Ch. 009| No Response

March 17, 2065. Tuesday. 08:10.

Gu Mingye walked out from the bridgehead without looking back.

On Shuyuan Street, the school-hour students walked in twos and threes, the same as any morning. A school bus drove past him.

At the end of the 300-meter straight stretch, he stopped at the traffic light at the Shuyuan Street intersection and waited for green.

The red-light countdown ticked to 8, 7, 6.

He didn't look back.

Same as at the bridgehead just now, he knew that looking back now would only show him three possibilities: the person still in place, already gone, or already turned around watching him.

Look back or not, the result was the same.

Green came on. He crossed.

He went into Shuyuan Station on the Rivermag Line, Platform Three, boarded the 08:20 Rivermag. Third car, a window seat.

This morning, the middle-aged man with the briefcase wasn't there. Maybe he'd switched to the fourth car, maybe he'd taken the day off, maybe he'd just changed his commute route.

The old woman with the plastic bag wasn't there either.

In their place was a high school girl Gu Mingye had never seen before, in another school's uniform, head down at her phone.

She didn't look at Gu Mingye.

But as Gu Mingye walked into the car, her phone screen lit up for an instant, and then she angled the screen away.

Gu Mingye sat down in his seat.

The doors closed, the train started moving.

---

08:30. The gate of Qingcheng Municipal Second High School.

Uncle Zhang the guard wasn't sitting in the guard booth today.

He was standing outside the booth, watching the gate.

Gu Mingye walked over.

Uncle Zhang saw him, paused half a second.

Different from that half second yesterday.

Yesterday's half second was "I see it but I can't greet you."

Today's half second was "I see it, and I know you've got someone with you now."

Gu Mingye didn't know why he could tell the difference today.

He passed by Uncle Zhang.

Uncle Zhang didn't look at him, but didn't look away either.

Just, watched him go.

---

Morning study.

Ah-Zhe's seat was empty.

His bag wasn't on the chair. He hadn't come today. Maybe still on leave.

Xiaowen sat in the third row, by the aisle, copying into her notebook. She looked up at Gu Mingye for half a second, then back down to keep copying.

Different from yesterday's half second too.

Yesterday, that second Xiaowen looked up was like "I see there's something on you, I'll look down fast."

Today's half second was "I see you, I know you made it through last night."

Gu Mingye didn't know why he could tell the difference today.

Maybe he himself had changed. The Gu Mingye from before 23:30 last night wouldn't have stopped to work out what was hidden in a half second.

Maybe the people around him had changed — they knew there was something covering him now.

Maybe both had shifted a little. He couldn't tell which.

He sat down, set his bag down, took out the textbook for the first period.

First period, literature.

---

09:00. Literature class.

The literature teacher was a senior teacher at the school, in his fifties, gold-rimmed glasses. Today he handed out a worksheet.

"Today we're reading from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio," he said. "Turn to page 23."

The students turned the pages.

"This piece, 'Scholar Ye,' is about a talented scholar who keeps failing the examinations. After he dies of illness, his spirit goes on to the home of a county magistrate he admires, tutors the magistrate's son, and the son finally passes."

The way the literature teacher taught was nothing like Teacher Lin.

Teacher Lin buried her message inside scientific descriptions of animal behavior.

The literature teacher read the text straight.

"Today we'll discuss one question — in this story, did Scholar Ye die, or not?"

Some students said he died. Some said he didn't. Some said he half died.

The literature teacher nodded.

"The text writes that he died of illness, and his family wept. So he should be dead."

"But his spirit went on for several years doing things. Tutoring, watching the magistrate's son pass, and only then 'going home.' After he goes home, his family tells him, 'you passed away long ago.'"

"So did he die, or didn't he?"

The classroom went quiet.

"I'll give you an answer — in this story, the stretch between Scholar Ye 'passing away' and 'going home' is real. When Pu Songling wrote this, he had no intention of telling the reader which part was real and which false. He's only telling you that those days of Scholar Ye's really happened."

The literature teacher turned the page.

"Next question — why did Pu Songling write this."

"Because a talented person might have to wait until after he's passed away to get the chance to finish what he wanted to do in his life. Pu Songling himself failed the examinations his whole life; he knew that feeling."

"Is that superstition?"

The literature teacher looked at the whole class.

"The textbook tells you it's superstition. Folk imagination."

He stopped a moment.

"But when Pu Songling wrote it, he wrote it as true."

Some students in the classroom looked up. A few felt that line "shouldn't have come up in the schedule of this literature period."

But the literature teacher didn't explain any further. He turned a page.

"Turn to page 24, let's keep going with the next version's annotations."

The students looked down, turned with him.

Gu Mingye turned too. But he knew that passage just now, and Teacher Lin's passage yesterday, were the same thing two different people had dressed in two different sets of words and handed to him.

Teacher Lin wrapped it in "animal groups avoiding unclassified individuals."

The literature teacher wrapped it in "the stretch between Scholar Ye passing away and going home is real."

Peel off the two layers of skin and underneath was the same sentence: what he saw was really there. The textbook called it superstition, and still it was really there.

---

09:50. Break.

Gu Mingye closed his literature textbook.

Ah-Zhe's seat was still empty.

Xiaowen packed her bag, walked out with another girl. Didn't look Gu Mingye's way.

Gu Mingye went out to the corridor, leaned on the railing, looked down at the courtyard below.

Down in the courtyard, students were playing basketball. The weather was nice today. The morning light lit up the second-floor windows of the old apartment across the street.

The curtains had been drawn open.

All the way open, pulled to both sides of the window frame, the cloth bunched at the edges. Yesterday's gap, only a finger wide, was today spread flat.

Behind the window, no one.

On the sill, a potted plant — a green one, looked like an ordinary golden pothos.

Completely different from the "someone standing behind the gap in the curtain" he'd seen yesterday.

Like that person wasn't there today.

Or like that person, after confirming today that Gu Mingye "had someone with him," had pulled the surveillance back.

Gu Mingye didn't know which was right.

He stood at the corridor railing about ten seconds, turned, walked back to the classroom.

---

10:00. Between classes.

In the corridor, Teacher Lin came by from that direction, the same as yesterday.

She reached the front door of Class 2-3.

Same as yesterday, she stopped.

Same as yesterday, she looked into the classroom.

Her eyes searched for Gu Mingye.

Gu Mingye met her gaze.

The condition his mother had set was in his head — "If Teacher Lin talks to you again, don't respond directly."

Teacher Lin didn't speak. She gave a small nod, just like yesterday's faint "confirming something to herself" nod.

By his mother's condition, Gu Mingye shouldn't respond either.

He did one thing — he looked down at the literature textbook on his desk.

Didn't respond to Teacher Lin's nod.

Didn't look back into Teacher Lin's eyes.

Didn't make any motion of "I see you."

He looked down at the line on the "Scholar Ye" page, "One day, he suddenly arrived from outside."

Two seconds.

He looked up, at the door.

Teacher Lin was still standing there.

She was looking at Gu Mingye, her expression unchanged.

Her expression was about the same as before. No disappointment, no question.

It was — "I understand."

She nodded once more.

This nod was aimed at Gu Mingye, for him to catch. The one before had been her looking down, checking with herself.

"I see your non-response. I know what it means."

She turned and walked off.

---

10:00+. The other end of the corridor.

Gu Mingye heard Teacher Lin's footsteps slowly recede.

Completely different footsteps from the empty ones below the balcony in the night.

Teacher Lin's footsteps were the regular sound of heels on concrete, with weight, neither fast nor slow.

Very ordinary footsteps, a school teacher's footsteps.

But Gu Mingye could hear the layers in those footsteps now — the sound of the heels striking the floor, the echo bouncing off the corridor wall, the background hum of students from the other classrooms.

He'd never "heard" the corridor like this before.

Maybe after last night, he'd changed. Or maybe because he was keeping his mouth shut now — not talking, not responding — all the freed-up attention had crowded into his ears. Or maybe it was just that today he wanted, more than usual, to hear clearly whether there was anything wrong in the sounds around him.

Teacher Lin's footsteps vanished at the far end of the corridor.

---

11:00. Second period.

History class.

The history teacher was teaching the Industrial Revolution. The steam engine, the spinning machine, child labor in English factories.

Different from Teacher Lin, from the geography teacher, from the literature teacher.

When the history teacher taught, there was no "other layer" at all. He was just teaching history.

Gu Mingye took notes.

He found he was taking them more carefully than usual.

Across the last four classes, two teachers (Teacher Lin, the geography teacher) had been talking to him, one teacher (the literature teacher) might have been talking to him, one teacher (the math teacher) had only seen the thing on him and not spoken.

Today the history teacher had none of that layer at all.

A pure school history class, without any nightwalking edge to it.

Gu Mingye took the notes for this period like he was gripping something normal.

Gripping it, not letting go.

---

12:00. Lunch.

The school cafeteria.

Ah-Zhe was still on leave. Xiaowen was with another girl today. Ah-Kai was over with his own class.

Gu Mingye carried his tray to the usual six-seat table.

There was one person at the table — a student from another class, someone Gu Mingye knew but wasn't close to, surname Huang.

"Mingye," Huang said.

Gu Mingye was caught off guard for a moment.

The first familiar classmate to greet him today.

"Hey," Gu Mingye said.

"Can I sit here? Our class's side is too loud."

"Sure."

Huang sat down, started eating.

The two of them didn't talk much. Huang played on his phone, Gu Mingye ate his lunchbox.

Now and then Huang glanced up at Gu Mingye.

A glance, then back down to shovel rice. His eyes didn't hold on Gu Mingye's face even half a second, didn't linger on his body, didn't slide to behind his shoulder. The ordinary classmate kind of look.

Gu Mingye didn't know whether Huang really didn't know, or knew but chose not to care, or whether it was just that they weren't close to begin with, so there was no basis for a comparison of "the Mingye I know is different from the Mingye today."

But Gu Mingye knew that today at lunch, a classmate from another class was willing to sit at his table.

Different from yesterday, when the whole table was just him.

---

12:30. The stairwell.

After he finished lunch, Gu Mingye took his tray to the return area, walked out of the cafeteria building.

The stairwell was empty.

Not like yesterday at 12:25 — yesterday in the stairwell he'd run into Teacher Lin and that middle-aged teacher in the suit, that scene of the two of them glancing at each other.

Today the stairwell was empty.

Teacher Lin wasn't there. The teacher in the suit wasn't there.

Gu Mingye went up the stairs, up to the second floor, walked back to Class 2-3.

Reaching the courtyard side, he stopped and looked up at the second-floor windows of the apartment across the street.

The curtains were still drawn all the way open.

Behind the window, still no one.

That pothos sat in its place, the leaves looking very ordinary in the noon light.

Gu Mingye stood at the courtyard about five seconds.

Then turned and went up.

He remembered one of the conditions his mother had set — "Take the Rivermag home after school, no matter what, don't go around by that apartment across the street."

He wasn't getting out of school now.

But he knew he also wasn't going to go around over there to see whether the pothos was real, or fake, or whether its being placed there today was a signal.

His mother's line, "don't go around by that apartment across the street," was a route on the surface. Underneath it was pressed another line she hadn't said out loud: some things you can leave be, not look at clearly.

Like the apartment window across the street today.

Like the stranger in front of the Earth God shrine at the bridgehead.

Like his own act of not responding to Teacher Lin.

Leave it be, don't look, and the bit of initiative he'd clawed back into his own hand stayed there. Lean in for a clear look, and a person gets dragged into the game the other side had already laid out. He chose the former.

Grandma had said — for the ones who can see, the most important thing is keeping your own daily routine.

Gu Mingye understood now.

Keeping the routine was eyes open, having seen it, setting it on the corner of the desk for now, not reaching out to touch it today. That was a different thing from shutting your eyes and pretending nothing was wrong.

He headed up to the second floor. Next was P.E.; the homeroom teacher would probably have everyone do self-study through another afternoon.

He knew he could make it to the end of school today.

---

【Ch. 009 End · Shuyuan Station on the Rivermag Line → Qingcheng Municipal Second High School】