Chapter 73 First Love
Shoutout to nyanmaru for the commission!
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“Did you guys see the news yesterday? There was a dismemberment case!”
Xie Shiyu sat at his desk, copying the English homework that Chu Feng had written.
Upon hearing the classmates’ discussion, he didn’t stop writing, his tone indifferent but slightly surprised, “Oh? When did it happen?”
“Just yesterday morning! They found it in the south outskirts!”
“Oh my god!” Another female classmate exclaimed, “That’s not far from us, it’s so scary… Have they caught the culprit?”
“How could they catch him so quickly? It will definitely take some time for the police to solve the case, and…”
The classmate said grimly, “Maybe, in the end, they won’t catch the murderer, and it will become a famous unsolved case in our city or even the whole country!”
“That’s impossible.”
Xie Shiyu, sitting at the back, continued doing his homework and casually remarked, “For major violent crimes like this, they will definitely take it seriously.”
“Yeah, exactly. Such a serious murder case would definitely establish a special task force. With today’s technology, they might catch the culprit in a few days. It’s the smaller theft cases that they don’t bother much about, and those often end up unresolved.” The girl said.
“What are you guys talking about?”
Chu Feng walked over. He had just brought back the last quiz paper from the teacher’s office, ready to distribute them.
Female classmate: “Did you see the news about the dismemberment case reported yesterday?”
Chu Feng: “…Yeah.”
Last night, while watching TV, his dad wanted to watch this kind of legal news, but his mom wanted him to listen to the English channel as usual. In the end, they had another big argument. Chu Feng only saw the beginning of the report on that case.
“We were just guessing when they would catch the culprit,” Xie Shiyu said.
He returned Chu Feng’s homework and turned to “polish” his own copied work: randomly picking out a few questions and changing the correct answers to wrong ones.
Everything seemed perfectly natural.
“What do you think? How long until they catch the murderer?” the girl asked.
“…It’s hard to say.”
Chu Feng handed the quiz paper to the English class representative in the front row and sat back down:
“It seems like something similar happened before…”
“What? Another dismemberment case?” the girl asked in shock.
“I also… don’t remember very clearly, but it seems like it was during elementary school, there was a case where they tied the body parts with a red plastic rope.”
“Yeah, I remember that case. They said there were knots tied with a red plastic rope on the body parts, the way it was tied was very strange. But the culprit still hasn’t been caught to this day!”
“Ah! Stop it, I’m getting goosebumps!”
The bell rang—
The class bell rang just in time, and the English teacher walked in, her high heels clicking on the floor.
The students weren’t actually very interested in legal news. With the tedious English quiz, the dismemberment case was quickly forgotten.
Xie Shiyu yawned. He rested his chin on his hand, looking at the words on the blackboard, where the letters wriggled in the green sea of chalk.
“Xie Shiyu! Look at you, how many times have you failed the quiz now?”
The English teacher walked down, picked up Xie Shiyu’s quiz paper with a score of 45:
“I said last time that anyone who fails five times in a row will be punished, right? Class representative, check how many times it’s been for Xie Shiyu.”
The English class representative, a boy sitting in the front row, timely pulled out the register. He crossed out the word “正” behind Xie Shiyu’s name:
“Teacher, five times.”
“Alright, then today before class, let Xie Shiyu perform an English song for us. If he fails again next time, he’ll continue performing until he passes the quiz!”
Laughter erupted around. Chu Feng sighed softly as he sat among them.
Xie Shiyu didn’t shy away. He stood up, stepped onto the podium as the teacher requested, and confidently began to sing: “Twotwotiger, twotwotiger, runrunfast…”
English teacher: “Two tigers!”
Xie Shiyu: “Oh.”
The classmates laughed even harder. Chu Feng, sitting among them, shook his head helplessly, a faint smile on his lips.
At that moment, the sunlight was just right.
When Xie Shiyu returned to his seat, he saw the English class representative leaning over the register, crossing out the word “正” with a stroke.
Singing as punishment once would erase one stroke, and failing the quiz again would add another. On his quiz paper, there were circles drawn by the teacher’s red pen, one after another, like flesh and blood scattered across white paper.
Sitting in the classroom bathed in sunlight, Xie Shiyu once again recalled the thirty-seven “正” he had written down in his notebook.
In the end, those “正” turned into a stormy night in the southern outskirts, and thirty-seven pieces of flesh.
The father who seemed as tall as a mountain in his childhood, the demon that his mother couldn’t escape no matter how much she resisted, turned out to be just that.
“…Xie Shiyu… Xie Shiyu.”
“Hmm?”
Xie Shiyu snapped out of his thoughts, and Chu Feng beside him was frowning at him:
“You’ve been zoning out a lot lately. Here.”
Chu Feng handed his perfect quiz paper to Xie Shiyu, making it easier for him to correct his failed quiz.
“Oh, thanks.”
Xie Shiyu took out a red pen and meticulously copied, the bright red color painting a picture of blood in his sight.
“So you did kill him after all.”
In his mind, that voice spoke again:
“Uncle knew you would do this, little Shiyu.”
Tsk.
Xie Shiyu paused for a moment, and the tip of his pen left a small red dot on the paper.
“What’s with the tsk?”
Thirteen-year-old Chu Feng looked a bit annoyed at little Xie, “I kindly helped you correct your quiz, and you don’t want to give it back to me.”
He reached out to take back his quiz paper…
Xie Shiyu flipped his hand, pressing down on Chu Feng’s extended hand, not letting him take it:
“I’m not tsk-ing at you.”
Chu Feng struggled against the hand pressing down on his, “Let go.”
“Not letting go.”
Xie Shiyu corrected the quiz while exerting gentle pressure, his palm against Chu Feng’s hand back, smooth and slightly cool. It felt comfortable, and he didn’t want to let go.
Chu Feng shook his hand forcefully, but his strength was weaker than Xie Shiyu’s, and he couldn’t break free. He could only let Xie Shiyu’s hand obediently press his hand onto the desk.
“Xie Shiyu, what are you doing?”
The English teacher saw everything clearly from the platform, she walked down, closing in step by step:
“Why are you pressing down on Chu Feng’s hand?”
All the classmates turned to look at the two of them.
Chu Feng: “…”
Under everyone’s gaze, Chu Feng felt the hand pressed down on him heating up. Xie Shiyu didn’t let go, and he couldn’t retract it…
The atmosphere around was somewhat teasing. Chu Feng pretended not to notice, he kept his head down, staring at the English workbook as if he could transform into a word to fill in the blanks.
Xie Shiyu lifted his head nonchalantly and replied, “Teacher, I’m correcting the quiz and absorbing Chu Feng’s study power. I’ll definitely pass next time!”
The surrounding classmates burst into laughter.
“Instead of believing in superstition, why don’t you study a few more words for me when you have time?”
Thump— the English teacher rolled up the exercise book into a tube and knocked on Xie Shiyu’s head:
“Alright, everyone, open your exercise books. Let’s check the answers for the test…”
***
A red check mark passed through ten blanks in the cloze test, all correct.
Chu Feng held a red pen in his right hand, checking and correcting the answers, while his left hand moved:
“Hey, how long are you going to keep pressing down?”
“Till the end of time.”
Chu Feng rolled his eyes, “Be careful, your quiz might not pass till the end of time.”
Xie Shiyu chuckled, corrected the last wrong word, and released a bit of pressure. Chu Feng tried to pull his hand back, but Xie Shiyu suddenly reached out and grasped it—
Then quickly let go.
Chu Feng quickly withdrew his hand. After a while, he quietly glanced at Xie Shiyu, who was opening an exercise book full of blanks and randomly filling in ABCD, as if nothing had happened:
“Tomorrow, let me copy your English homework again.”
“Do it yourself!”
Thirteen-year-old Chu Feng closed his English workbook a bit angrily.
Sometimes he felt that his closeness with Xie Shiyu could go further, and sometimes he felt that maybe he was overthinking it. The boy sitting diagonally across from them hugged and kissed his darling every day, asking to copy his homework, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything real.
At the turn of spring and summer, the trees outside the classroom window were lush, and little sparrows chirped on the branches, mingling with the early summer cicadas. The cicadas sang on and on.
After school.
The setting sun dyed half the sky red, and walking in the red-orange light, the thick black shadows stretched out.
“It’s a bit like the witching hour.”
Chu Feng: “What?”
“You don’t know?” Xie Shiyu, carrying a light backpack and tossing all his textbooks into the school drawer, walked briskly:
“Dawn and dusk are when most people die.”
Chu Feng had indeed heard of this saying, the changing of dawn and dusk, the alternation of yin and yang, were usually ominous times:
“When did you become so superstitious?”
“It’s not superstition, it’s adapting to the situation.” Thirteen-year-old Xie Shiyu spoke coherently: “Since these moments aren’t particularly auspicious, then conversely, if you choose to do something bad at this time, maybe you’ll get twice the result with half the effort.”
“…” Chu Feng: “That’s just nonsense.”
“Hahaha. Alright, see you — remember to let me copy your homework tomorrow.”
Little Chu Feng: “No way!”
Xie Shiyu didn’t mind, because he knew Chu Feng would still let him copy his homework tomorrow. Thirteen-year-old Xie Shiyu waved to Chu Feng and turned into the left fork.
Chu Feng stood still for a moment, remembering their elementary school days.
The school had changed, the roads had changed, but when they walked home from school together, after just one or two streets, they would reach a fork in the road. Xie Shiyu would always go left, while he would go right. They could never walk home from school together.
Xie Shiyu lived in an old residential building in the West City District, while Chu Feng lived in a high-end residential area in the city center. Their directions were completely different, so they could only walk together for a short distance before parting ways.
This feeling made Chu Feng uncomfortable. He thought about high school three years later. With his current grades, he would definitely be admitted to the city’s key high school. But where would Xie Shiyu be by then?
“Oh, Chu Feng! Are you also done with school?”
Chu Feng turned around and saw the annoying Sun Bing, who had been assigned to the next class in junior high:
“I heard you’re also going to the provincial competition at Children’s Day?”
“Yeah.”
Chu Feng replied listlessly, walking ahead. He couldn’t walk home from school with Xie Shiyu. Sun Bing, who had been walking with him since elementary school, was the one who walked with him every day.
Sun Bing: “Are you going to play the piano?”
Chu Feng: “Yeah.”
Sun Bing: “I’m going too! I’m going to play the saxophone!”
Chu Feng knew what this guy wanted to hear and casually replied, “Wow, impressive.”
“Not really. You’re the impressive one. By the way, I heard your mom took you to participate in the international DW Music Competition last time? Such a pity, I happened to be… Otherwise…”
Chu Feng rolled his eyes internally, praying to get home quickly to say goodbye to Sun Bing.
***
Di Di—
“I’m back.”
Chu Feng opened the electronic access code lock and walked into the house.
“Oh, you’re back. Your mom will be back to cook in a while.”
On the sofa, his dad was sitting with his legs crossed, reading the newspaper, while the TV played the evening news.
Chu Feng walked straight up to the second floor of the duplex, ready to study in his bedroom.
As he climbed the stairs, he suddenly heard the TV in the living room reporting:
“At present, the police have found all the body parts, and the preliminary estimation of the time of death is three days ago, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.”
Chu Feng’s footsteps paused.
The light from the setting sun streamed in from the window, casting a bloody red hue on the stairs.
5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Thirteen-year-old Chu Feng, upon hearing this time, suddenly remembered what Xie Shiyu had said:
Dusk, the witching hour.
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