Chapter 15 Section five

In the sixth class on Monday, I asked the students in the class to gather in the playground.They showed incomprehensible expressions. After arriving at the playground, I asked them to line up in front of the teaching building, right below Class 3, Grade 5.After a while, two people walked up ahead—Eto and Sensei Morimoto's mother.It was I who called them. "I'm sorry to bother you to make a special trip here. As I said on the phone just now, I will try to solve the mystery of Mr. Morimoto's death next. No, it's not so much to solve..." I glanced at the children, "Maybe It would be more accurate to say that it came from these guys."

Immediately they began to complain, and words like "we don't know anything" came from time to time.I turned to those who had spoken. "No, you guys must know something. Here's the proof." I pulled an item out of the paper bag in my hand, a bicycle inner tube. I noticed that the faces of almost all the children changed. "It's something hidden somewhere. How about it? Some of you should have an impression of this thing?" Several people cast reproachful glances at Ayaka Shimomura.She widened her eyes and shook her head. "Impossible. That thing is at my house..." At this point, she covered her mouth with a serious expression on her face.

I smiled. "That's right. Shimomura's house still has something like this, so it's the one that Morimoto-sensei used?" Shimomura Ayaka bit her lip regretfully at my words. "What's going on here? I'm confused." Jiang Teng's voice was a little impatient. "I know why Mr. Morimoto went to the playground. He did it to practice bungee jumping." "Huh? Bungee jumping?" Jiang Teng widened his eyes. "Exactly. For some unknown reason, Mr. Morimoto had to do a bungee jump. And, it was from that window." I pointed to the window of the third class of the fifth grade above my head.

"How is it possible..." Jiang Teng shook his head with an unbelievable expression.Teacher Morimoto's mother also looked at a loss. "I think Morimoto-sensei is going to buy a climbing rope at a sporting goods store. Since I can't find it, I plan to use other ropes instead. And the teacher also bought an inner tube from a second-hand bicycle shop. He plans to tie the rope and the inner tube to his feet. , jumped out of that window." "Such a dangerous thing...how could..." Mr. Morimoto's mother covered her face with her hands. "Of course, Mr. Morimoto also understands the danger of this matter. Mr. Eto, did you help me find out about that matter?"

"Did you ask me to check the contents of Mr. Senben's car and the corresponding weight? Well, as I said before, there are five bags of rice, all of which are ten kilograms each. There is another one weighing about one kilogram Big cloth bags and a five-kilogram dumbbell, all in the back seat of the car." "I see, it's a dumbbell. Speaking of which, Mr. Morimoto still has one at home. Usually dumbbells come in pairs, and I thought it was strange to have only one." "What exactly do you want to talk about?" "Mr. Morimoto threw down substitutes of the same weight as himself to adjust the length of the rope and the inner tube before jumping by himself. Those substitutes were five bags of rice, dumbbells and cloth bags. Ten kilograms multiplied by five, plus five kilograms, Plus one kilogram, the total is fifty-six kilograms, which means that this should roughly match the teacher's weight."

"That's right. The child's weight is about that much." Said Mr. Morimoto's mother. "That's right. The '10×5+5+1' written on the blackboard means that." Jiang Teng exclaimed in a low voice. I turned back to face the children. "You should be honest. Why did the teacher go bungee jumping? What happened between you and the teacher?" Everyone was silent at first.Finally, Ayaka Shimomura took a step forward.She seemed to have finally figured it out, and said, "That was before the Golden Week. As soon as Mr. Morimoto opened the cage, Chippy ran out. The teacher immediately went to catch him, but Chippy escaped and ran to The outside of the open glass window. We all panicked because Chippy couldn't fly yet. The teacher tried to push the glass window to the other side, but he didn't because it was rusty. So we all yelled. We yelled :'Teacher! Quickly save Qipi! You can lean out of the window and reach out and grab it!'"

I pictured the children screaming, how panicked they must have been. "But Morimoto-sensei didn't do that, did he?" After I finished speaking, Ayaka Shimomura lowered her head silently. "Teacher seemed very scared. Chippy was about to fall, but he was still lingering. After a while..." Ayaka Shimomura pursed her lips tightly. After a while, Qipi fell, and she probably wanted to say so. "Chippy died, so you all hate Morimoto-sensei. Is that so?" Ayaka Shimomura did not answer.I scanned the other kids, all averting my gaze. I decided to question Yamamoto. "Then, why did Mr. Morimoto bungee jump?"

Yamamoto seemed to be about to cry, looking at Ayaka Shimomura as if asking for help. Finally she spoke again. "Since Chippi's incident, we have completely ignored the teacher. We decided not to respond even if he talked to us. The teacher asked how we could forgive him, so after everyone discussed it, we decided to let him jump from there. Go down and show us. As long as he completes a bungee jump from the classroom window, we will forgive him." At this point, Shimomura Ayaka's eyes began to roll tears.She cried and continued: "But, we didn't take it seriously. We thought he couldn't do it anyway, and just said it deliberately to make things difficult for him..."

"It turned out that Morimoto-sensei took it seriously. Then, he decided to bungee jump from the window, didn't he?" "On May 5th, Sugimura, Suzuki and Yamamoto and I went to Tanaka's house to play. On the way home, we passed the school gate and found Mr. Morimoto doing something at the window of the teaching building. After looking carefully, he found that he was about to tie a rope and Big bags of bicycle inner tubes, thrown out the window." I nodded, as I thought. "After a few tries, the teacher tied the rope to his feet and jumped out of the window. But..."

Ayaka Shimomura started crying again, so Suzuki continued her words. "I think it might be because the shoes fell off, and the ropes on both of Mr. Morimoto's feet also fell off. Then the teacher fell headfirst." Hearing Suzuki's words, I turned to look at Eto.This would explain Morimoto-sensei's dropped shoes. "Why didn't you call someone immediately?" I asked Suzuki, Yamamoto, Ayaka Shimomura and others. Yamamoto answered me hesitantly: "Because, we feel that if the reason for the teacher's bungee jumping is known to others, we will definitely be severely scolded... Besides, the teacher seems to be hopeless..."

"Indeed, the situation at that time should have been close to death on the spot." Jiang Teng said behind me. "Are you also the ones who put away the ropes and other items?" I looked at Yamamoto, Suzuki and others. Yamamoto nodded slightly. "Because we wanted to hide the fact that the teacher had done bungee jumping exercises... Shimomura took home the inner tubes and ropes. There were five bags of rice and a dumbbell in the bag in the classroom. We divided the labor to carry these Get into the teacher's car. The car key is in the teacher's pocket." "That's it..." I looked behind me.Eto stood there with a gloomy expression, while Mr. Morimoto's mother showed a painful expression. "The truth seems to be the case. It was neither a suicide nor a homicide, but an unfortunate accident caused by Morimoto-sensei's desire to capture the hearts of the children." Eto and Morimoto-sensei's mother didn't say anything, just lowered their heads. "We feel that we have done something very sorry for Mr. Morimoto... So, we all made up our minds that we will never disobey the teacher's words again. Because, apart from this, we can't do anything..." As if echoing Shimomura Ayaka's words, the children all sobbed and cried. I sigh deeply. "Children, people are very fragile. Teachers are also human. I am also fragile, and you are also fragile. If the weak do not support each other to survive, no one will be happy." I don't know if they are listening to me, but they just keep crying.