Chapter 24 Chapter Twelve

July 15, 2005, eight o'clock in the evening. After Mali parked the car on the side of the road, he took out his mobile phone and glanced at the text message: "Old classmates, July 15th, the 10th anniversary of graduation, dinner is at Wuji Hot Pot on Changshou Road, AA system, see you there!" It was sent by an old classmate of Nanming High School, and the news had been posted on the class homepage of Xiaonei. He hesitated before replying to confirm. Walking into the hot pot restaurant filled with all kinds of seasonings, Ma Li frowned and looked in the mirror, combed his hair a few times deliberately, and his mustache was slightly vicissitudes.

The classmates were already eating and drinking. He saw a strong man, weighing at least 90 kilograms, with a round belly protruding from the belt.It took me a long time to remember the name. It turned out to be my roommate back then. I didn't expect that from a young man with a standard figure, he turned into this fat face, and he was also the kind of person I hated the most. Ma Li's appearance was exciting, especially among the female students, some simply pulled him to their side, but he sat down without any resistance: "Sorry, I'm late, I'll punish myself with three cups!"

He said this with a very masculine tone, and his voice was magnetic. He poured himself three cups in a row, and it was obvious that he was good at handling various situations, and there was never a lack of women in his life. "Since you were admitted to Tsinghua University, I haven't had a chance to see you again." The class monitor's tone was quite sour, and Mali handed out his business cards perfunctorily, attracting the students to exclaim from time to time: "Wow, senior partner, you are now a big boss!" "Three years ago, I changed my career to venture capital and just made wedding dresses for others."

His smile was formulaic, comforting but not at all friendly. The students greeted each other, and many of them had rings on their left ring fingers, and even their hair was gradually thinning.There are still a few beautiful girls left, and their clothes are more fashionable and expensive.Several people talked about their own children, and the most outrageous thing was that someone's son could make soy sauce, it seemed like a lifetime away. "By the way, why didn't Ouyang Xiaozhi come?" A man muttered something, and a girl replied, "Oh, her? That transfer student, I share the dormitory with her."

The monitor scratched his head and said, "I heard that she was admitted to a normal university, but I haven't contacted her since then." "It's so strange, this kid actually eats hot pot alone." The fat classmate said something, and Ma Li noticed that there was only one boy sitting at the small table next door. Behind the thick hot pot steam, the face of the ten-year-old was even paler, with well-shaped eyebrows and eyes.Although Mickey Mouse is still printed on the clothes, he can exude a special aura just by sitting there quietly, making other children eclipsed.

"Yeah, it seems that no adults have been here." "Children nowadays, don't be less common than we were then." Ma Li frowned and shook his head, the boy ignored them at all, and just ate the pissing beef balls by himself. Suddenly, a gossip woman said, "Hey, who remembers Liuman?" There was no sound on the table for a moment, only the sound of the hot pot rolling, like the oil pan frying sinners in hell. "You said——did Teacher Shen Ming kill her?" "Isn't it obvious? Liuman seduced Mr. Shen, and Mr. Shen was about to get married, so she murdered her and carefully prepared the bamboo

Tao's venom lured Liuman to the small attic of the library in the middle of the night, and poisoned her to death. " "That morning, when Liuman was found dead on the roof, Teacher Shen was the first to climb up to see the corpse." "I remembered it too, it really scared me to death! Next, I will have nightmares for a week!" "Someone saw the two of them talking alone in the self-study classroom the night before Liuman was killed. Later, a bottle of residual poison was found in Teacher Shen's room. After he was arrested by the police, he was released again for unknown reasons. gone."

"In those few days, the dean informed all the teachers and students in the school: Teacher Shen was expelled from the school—I didn't expect Teacher Shen to kill the dean! I don't know who killed me? It became a headless case, and the body was still in the witch. Found it in the district!" Ma Li, who had been silent all along, finally interrupted the gossip: "Shut up! I don't believe Teacher Shen is a murderer! Please respect the deceased, after all, he was our head teacher. Everyone liked Teacher Shen very much back then, didn't you? Girls don't Do you say Mr. Shen is handsome? The boys say he is very energetic and has no airs, and he often plays basketball with us on the playground. He is also the instructor of the school's literature club, and he has nothing to say about ancient poetry or new poetry!"

These words made the students stunned. He had never seen him lose his temper so much. Half of the restaurant turned their heads.Including the boy sitting at the next table, looking at Ma Li with strange eyes. "Forget it, forget it!" The squad leader was confused again as a peacemaker, "It's all in the past, there's no need to be unhappy." "However, Teacher Shen appeared on the Internet again a few days ago." A boy made a mysterious statement, which caused the girls to scream, "Is it his ghost?" Instead, Ma Ma pulled him and asked, "What's going on?"

"I saw it too. It's on our class homepage on Xiaonei. You can check it online." "Someone must be playing a prank!" Everyone dared not mention the word "declaration" again, and several students left one after another, leaving the AA money to the monitor. At 9:30, the hot pot restaurant was about to close, and the women had finished walking. Ma Li picked up a cigarette, stroked his mustache, and looked dull and depressed. The waiter ran over and asked the boy at the next table, "My child, have your parents paid the bill?" The child fumbled in his pocket for a long time, and timidly took out dozens of dollars: "Sorry, I only have these on me, can you let me go home and get the money?"

"manager!" A big man came over and said fiercely: "Hey, brat, do you want to eat the overlord's meal?" The boy's eyes turned red and he burst into tears. When the waiter and the manager were helpless, Ma Li got up and said, "I'll pay for him." He threw two hundred dollars on the table. Afterwards, Ma Li realized that the boy was the actor. The manager took the money and asked while giving change, "Your child?" "I don't know each other, I just feel that I have a relationship." The boy sobbed and wiped away his tears, looked at Ma Li's serious eyes, and said "thank you" tremblingly. "Little friend, go home early." He turned his head and said to the class monitor and others, "Stop drinking, it's time to leave!" It was already raining heavily outside, Ma Li got into his POLO car, but the boy threw himself to the car window and tapped it with his fingers. He put down the car window: "what's the matter, little friend?" "Can you take me home?" "why?" "I want to give you the money back." "No." "However, it's getting dark, and I'm afraid it's dangerous to go home alone. Besides, I haven't brought an umbrella yet." Seeing the boy's frightened expression, he frowned and hesitated for a moment before opening the passenger's door.Ma Li's hand was as cold as a dead man's, pinching the child's slender wrist.The car stereo played the song "A Chinese Ghost Story". Leslie Cheung was his idol in high school. At that time, there was a poster of Ouyang Feng in "Evil, West Poison" on the bedside of his dormitory. Raindrops hit the windshield on a summer night, and the boy reported his address, which was actually in a villa area in the suburbs—but he couldn't even afford a hot pot meal, so how could he be the child of a rich family? This made Ma Li interested, and he turned the steering wheel without saying a word.Lighted a cigarette for myself.The boy watches his eyes in the rearview mirror, and he sneaks glances at the boy, but pulls back when he catches them. "Wealth and honor do not return home, like brocade clothes walking at night." Suddenly, such a sentence popped out of the boy's mouth. I don't know if it is the expectation of Ma Li or a mockery?His heart trembled slightly, and he glanced at the boy out of the corner of his eye, his expression was still calm, as if he hadn't said anything. In the dark night, the horsepower was driving fast on the elevated road, and it took half an hour to reach the gate of the villa area. The boy got out of the car and grabbed the window and said, "Wait for me, I'll go home and get the money." Ma Li threw away the cigarette butt, his eyes were in a trance for a while, before the boy came back, he turned the steering wheel and drove into the rainy night. An hour later, the POLO car stopped at the door of an apartment, which was a house he rented. It was messy and full of sundries. Only the wardrobe was spacious and clean, which was the most important aspect to him. Ma Li turned on the computer and went online, and found Nanming Senior High School on the school intranet. He entered Class 2 in 1992 and graduated in 1995.He saw many familiar names, but not all of them were on Xiaonei, and not all of them were still alive. Sure enough, he saw the ID named "Shen Ming"—— "I WILL BE BACK." Anyone who saw Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Terminator" in the 1990s knows this. Here are a few replies - "Dizzy, Teacher Shen? Didn't you die a long time ago?" "Which bastard is playing a prank? Is it fun to joke like this? Get out!" ... Ma Li registered an ID with his real name, and replied below—— "Mr. Shen, if you are still alive?" If you are still alive? Three days later, Ma Li found out that someone added his QQ, which was also called "Shen Ming", and added a sentence: "Student Ma Li, do you still remember the teacher?" He immediately accepted the friend application, and took the initiative to speak on QQ: "Who the hell are you?" Unexpectedly, the other party was invisible on the other end of the network: "Shen Ming." "In the middle of the night, don't scare me!" The time in the lower right corner of the screen has reached 1:40 in the middle of the night. "It's so late, why don't you go to bed?" "Working overtime! I'm preparing a financing report, and I have to go to the bank for a meeting tomorrow morning, and I may have to stay up all night again." "Why are you so desperate?" "struggle!" I also feel strange, why do I still talk so much to this ID?Maybe it was a prank or a psychopath. "Ma Li, your classmates will see that you look very tired, you should pay attention to rest." "School reunion? Hot pot restaurant? Who are you?" Then, he listed several names, all of which were rejected by the other party. "If you don't believe that I am a statement, why bother to apply for my friend?" "I don't know, I just miss him a little bit, he has been dead for ten years!" "I'm not dead." "I saw your dead body." Ma Li's fingers trembled on the keyboard, "At your memorial service." "What do I look like?" "You are lying in a crystal coffin. You look weird and your face is frighteningly white. They say you have to wear heavy makeup to cover your rotten face. The school says you killed the dean and forbids teachers and students from coming to the funeral , I was the only one who sneaked out. The memorial service was paid for by a middle-aged man, and he was lying in front of your coffin crying very hard, and I helped him up." "Thank you very much, classmate Mali!" Trees were dancing outside the window, as if raindrops were hitting the glass: "I watched you being sent to the cremation furnace, and the middle-aged man picked out your ashes with his own hands. I cried a lot. No! I tell you What are these for? You are not Teacher Shen!" "If I weren't Teacher Shen, I wouldn't know that you helped your deskmate cheat in the exam in the second year of high school. You charged ten yuan for each question. After being caught by me, you came to my dormitory in the middle of the night and knelt down and begged for mercy. .” Seeing this paragraph, the hairs on Ma Li's back stood up. Only the two of them knew this secret. "Teacher Shen must have leaked the secret!" "Do you think I'm that kind of person? That night, you swore to God with tears in your eyes that you would never do something like that again, and I also promised you that you would not tell about it. Later, I secretly visited your house , I just found out that your father is an alcoholic, and your mother makes a living by setting up a street stall, and you work outside every summer, just want to earn more money to subsidize the family - I believe these secrets, you have not told the school Anyone ever said that." "Stop talking!" Ma Ma will never forget it until he dies——Since then, Teacher Shen has subsidized Ma Li with fifty yuan from his monthly salary as pocket money.At first, Ma Li was resolutely unwilling to accept it, but the teacher said that it was lent to him, and he would pay it back when he worked in the future, helping him survive the most difficult months. In this life, he is grateful to the young head teacher Shen Ming. The QQ dialog box keeps showing that it is typing: "In the first half of the third year of high school, you suddenly came to my dormitory and said that you had lost a notebook in the library and wrote a lot of complaints about your classmates and teachers. Others found out and asked me to accompany you to get it back in the middle of the night, because I had the key to the library. So I took you to the library and found the notebook. The wind was very strong that night, and the attic door was blown open. We Both of them were very curious, so they climbed up to the small attic, and found that there were many tattered old books piled up in the dusty place. You picked one and took it away. There was moonlight shining through the skylight of the attic, and a black cat jumped from the roof. After passing by, he stared at us with rounded eyes. I remember you said a word: This cat seems to be possessed by a ghost, which is definitely not a good sign, maybe someone will die here." Of course Ma Li will not forget, the last sentence is verbatim, which means that even if he lives to this day, he may not have such a good memory, right? "That tattered book has been hidden in my bedside cabinet, but after you died, I burned it." "You often flip through that book with a flashlight in the middle of the night. You say that there are love letters left by former students in the book, and that you must keep this secret. Ma Ma, you don't know that I secretly opened your drawer and put your I checked it carefully, and in the illustration of the Battle of Waterloo, there is a line of crooked pen characters-'Anyone who has read this book will suffer bad luck, either by a knife or by a needle!'” "Mr. Shen, didn't I tell you not to touch my book! When I first saw that line, I was very scared and regretted stealing this book from the small attic. But I thought this was probably the past The student who borrowed the book played a prank, and hid the book for nothing. However, a year later, the curse came true, and you were stabbed to death in the witch district!" "Yes, I died by a knife." "So, I burned that book! Since then, I have been inexplicably afraid of needles, and I feel sick when I hear these two words. I don't go to the hospital when I get sick and have a fever. After getting the injection slip, I turned around and tore it up." "You're not married, are you?" "I have talked a lot with girlfriends, and there are often some rich women who take the initiative to seduce me, but none of them can make it to the end." Ma Li felt that he was really crazy, why should he say all this, "Mr. is he dead?" "Didn't you watch me being cremated?" "Dizzy! You've been burnt to a handful of ashes, how could you chat with me about QQ here?" "Ma Li, I'm by your side." "No, it's a hallucination! You're just a figment of my brain! I think I should keep taking my meds! Get the hell out of my brain!" Over the years, Ma Li has been troubled by insomnia and dreaminess, and has been checked in the hospital, and has been taking antidepressant drugs. "Do you think this is a domestic horror movie?" "This is a real illusion! I'm going to take medicine! Take medicine! Take medicine! Take medicine! Take medicine!" The screen was already covered with the words "take medicine". "What medicine are you taking?" "Let's meet and talk." Ma Li's fingers were sweating as he typed this line. "OK." "Can you guarantee it's you?" Ma Li's mind was completely confused, he thought it was a hallucination just now, but now he confirmed that he was talking to the dead. "If only I could tell all your secrets." "Tomorrow afternoon, at four o'clock, at the gate of Future Dream Building, if you really know me, you can meet me." "See you there!" The ghost of Shen Ming disappeared from QQ. Outside the window, the rain was getting heavier and heavier, reminiscent of the thunderstorm night on June 19, 1995, when he was killed. Ma Li saw the black curtain again, surrounded by solemn mourning, and looked at the remains of the deceased—Mr. Some lipsticks and foundations look disgusting.Only he boldly reached out and stroked the cold coffin, like a hard corpse.The glass suddenly opened, Ma Ma touched the dead man's face, Shen Ming opened his eyes, opened his mouth and bit his finger... What a terrible dream, he woke up drenched in sweat, his belly was already pale outside the window, and he began to write his resignation report. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Mali came to the entrance of Future Dream Building. Someone pulled the hem of his clothes, but he didn't see anything when he turned his head. Then he lowered his gaze, only to see a boy's face. Still not forgetting this kid, Ma Li paid the bill for him at the hot pot restaurant at the class reunion, and then drove him back to the villa. "Hello, Mali!" Looking at this impressive and calm face, he was a little tongue-tied: "You... you?" "At four o'clock in the afternoon, at the gate of Future Dream Building, didn't you say so?" "No, it can't be you. Where is he hiding? Did he pay you to come here?" Ma Li pushed him away and looked around anxiously, as if a ghost was lurking in the lively crowd. "Don't waste your time, it's me!" The boy's expression remained calm, and he asked coldly, "What medicine did you take?" Ma Li was stunned by this sentence, squinting his eyes to look at his face, and took two steps back in horror.The boy followed Shen's tone, and even his voice was somewhat similar. "Wait a minute—what did you just say?" "Anyone who has read this book will encounter bad luck, either by a knife or by a needle!" "Shut up!" Ma Li's lips turned purple, looked around, and whispered, "Come with me." The two came to Starbucks, and he ordered a cup of hot lemon for the boy and a cup of coffee for himself. "Tell me, who ordered you to do this behind your back?" "Statement." Holding his chin, he said interrogatively, "Little friend, what's your name?" "die." He shuddered when he heard it, and the boy explained: "The commander's commander, look out." "Oh, what a weird name. How old are you?" "Ten years old, it's the fourth grade after the summer vacation." "When Teacher Shen died, you weren't born yet." Si Wang replied calmly: "Yes, I was born half a year after his death." "Then what is your relationship with him?" "You can't imagine—do you really want to hear it?" "Say it! I'm not that patient." In the corner of the noisy Starbucks, he whispered next to Ma Li's ear, "I'm possessed by Shen Ming's ghost!" He suddenly raised his head, looked at the boy in fear, and shook his head desperately: "Nonsense!" "Student Ma Li, please tell me the creative background of "Remember Liu Hezhen" again? Ma Li, come with me to the playground to play basketball? Ma Li, are you responsible for collecting the test papers today? Ma Li, why are we studying? For China Studying for its rise! Mali, have you forgotten the Dead Poets Society?" "Please stop talking, Teacher Shen!" Ma Li almost jumped up from the table, but covered his ears with his hands, looking extremely painful. Si Wang continued to say in an affirmative tone: "Student Ma Li, I'm sorry, I didn't do it on purpose, but I just want you to believe that I have never left you, my dearest student." "Shen Ming, what happened to you? Who killed you back then?" "If I know the answer, I'm afraid I won't become a lonely ghost." Ma Li frowned and looked at him, nodding and then shaking his head, regretful in his heart.He took a sip of his coffee before returning to normal: "Has your ghost been wandering all these years?" "Yeah, I was floating on Nanming Road. A few years ago, I saw an elementary school student, and I simply rode on his back. You see, this child always bows his head, because I have been suppressing him all these years. " The boy lowered his head in pain, showing that there was a heavy pressure on the back of his neck—it turned out that the Thai horror movie was real! "Mr. Shen, don't come out to scare people in broad daylight!" "I'm sorry, if we meet at night, you don't know how scared you will be." The child has completely turned into Shen Ming, his eyes and eyes are like those of an adult man, and even his smile is so weird, "When I want to rest At that time, the kid named Si Wang came out, but when I want to talk, his brain will be completely occupied by me!" "Then how long are you going to stay? Don't catch the murderer, you will be floating outside forever?" "Probably—yes." "I think this child named Si Wang is quite pitiful." "It can be regarded as my fate with him, just like the fate between us." Ma Li's face changed, he knew that he was talking to a ghost, the ghost who was killed ten years ago: "Oh, yes, all these years, I also want to avenge you, I tried hard to find the murderer, but found nothing .” "Thank you, how are you doing now?" "I just handed in my resignation report today, and I really can't stand the pressure of doing finance." He picked up the paper towel that was given on the table and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Si Wang knocked on the table: "Hey, do you need my help? You must know that undead are omnipotent!" "What can you do for me? Cure my depression, kid?" "Can I get you a new job?" Seeing the serious expression on the boy's face, Mali replied with a wry smile, "Don't tell me about tutoring!" "The largest tutoring company in China - Erya Education Group, the assistant to the general manager, with an annual salary of 600,000." Si Wang's tone was slightly encouraging, while Ma Li shook his head blankly: "Stop joking." "Do I have to let the headhunting company come to you officially to believe it?" Half an hour later, the 28-year-old Ma Li and the 10-year-old Si Wang walked out of the Future Dream Building respectively.A BMW 760 drove to the side of the road and sped away with Si Wang. Ma Li looked at the turbulent crowd shrouded in twilight. Every living person was busy on their way, unaware that they were rushing to death, and there were countless ghosts of their predecessors floating around.