It’s Him – Ch19

Subsequent

Teacher Sun had not looked at the note for a long time.

Mainly due to psychological avoidance, a desire to avoid the pain, she didn’t want to admit that she had caused a student’s death.

Now, she was reading it seriously.

There were still typos in the middle, crosses were marked, and then corrections were written beside them.

She had forgotten about these details from before.

Sun Ning felt a discomfort that was hard to describe. She remembered those times when she would always tell her students, if they wrote a word wrong, don’t circle it in black, don’t mark it with a cross, just write the correct word next to it.

She read through the note again, and even though many years had passed, and she was now a middle-aged woman, she still felt her heart race with anxiety.

But this time, she felt something different.

Back when she first read it, she was younger, with fewer students, and with the immense pain and outside criticism weighing on her, it crushed her. She couldn’t control herself, couldn’t think deeply about the whole situation.

Now, looking at this aggressive note again, combined with what had happened with Teacher Zhao, she began to doubt.

Could Li Hao really have committed suicide? What role did Teacher Zhao play in all of this?

Unfortunately, Teacher Zhao was gone. Otherwise, she would have gone to find him to ask for the truth!

This was the first time Teacher Zhao had acted against someone he knew.

He had never acted against someone he knew before. This time, he couldn’t hold back. One reason was the growing anger inside him with no outlet, and the other was the golden opportunity that had come his way.

A person had left a note saying that another person had forced him to commit suicide. He even went to the edge of the rooftop, looked down, and while staring, said, “Teacher Zhao, this building is too tall; I can’t really see the faces of the people below.”

He clenched his fist, gave a light push from behind, and the person fell.

It’s hard for people to control their primal desires.

When Li Hao’s three roommates went downstairs, they met Teacher Zhao. They said that Li Hao was going to commit suicide but didn’t mention their prank.

The three roommates weren’t fools, of course. They knew that the fewer people who knew about this, the better.

When Teacher Zhao reached the building and saw Li Hao, his face showed undisguised joy. He looked like someone about to do something big.

This? Suicide?

Teacher Zhao immediately realized what was going on, which led to the conversation between the two.

Li Hao thought that it was his three roommates who had let the secret slip, so he didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings.

By the time Teacher Zhao found Teacher Sun, the students had already surrounded the area. His three roommates, trying to suppress their excitement from doing something bad, were bringing the principal over to watch the crazy woman embarrass herself.

As they arrived, from afar, a group of students was gathering near the boys’ dormitory.

Several dormitory aunties were driving the students away.

At this moment, the three roommates still didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation. Instead, they found it amusing, especially when the principal, usually slow and calm, was now running like an awkward penguin.

While running, she shouted, “Get the students out of here!”

The three roommates couldn’t stop laughing.

When they arrived, they found that the dorm aunties, the director of education, and the principal weren’t looking up at the rooftop but were instead gathered around something…

They never imagined that Li Hao had actually committed suicide. The thought was too frightening, so the three boys simultaneously thought, could it be a prank? Could Li Hao be lying there trying to scare them?

One of the roommates stepped on Li Hao’s flip phone, and immediately, they were frozen in place, scared out of their wits.

The director of education saw them and said, “You should go back to your classrooms. Don’t stay here.”

Her tone was very gentle, as if she feared frightening them.

And all of this pointed to one truth.

Li Hao was dead.

At that moment, the three of them were paralyzed with an intense, nameless fear. It was one of the dorm aunties who came over and took them to the teaching building.

From then on, the three roommates were kicked out. Everything became blurry before their eyes.

It wasn’t until the evening that the three of them finally spoke.

“What should we do now?”

“How could this happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it was slippery after the rain yesterday?”

They didn’t know.

The next day, Li Hao’s parents came to the school, a large crowd gathered at the school gate, wailing and demanding that the school hand over Teacher Sun for justice, demanding her life for Li Hao’s. The place was chaotic, with banners, and onlookers dared not approach, only watching from a distance.

Pingcheng Middle School was the best in the city, and everyone in Pingcheng hoped that their children could get into this school, so many people were paying attention.

In less than half a day, the whole of Pingcheng was filled with sorrow—

“I heard his grades were really good.”

“Ah, poor child, how can the parents take this? They worked so hard, and now he’s gone!”

“That teacher really committed a terrible sin.”

When people spread stories, they couldn’t help but exaggerate, pushing the victim’s suffering to extremes to stir emotions in the listeners.

Before long, it became—

“I heard they were very poor. His father is disabled, and his mother works alone to support the family. Sigh…”

“That teacher, I heard she bullies kids from poor families. She treats the city kids differently, deliberately suppressing the kids from the countryside.”

Li Hao was so pitiful, and Teacher Sun was so terrifying.

Naturally, some people with a strong sense of justice leaked Teacher Sun’s address to the victim’s family, helping them seek revenge.

As a result, paint was thrown on Sun Ning’s house, with words written demanding her to pay for her crimes.

On the third day, Li Hao’s parents were still there, and Sun Ning came out to bow in apology.

After bowing, she was doused with red paint and had to be led away by other teachers in a sorry state to clean herself up.

Many students came out to watch the commotion, and the three roommates were also in the crowd.

This was the effect they had originally wanted, but at that moment, they couldn’t bring themselves to laugh.

They were all excellent students from local districts, and being boys, both at home and at school, they had been taught that they would have bright futures. How could they possibly want to trade their lives for a high school teacher’s career?

In the end, the situation was resolved.

The school naturally refused to acknowledge any educational problems, insisting that the police investigation concluded it was an accidental fall. The parents were furious and shouted, accusing the school and the police of collusion.

The school’s final solution was to suspend Teacher Sun, cooperate with the police investigation, and pay the family 200,000 yuan.

The school couldn’t be too harsh, as everyone knew Teacher Sun’s usual character. If the school acted too harshly, it would definitely hurt the morale of other teachers.

The police investigation also found no evidence that Teacher Sun had violated any ethical standards as a teacher.

Two months later, Teacher Sun returned to teaching.

——————————————

The three roommates never mentioned the incident at school again.

Naturally, Teacher Sun no longer taught their class. The new teacher was an experienced educator who shared an office with Teacher Sun. She saw everything Teacher Sun had done and the final outcome.

On one hand, she felt disheartened, and on the other hand, she felt fearful.

As a result, she became very laid-back. If students wanted to submit homework, they could; if they didn’t, it didn’t matter. Skipping class to play games? As long as they came back alive, it was fine.

Yes, this female teacher said this directly from the podium.

“You can do whatever you want. I have two conditions: don’t disturb the students who want to study, and stay alive.”

Without Teacher Sun, there was no longer pressure to submit homework, and they could freely skip class to play games.

The three of them played even more recklessly than before.

They dared not stop; if they did, they would think about Li Hao’s death.

If they studied seriously, it would mean listening to Teacher Sun’s words, and then their good friend’s death would lose all meaning.

The second roommate, the one who had hesitated from the beginning, started having nightmares every night. Eventually, he couldn’t bear it anymore and told his parents about the incident.

Upon hearing it, his parents’ faces changed. After all, adults consider more factors.

They had played a prank, and given the police’s findings, the conclusion was clear: the student had gone to play a prank but slipped and fell.

The parents realized this and, after thinking it through, grabbed whatever they could and beat him. Afterward, they pinched his ear and told him not to tell anyone.

“If you say anything, the school will blame everything on you three. You’ll all be expelled.”

As for Teacher Sun, who had already been accused of murder? She was back at school teaching, and it didn’t have much impact.

So life continued.

The three of them eventually ended up at the bottom of their class rankings. Pingcheng High School was the best school in the area, and getting in meant one foot was already in the door of a prestigious university.

However, they only managed to get into a third-tier university, which was a rare situation for Pingcheng High.

They didn’t want to repeat the year and just wanted to leave the school as soon as possible.

Throughout high school, it seemed like they were gambling with everyone, as if studying hard would prove they were wrong at first and that Teacher Sun was right.

And in the end, everything passed. The second roommate, now working in a city repairing computers, has an eleven-year-old son in fifth grade. His son constantly holds his phone, and whenever it’s time to study, he immediately complains of a headache or stomachache.

A simple division with decimals is easy to solve, but that little rascal, his brain seems like it was kicked by a donkey, and he can’t seem to figure it out.

“It’s all your mother’s genes!”

His wife couldn’t stand hearing that, “As if you’re so smart. Aren’t you the one who also went to the same university as me?”

“I didn’t want to study back then. I spent all my time in internet cafes, never did my homework, and you worked hard every day, but we both ended up in the same university. No need to say who’s the real fool.”

He hadn’t attended any class reunions, but he occasionally heard about a few of his classmates from their class who had gone to universities and even became graduate students or entered state-owned enterprises.

He wasn’t young anymore, and he started to feel that he had awakened, matured, especially after having a son. He realized he had wasted his talent in the past.

He would even say, if only Teacher Sun hadn’t given up on their class back then.

In the end, he drunkenly posted a life lesson on his social media:

“When I was young, I didn’t know the vastness of the sky, thinking the world was wide enough for a bird to fly, but now I realize it’s hard to even take a single step.”

Then came a bunch of mutual consolations from other disheartened people, reminiscing about the glory days.

Until Teacher Sun called.