Chapter 569: A Bloody Beginning

September 30th, in a staff lounge at Sixth Middle School, a heated argument between a man and a woman startled the sparrows perched on the utility poles.

With a loud “bang,” the argument came to an abrupt end.

The man stared at the bloodied trophy in his hand and at his girlfriend lying on the floor. His pupils dilated in shock. No matter how much he knelt, apologized, shook, or called out to her, he could not undo the catastrophe he had caused.

The trophy slipped from his hand and fell to the floor. He knelt, pulling at his hair, silently crying and pounding his chest in anguish.

There was a knock at the door. He spun around, his expression instantly becoming vicious. A colleague outside said, “Mr. Yan, I left my lesson plan in there.”

“I… I’m not available right now.”

Mr. Yan glanced at the corpse on the floor. He wasn’t sure if the lie came from his heart or if it just slipped out naturally with a flick of his tongue.

In that moment, he realized the enormous cost he would pay to cover up this lie.

“Okay, understood. I’ll get it after the holiday. Happy holidays.”

“Happy holidays!”

As he heard the footsteps receding, Mr. Yan’s smile vanished, and he was pulled back to his harsh reality. This had to be handled perfectly; no traces could be left. But how? His mind was in turmoil.

With the corpse in the room, his thoughts oscillated between tracing the roots of the tragedy and envisioning severe punishment. At one point, he sprang up and slapped the corpse’s face, cursing through gritted teeth, “This is all your fault!”

It seemed like the body moved, but he couldn’t be sure if it was his imagination. Jolted by the sight, he backed away, kneeling and staring wide-eyed for five minutes without blinking.

He wanted a cigarette but had none. He remembered a colleague had a pack of high-quality ones gifted by a parent. After a moment of hesitation, he decided, “Screw it.”

Tearing open the pack, he lit one and inhaled deeply. The nicotine rush sent a shiver through him, its anesthetic effect causing his fingers to tremble slightly.

Sitting on the floor with the cigarette, his right arm draped over his bent knee, he addressed the body, “You don’t understand anything. I didn’t come from a privileged background like you. Every step of my life has been a thousand times harder than yours. You just criticize, thinking the world would be perfect without this or that. You’ve never seen the world’s cruelty!”

He suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to do something—kill and have sex. These primal instincts were intertwined, and awakening one would inevitably revive the other.

No matter how civilized humans pretend to be, deep down, they crave these two things.

Many murderers seek out prostitutes right after a kill. Now he understood why.

“You don’t understand anything!” he spat, as he began to strip the body. When his hands touched the cold, iron-like skin, he recoiled in fear, feeling nothing but dread. Damn it!

“Why! Why! Why!” he wailed, beating his chest, crying bitterly over what he was about to lose. His tears were all for himself, not a single drop for the deceased.

Night had fallen unnoticed. He peeked through the window; the playground was empty.

Mr. Yan carried the body, now stuffed into a sack, downstairs. He used to playfully carry his girlfriend often, but now she felt as heavy as a stone, bending his back under the weight.

Blood seeped from the back of the head, creating a large red stain. Anyone seeing this human-shaped sack topped with a flower-like burst of red would understand what had happened.

He looked around nervously.

Crossing the empty campus felt like navigating a minefield. Any accidental glance could doom him. He prayed silently to any deity, asking for smooth passage just this once.

The cursed parking lot was on the far side of the playground. Finally reaching it, he breathed a sigh of relief, as if crossing a finish line.

He opened the trunk and tossed the body in like a bag of trash. The sound suggested a bone might have broken, but he didn’t care. To him, she was now just a lump of meat, a problematic lump of meat.

Sitting in the car, he was suddenly blinded by bright lights. He shielded his eyes with his arm.

A figure emerged from the car’s headlights, casually lighting a cigar and beckoning him with a finger.

Compelled, Mr. Yan got out of the car and approached, exclaiming in surprise, “Mr. Zhou?”

“Is that Ms. Lin in the trunk?”

“N-no, just some old teaching materials.”

“You’re so nervous your tongue’s tied. If you’re like this with me, how will you handle the police?”

Mr. Yan eyed him suspiciously, wondering if Zhou intended to help.

Mr. Zhou was a mysterious man who had only been at the school for a month. He never joined office conversations, always thinking alone with a cigar. After class, he drove straight home. In all this time, Mr. Yan didn’t even know his full name.

It was Zhou who knocked earlier about his lesson plan. Had he already suspected something?

“Why do police always catch the real culprit? Because they’re skilled? No, it’s because criminals are stupid. Police academies take 3 to 5 years to train officers in everything from criminal investigation to forensic science. They have equipment, surveillance cameras everywhere, and the authority to question anyone. They can legally harm others. You’ll be facing not just one but a team! And what do you have? No experience, just panic, clumsiness, and mistakes. Like a bad magician performing for experts. In three days, you’ll be at the police station, sipping tea, enduring rounds of interrogation. How long can you hold out? Can you afford a lawyer? You’ll keep denying everything, which just tells the police, ‘It’s me! It’s me!’” Zhou took a deep drag of his cigar, shaking his head knowingly. “You’re too green, kid.”

Mr. Yan’s eyes widened, tears of regret streaming down. He knew he was standing before a master. Only a master would speak like this. He knelt, clutching Zhou’s shoes, begging, “Help me, please! I beg you!”

Zhou nonchalantly savored his cigar, inspecting the glow at its tip. After what felt like an eternity, he said, “What’s in it for me?”

“Anything you want, just name it!”

“If you give me one thing, I’ll help you this once. I’ll make the police know you’re a suspect but be unable to act. I’ll let you live your life free of this.”

“Thank you! Thank you! You must be sent by God. No, you are God!”

Mr. Yan kissed Zhou’s shoes repeatedly, as if they were his girlfriend’s soft lips. Zhou smiled slightly and took out his phone, “Shuangshuang, we’ve got work to do!”