The Dinner

The ominous list left both Hui Nan and Huang Lu pale and shaken. That evening at the dinner, every name on the list was present.

The school had reserved a large private room seating four tables. As was customary, the aging principal, Chen Daipeng — nearly sixty — took the microphone and delivered a few formulaic remarks before the meal began: our school continues to grow; today we welcome much new blood into our ranks…

At the word "blood," Hui Nan suddenly felt as though the school were a vampire. She knew the principal meant new teachers, not tuition fees, but the image wouldn't leave her.

After the principal's speech, everyone began eating, and once the meal wound down, people drifted from table to table with their glasses, toasting and chatting.

The first to find Hui Nan was the homeroom teacher of Class 4, Xiao Jin. "Little Hui, how do you like our school so far? Are you settling in? We're counting on you for geometry in our class from now on. We have two P.E. periods a week — if you ever need to borrow one for your class, let me know the day before and I'll arrange it." Hui Nan was aware that Xiao Jin was trying to earn the title of Senior Teacher, which meant she was desperate to drive this cohort's exam results as high as possible.

Hui Nan found herself feeling something like pity for these students. Fourteen, fifteen years old — at the age when they most craved movement and fresh air — locked in classrooms all day. The already-scarce two P.E. periods a week were routinely confiscated for other subjects.

Next came the homeroom teacher of Class 1, Ma Dahua, already reeking of liquor. "Little Hui, you just got here — so much to learn. With students, you can't give them an inch. Punish when you need to punish, hit when you need to hit! In all my years of teaching, how many classes of students have I handled? Has a single one of them dared to defy me?"

At the neighboring table, Huang Lu suddenly turned and stared straight at Ma Dahua.

Ma Dahua seemed not to notice. She took another drink and went on. "Why does everyone respect me? Because I can raise the scores. The ones who walk around smiling and laughing with their students, whose scores go nowhere — what good is it that the students like you?"

"All right, Ma Laoshi, take it easy on the drinking." A colleague from the language department steered her back to her seat. Huang Lu turned away, seething.

Hui Nan understood now why students didn't like this woman — and why even the other teachers didn't like her.

Various other teachers drifted over to chat afterward, and Hui Nan made polite conversation with each. Then she noticed a young man at the nearby table — a few years younger than herself, it seemed, glasses, refined-looking, quietly drinking alone. After an evening of talking with middle-aged colleagues, the sight of someone around her own age was a relief. Hui Nan picked up her glass and went over to introduce herself.

His name was Jia Shi — the history teacher for the fourth grade, twenty-five years old. Like Hui Nan, he had just been brought in to the school and had recently finished his probationary period.

Perhaps because he'd had too much to drink, partway through the conversation Jia Shi suddenly announced, "I don't want to do this anymore."

"What? You just started."

"Hui Jie, you have no idea. I've loved history since I was a child — I enrolled in a history program over my family's objections. But really, what can a history graduate do besides teach?"

"Isn't teaching history perfectly good?"

"Good? I've been looking through the history textbooks this week. What kind of history is this? The whole thing is lies. How am I supposed to teach this? If I follow the textbook, I feel I'm betraying history and my conscience. If I teach the truth, the answers won't match the standardized exam."

He knocked back another drink and launched into an impassioned lecture on the Battle of Shanghai, the Chongqing negotiations, the Three-Anti and Five-Anti campaigns — all of it completely beyond Hui Nan's knowledge. He ranted about how the textbooks had falsified history, then pivoted to ranting about the whole system:

"The entire point of our system is to keep people ignorant. The schools fool the children; the media fools the adults. Official news and school textbooks are cut from the same cloth — pure fabrication. Fifteen years ago, there was a magnitude 6.5 earthquake right here in Tiecheng. The news reported 34 dead city-wide. My cousin worked as a nurse at the hospital then — she said the morgue in her building alone had 48 bodies."

"A major earthquake?" A girl who had been sitting with her back to them suddenly turned around, apparently drawn in by the topic.

She was in her twenties, slightly round, wearing glasses and a ponytail, with a string of cheap multicolored plastic beads on her wrist.

Jia Shi knew her — she was Zhai Jia, the geography teacher, from the same department as him. A southerner who'd come to Tiecheng recently, she too was a newly arrived student teacher, just like Jia Shi and Hui Nan.

Zhai Jia moved closer and continued: "So this city had a big earthquake and lots of people died horribly. No wonder I've felt something eerie about this place ever since I arrived. So how many people really died?"

Jia Shi was from Tiecheng, and Zhai Jia's comment irritated him, but he answered seriously enough: "You want to know the real number? Actually, the earthquake was enormous. The whole city was destroyed. Every person in it died — not a single living soul remained."

"What?"

"That's why you find this city eerie. The people you see on the streets aren't alive."

"They're not alive?"

"I was twenty-five fifteen years ago. I'm still twenty-five now. Haven't aged a day. Jealous?"

Zhai Jia's color was already changing, her fingers instinctively working the beads on her wrist.

Jia Shi gave a strange smile. "Don't be jealous. You'll be just like us soon."

He stood abruptly and moved toward the now-terrified Zhai Jia. Hui Nan quickly grabbed his arm. "The girl's easily scared — stop it."

Jia Shi laughed and sat back down. Zhai Jia, once she'd recovered, punched him in the chest. "You little — I'll kill you!"

Hui Nan watched Jia Shi's joke and thought about the afternoon's incident in the biology office. Could that have been someone's prank as well? Besides the unsettling list, there was another thing weighing on her: the question of how Gu Qing had really died. What came next — both the investigation and the events themselves — would teach Hui Nan that none of these strange incidents were pranks. They were all warnings of something terrible.