Xie Zhi followed Li Xian's pointing finger and looked down from the bed. The instant their eyes met, she suddenly became flustered and lost, and Li Xian noticed it all.
After their brief exchange of looks, Xie Zhi suddenly jumped off the bed. Just as everyone thought she was about to say something, she lowered her head, hurried past Teacher Shang, and ran out the door.
Li Xian and Xu Loubai both climbed down from the bed and quietly watched Teacher Shang, who stood rooted to the spot. His expression was complicated, as though he were silently processing everything that had just happened. Finally, his voice trembling as he sought confirmation, he asked:
"Xie Zhi, and those students just now... they're all..."
His words caught in his throat halfway through. He did not want to say those two words, and in the end, Xu Loubai quietly finished his sentence:
"All dead."
At those words, Teacher Shang seemed to lose the last of his strength and collapsed into a chair.
"...Why? When did it happen? What happened?"
His voice was very low, sounding less like a question than a dazed murmur to himself. But Xu Loubai caught it and briefly described everything Xie Zhi had experienced after returning to school:
"After she came back, her classmates' attitude toward her still hadn't changed-you should know what that involved. After that, her condition kept getting worse, and before long, she jumped from a building and killed herself."
Perhaps Xu Loubai had gone over this matter in her heart too many times already. Her tone could almost be called restrained as she spoke; only the tremor at the end betrayed her grief.
Teacher Shang bowed his head lower and lower, finally covering his face. Words filled with remorse spilled through his fingers:
"I thought