Gu Mingye's school biology teacher. She never spells anything out—she simply tells, in class, an experiment that happens to fit Gu Mingye's situation exactly.
Background / motivation / observation stance
The biology teacher at Gu Mingye's school—strict by habit, but not a bad person. After Gu Mingye began to notice that 'some people looked at him differently,' she was one of the few who could both see the thing on him and was willing to respond to him in her own way.
She couldn't intervene directly; all she could do was tuck the message into what she taught, there in the classroom.
She does not take attendance, but she remembers who drifted off in which period.
Her lessons have a particular feature: the textbook gets covered on schedule, yet every chapter branches off into an experiment. Those experiments mostly have nothing to do with the exam, and she doesn't ask anyone to copy them down—she writes a single line of conclusion on the board and wipes it off before the bell. Most of the class treats it as a break. A few look up.
During those few minutes off-syllabus, her speech slows, her sentences shorten, and her eyes sweep the room more often.
She has never written anything extra in anyone's home-school notebook. What she has to say, she puts where it won't be copied into anyone's notes.
In that biology class, she lectured on 'individual recognition within animal groups.' She cited an experiment: spray the scent of a dead duck onto a healthy duck, put it back into the flock, and the flock will instinctively avoid it. She wrote on the blackboard: the group won't explain why it avoids, but the individual can choose whether or not to let being avoided break them.
As she passed Gu Mingye's seat after class, she used her index finger to lightly tap the spot on his textbook cover where the butterfly was—I saw it.
Her lessons have a particular feature: the syllabus is covered, and every chapter still turns aside into an experiment.
Those experiments mostly have nothing to do with the exams, and afterwards she does not require notes—only a single line of conclusion on the board, wiped off before the bell. Most of the class treats it as a break. A few write it down.
She remembers who wrote it down. She also remembers who drifted off in which period—she does not take a register, but those eyes are always moving across the room.
The student she calls on is usually not the one who has stopped listening. It is the one listening hardest who has not put a hand up.
She is strict by habit and not unkind. Late work loses marks, and she keeps the student back to ask why.
She can see the thing on Gu Mingye. People in this city who can see are not many, and those who can see and are willing to respond are fewer—the usual course is to look away and behave as though nothing were there.
She cannot intervene directly. The rules are what they are, and crossing them serves nobody.
So she buries what she means to say inside what she teaches—inside an experiment irrelevant to the exam, inside a line of conclusion wiped off as soon as it is written. Those who can hear it will hear it. Those who cannot have sat through a biology lesson.
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