Gu Qing's Diary (Part Two)

Gu Qing's Diary — The Biology Teacher, Huang Lu

Let me write about our biology teacher today. Her name is Huang Lu. She is slender in a very particular way — every bone seems to be trying to push out through her skin, and if she wears anything thin she looks like a skeleton on display. Her eyes are large and bulging, as if they might fall right out.

Huang Lu is without question the laziest teacher at this school. The students on board-wiping duty love her, because she doesn't write a single word on the board during class. Not only does she not write — she barely speaks. She has students stand up and read from the textbook one by one, and once the reading is done she sits there and does nothing until the bell rings. The moment it rings, she's out the door first.

Today in biology class she handed out a set of questions and made us sit an exam. If she has a test to give, she never lectures — because during a test she gets to sit there and play on her phone.

The last question was a labeled diagram of the eyeball. I couldn't fill in a single blank. I looked up and saw Huang Lu, eyes wide as a goldfish, completely absorbed in her phone. It struck me as somehow cartoon-like, so I expanded the eyeball diagram on the test paper and drew a cartoon figure with big wide staring eyes, modeled on her. Maybe if she sees it she'll think it's charming and give me a point.

Gu Qing's Diary — Liu Banxian the Fortune Teller

There's an old man who tells fortunes from a little stall at the base of the school wall. Everyone calls him Liu Banxian — "Half-Immortal Liu." I've heard he's been sitting there for years, though almost no one ever seems to consult him. I'd never seen anyone go up to him before.

Today I did. During lunch, I was chatting with Su Meng and a few others at the school gate when we noticed a girl approaching the stall. She didn't look like a student here — a bit older, southern accent, slightly round, glasses, a string of plastic beads on her wrist in garish multicolored plastic.

I was curious and moved close enough to listen. The girl said she'd just graduated from a teachers' college and came to Tiecheng to look for work. She wasn't sure whether to stay in this city long-term, and wanted Half-Immortal Liu to tell her fortune.

Liu Banxian asked her to write a character.

The girl thought for a moment. "I'll use my own name." She wrote the character 佳 on the paper.

Liu Banxian half-closed his eyes. "Have you perhaps had some unpleasant experiences in the city where you came from?"

The girl nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, yes! You've read it!"

What was there to read? Would she be here if she was happy where she came from?

Liu Banxian looked very pleased with himself. He studied the character some more, muttering: "One person, two layers of earth. When a person enters the earth, they are at peace. This city is your destination. Stay."

I wanted to laugh. A rare customer, of course he wanted her to stay and come back regularly. The girl took it completely seriously, thanked him many times, paid, and left.

A teacher's college graduate, and she still believes in this kind of thing.

Gu Qing's Diary — The Confession

He confessed to me today. Actually I'd been dropping hints for a long time before he finally figured it out. After school he said he wanted to take me somewhere. I was expecting something romantic — instead he took me behind the school boiler room and brought out a flute, and played a song. "Butterfly Lovers," of all things. It was a bit awkward, but it was thoughtfully prepared, so I was still moved.

Afterward I asked him: "Would you die for love like Liang Shanbo did?"

He said, "Liang Shanbo was the one who died first."

I was speechless. I said, "That's not the point — what I mean is, if I died, would you die for me?"

He said, "How?"

I said, randomly: "Killed by someone."

He thought for a moment and said: "No. I'd want to live so I could avenge you."

So rational. Is that what boys are like when they're good at the sciences?

But I don't need him to avenge me.

I'll avenge myself.

Hui Nan reached that last line and felt a chill move through her. I'll avenge myself — how? With what?

Beside the diary sat the creased list. Every teacher who appeared in the diary pages she had read was boxed on the list. The other boxed names were perhaps in the pages already turned to ash.

Hui Nan weighed whether to warn the other teachers named on the list and tell them to be careful. She also worried about causing panic — for those who couldn't bear it, publishing the list would amount to serving them a death sentence, possibly triggering extreme reactions.

She turned it over in her mind a long time and finally decided to take the matter to Principal Chen Daipeng. She could see he was a man who had weathered many storms; the position of principal was not one just anyone could occupy. And his name was not on the list — he could think through countermeasures with a cooler head.

When Chen Daipeng finished hearing Hui Nan's account of the list, he was genuinely shaken, though he disguised it well and offered her a few vague reassurances. The moment she left, he called in the school's network administrator, a young man named Xiao Wang, and asked him to check the print records on Huang Lu's computer and look for any sign the printer had been compromised. The check turned up nothing: the date and time on the list matched perfectly with the printer's own logs. The files, software, and network were all completely normal. Everything normal — and yet an abnormal list had been printed. How?

Hui Nan had barely returned to the mathematics office when she received a group invitation from the principal: all subject teachers of Class 4, Grade 4 were invited to dinner that evening.

That night, all of those still alive whose names had been boxed on the death list came.