Another World

The first period on Thursday morning was geometry for Class 4 — Hui Nan's class. After everything that had happened these past few days, she had no energy to lecture. The period was assigned as an exam. A test was far less demanding than teaching, but invigilating was still required. When Hui Nan spotted a student cheating from a practice book, she went down to stop it.

The student was Zhang Qi, copying answers from an exercise guide. Caught in the act, he showed no particular panic — just looked calmly at Hui Nan, with the expression of someone prepared to be scolded.

Today Hui Nan was not in the mood to scold anyone. "Close your book and put it away," she said flatly.

Zhang Qi said nothing and began to close the exercise guide.

"Stop!" Hui Nan's voice came out sharp. Her eyes had fixed on the cover.

Written there in two lines: "First pockmark hangs herself, second pockmark watches. Third pockmark buys medicine, fourth pockmark brews it."

Hui Nan felt her scalp tighten. She had been refusing to revisit this rhyme, and here it was appearing before her like a ghost.

She snatched the exercise guide and said to Zhang Qi: "Outside."

Standing in the corridor, Hui Nan's hand trembled as she pointed to the cover. "What is this?"

Zhang Qi seemed baffled by her reaction, staring at her blankly.

Hui Nan steadied herself, then spoke again: "Who wrote this?"

"I did."

"Why?"

"I heard it brings good luck."

"You copied it from somewhere?"

"Yeah. The school forum."

Zhang Qi walked back inside, baffled, and Hui Nan ended the exam as quickly as she could and went to the mathematics office to log on to the school's internal forum. She found the post quickly — it had only been up a few days. And there, for the first time, she saw the nursery rhyme in full:

First pockmark hangs herself, second pockmark watches.

Third pockmark buys medicine, fourth pockmark brews it.

Fifth pockmark nails the coffin, sixth pockmark carries it.

Seventh pockmark digs the hole, eighth pockmark buries it.

Ninth pockmark sits on the ground and cries.

Tenth pockmark asks what he's crying about.

Ninth pockmark says:

It wants to climb back out of the earth.

After reading it, Hui Nan felt as though she had tumbled into a bottomless pit. The rhyme seemed to carry the message of death.

Ma Dahua was hanged in the classroom.

Huang Lu's eye was pierced by a shard of glass.

Xiao Jin, before she died, wrote the character "medicine" in blood.

Each victim matched one of the pockmarks in the rhyme. Hui Nan thought of the staff directory — ten names boxed on that sheet of paper. Class 4, Grade 4 had ten subject teachers. This nursery rhyme had exactly ten pockmarks. The directory had laid out the list of the dead; the nursery rhyme had written the script for how each would die.

Hui Nan moved her cursor to the username at the bottom of the post. A profile page appeared: the account name was "lulu305."

"It's Huang Lu."

A voice came from behind her. Zhai Jia, from the geography department.

"Zhai Jia? When did you get here?"

"I found the forum post too. I came over specifically to tell you about the rhyme."

"You're saying this account is Huang Lu's?"

"I recognize her email."

"But the post date is October 30th — the night of Xiao Laoshi's death. By that point Huang Lu had already—"

"Actually, the voice we heard in Class 4 that night was also Huang Lu. She must have known something. She's using this nursery rhyme to tell us what she knows."

"How would she know?"

"Because she's already gone to another world. And the killer is in that same world."

"Another world?"

"Where people go after they die."

Zhai Jia looked at the screen once more, then said, character by character: "This is a nursery rhyme from the realm of the dead."

Hui Nan felt a sudden shift in Zhai Jia's manner — something unsettled her. "Who told you all this?"

"Master Liu. He can see things we can't."

"Master Liu? The fortune teller at the school gate — Liu Banxian?"

"That's him. He told me: what the underworld sends out as a message becomes fixed fate in the world of the living. What we're facing is not something human."

Hui Nan quickly cut her off. "Zhai Jia, don't frighten yourself. There is no such thing as the underworld. And even if there were, people from that world don't come to commit murders."

"Then how do you explain the voice we heard that night? And the nursery rhyme appearing before Xiao Laoshi was killed? And the character 'medicine' that Xiao Laoshi left at the end — why does it appear in the nursery rhyme?"

Hui Nan had no answer.

"It isn't over," Zhai Jia continued. "The next target is the fourth pockmark. Any one of us could be the fourth pockmark."

A commotion in the corridor broke through — and then the algebra teacher Suo Xin walked into the mathematics office, drained of color, forcing words through trembling lips: "Wang Qin has had an accident."