Calculer

Chapitre 26

"besides......"

Huang Yi kept repeating the word "there is still" for a long time, but he couldn't come up with anything meaningful.

"What else?" Ziyuan asked anxiously.

"Ah," Huang Yi's face regained its composure, "and that building too."

"That was the staff housing of a state-owned factory at the time. Back then, housing was allocated, and it was similar in structure to the staff dormitories we have now. Sometimes we would go there to play because it was a large building where we could have a lot of fun."

That night, there were no stars, but the moon was frighteningly large. Whether we were terrified or excited, we went into the building and started playing an adventure game.

When we entered the building together, there wasn't a soul in sight. Then we...

At this point, Huang Yi touched his forehead, his expression showing great pain.

"Huang Yi, are you alright?"

"Mr. Huang..."

Ziyuan and Zhang Bei looked at Huang Yi with concern. Huang Yi ignored their words, took a sip of water, and tried to continue recalling, but he felt that the memories in his mind were becoming blurred. He tried his best to remember, but he always felt powerless.

"Why? Why can't I remember anything?" Huang Yi shouted.

No one spoke in the house, but Huang Yi said nervously, "Quiet. I've got it."

Memories flashed through Huang Yi's mind like fragments of photographs, each one a sudden burst of light. Huang Yi stammered, "That building... the dark corridors... no one else, just us... the doors were so close together, one door, two doors..."

"A room with the door open, a woman lying on the bed... two men, a little girl, and a teenage girl."

"..."

Silence. With Huang Yi's silence, the surroundings became eerily quiet. Now, Huang Yi lay motionless on the bed. Apart from the sound of his breathing, he was no different from a corpse, and he paid no attention to Zhang Bei and Zi Yuan.

Time passed slowly, and Huang Yi remained in bed. Aside from occasionally glancing at the photos in his hand, even his breathing became softer. Huang Yi had shut himself off, as if he had been buried in a grave.

"Huang Yi, what's next? Keep going," Zhang Bei urged impatiently.

Ziyuan looked at Huang Yi anxiously, but he didn't say another word or move again.

"Perhaps we should go now." Ziyuan understood that while patience was needed for patients like Huang Yi, she was extremely reluctant to stand up and said, "We'll come back tomorrow. I think he might be tired."

“Okay, let’s go first,” Zhang Bei replied.

The two walked out of the house one after the other. Before leaving, Zhang Bei said goodbye to Huang Yi. Huang Yi remained lying in bed, unresponsive.

The dormitory corridor was also very dark, with light shining through from somewhere and illuminating the surrounding dust. Ziyuan and Zhang Bei walked out of the dormitory in silence. At this moment, Ziyuan was still thinking about what Huang Yi had said earlier.

The two walked out of the factory and reached the roadside. Seeing that Ziyuan remained silent, Zhang Bei patted Ziyuan's shoulder and said, "Don't think too much about it. I'll come with you tomorrow."

“I think he and Xiaojing must have run into something in that building when they were kids,” Ziyuan said, sounding a bit nonsensical.

"Don't think about it..." Zhang Bei said, looking around at the road, searching for a taxi. "Maybe that was just Huang Yi's nonsense. You saw that Huang Yi's mental state was a bit abnormal."

“I believe his memories are true,” Ziyuan insisted.

"Is that what you think?" Zhang Bei asked, looking at Zi Yuan.

"Yes, I believe I will soon find out why Xiaojing committed suicide..."

“However,” Zhang Bei lit a cigarette, took a puff, and said helplessly to Zi Yuan, “you have to promise me that after this is over, you can’t keep overthinking things.”

Ziyuan felt a surge of warmth in her heart and gratefully said to Zhang Bei, "Zhang Bei, thank you so much."

Zhang Bei looked away shyly, when she suddenly heard Zi Yuan exclaim "Ah!" Zhang Bei immediately turned to look at her and asked, "What is it?"

"I left my handbag in Huang Yi's dorm room."

"I'll go back with you to get it."

"Okay," Ziyuan said with a smile, a very beautiful smile.

Zhang Bei gazed at her with rapt attention.

Then, Ziyuan and Zhang Bei went back to the factory.

When the two returned to the factory, they found the gates wide open, but the guards were nowhere to be seen. Both Zhang Bei and Zi Yuan felt something was amiss. As they approached the dormitory, they saw small groups of people walking towards them from a distance, their faces filled with panic. They passed by Zi Yuan and gathered downstairs at the dormitory building. Before them, a large crowd had already gathered there, and several screams from women could be heard, followed by a noisy discussion.

"What's going on?" Zhang Bei asked, and driven by curiosity, she walked over as well. Because there were too many onlookers, Zi Yuan didn't want to squeeze in with them, so she stood outside the crowd.

Zhang Bei pushed through the crowd and saw the person everyone was watching—Huang Yi.

His face was turned towards Zhang Bei, his legs were bent over, and he held Wang Yujing's photo in his hand. His entire body was lying face down on the ground covered with bricks and rubble, his eyes wide open, and the corners of his mouth slightly turned up as if he were smiling. Huang Yi's appearance at this moment was like a photograph of someone who had tripped over a brick while running forward and was then frozen in time, giving off a terrifying and eerie feeling.

Zhang Bei quickly went over and nudged Huang Yi, calling out, "Huang Yi... what's wrong?"

"He just jumped from the roof," the guard said, stepping out from the crowd.

"Call an ambulance!" Zhang Bei shouted as she touched Huang Yi's wrist and found that he had no pulse and no body temperature.

“I’ve already called,” the guard replied.

Zhang Bei stood up and rushed out of the crowd. Zi Yuan, who was waiting outside, came up and asked, "What happened?"

"Huang Yi jumped from the building..."

Ziyuan covered her mouth, stared wide-eyed at Zhang Bei, and after a long while, said in a trembling voice, "Now he..."

"No pulse, may already be..."

In an instant, that nameless sense of terror washed over Ziyuan again. She stood frozen in place, feeling that the truth was very, very distant from her...

Chapter Fifteen: Two Mothers

The sweltering heat of summer enveloped the campus, and sweat poured from Gu Xing's body as he walked dejectedly back to the boys' dormitory. For five consecutive days, Gu Xing had gone to the girls' dormitory again and again to inquire about Xu Chen's whereabouts, but the answers he received were utterly disheartening.

"Xu Chen went home?" Gu Xing muttered to himself as he walked. "Why did he leave without saying goodbye? Did something happen at home? Maybe Xu Chen doesn't care about me at all, so there's no need for him to tell me."

At that moment, a woman in her early twenties walked past Gu Xing. Her appearance caught his attention, and his gaze immediately fell on her. She was quite pretty, with long, flowing, lustrous hair. What was most striking about her were her large eyes, with unusually dark pupils, as if they contained a dark, endless universe.

She was frowning, preoccupied, and slowly walked past Gu Xing, seemingly oblivious to everything around her.

Gu Xing kept watching her until she walked past him. Looking at the woman's retreating figure, Gu Xing wondered, "I've never seen her before. Is she new? She doesn't look like a freshman. Could she be a new instructor?"

The woman walked away, and Gu Xing turned around and continued walking. The lingering image of Xu Chen reappeared in his mind, and Gu Xing sighed again.

Back in the dormitory, Yang Mian was already there, but Li Xu had gone out. Da Kai and Zhang Da'e were talking to Yang Mian. When they saw Gu Xing return, they just glanced at him and didn't say anything, continuing their conversation.

"Li Xu said that the woman's name is Xiaohua," Zhang Da said mysteriously to Yang Mian.

"Could it be his hallucination?"

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Zhang Da waved his hand at Yang Mian and said, “Li Xu was so frightened that morning that he was unrecognizable.”

Yang Mian thought for a moment and said, "Perhaps Li Xu is obsessed with women; it's probably just his imagination."

"Could it be another prank by Xu Chen?"

Da Kai's words silenced the room. Then everyone looked at Gu Xing, who was standing in the corner of the room. Gu Xing glanced at them and said, "Xu Chen has already gone home."

"Even if she hadn't shown up, she would still be capable of doing something like this, right?" Yang Mian thought to himself, but didn't say it aloud.

After a moment of silence, Li Xu returned from outside, and Yang Mian and the others immediately began chatting about all sorts of things, no longer discussing the so-called "Little Flower."

As the three chatted, Li Xu stood blankly beside them, staring at them. Yang Mian and the others felt guilty and just kept talking nonsense, ignoring Li Xu.

Gu Xing saw this scene from a corner of the room, but not wanting to watch, he lay down on the bed and pretended to be asleep.

"What are you talking about?" Li Xuzhong asked.

Not being very bright, Da Kai casually replied, "The World Cup."

"Are you done playing?"

He nodded with a silly grin.

Who won the championship?

"China" is still grinning foolishly.

After listening, Li Xu straightened up and went back to bed, saying nothing more.

Yang Mian made an appointment with Xiao Hui, but didn't stay long. He stood up and said, "I have an appointment, I'm leaving," and walked straight out of the dormitory. Only four people remained in the dormitory.

Ziyuan has returned to her dormitory. Huang Yi's death has dealt another blow to Ziyuan, and she is now exhausted from dealing with the police's questions.

After resting for a while, although she was very tired, Ziyuan couldn't calm down. Why did Xiaojing want to commit suicide? What did she see? Why did Huang Yi also want to commit suicide? Was it related to the building they talked about when they were young?

Unable to find answers, questions piled up in her mind one after another. Ziyuan poured herself a cup of coffee and took a sip.

The sugar was forgotten, and the bitterness almost made Ziyuan vomit. Suddenly, her nerve endings were stimulated, and the events of the past few days flashed through her mind.

"Xiao Jing came to me, she was a little mentally unstable. After she died, I also started hallucinating, or rather, I had a strange feeling. This situation seemed to have a sense of déjà vu." Zi Yuan said to herself, putting the sugar into the cup.

"Xu Chen!" Zi Yuan finally thought of it and called out.

“My encounter with Xu Chen was somewhat similar to what happened to me. Every time I saw her, I would have hallucinations, which is similar to what happened to Xiao Jing this time.”

"Whether there is any connection between the two or not, it has been a long time since I've seen her. I wonder how she is now. It would be good to go and see her."

After making up her mind, Ziyuan rested for a while longer before heading to the girls' dormitory.

When she reached the vicinity of the dormitory gate, she saw a man and a woman holding hands and talking. As Ziyuan walked past them, their conversation caught her attention.

"...Xu Chen did not return."

"She hasn't come back yet. Did she say she was going home?"

"Yes, it's been a week and she still hasn't come back, but Gu Xing comes to see her every day."

Ziyuan listened intently for a while, and seeing that the couple seemed to have noticed her eavesdropping, she said apologetically, "I'm sorry, my name is Ziyuan, I'm really sorry for eavesdropping on your conversation."

The couple was Yang Mian and Xiao Hui. They seemed a little lost after hearing Zi Yuan's words. Zi Yuan continued to explain, "I'm Xu Chen's friend. Are you her friends too?"

"Does Xu Chen have friends too?" Yang Mian murmured. Zi Yuan couldn't hear him clearly and asked Yang Mian, "What? What did you just say? I can't hear you."

"Oh no, I didn't say anything just now. By the way, my name is Yang Mian, and her name is Xiao Hui."

Ziyuan nodded in acknowledgment, and then exchanged a few polite words with the other three.

Ziyuan then asked Yang Mian, "Are you all Xu Chen's friends?"

"I guess so."

"Has Xu Chen returned from his trip?"

"She's back, but she's left again. I heard she went home."

“Go home? I think if she really went home, her mother would definitely call me.”