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墨書 Inktalez
Zhou Hang's temples throbbed, the pain from being crushed by a truck for the thirteenth time still lingering at the nerve endings. He curled up in the corner of the Laboratory Building, his nails digging into the peeling cement seams of the wall, bile rising bitterly in his throat.
The sound of a duty student dragging a water bucket echoed from the end of the corridor, the metallic clatter against the tiles making him flinch—this sound perfectly overlapped with a memory from a late spring afternoon.
"Get out of the way! It's filthy!"
The piercing scream from his memory suddenly pierced his eardrums. In the corridor of Class 2, Year 3, a girl in a Rose Red Hoodie deliberately swung her mop towards the corner, splattering dirty water all over Lin Xue.
Zhou Hang saw his fifteen-year-old self passing by with a physics workbook, his white sneakers screeching to a halt five meters away, the corners of the workbook crumpling under pressure. Suddenly, he caught a whiff of that year’s scent lingering in the air—84 disinfectant mixed with the cheap Strawberry Scented Hand Cream used by the girls.
As Lin Xue squatted on the ground picking up her scattered textbooks, a patch of pale skin showed at the back of her neck, sticky with crushed rose petals—those were pranks played by boys from the neighboring class.
"Look at her expression!"
The Class Flower with High Ponytail used a compass to lift Lin Xue's chin, and immediately, a chorus of camera shutters erupted around them. Zhou Hang's retina retained that image: Lin Xue's trembling eyelashes casting spiderweb-like shadows beneath her eyes, blood droplets rolling down from her mouth where the compass had pricked her, staining the second button of her school uniform with dark red.
That night during Mathematics Self-Study Class, he heard whispers and snickers coming from behind. Someone was passing around printed photos; Lin Xue's face was edited to look like an obituary under everyone's draft papers. When the duty officer knocked on the podium to restore order, he distinctly remembered swallowing three times before finally bowing his head to draw a crooked auxiliary line on a geometry problem.
At this moment, the setting sun in the cycle suddenly turned blood red as Zhou Hang staggered towards Classroom 7 of Year 3. In the lower right corner of the blackboard where daily proverbs were written, chalk letters twisted ominously into "You owe her an apology."
When he reached out to touch it, the writing reverted to "97 days until college entrance exams."
When the Storage Locker emitted its foul odor for the third time, Zhou Hang finally discerned a pattern. Every time the cycle reached its seventh iteration, dark red stains would seep from the bottom locker door. This time he had prepared a paper cutter in advance; as the stench filled the air, he pried open the rusty latch—faded light blue hairbands tangled with half-melted strawberry lollipops lay inside, and on the plastic wrapping was barely visible Lin Xue's signature for her Chemical Assignment.
When the cafeteria lady handed him his tray for the tenth time, he noticed that oil droplets on top of his egg flower soup suddenly coalesced into shapes resembling pupils. Zhou Hang's hand trembled, spilling soup onto a boy's AJ Shoes behind him; his angry shoving made Zhou Hang shiver all over.
The boy with black-framed glasses was unmistakably the one who had spilled ink on Lin Xue's desk back in the day.
As the iron gate on the rooftop of the Laboratory Building swung open for the fifteenth time, Zhou Hang saw his trembling fingertips illuminated by the moonlight, appearing almost translucent.
A faint scent of jasmine wafted through the air, reminiscent of the fragrance sachets Lin Xue always kept in her school uniform pocket.
As he took a step forward, a flurry of shredded exam papers suddenly fell from the sky, each piece inscribed with the same chemical equations—the last quiz Lin Xue had not managed to submit before her passing.
"Zhou Hang?"
The familiar voice of the dean called out from behind him. When he turned around, he was met with the eerie reflection on the dean's glasses.
In the dean's hand was a thick file folder, from which dark red liquid seeped out at the seal, dripping down the creases of the brown paper in a pendulum-like motion.
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