The Body Is Gone

Monday morning. As the national flag was raised to the top of the pole, a new week began. Hui Nan felt something like relief — she was still alive to attend this week's flag-raising ceremony. She stood behind the rows of students, watching Zhang Yao deliver his habitual morning speech from the platform. Behind the student rows she also spotted Zhai Jia, Zhu Hua, and Suo Xin. Six people in the group chat — five had showed up. Jia Shi was missing.

After the ceremony, Zhai Jia fell into step with Hui Nan back to the mathematics office, Zhu Hua and Zhang Yao following. People who shared the same fate gathered together for a small measure of safety.

The mathematics office was heavy with tension. As everyone sat amid their mutual uncertainty, a soft chime from Hui Nan's computer cut through the silence: the chat software. Jia Shi's avatar had lit up. Jia Shi was speaking.

"Don't worry about me. I'm on vacation with my mum in Country Z. Just checked in to the hotel."

"This guy — he actually left the country without telling us."

"Scared us half to death."

The news of Jia Shi's safety drew a simultaneous exhale from the whole room. Hui Nan initiated a video call. Everyone crowded around the screen. Jia Shi's face appeared.

"Are you all okay?" he asked.

Zhu Hua: "Everyone's fine. You relax too."

Hui Nan: "The killer was killing someone every day and then suddenly stopped. Is the case over?"

Suo Xin: "Maybe Wang Laoshi's final message gave the police a significant lead, and the killer went into hiding."

"Into hiding?" On screen, a look of contempt crossed Jia Shi's face. "Something brazen enough to steal from a police station — and it would hide from our school?"

Hui Nan quickly asked: "What did it steal?"

Jia Shi's mouth began to move: "My dad heard Sunday morning from someone below him — Wang Qin's body has gone missing."

"The body is gone?" Everyone was jarred by the news. Voices overlapped:

"What would a killer want with a body?"

"Who would have the nerve to steal a body from a police station?"

"Who would have the strength to move something that heavy without being stopped by security?"

Zhai Jia, who had been quiet, suddenly said: "What if the body walked out by itself?"

The room fell silent. The chilling suggestion brought the temperature in the office to freezing.

After all — if this corpse could send text messages, why couldn't it walk out on its own?

The teacher next to Zhai Jia, Zhu Hua, quickly moved to comfort her, patting her hand. "Xiao Zhai, don't let your mind run wild. The killer must have been afraid the police would find evidence on the body. The body is—"

Zhu Hua stopped in mid-sentence. Her eyes had locked onto a chair in the corner. In that chair sat a person — Wang Qin.

She felt her limbs go numb. She wanted to speak but couldn't. Her trembling hand rose and pointed. "Wang — Wang—"

Thud. Zhu Hua fainted with fright.

The sudden collapse startled everyone; they turned toward what she had been pointing at. In the corner was a chair — and on it sat no one. There was only a sweater draped over the chairback, one that Wang Qin had frequently worn in life. She had been wearing it in her last class when she drank the acid, and wearing it when she was killed and thrown into the hospital pond. It should have been locked away with the other evidence at the station — and yet here it was, in the mathematics office.

The atmosphere in the room became deeply wrong. Every face had drained of color. They helped the terrified Zhu Hua upright first, then called the police. The police responded that none of Wang Qin's clothing had gone missing — what was in the mathematics office was simply a sweater that happened to look identical to the one Wang Qin used to wear.

Someone held a cup of cold water to Zhu Hua's lips and she regained consciousness. Knowing the sweater on the chair wasn't really Wang Qin's, she still couldn't bring herself to look at it again. Suo Xin helped Zhu Hua to the clinic; the others all dispersed — no one wanted to stay in that room. Only Hui Nan remained, along with Jia Shi still on the computer screen.

Hui Nan looked at him. "Did you go abroad to hide?"

"My dad insisted I leave. Said to come back once the case was solved."

Something cold settled in Hui Nan's chest. The deputy public security director could only protect his own child by sending him out of the country.

"Look after yourself, Hui Jie," Jia Shi went on. "This isn't over. It's still here."

"What's still here?"

"There's a shadow. I can feel it — it's always been watching us from the dark. It's waiting for an opportunity. Someone among us is still going to be killed."

"A shadow watching us in the dark? Have you reported that to Officer Wu?"

"Him? A detective?" A cold laugh from the screen. "He's just a police dog."

The video call ended. Hui Nan noted that Jia Shi's rebellious personality was very much like Chang Di's — one harboring resentment toward the structures of society, the other contempt for the school's authority. Both cut from the same cloth.