. Since he couldn't figure it out, he turned to think about another question—
What did the disappearing silhouette on the rooftop have to do with this matter?
Previously, he had temporarily given up on looking for the other party's whereabouts because he felt the silhouette on the rooftop had nothing to do with the "clay figures." However, yesterday's unexpected events had tightly linked the two together again.
Since the person in the basement had very likely reclaimed the clay figure four years ago.
Then, who was the person looking for the basement?
The truth grew increasingly shrouded in mystery.
Zhang Shutong took out a piece of paper.
He first wrote the words "Clay Figure."
Then he drew three lines radiating around it.
One line was naturally the mastermind who dug up the corpses.
One line was the person who reclaimed the clay figures back then.
And another line was the silhouette on the rooftop.
He wasn't sure if these were three different... perhaps they should be called factions. If the mastermind was clearly an adversarial faction, what stance did the next two factions hold?
Before a churning sensation could rise in his stomach, Zhang Shutong stopped his pen tip just in time and let out a sigh.
Learning from past lessons, he balled up the scratch paper into a wad, then slowly tore it into shreds, destroying the evidence.
When morning reading ended, he didn't leave the classroom, instead slumping over his desk to close his eyes and rest.
Today was a rare, quiet day. Although Ruoping and Qingyi didn't have fevers, they looked entirely listless.
The morning passed quickly.
Zhang Shutong sat through the first three periods while yawning continuously. It wasn't until the break that he turned his head and saw Lu Qinglian pulling out an extracurricular book. She didn't spend all her time grinding through problems and doing test papers either; rather, she solved problems during class just to better manage her spare time.
She was also one of the rare students who went to the library. Right now, Lu Qinglian had borrowed an extracurricular book and was reading it quietly in her seat.
"Please call me when class starts," Zhang Shutong requested.
Lu Qinglian glanced at him and said nothing.
Zhang Shutong said another word of thanks and closed his eyelids heavily.
...
"...The teacher is relieved to see you guys like this. In the future, you need to focus more. Although I used to say often that you should play when it's time to play, and study when it's time to study, and that you should focus on balancing work and rest, but—"
In his dazed state, a rather cheerful voice came from the podium. Its tone shifted:
"But after one more semester, it'll be the high school entrance exam. You still need to rouse your spirits more. I won't talk about the usual platitudes; let me mention another angle here, which can be considered my personal view. Setting aside grades and futures, the students have stayed in this classroom for four years. At the node where we step into the next stage of our lives, we always need something to put a period on the previous stage. At this point, someone will definitely ask, teacher, teacher, why put a period when there's nothing better to do?
"Good question. When you welcome high school life, it will tell everyone that you are already prepared to face a new life. Perhaps this is what's called a sense of ritual. Don't underestimate the phrase 'sense of ritual.' Why do we eat a cake on our birthdays, and light candles to make a wish? Isn't it just to make ourselves believe from the bottom of our hearts that we've grown a year older and it's time to face new challenges in life?
"Don't blame me for nagging. Here, I hope all the students, whether you were diligent or careless in the past, will start working hard from today to put a period on your middle school career. This is the confidence for you to welcome your new life in the future. Of course, an exclamation mark is fine too, just don't draw a question mark...
"Finally, I want to conclude with a line. Shakespeare said a line in The Tempest: 'What's past is prologue.' The teacher sincerely hopes you can live the life you want. I say, Wenwen, don't wipe your tears, and Yawen, look, your eyes are all red. It's not like the teacher isn't coming back.
"Look at Shutong, he's even in the mood to sleep..."
As Zhang Shutong listened, he realized something was wrong. Instinct told him that several very angry gazes were looking over now, and he had somehow become an ungrateful wretch for no good reason.
He quickly shook off his drowsiness and raised his head.
It was midday on December 13. After a heavy rain, the weather was unexpectedly clear, and there was even less dust floating in the air. A beam of sunlight shone into his eyes, making him instinctively blink. A tall man wearing a crumpled white shirt was standing on the podium.
The man was just over 1.8 meters tall, with a hooked nose, a long face, and a square jaw, revealing a resolute temperament. At this moment, however, he smiled quite un-seriously and waved his hand toward him:
"You kid have finally woken up?"
Perhaps the man was in a good mood, but Zhang Shutong's first reaction upon seeing his beloved teacher was pure shock.
Hey, hey, what's going on? Where was that newly arrived Teacher Xu? He hurriedly turned his head to look. Except for the teacher on the podium changing, everything else remained the same. Zhang Shutong didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing; his desk mate wasn't Gu Qiumian either, but Lu Qinglian.
"What's the situation?" Zhang Shutong asked in a low voice.
"Teacher Song came back early."
Lu Qinglian sat upright in her seat. She usually didn't pay much attention in class, but right now she rarely tilted her chin up to look at the podium.
Hearing his voice, she turned her eyes, looking as if she were repeating the words he had missed:
"To meet with the students, to say farewell.
"Also, to go eat at noon."
"Eat?"
"Teacher Song said he's treating the few of us to a meal."
Zhang Shutong was just about to ask who exactly was included, but along with the fall of Lu Qinglian's words, the dismissal bell rang.