Volume 2 Chapter 8

Volume 2 Chapter 8

Translated by: TaffyGirl13

Chapter Eight

“Ji You Yin!”

Yu Yin and Yu caught up with the boy after he turned the corner and entered the cla.s.sroom.

As soon he stepped into the cla.s.sroom, Yu Yin noticed that none of the students had arrived yet. The entire room was empty, and there was a breeze coming through the four opened windows. It’s probably because his mom is a teacher that Ji You Yin would come to school earlier than the rest of the students.

The boy stopped in his tracks when he heard his name being called out and turned around in bewilderment. “Teacher? Are you looking for me?”

He had stopped in front of Ye Xiao Xiang’s desk, which is where he then placed the flowers.

Yu Yin kept his gaze on that “thing” behind the student as it slowly slid off him and sat down at the desk. The eyeb.a.l.l.s sticking out were locked onto the white flowers on the table. “Erm...why did you place those flowers on her desk?” The flowers weren’t chrysanthemums or sword lilies, but rather seemed to be the type of small white flowers that one could pick around the school grounds.

The boy froze for a moment before stuttering in panic to explain, “I’m not trying to pull a prank or anything...because I heard Mommy say that Ye Xiao Xiang died for some unknown reason, I originally wanted to bring these to her home...but Mommy wouldn’t let me. Anyways, I figured that if I put them on her desk, she should still be able to receive them.”

“I see.” Since the thing sitting at the desk was fixated on the flowers at the moment, it didn’t seem like it would make any movements. Yu Yin glanced at Yu, who was wandering aimlessly around the cla.s.sroom. It didn’t seem like there was any imminent danger, so he relaxed a bit. “You seem pretty close to Ye Xiao Xiang? You didn’t refuse to help her clean up her things last time, right?”

“Mhm, I’ve visited her home a few times with Mommy. She’s different at home than when she was at school, and was a really nice person, so...” Ji You Yin seemed a bit embarra.s.sed as he scratched his head, not continuing any further.

Having caught his general meaning, Yu Yin didn’t ask for any more details.

Just when the cla.s.sroom had fallen into silence, the sounds of chattering could be heard from outside. Soon afterwards, several students walked into the room.

Distracted, Yu Yin turned to look at the students that had just walked in. When he turned back around, he discovered that the thing sitting at the desk had disappeared. Only the white flowers remained. “Your morning self-study period is about to start, so I won’t disturb you any further. I’ll see you in cla.s.s later.” With this, he dragged Yu, who had been standing behind him to look at a wall newspaper, out of the room.

He still felt like something was off about the situation.

Not long after leaving the cla.s.sroom, the morning bell rang out to indicate the start of the clean-up period. The students grabbed brooms and slowly made their way across campus to sweep up the grounds.

After searching around a bit, Yu Yin found a pavilion. He led Yu to a vending machine to buy two canned drinks, then walked over to the pavilion.

The cleaning period wasn’t long; it typically lasted 10-15 minutes. The morning self-study bell then followed, and the students all happily returned to their cla.s.srooms. Only some cleaning staff remained to patrol the area for inspecting and evaluating the surroundings.

“You know, I keep feeling like some things are really strange.” After downing half his canned drink, Yu Yin looked at the person currently sitting across from him that was flipping through some random book. Yu paused mid-flip to look up at him. “A teacher wouldn’t typically bring their child over to pay a visit to another family’s home, even if the children were cla.s.smates, right?”

He recalled that when he had been in elementary school, the teacher would often find the time to pay a visit to students’ homes. It had even happened once while he was in high school too. Since his uncle had just happened to be home that day, he had been mistaken for his dad, and had even made-up some answers to questions. In the end, his high school teacher had suspicions about their family for a long time.

Yu stared at him for a while before pa.s.sing over his notebook. “Her husband doesn’t have the time to watch the child?”

“Eh, that’s probably it,” Yu Yin shrugged. Just then, he noticed from the corner of his eye some familiar figures of little thieves walking behind a bush. “Oi! The three of you freeze right there!”

After being caught on the spot, the bush didn’t move. Then, with a few shakes, three short figures walked out.

“It’s you again! Zhao Liang Yi, was being scared to death a few days ago not enough for you? You’re still trying to sneak out!” Yu Yin walked over to grab the largest of the three little demons and scolded him angrily.

“Sh, shhhh, quiet down a bit! You’re going to get us discovered by the Director!” The larger student resisted while the other two quickly caught up. “I didn’t eat breakfast this morning, so I just wanted to go out and grab some food! It’s not like raising the flag is a big deal, it’s just the teachers admonishing us.”

“That still counts as skipping cla.s.s.” Yu Yin knocked the boy’s head and looked at him with a slightly fed-up expression. “How’s your injury from last time?”

“Oh, that.” Zhao Liang Yi rolled up his pants to reveal a circle of dark bruises around his foot, with no other visible scars. “Teacher, you’re definitely the kinder one. If the Director came over, I would’ve been killed ages ago. Thanks.”

“Tch, if you don’t want to get killed, I suggest you behave yourself a bit more,” Yu Yin coldly replied.

“That’s right, Teacher, you probably know that Ye Xiao Xiang was killed too.” The kid leaned close and whispered as if talking about some kind of secret, “My dad said she was floating inside a water tower...”

Yu Yin rolled his eyes. “Listen up, you three. As students, you are to immediately return to your cla.s.sroom. Otherwise, I’ll call the Director to the personally accompany you to eat breakfast. Believe me.” These kids were really too inquisitive, which wasn’t a good thing, especially in this situation.

The larger kid elbowed him and said, “Don’t be like that, Teacher. Telling me won’t bring any harm. I can also tell you about something else.”

“What something else?” Just from seeing the extremely mysterious expression on Zhao Liang Yi’s face, Yu Yin felt it was necessary to ask.

“Teacher, I’ll tell you if you tell me about Ye Xiao Xiang,” the child said, as if he had some experience haggling with an adult.

Since he was trying to use it as coercion, Yu Yin shrugged and quickly said, “Then forget it, I don’t want to listen.”

The child was momentarily stunned, clearly not expecting Yu Yin to just give up like that. He’d probably been pretty prepared to do something afterwards. “But...”

Just as he was going to say something, Yu Yin’s phone coincidentally went off. It was a call from the manufacturer. He glanced at the three students and picked up the phone. “h.e.l.lo? This is Yu Yin...mmm, you’ve arrived? Then I’ll go over now to pick it up.” After the short conversation, he hung up and said, “Yu, let’s go. As for you three, you’d better all quickly return to your cla.s.sroom. You hear me?”

Yu Yin pinched the largest student’s face and stood up, collecting his bag and the drinks before walking towards the main gate.

“Teacher! Do you want to exchange information with me after cla.s.s?” The stubborn Zhao Liang Yi shouted from behind.

“Try asking me later!”

***

“Ah Si.”

In the morning, while Yan Si and his group were taking advantage of the fact that the family member was not present and engaging in examinations, a certain dispatched fellow walked over to knock on the gla.s.s window.

“h.e.l.lo, Boss.” Yan Si greeted his colleague as he took his large gla.s.ses off and shook his hand to attempt to fling off the sticky liquid on his gloves. He walked over and asked, “What put you in such a good mood for you to suddenly run over here?”

Yu Xia glanced down at his hand and snorted, “We investigated the camera footage, but still haven’t found anything. However, we did find a suspicious fingerprint outside the water tower room door.” He waved the report in his hand and said, “We just found a match.”

“Oh? Whose?” Yan Si decided to just pull his gloves off. He walked out of the room with Yu Xia and they entered the corridor that was bustling with people. Most of them were quickly pa.s.sing by with hurried footsteps.

“That headache-inducing family member.” Yu Xia paused at the nearby vending machine and bought two bottles of soda, pa.s.sing one to his companion who had probably pulled an all-nighter. “The fingerprint, from the thumb, was facing downwards on the door at about my eye-level.”

“What a strange position.” Yan Si opened the bottle and took a few sips, immediately feeling refreshed and more awake.

“It’s not that strange.” Yu Xia placed his drink on top of the vending machine and spread his palm on the machine while his left hand made the motion of unlocking a door underneath. “He just wanted to open the door. The water tower’s door is difficult to open and needs some extra force.”

“Wouldn’t he typically use the right hand to open it?” He had noticed that the extremely difficult to handle family member wasn’t left-handed.

“Mm, he was probably carrying something on his shoulder then, resulting in him opening the door that way.” Yu Xia took his drink back as he voiced his conjecture.

Yan Si smirked and glanced at him. “Great, so we just need to figure out what he was carrying on his shoulder.”

Yu Xia gave him a thumbs-up and then pulled out a piece of paper from the doc.u.ments. “We’re preparing to make a trip to his home,” he cheerfully said while waving the search permit.

“I wish you a smooth trip.” Yan Si finished his drink and tossed the bottle in the nearby recycling bin. Unwilling to waste any time, he waved good-bye to Yu Xia and began to walk towards the opposite direction.

“I hope you guys can find some useful clues,” Yu Xia chuckled, and walked towards the other end of the corridor.

Just as Yan Si was about to re-enter the workroom, he noticed a shadow flash by from the corner of his eye.

He instinctively turned around and saw an unhuman-like silhouette turn around the corner in front of him.

If he recalled correctly, that was the direction of the bathrooms.

After hesitating for a short two seconds, Yan Si tossed his plans of returning to the workroom and instead followed the path the shadow had flashed by. After turning the corner, he arrived at the public bathrooms, one for males and one for females.

Because the cleaning staff had just finished, there was the clean and refreshing smell of lemon-scented cleaning solution.

Of course, he wouldn’t walk into the female bathrooms. Although the women here were females, they were all extremely ferocious. He was absolutely certain that if he sneaked into the bathrooms like a voyeur, he’d end up pleading in tears for mercy to those female colleagues in the bathroom and end up labeled as a peeping tom.

After contemplating this for a short moment, Yan Si stepped into the male bathrooms at the very end of the corridor.

Perhaps because it was currently a busy period, there was n.o.body in the bathrooms. It was sparking clean, and the water on the floor hadn’t yet dried completely. The cleaning solution scent filled the air of the entire bathroom.

It didn’t seem like anybody had entered.

After looking around for a bit, Yan Si felt like he was just wasting his time. nove(l)bi(n.)com

“Does Teacher Qi not have any cla.s.ses in the afternoon?”

The director followed his line of sight and laughed, “That’s not it. It seems like something happened to Ye Xiao Xiang’s family member, so Teacher Qi wanted to use the afternoon breaktime to go check on the situation...she puts a lot of her heart onto her students.”

“I see.” Yu Yin shifted his gaze back to the inside of the cla.s.sroom. Yu had been caught by several girls asking him questions and seemed to be struggling with shaking them off.

“In that case, there’s nothing else, Teacher Yu. You can continue with your cla.s.s.” The director patted his shoulder and turned to walk towards the teacher’s office.

Only after seeing the director enter the teacher’s office did Yu Yin turn around, about to re-enter the cla.s.sroom and save Yu. But just then, a certain person tried to secretly flee. “Zhao Liang Yi, you are not allowed to skip my cla.s.s.” He had been trying to escape way too openly that it was impossible to not catch him.

Contrary to expectations, Zhao Liang Yi walked over to him.

The stocky student smiled coquettishly, “I’m not trying to skip cla.s.s...Teacher, have you thought over what we discussed this morning? Or I can tell you what I know first.”

Looks like this boy isn’t just an ordinary gossiper.

Yu Yin said with furrowed brows, “Try telling me first. If it’s something senseless, I’ll just immediately force you back into the cla.s.sroom.”

Zhao Liang Yin leaned over and mysteriously said in a low tone, “Actually, my dad said that after the instance where he saw Ye Xiao Xiang’s mom go into a man’s car, he actually b.u.mped into the guy.”

“Oh?” Yu Yin glanced at him. “Continue on.”

The boy smirked, “That guy seemed to be a private investigator. My dad suspected there was someone trying to set him up from the shadows, so he invited a private investigator, who just so happened to be that man.”

So that means Ye Xiao Xiang’s mom was actually sitting in a private investigator’s car?

That could only be for two possible reasons: one is that she is really his lover, while the other is...

The typical move to try to catch someone having an affair.

“What you’re saying is useless, get back inside,” Yu Yin immediately pressed him, not wanting to give the boy any chance to inquire about anything.

“Hey! Teacher, you’ve already heard it. Can’t you at least let me go out to buy lunch and pretend you didn’t see it?” Zhao Liang Yi tried to bargain with him another way as he took a step back.

“Buy lunch, my a.s.s. Doesn’t the school provide nutritious lunches? Yet you want to go out and buy some, you must have tons of money!” Yu Yin bluntly said and knocked his head.

“The school’s nutritious lunch is as hard to eat as a ghost...”

“You’ve eaten ghosts before? Don’t just spout out random a.n.a.logies!” Yu Yin pushed at his back towards the cla.s.sroom as he snorted, “At best, I’ll let you guys out five minutes early so that you can go wherever you want. Anything more is impossible. If you still try to haggle with me, I’ll make you sit in cla.s.s until the noon bell.”

Zhao Liang Yi quieted down. “Ok, ok.” He then reluctantly walked back into the room.

Yu Yin slowly followed him from behind.

The students in the cla.s.sroom had been working for a while now, and Yu had just managed to shake off the last student.

“Ok, if you guys keep working hard and finish early, we can end cla.s.s early to grab lunch!”

The cla.s.s erupted in cheers.

***

The midday sun cast short shadows on the sports field.

After Yu Yin let the students out of cla.s.s nearly ten minutes early to get lunchboxes, he tidied up his completed product and the tools, returned the tools to the toolbox, and stuffed it back into his bag.

There were several female students happily comparing each other’s differently colored windchimes in the cla.s.sroom.

“Yu, thanks for your trouble today.” Yu Yin smiled at the person pushing up his gla.s.ses and smoothly tossed over the completed windchimes. “These are for you. I’ll treat you to a big meal later too.” After being tormented for the entire morning, Yu definitely deserved to be rewarded with a feast.

Yu caught the flying windchimes and looked at their white decorative designs. After a breeze pa.s.sed through to emit a clear, tinkling sound from the windchimes, he carefully placed it into his own backpack.

After tidying up his things, Yu Yin tossed his own backpack over his shoulder and walked out of the cla.s.sroom.

Because there was still a short while before the formal end of cla.s.s, he pa.s.sed by several cla.s.srooms that were still quietly in session, which contrasted their cla.s.s’s somewhat noisier students.

After pa.s.sing through the hallway, Yu Yin stopped in front of the teacher’s office. “I’ll go in to let the Director know that we’ll be leaving.”

Yu nodded, and stood outside to wait.

“You’re not coming in?” Yu Yin simply shrugged when he saw the shaking head in response. “Then I’ll be out soon.” He then walked straight into to the office to look for the director.

Yu stayed outside, his gaze focused on the short, stone washing stand right in front of him for a moment before he turned to look at something else. Soon, the midday bell rang out, and many students came rushing out of their cla.s.srooms, as if they had just been freed from prison. Some hadn’t even eaten lunch yet but were already running off to the sports field with blue b.a.l.l.s in their hands, as if afraid others would take their spots.

Most of the students headed towards the main hall and returned back to the cla.s.srooms with the baskets of nutritious lunch.

After watching the students bustling about noisily, Yu turned to face the school bulletin board, unwilling to respond with the occasional “h.e.l.lo, Teacher” he heard.

Around five minutes later, the teacher’s office door was finally opened.

“Sorry, the Director wanted to give us these to eat. I talked with him for a while before thanking him and leaving.” Yu Yin was carrying two gift boxes of pudding. “They’re still cold, they were just taken out from the fridge. Apparently they are specialties that were bought somewhere during the holiday yesterday.”

Yu stared at the pudding.

“Do you like eating these kinds of things?” Yu Yin looked down at the puddings as well. One was grape flavored, while the other was strawberry flavored, the typical yoghurt type puddings. The seals had the name of some tourist attraction spot.

Yu just continued staring for a while without giving any sort of response, before finally shifting his gaze.

“If you like them, I can give both to you, no problem.” From Yu’s reaction, it seemed like he liked them. Yu Yin patted his shoulder and said, “So you like this kind of thing? Then we can go to the supermarket on the way back and buy some to keep at home. Other people will eat it too anyways.”

Yu nodded, then quickly began to walk towards the main hall.

Just as Yu Yin was about to tease him, he suddenly saw a ma.s.s of black stuff on the short washing stand a few steps in front of Yu. It didn’t look like it was a shadow because it was three dimensional.

The washing stand’s faucet began to shake as Yu was just about to pa.s.s by.

“Yu! Stop!” Yu Yin shouted, and immediately chased after.

In that instant, the faucet violently flew out, as if burst by some ma.s.sive force, and large amounts of water sprayed outwards. Unable to react in time, Yu froze blankly on the spot as he watched the faucet fly towards his head. He subconsciously shut his eyes, waiting for the oncoming pain.

A few seconds pa.s.sed, but he didn’t feel any pain. He only felt a large amount of water spill on him, the sharp cries from the surrounding students, and...

“F*ck! Here we go again!”

When Yu heard this, he suddenly opened his eyes to see Yu Yin’s hand protecting his head. “d.a.m.n it, it’s been two months in a row now. Who knows what kind of random nickname that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Yan Si will come up with again!”

Yu Yin cursed reflexively as he cradled the back of his left hand that was now bursting with sharp pain.

The large amount of tap water that they were drenched in was deathly cold, and some of the nearby students had fallen from the rush of water as well. He could feel hot red fluid pour down the back of his hand along with the tap water.

After smashing into his hand, the faucet had fallen to the ground.

He was certain that the injury on his hand wasn’t light.

He lifted his head. n.o.body else saw the black thing still crouched on top of the washing stand. Suddenly, two bloodshot eyeb.a.l.l.s rolled into view from the head portion to fiercely glare at Yu Yin.

Yu Yin felt gooseb.u.mps suddenly from on his back, but he took a deep breath and gave “it” the middle finger. “Don’t even think about it!”

The black thing continued to viciously glare at him for a few seconds more before it suddenly vanished in midair.

Finally, mournful screeches rang out from all around that only Yu Yin could hear.

It sounded like a girl screaming out with hatred.

“d.a.m.n it! I’m just fated to always getting injured now.” Yu Yin shook his head and dragged Yu out of the water’s perimeter. He then spread his hand out; the back of his left hand was badly mutilated, ripped open with several large gashes.

The surrounding students finally managed to regain their senses with difficulty, but the sight of the blood gushing out from his hand made them cry out in alarm once more.

“Hurry up and summon the Director!”