Good Morning, Teacher

That morning, the news of Huang Lu's death reached the school. The cause of death: in the small hours of the night, she had run down the stairs alone and struck a pane of glass left in the fire escape by a resident on the tenth floor. Nineteen lacerations across her body. The fatal wound: a shard of glass through the left eye, piercing the brain.

Death had settled over the campus like a fog, making the autumn feel colder still. Two teachers dead in two days — both of them teachers of Class 4, Grade 4. The class was like a mouth that swallowed people alive, one teacher after another.

And now Hui Nan was walking into that mouth. Notebook and lesson plan in hand, she entered the classroom of Class 4, Grade 4. This was her first official class as a teacher, the day she formally became one of their instructors.

"Class begin!" she called from the lectern.

The students rose one by one, mechanically intoning in unison: "Good — morning — teacher."

A school and its teachers can force all their students to act the same, speak the same — but they cannot force them all to think the same. When those voices rose together saying "good morning," were the students truly greeting their teacher with warmth? Some were probably thinking about what snack to buy after class. Others where they'd go after school. And one or two were perhaps thinking: Teacher, should you even be alive?

Hui Nan sensed it — a malevolent gaze hidden somewhere in the crowd, like a large cockroach lurking in the dark, its antennae sweeping slowly across her face.

The feeling stayed with her until the bell rang. Back in the mathematics office, she took out the creased list from her drawer. She knew the hostile gaze wasn't trained only on her — all ten teachers of Class 4, Grade 4 on the list were at risk. They could all become the next dead face. Why Class 4, Grade 4? Was it really connected to the dead girl, Gu Qing? Was Gu Qing truly murdered, as Chang Di had said? What had this girl experienced in her short life?

During the second break, before the morning exercise period began, Hui Nan went to the sports ground hoping to find Chang Di and ask him directly why he believed Gu Qing had been killed. But she couldn't find him. She asked many students — no one had seen him. Just as she was turning back toward the mathematics office, Zhou Dong came running over, lowering his voice: "Ms. Hui, I know where Chang Di is." He pointed to an abandoned residential building outside the school wall, covered in "Demolish" signs. "He should be on the roof of that building."

Following the direction Zhou Dong indicated, Hui Nan left the school, circled around to the abandoned block, climbed all the way to the top floor, and pushed open a battered wooden door. There was Chang Di, sitting on a step, facing a small fire. In his left hand was a notebook; with his right he was tearing out pages one by one and feeding them into the flames. When he heard the door, he stopped and looked at Hui Nan with wary eyes.

Hui Nan sat down next to him. "It's fine — I understand needing to come out and breathe for a while. I'm not here about skipping morning exercises. I wanted to ask you something."

Chang Di's expression relaxed when it was clear she wasn't going to scold him. "About those two dead teachers?"

"No. About Gu Qing."

"Xiao Qing?" Chang Di's eyes lit for just a moment. Gu Qing had been dead for half a year, and everyone went out of their way to avoid the subject. Hui Nan was the first person to ever ask Chang Di about her directly.

"Last time you told me Gu Qing was killed. Why do you believe that?"

Chang Di sighed with a grief that sat beneath the surface. "She wouldn't have killed herself over a disciplinary note. Because she genuinely didn't care what anyone in this school thought of her."

"She didn't care?"

Chang Di opened the notebook in his hand — by now barely a few pages left — and turned to the last one. "This is Xiao Qing's diary. Read her last entry."

Only then did Hui Nan understand that the notebook Chang Di had been feeding page by page into the fire was Gu Qing's diary. She took it and read the last page:

Time passes so fast. I've been at No. 4 for almost a year. Tonight at dinner Mum suddenly told me she and Dad are being transferred back to headquarters again. We're moving again.

She left for her night shift after dinner. Dad hasn't been home since the weekend. Tonight it's just me again.

They're really grinding themselves into the ground at that private company, aren't they? Always on the move, never home. And they still won't quit. Sad.

I hate this unsettled life. Moving around like cockroaches. Though they don't ask my opinion anyway.

Tiecheng's not much of a place either. Grubby everywhere, nothing worth missing. The only thing I'm not ready to leave is him. This is the last thing I'll write in this diary. I'll give it to him as a keepsake — it's not like anyone else would want to read it.

Along with the diary I want to draw a portrait of the two of us to give him. We've never taken a photo together.

My hand won't stop shaking tonight. I'll finish the last bit tomorrow morning, during class. It doesn't matter if a teacher catches me — I'm leaving soon anyway. Worst case, they'd put a mark on my record. They wouldn't actually kill me for drawing in class. Hehe :)

When she finished reading, Hui Nan reached the same conclusion Chang Di had. Gu Qing did not kill herself.