It’s Him – Ch23

Alive is Enough

Humans are very strange creatures. Sun Ning herself has reminisced about the past, and every time her emotions would plunge, making it impossible for her to analyze the events from back then rationally.

However, when there was someone in front of her, with the person holding a pen and paper, acting like a journalist, ready to capture every word she said and extract the crucial information from them, she felt different.

Although she was young, the way she looked at her and the way she held the pen helped her resist the pain in her memories.

She was like a highly agile hunter in the forest, always striking at the heart of the matter.

Sun Ning had friends, of course, but everyone had their own families, and especially after middle age, everyone’s lives became especially complicated. She seldom troubled her friends with her own matters.

At this moment, communicating with this student, she found the smoothness and naturalness she used to have when venting with her close friends in the dorm during her student days.

Her thoughts started to flow, and as she spoke, she no longer immersed herself in her emotions. Instead, she tried her best to recall the situation back then and describe it as objectively and completely as possible.

“Every time I had a conflict with a student, Teacher Zhao would help mediate, but every time it didn’t seem to work.”

“I understand. It’s like he pretend to speak up for you, but in reality, he anger the other party and make them dislike you even more.” Li Xun nodded. “Your generation wasn’t as sensitive to such matters.”

The two of them continued to analyze bit by bit.

The events up to this point were as Li Xun had imagined. What took an unexpected turn was when the parents made a fuss at the school.

“At that time, I still thought Teacher Zhao and I were friends. The other teachers at school helped me, but from that moment on, Teacher Zhao started distancing himself from me. Whenever I was around, he wouldn’t show up.”

Li Xun felt that Teacher Sun was being too vague.

“What exactly happened back then?”

“Back then, the students’ parents insisted that I had caused the death of their child…” Even now, just thinking about that scene still made her nose feel stuffy and her stomach uneasy.

“They came with a group of people, blocking the school and holding banners, demanding that I pay with my life for killing their child.”

Li Xun poured her some hot water to help her ease the discomfort.

Sun Ning drank the hot water and continued, “When I went out, they threw paint at me. As we went to wash it off, we saw Teacher Zhao, and he turned around and walked away.”

Li Xun thought to himself, Teacher Sun’s resilience was incredible. It was unimaginable that despite such suppression, she was still teaching, and a highly regarded teacher at that.

But Li Xun also had doubts.

“Teacher Zhao is someone who enjoys seeing others suffer. How could he avoid you in that situation?”

With his personality, shouldn’t he have stayed close, watching Sun Ning’s pain, occasionally showing some concern?

Could he really have distanced himself?

Li Xun found it hard to believe.

Sun Ning nodded. “From that point on, we barely spoke to each other.”

Li Xun had an instinctive feeling that she was close to the truth.

He punished the children who brought pain to their parents because he had a son with high demands.

He punished the irritable parents because he had a parent who abused him.

For the former, he identified with the parent who was exhausted by their child.

For the latter, he identified with the child who had been abused by their parents.

Li Xun’s mind lit up, and everything clicked into place.

He distanced himself from Teacher Sun because, at that moment, he identified with her.

“Pay with life for killing”

“Drive a student to death”

Endless insults.

At that moment, it was clear that Teacher Sun also realized this, and the two of them looked at each other and said in unison, “He was scared!”

The simultaneous realization brought both of them a sense of joy, but then they immediately realized something was wrong.

Sun Ning said, “Do you think a pervert like him would be scared of these things?”

She had completely abandoned her formal language, no longer adhering to the conventions of teacher-student speech.

Li Xun also shared her doubts. “I find it strange too. Wait a second—”

Li Xun suddenly remembered. “The first time I saw Teacher Zhao change his expression was when one of our classmates read something aloud in front of him.”

“What?”

“Wait a minute, I’ll find it.” She pulled out her phone and started looking.

The school didn’t allow phones, but Li Xun didn’t treat Teacher Sun as an outsider. Not only had she brought her phone to school, but she had also sent messages to Teacher Sun during class.

Neither of them mentioned that matter.

Li Xun was looking for a newspaper she had worked on before.

“This is a gossip newsletter I did before. One of our classmates was reading it during class, and Teacher Zhao caught her. Teacher Zhao made her read it aloud. It was this paragraph—”

“He kept asking if we were still arguing. I wanted to say I wouldn’t argue anymore, I would behave, but my tongue was cut off…”

“That person started pouring something very stinky into my mouth…”

“At that moment, his face changed instantly. I remember it clearly.”

Teacher Sun read it, and it seemed familiar. They had collected about twenty copies of these printed gossip newsletters in their class this semester, but they hadn’t figured out where they came from.

So it came from here.

“He stopped back then, maybe he was really scared by what I went through at that time.” Teacher Sun comforted herself. If so, then the tragic things she encountered afterward seemed like a blessing in disguise.

It seemed to explain the situation, but she still felt something was off.

Li Xun’s mind felt like it was missing a piece. It wasn’t that she had imagined Teacher Zhao to be invulnerable, but this pervert had been locked in their basement for nearly half a month. It was clear that Aunt Zhang was an intellectual. Compared to her mother, who only knew how to hit people, Aunt Zhang specialized in psychological torment. Last night, when Li Xun went down, Aunt Zhang had brought a high-quality pair of headphones. Inside were the piercing sounds of a baby crying. Anyone would crack under that, but the other person remained more stable than her.

Could he really be scared of being cursed at? Of being shouted at to “pay with life for killing”? Of being splashed with paint?

Sun Ning sighed. “I don’t know. I now suspect he ran away on his own. If he were still at the school, I could just go look for him.”

Eh?

Li Xun thought to herself, for her, wouldn’t that just mean going to the basement?

She immediately said, “Let’s split up to look for his flaws. I’ll still focus on tracking the victims’ families. Teacher, you know more about our school’s teachers than I do. I still have a file on our high school’s suicide students. Could you see if you can find anything in there that links Teacher Zhao to pushing any of these students to their unnatural deaths?”

As she spoke, she pulled out a large stack from her bag.

Her printer had almost overheated these past few days.

Sun Ning took it, feeling a strange sensation. “Where did you find these materials?”

“I know a friend,” Li Xun didn’t hide it from her. “He was a victim’s family member from back then. His family is very wealthy. I told him about my situation, and he helped me look into the unnatural death incidents in our middle school. He checked everything.”

Sun Ning took it and immediately found a direction.

Li Xun continued, “We have to prepare for the possibility that he might come back. The more teammates we have, the better.”

Fighting alone isn’t a good thing.

That evening, Li Xun informed the substitute class teacher about not attending night study sessions. It was approved. In the final stretch of the senior year, the school wouldn’t be too harsh on the students, so skipping one night study session was fine.

Li Xun got home before it was even dark.

As soon as she entered, the loud sound of machinery hit her.

In the kitchen, her mother was using a meat grinder.

That meat grinder was something her mother had bought from a bankrupt hotpot restaurant. It was much larger than a household one, with a lot of power, able to grind an entire pig’s trotters.

Li Yuguai bought it to make dumpling fillings easier, but she hadn’t been selling dumplings for several days.

Li Xun’s gaze fell on the large basin of meat beside her.

Amid the noisy sound, Li Xun felt like she could hear her own heartbeat.

“Mom?”

Li Yuguai looked up. This was the first time Li Xun had come home this early in recent days. Before, she came back so late that her mother was usually already asleep. She had been so busy trying to drag her mother out that she hadn’t noticed how much weight her mother had lost.

The reason, she knew all too well.

Her nose became stuffy again as she saw her mother dump the ground meat into a nearby basin.

“Why so much?”

Li Yuguai didn’t look up. “Someone from the Industrial Bank passed away. Their family is preparing the banquet, and I’ve taken on part of the catering.”

Li Xun hadn’t heard of anyone passing away. She wasn’t sure if her mother was lying.

She wanted to ask something else, but her mother was already urging her, “Go study. Don’t waste time.”

Li Xun walked to her room, but her back still felt cold.

No matter how smart or capable she was, she wasn’t like Teacher Zhao, a pervert who could kill without hesitation.

She had her own feelings, and she could be scared and anxious too.

Her mother continued to mix the filling, adding chopped onions and eggs.

Li Xun couldn’t focus on anything, just waiting for her mother to finish and go to sleep.

At 1 a.m., there was no noise outside, and she went to the basement.

The basement was still pitch black, and as she stepped on the stairs, her legs were trembling.

She was really scared of seeing an empty basement.

A sound came from the corner.

“How did the mock exams go?”

Li Xun’s flashlight shone over, and Teacher Zhao was sitting there, alive, without missing any limbs, and even the injuries on his face had mostly healed.

Li Xun breathed a sigh of relief.

Alive is enough. These past few days, she’d been pushed to the point where her mind wasn’t normal anymore.

She relaxed, but then she remembered her mother’s sunken eyes, protruding cheekbones, and that feeling tightened again…

If this keeps up, maybe her mother will die first…