Ch. 010| After School

March 17, 2065. Tuesday, 13:00.

First period of the afternoon was P.E. The teacher didn't show.

The homeroom teacher came in and, same as yesterday, announced a study period. The room went quiet for a minute, then the talking started up again.

Gu Mingye sat in his own seat, turned his English textbook to the next unit, and began to read ahead.

The two periods left in the afternoon were Chinese and math. The literature teacher hadn't finished last week's handout; he'd pick it up again this afternoon. The math teacher would assign problems from the new chapter.

Gu Mingye knew what the afternoon would bring.

Fifty minutes a period, ten minutes between, a lunch break in the middle. From 13:00 now until dismissal at 15:30 was two and a half hours.

He could get through it.

His mother had said it that morning — for someone who can see, the most important thing is to keep your own ordinary life going.

These two and a half hours of the afternoon were the ordinary life.

He turned the textbook pages, looked up vocabulary, copied it into his notes with a dictionary. He did the same thing any second-year high school student does on a normal Tuesday afternoon.

---

14:00. Chinese class.

The literature teacher picked up where he'd left off the day before.

Today he was teaching "Nie Xiaoqian."

"Most of you know this one — there's a film adaptation. But today we're not discussing the film. What we're discussing is — why did Pu Songling want to write a love story between a ghost and a human scholar?"

Some of the students laughed.

The teacher ignored it.

"The answer is in the ending of this story. Nie Xiaoqian, dead more than a hundred years, in the end marries Ning Caichen and bears him a son. That ending is telling you — a ghost and a person can live together for a long time."

He turned a page.

"The people of Pu Songling's era didn't treat ghosts as enemies. They treated them as another kind of being that a living person might encounter, might come to understand, might even come to love."

"We modern people read ghost stories to scare ourselves. But when Pu Songling wrote this — he was describing the possibility of coexistence."

The teacher paused.

"For the rest of this period, finish reading the story on your own. Three-question quiz next class."

He sat back down at the front.

The students started flipping through their books, copying down the key points.

Gu Mingye copied three lines of notes.

He didn't look up at the teacher.

But he knew that when the teacher had looked up, he'd glanced over this way once.

Not the kind of look that meant "there's something on you." The kind that meant "I've said what I wanted to say this period — did you hear it?"

Gu Mingye didn't respond — the same kind of not-responding as the one he'd given Teacher Lin that morning.

The condition his mother had named included Teacher Lin, and it could be applied to the other teachers too.

He kept copying his notes.

---

15:00. Math class.

The math teacher worked through application problems on quadratic functions.

He called two students up to the board to write out problems. He didn't call Gu Mingye.

Gu Mingye copied notes, worked the problems, kept pace with the class.

The whole period was no different from a normal Tuesday-afternoon math class with no trace of any night-edge to it at all.

The math teacher finished the last problem, closed his book, glanced at his watch.

"The bell's about to go. That's it for today."

The dismissal bell rang.

---

15:30. Dismissal.

Gu Mingye packed his bag, shouldered it, and walked out of Class 2-3.

Ah-Zhe's seat had been empty all day. Xiaowen hadn't come back to the classroom after lunch; word was she'd taken the afternoon off and gone home too.

Gu Mingye went downstairs, crossed the field, walked to the school gate.

Uncle Zhang the guard was standing outside the guardhouse as always.

Gu Mingye walked past.

This time Uncle Zhang looked up, met Gu Mingye's eyes, and gave a small nod.

That one in the morning had been a sending-off, watching him walk away. This one was different — the chin only pressed down half an inch, as if to say "see you tomorrow."

Gu Mingye nodded back.

"See you tomorrow, Uncle Zhang."

Uncle Zhang smiled a little. He didn't say anything.

Gu Mingye walked out the gate, heading toward Shuyuan Station on the Rivermag Line.

That was, for him today, the first "normal" interaction with anyone from the school.

---

16:00. Shuyuan Station, the Rivermag Line.

In the afternoon dismissal stretch, there were more people on the platform than in the morning commute.

Platform Three. The train pulled in.

Gu Mingye boarded and found a seat.

The third car was a little crowded today. Across from him sat a mother with a child, maybe five years old, pushing a toy car back and forth in his hands.

The child looked up, saw Gu Mingye, and paused.

Then he smiled a little and pushed the toy car toward Gu Mingye.

The mother reached out and pulled the child back. "Don't bother the big brother."

The child didn't cry, just went on playing with his toy car.

Gu Mingye looked at the child.

The way the child looked at him was the ordinary way — without that layer of "there's something on you." The way a normal five-year-old looks at a stranger out of curiosity.

The same kind of look Huang had given him at lunch.

The people not inside the spreading web of perception — the five-year-old, the unfamiliar kid from another class, and Uncle Zhang the senior guard (Uncle Zhang was probably another line in the school's network of people who knew, but he'd chosen the ordinary-person interaction of "seeing him off" and "see you tomorrow").

These few people, added together, made up the middle ground where Gu Mingye could "get through" today.

---

16:30. Qingcaohe Station.

He got off.

Out of the station, under the elevated track of the Rivermag Line, heading toward the Old River District.

Different from that 17:50 dismissal stretch last evening — today he was more than an hour earlier than yesterday.

The stretch along the old river embankment, the evening light, was still that red of early spring.

The same light he'd looked at yesterday.

But Gu Mingye walked this stretch of road slower than yesterday.

He slowed his steps, not because he was tired. Ahead was the Earth God shrine by the bridge, and he wanted to see clearly what the front of it looked like now, in the daytime version.

---

16:45. The little bridge over the old river embankment.

The old banyan at the bridgehead.

The Earth God shrine.

No one in front of the shrine.

That stranger who'd been burning incense at 08:10 this morning was gone.

Gu Mingye walked over, crouched, looked at the incense burner.

There was no incense in the burner.

Not the "the incense burned down, only ash is left" kind of nothing. The "the whole burner's been cleaned out, the ash cleared too" kind of nothing.

The ring of scorch marks underneath — still there.

But not in the same place as the ones he'd seen this morning.

This morning's scorch mark had been on the left side of the burner's base.

Now the scorch mark was on the right side.

As if someone had stuck in a fresh stick of incense, let it burn down, then wiped the ash away again.

Gu Mingye looked for about ten seconds.

He didn't know what it meant that the scorch mark had moved to the right.

But he knew that someone had performed an action on this burner.

He didn't go over and touch it.

He glanced once into the interior of the shrine — the inside was empty too, and the spot where the spirit tablet should have stood was just empty. The spirit tablet, his grandmother had said, was carried off when the district was redrawn in the eighties.

That spot was still empty now.

But as Gu Mingye looked at that empty spot, it felt to him "emptier than usual."

He didn't know what "emptier than usual" meant.

He stood up, crossed the bridge, kept walking.

---

17:00. The mouth of the alley in the Old River District.

Under the old mango tree, at the mouth of the alley — the same spot where Gu Mingye had crouched at 05:00 yesterday waiting for daybreak.

But now it was daytime. The evening light slanted across the leaves of the old mango tree. In the alley, neighbors coming home from the early shift went by pushing handcarts.

The noodle stall at the mouth of the alley had packed up. The iced-tea cart was still there, the owner sitting in a chair scrolling on her phone.

Gu Mingye walked into the alley.

Walked to the end.

Two creaks of the stairs. Up.

Opened the door.

---

The smell of cooking was in the house.

His mother was in the kitchen. She heard the door and came out.

"Mingye."

"Mm."

"You're back."

"Mm."

Her hair was wrapped in a towel; she'd just finished a shower. She was wearing house clothes, not the nurse's uniform from the day.

"You look tired."

"I'm okay."

"Dinner's almost ready. Go wash your hands first."

Gu Mingye set his bag on the sofa, went into the bathroom, washed his hands.

The Gu Mingye in the mirror looked the same as the one he'd seen at 06:30 that morning.

But he knew that he himself was again a little different from the Gu Mingye of the morning.

He'd gotten through the whole day of school. He hadn't responded to Teacher Lin, and Teacher Lin had taken the signal and not pressed further. The child playing with the toy car on the train, Huang the unfamiliar classmate at lunch, Uncle Zhang at the school gate — the way these few people looked at him was clean.

Now he stood in the bathroom of his home washing his hands. The days were still the days.

---

17:30. The dinner table.

His mother had made something simple — a pot of clam soup, a plate of stir-fried cabbage, a piece of pan-fried fish.

The two of them ate.

His mother didn't ask Gu Mingye how school had been today.

Gu Mingye ate for a while, then spoke up on his own.

"I didn't respond to Teacher Lin. She understood."

His mother nodded.

"This afternoon, that window across the street — the curtains were drawn all the way open, and that person was gone."

"Mm." His mother said. "We should still have a while yet."

"What do you mean, a while?"

His mother thought for a moment.

"Grandma used to say that in the family, someone who can see goes through three to five big 'door-openings' in a lifetime. The last train two nights ago was your first. We're in the buffer between the first and the second now — the buffer can last anywhere from a few days to a few years."

"A few years?"

"After Grandma nearly went through that one time, it was about seven years before the second."

Gu Mingye set down his chopsticks.

"What happened to Grandma the second time?"

His mother smiled a little.

"She didn't say."

She took another sip of soup.

"Grandma never said much about a lot of things. People of her generation didn't like to explain."

"So did she ever have a third time, or not?"

"The year before Grandma passed, there was a stretch where she got very strange. She was already in her seventies then; she'd talk to me and trail off in the middle, staring into space. Maybe that stretch was her third time. But she never said anything."

His mother set down her spoon.

"In those last days before she passed, the line she said most often was — 'They're coming again soon.'"

"Who's 'they'?"

"I don't know."

His mother picked up her spoon, took another sip.

"In the last month before Grandma passed, one day she told me, 'Put the box away safely.' I didn't know what she was talking about at the time. Later, going through her things, I found that box at the back of a drawer."

"She didn't say when to open it?"

"She said to wait until the next one in the family who can see starts asking about it."

"How did she know there'd be a next one?"

His mother smiled a little.

"Grandma just knew. People of her generation — some things they just know."

---

18:00. His mother finished clearing and washing the dishes and came back to the living room.

She didn't sit back down on the sofa. She went into her room, and after about a minute, came back out.

In her hands was a small box.

A wooden box. About the size of a palm. It looked very old.

She set the box down on the coffee table.

"This is what Grandma left behind."

"She passed the year you were eleven, and the box has been at the back of the drawer in my room ever since."

Gu Mingye looked at the box.

"What's inside?"

"I've never opened it myself." His mother said. "While she was alive, Grandma said I could only open it once the next one in the family who can see started asking about it."

"Open it now?"

His mother shook her head.

"Not now. Too much has happened today. I can see your eyes can't take any more."

"I can take it."

"I know you can." His mother said. "But Mom doesn't want to open it tonight. Tonight let the box sit here, and we'll open it tomorrow morning after breakfast."

She took the towel off her head and laid it down beside the sofa.

"Take tomorrow off at home. I'll call the school for you."

"Mm."

Gu Mingye looked at the wooden box on the coffee table.

The grain of the wood was dark, and it looked very old. There was no design on the lid, and no lock.

Unopened, it was just an ordinary wooden box sitting on a table.

Opened, what it would be, Gu Mingye didn't know.

But he knew that tonight he wouldn't open it.

He'd promised his mother to open it tomorrow morning.

His mother stood, took the towel out to the balcony, and hung it to dry. She came back to the living room, looked at the wooden box on the coffee table, then looked at Gu Mingye.

"Shower first. Get to sleep early."

"Mm."

"Mom's taking tomorrow off at home. If you hear anything in the night, or see anything, don't deal with it yourself — come over and knock on my door."

"Mm."

"Don't try to solve it on your own. Tonight we don't solve anything. We just live in this home, properly."

When she'd said it, she went into the bathroom and turned on the tap to wash her hands again.

The sound of water.

This time it was tap water gushing down. That pool of soundless water that had collected on the kitchen counter at 02:30 last night had nothing to do with it.

---

【Ch. 010 End · Qingcheng Municipal Second High School → Shuyuan Station, the Rivermag Line → the little bridge over the old river embankment → the old house in the Old River District】