With so few clues, Chen Ge couldn't piece together what had really happened.
He put the three chairs back where they'd been, then looked around. The mirrors made the dance studio seem especially empty.
"It's so clean, they must have swept more than once." There wasn't a speck of trash on the floor. That wasn't good news for Chen Ge. "Someone cleaned up the scene. I just hope they didn't throw away those special red dancing shoes."
Chen Ge left the mirrors and walked to a corner of the dance studio. The wall was covered with certificates of achievement and what looked like a rankings board.
After glancing at it, Chen Ge noticed something odd: someone had crossed out the name in first place with a permanent marker.
"A rankings board with no first-place name?" He spotted several girls' names, including Qian Yujiao's, but Zhang Ya's was nowhere to be found.
He looked away. More award-winning photos were displayed on the wall, and one of them caught his eye.
It seemed to be a group photo of six people. Five of them clustered together, smiling brightly, while the sixth stood off to the side, a distance from the others. Someone had cut her out of the picture with scissors. If the bottom edge hadn't revealed part of a snow-white ballet shoe, Chen Ge might have thought it had originally been a photo of five people.
"They're all individual photos or pictures of small groups. Why isn't there a class photo?" Chen Ge took out his phone and snapped a picture of the wall, then ran his hand along it as he continued onward. Before long, he found an unmarked room.
Curious, he pushed the door open.
Inside were a desk, a wardrobe, and a single bed.
"Looks like a counselor's