Murder Bureau within Bureau

  I hadn't slept for long when Liu Hui came knocking on the door at dawn.

  She changed a lot overnight, last night she wore a white dress and pants, looking gloomy, like a female ghost. This morning she put on a floral dress and combed her bangs, looking more sunny, especially the bangs covered up her mole, giving off an indescribable charm.

  She chatted with us for a few sentences and suddenly changed the subject, asking if we had gone to the village last night without following the rules.

  Can I admit this? Even if she really found out something, knowing in my heart that we went out, on the surface I'll pretend to be confused, otherwise once it's made public, there will undoubtedly be a confrontation.

  Panzi shook his head in denial, pretending to be stupid and confused, just like me.

  She didn't ask any more questions, and after finishing up, she took us out the door, saying let's go have breakfast together. As we were just walking out, Panzi turned her head to take a look, and exclaimed in surprise.

  I turned back to take a look. The two door gods on the gate were gone. Those door gods were carefully pasted by Panzi, even if it was windy, they wouldn't be blown away so easily.

  I'm puzzled and thought to myself, could it be that someone really came by in the second half of the night? And also took away the door god along with it?

  The place where we had breakfast was still that broken tile house, the place where we drank potato soup last night. This time when I followed Liu Hui in, I found two people sitting on the round table, holding a bowl of porridge and drinking, and an old lady standing in front of the stove, seemingly cooking rice.

  As soon as I saw this old lady, especially her stout figure, my heart skipped a beat. She was the same old lady who had been talking nonsense by the well last night. Fortunately, she didn't recognize us at all, and neither Panzi nor I said anything to her. Otherwise, we would have given ourselves away with our fearful tone, and our voices would have easily betrayed us.

  Liu Wei introduced us and said that the two people eating congee were also teachers, and colleagues with us. Now I understood, this broken tile house was what they called the teaching staff canteen.

  The two of us found a place to sit down, and Liu Wei brought over three bowls of congee. While we were drinking the congee, she got to the point and said that the school in Su Yuan Village was very small, with only about thirty students, and there wasn't even a physical education class, so it would be impossible for us to work as PE teachers.

  I asked casually, if we don't teach physical education, what else can we teach?

  She said that currently, there is a shortage of one math and language teacher. I reckon she also figured it out, my friend and I don't have much cultural foundation. She specifically reminded me that teaching in Suifeng Village is all primary school textbooks, not difficult.

  I thought to myself, if I only taught elementary school textbooks, the two of us could really make a good team. Elementary school math is nothing more than addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, not even needing to solve equations. In comparison, teaching Chinese is much harder than math. Chinese is all about nuances in words and phrases.

  I gave him the priority, letting Panzi choose first, asking him to teach Chinese or math. In fact, I was very sure in my heart that Panzi would definitely choose math.

  Ke Pan's expression was very solemn, and he thought for half a day before saying to me, "Du Rui, you teach math, I'll handle language."

  As soon as I heard this, I thought, "What's wrong with Panzi? He can't even understand elementary school math."

  It was settled like this, and after eating, Liu Hui took us to the school for a walk. To be honest, the scale of the school in this village is not only small, but it doesn't even have a scale. Two large tile-roofed houses were surrounded by a large area of bamboo fence walls, with the larger one serving as the classroom and the smaller one serving as the teacher's office, which was considered a school. A group of students of different heights and ages, all squeezed into the same classroom to take the same class.

  Liu Wei said that this morning was a math class, and I had to follow him to listen in on the lesson. As for Pan Zi, he could only stay in the office and chat with other teachers.

  This is the rhythm that separates us, although I don't want to be separated from you, but can't find a good reason, so I had to take my pen and book and leave with Liu Wei.

  I've never been a student teacher before, I don't know what to do or not to do at all, but when I was in school, I saw other teachers listening to classes and they all sat in the back row.

  I followed suit and learned from them, also finding a chair to sit in at the back.

  Liu Wei is talking about applied questions today, this is my first time coming to practice, whether it's true or false, I have to pretend to be serious, right? So I told myself to focus and take some notes, but I really overestimated my patience.

  In less than twenty minutes, both of our eyelids started to droop, and I felt that Liu Hui's lectures were like lullabies, bringing out my infinite drowsiness.

  I secretly encouraged myself to hold on and not fall apart, but ten minutes later, I occupied the desk of a student next to me and fell asleep.

  I was in a daze and didn't know how long I had slept, but suddenly felt something was off. Why did the classroom become so quiet? Where were the sounds of lectures?

  I thought to myself, "Isn't it time for Liu Wei's class to end and switch to self-study?" I lifted my head, still half asleep, and looked around with bleary eyes.

  This look scared me enough, the whole class of students stood up, staring straight ahead, Liu Wei on the podium stared at the bottom of the platform with a straight face, they both clutched their waists with both hands and wildly twisted their heads.

  This student next to me was shaking his head from side to side, the amplitude made me worry that he could break his neck, especially when he slightly opened his mouth and showed a slightly sarcastic smile.

  This suddenly reminded me of the female corpse, my heart was racing and I couldn't sleep anymore. I didn't dare to touch this student blindly, fearing that something would happen. I slowly got up and waved my hand at Liu Hui.

  My actions were quite obvious, she should have noticed, but strangely, she completely ignored me. Moreover, the people around us also raised their hands and made some puppet-like movements.

  A term suddenly popped into my head, "puppet", I couldn't hold it back anymore, regardless of whether it was class time or not, I lifted my leg and ran.

  After I escaped from the classroom, my heart was slightly calmer. Then I thought again, I wonder how Panzi is doing, he won't encounter a similar situation in the office, will he?

  I hurriedly went to the office, but Panzi was not here at all.

  I thought to myself, could something have happened to Panzi? At this time, there was another teacher in the office making lesson plans, he had a distinctive feature, his face was quite long.

  I walked over and asked this tall face somewhat impolitely, "Where's Panzi?"

  He also ignored me with this cold expression, pointing in a direction and saying to me, "He's gone to the bathroom."

  I'm not too convinced by what he said. I thought to myself, how convenient is this? There's something strange going on in the classroom and Panzi just happens to have an urgent need to pee?

  I decided to go to the toilet first to find Panzi, and followed the direction of the long face to find that toilet. This toilet is also quite distinctive, just a stone house, divided into male and female compartments. Although I didn't go in to take a look, I estimate that inside it's probably just a big pit, where both urine and feces are invited to gather.

  I shouted towards the toilet. That big long face didn't lie, Panzi was indeed inside, and he immediately responded to me with a sentence.

  I saw that Panzi was fine, and suddenly I didn't feel so anxious anymore. I lit a cigarette and waited while smoking.

  As he was about to finish the cigarette, Panzi's face turned pale and he walked out rubbing his stomach. He even complained to me first, saying that he didn't know what was wrong, but he had been having a stomachache all morning.

  I didn't have the energy to get tangled up with him over trivial matters, so I told him everything I saw earlier.

  Pan Zi's face turned even uglier after hearing that, and at this point, there was no need to wrap him in a shroud; otherwise, wrapping him up would be no problem for a corpse.

  He stuttered a bit and said to me, "Du, Du Rui ah, this village is not clean, the students of that school must have been possessed by ghosts just now, otherwise how could they become puppets?"

  I looked up at the sky and saw that it was a fine day, so I casually said, "It can't be a ghost, can it? In broad daylight like this, ghosts wouldn't dare to show themselves in the sunlight?"

  Pan Zi shook his head again, I don't know what he's thinking, anyway, he covered his stomach and turned back to the toilet. I stood outside the toilet and could still hear the sound of him farting. This time he had a stomachache, I suspect it wasn't because of eating bad food.

  When I returned to school, it happened to be the time for class activities. Liu Wei also came out of the classroom to relax and greeted us again.

  I observed her expression, nothing unusual, just like a normal person. So I asked her a question, what exercise was she doing with the students during class?

  Liu Wei said it was a neck and shoulder exercise, and she also asked if we two wanted to learn it, which is quite effective.

  Can Pan Ze and I learn this? We're not really intellectuals, and our usual tasks don't involve desk work. Seeing us both shake our heads, Liu Wei didn't say anything else.

  This afternoon I was in the office with Liu Hui looking at lesson plans, while Pan Zi and another teacher went to listen to a Chinese class.

  I'm afraid something strange will happen again, and I slipped out of the office several times in the middle, wandering around the classroom. But this afternoon was very peaceful.

  After work in the evening, I was thinking of asking Liu Wei to go to our place and chat with me to dig up some clues. But before I could even open my mouth, she actually asked us out first.

  She said we're just here for an internship, and two teachers want to treat us to a meal, let's get together for a casual dinner.

  I thought about it and figured it wasn't bad either. After all, many people make good phrases, so Panzi and I followed Liu Wei together.

  There isn't even a single restaurant in this village, our gathering place is just that staff canteen, it's just that tonight we won't be having potato soup, and instead the fat woman brings out a pot of meat.

  The pot is still hot, the meat inside is bubbling, and in the soup, I also saw black dots like sesame seeds.

  I don't know if this is a characteristic of Suifangcun or not, but why do they always like to add this kind of black sesame-like seasoning to their dishes?

  Liu Wei first served us meat soup and called on everyone to eat and chat together. These two teachers, one was a tall-faced person I knew, the other wore a green jacket, don't know what he taught, didn't see him during the day.

  At first, they were all talking about some topics in school, which student had done what recently.

  I and Pan Zi also tried to get close, listening while hee-hawing along, when I felt the atmosphere was about right, I suddenly threw out a topic.

  I asked them, "By the way, before I came here, I heard that in Suizhong Village, several people have gone mad. Is this true or a rumor?"