Chapter 5 Chapter Four

June 5, 1995, dark night. On the fourth floor of the male dormitory building, dormitory 19 is the deepest part of the corridor, and next to it is a storage room full of sundries.My fiancée, Gu Qiusha, came only twice and said that the place where I lived was worse than a kennel, and vowed to let me have the most spacious and comfortable home. A month later, she and I will get married. The wedding time was set after the college entrance examination, and before I was transferred from Nanming High School and officially started working in the Municipal Education Bureau.The time for us to receive our marriage certificate has been set on June 19, two weeks later.

I just got off the phone with my fiancée and haven't dared to tell her about the day, except that I might be in some trouble, but it'll be over soon. It was ten o'clock on the watch, which was given to me by Gu Qiusha's father, and it was a famous Swiss watch bought in Hong Kong, which once caused a sensation in the teacher's office.I was reluctant to take it out, for fear that the shiny surface would be worn away, but Qiusha forced me to wear it every day. Sitting in front of the desk, I didn't have time to take off my watch, and stared at the glass on the surface, reflecting my tired face.Since graduating from university and returning to my alma mater as a language teacher, I have lived here alone for three years.Although the walls are a little peeling off, the ceiling is cracked and moldy, there is only a crumbling single bed, and a color TV from the second-hand market that often snows, but I still miss this room, because it is also in this dormitory for three years in high school spent.

At that time, there were three beds in the room, each with six boys on the upper and lower bunks. In 1988, late at night on the eve of the college entrance examination, one of them hanged himself. When we woke up in the morning light, we saw a dead body hanging under an electric fan... Unfortunately, I slept on the upper bunk. The eyes are parallel to mine, as if one eye is speaking to me. The school's investigation was nothing but that he could not bear the pressure of the college entrance examination, and he was worried that he would fail the exam and go to a dead end.This result made it difficult for several of our roommates to accept, and we had nightmares for several weeks.When we graduated this year, no one dared to step into this dormitory. Together with several rooms next door, rumors of haunting continued to spread, and they were all abandoned by the school.

Four years later, I returned as a new teacher and the only teacher in Nanming High School who graduated from Peking University.But I don't have a house, and the school can't solve the housing problem, so it can only use this haunted house as my single dormitory. I'm moving next month though, saying goodbye to the house I've had for six years. The new house is an apartment allocated by the Education Bureau, which is considered a special case. After all, it has only been three years since I set foot on the teacher's podium—and many old people who are about to retire from teaching all their lives have no chance for three generations in cramped, leaky old houses. Get such an apartment.Two months ago, I just got the keys to my new house. It is a two-bedroom, one-living room in the city center, the best conditions that the education system can allocate, and the leaders of the Municipal Education Commission live upstairs.My fiancée's family helped us with the decoration. The newly bought imported furniture and electrical appliances just arrived yesterday, and the cost has already exceeded my one-year salary.

I understand that I don't know how many people envy me, envy me, and hate me. Although I couldn't sleep, I turned off the lights early and lay down on the bed. After a while, I heard a knock on the door.nervously opened the door , but saw the police officer at noon, his gaze passed over my shoulder, scanning every detail in the room. "Good evening, Teacher Shen, can I check your room?" The police officer showed a search warrant, and behind him was the school's stern dean, staring at me with pity. "You... are you doubting me?" The dean is a middle-aged man with a sincere expression: "Mr. Shen, you are famous for being fluent in class, why don't you--"

I almost slapped myself, and stopped in front of the door: "Mr. Yan, is that you?" "Sorry, won't you let me in?" Officer Huang Hai's voice was even more dull. If ordinary criminals bumped into him, they would have peed their pants in horror. "No, please take a look! I haven't done anything wrong, so why am I afraid of being searched?" I let the police into the room, pointed to a string of beads hanging on the desk, and said, "Be careful not to break this thing." Although they didn't drive me away, I walked out of the dormitory with a face full of shame, and a policeman followed me everywhere. Would I still run away?

I walked under the cold moonlight, turned around and saw the boys rushing out of the dormitory, probably already determined that I was a murderer, and the police were arresting me and escorting me? The few minutes of waiting for the search was so unbearable that it would kill people.I turned to the girls' dormitory building on the other side, and the windows were also crowded with girls' faces, but I didn't see her. Officer Huang Hai went downstairs, and there was a plastic bottle in the transparent bag.I couldn't see his face clearly in the dark, but he didn't say a word to me again.Two policemen clamped me from left to right and took me to the gate of the school, where a police car with flashing lights was waiting.

"Officer, please lock my door, there are my important things inside." That was the only thing I said when I was arrested. The moment I was stuffed into the police car, there was a man standing by the side of the road in Nanming, his frighteningly pale face was illuminated by street lights. His name is Zhang Mingsong.