Chapter 3: My Memory Was Wrong

After hanging up the call with the principal, I felt a bit short of breath. Anyone carrying a secret would have a touch of morning sickness.

The principal sent another WeChat message chasing me down about exactly what was going on. I replied that Neng County was just this one mu and three fen of land—you’d definitely be able to dig it up, so no need for me to elaborate.

Later, I found out: seven years ago, a child died in the class I was teaching.

The principal said, what kind of secret is this? You could’ve just told me right away! Look how scared you are.

That evening, she bombarded me with over twenty voice messages, each more than twenty seconds long. I clicked play and went to boil some noodles, letting her voice accompany the cooking as she explained things in detail. She said it was normal to get tangled up in some trouble, or that I should take a couple days off—there was a crazy woman hanging around the kindergarten, and she hoped I could stay hidden as much as possible.

I could tell that although our principal’s tone was breezy and casual, her words betrayed a hint of fear toward that crazy woman.

Bright Kindergarten and Plum Kindergarten weren’t the same breed at all. With remnants of Plum Kindergarten stirring up trouble for Bright, the principal was pissed and vented a whole bunch.

To the people of Neng County, Plum Kindergarten was the dregs in the corner, taking in kids nobody else wanted. Meanwhile, Bright Kindergarten shot up right in place like a Tower of Babel reaching the heavens. A bunch of uniform kids got wheeled in by their parents on electric scooters, and when they came out, they were sorted into future doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, flitting about in fluent languages from all over the world, shining as bright as the kindergarten’s name.

So I could understand why the principal had started by telling me to take leave.

To put out a fire, you had to start at the source. I was the potential trigger for that crazy woman. If I wasn’t around, she could just outright draw a line with Plum Kindergarten and always be in the right. But with me there, it was a case of righting wrongs with the proper culprit. The crazy woman would come after me.

By the time my bowl of noodles was done, it was clear broth with just three scallion flowers hanging in it. I dug out some aged vinegar and set it on the table. The screen had already gone dark—the principal was done talking.

I set the chopsticks straight and was just about to eat when a burst of extremely noisy racket erupted from downstairs. Those roller-skating boys suddenly started yelling and hollering, shouting “Let him go!”

Kids fighting—it was occupational habit for me to stand up, push open the window, and try to break it up.

The sun had just set, but the sky was still light. The air was murky, a trash can had been knocked over with piles of garbage spilling out. In the middle of the trash heap, one boy was futilely kicking his roller skates back and forth, his collar yanked long. Several other boys crowded around, yelling, “Let him go! Let him go! He’s already apologized!”

Right in the center, I saw a mess of gray-white dry grass haphazardly tied up at the back of her head. Judging by her build, it was a woman, wearing a thick fleece hoodie totally out of season. She wasn’t tall, but she was strong, yanking the boy’s collar right up to her face.

The boy couldn’t break free, twisting at her hand and flailing his arms wildly, yelling—but it was all for nothing. The woman was like a stone spirit, utterly immovable.

Finally, the boy she’d grabbed let out another wail: “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!”

The woman let go, and with a slap, the boy’s skates shot forward while he went backward. His butt hit the ground, and he tumbled right into the garbage pile.

The other boys scrambled over in a panic. I went back, picked up my bowl, and slurped my noodles. Suddenly, the woman said very seriously to the group of boys, “Make trouble again, and I’ll kill you.”

How could anyone say something like that to kids? I choked on a mouthful of noodles that wouldn’t go down or come up, watching as the boy bawled, “I didn’t mean to crash into you… I didn’t mean to.”

But the woman didn’t listen anymore. She stepped over the garbage pile, her jeans faded white. Leaving the boys behind, they cried their hearts out like the sky was falling—it seemed they’d eaten some real hardship and didn’t dare curse her to her face.

The woman suddenly stopped, turned back, and asked, “Does a teacher live around here?”

Her tone was exceptionally calm, like she already knew a teacher lived here and just wanted confirmation. She scanned around, taking in all three buildings of our neighborhood, then her gaze fell back on the boys scrambling away on their skates. But the boys ignored her and sped off on their wheels.

My noodles had gone a bit cold and stiff. Swallowing them felt like gulping down a walnut. I closed the window, drew the curtains, and the phone on the table buzzed to life.

Principal Zhao: It’s actually no big deal. I didn’t mean anything by it, just afraid the crazy might hurt someone. I thought it over carefully—it’s been seven years, anyone who should be in jail is, and the dead won’t come back to life. No reason for her to come after you.

Principal Zhao: Come to work. Don’t overthink it, I didn’t mean anything else.

I forced down two mouthfuls of cold noodles, picked up the phone to light my face, turned on the room light, lay down on the bed, typed out two lines and deleted them with a clatter, then simply replied “Okay,” followed by a thank-you emoji. I tossed the phone aside; it rolled down the sheets toward the bed crevice, clunking into place and filling the gap tight.

Jiaxing Residential Area had three buildings total, arranged in a pin character formation. I was in the bottom left of the pin. Rough estimate: there weren’t eight or ten teachers living in Jiaxing Residential Area. That woman probably wasn’t after me.

Downstairs, Teacher Xu ran an after-hours cram class for students in violation of policies and rules. On weekends, the kids downstairs would head out in perfectly timed batches, like they were just touring Jiaxing Residential Area—some keeping watch, some riding bikes, serious as spies on a mission.

In Building 3 lived Teacher Wen, infamous for it. Rumor was she’d been carrying on with a student’s parent, it got blown up to the school, but I didn’t know the aftermath. Everyone nodded respectfully to Teacher Wen in person, while gossiping eight hundred jaw-dropping endings behind her back.

With so many teachers more “teacher-like” than me—a mere kid-wrangler—when looking for one, I shouldn’t be high on the list.

But there I was, sitting on the bed plugging myself in, feeling stuffy. I stuck my feet out from under the blanket, then felt cold and pulled them back. I wished I could turn into a flexible octopus, curling into a wall crack, pressing my tentacles to the cold wall, drying out and jarring myself up.

I couldn’t help wanting to peek through the curtains at that woman again. From the fifth floor, high above, I couldn’t make out her features hidden under the messy hair. She felt strangely unfamiliar, yet there was some hidden connection drawing my gaze to her.

The facts were ironclad: Zheng Ningning was dead and buried, the killer in jail. I couldn’t imagine who could face this fact from seven years ago and turn into a crazy woman.

Tossing and turning sleeplessly for a long time, I WeChatted Zhu Erting, asking her to pick me up for work the next day.

Zhu Erting: What secret are you hiding from me, hm? I know all about Li Yongquan sending you home today. Aiya, is it that Lao Jiang here wants to eat tender grass?

Of course I didn’t want to eat Li Yongquan’s tender grass—boys that immature were kindergarten dropouts in my eyes.

But I didn’t want to spill my secret to my colleague.

Jiang Huixiang: You already know I didn’t ride my electric scooter back. Help a sister out.

Zhu Erting sent a voice message, chuckling puff-puff, saying Lao Jiang was eating tender grass.

These unnecessary misunderstandings and forced secret-spilling both made me awkward. Weighing it, I sold out my ex to Zhu Erting. I said my taste didn’t match Li Yongquan’s image at all—look at my ex’s photo and you’d believe I had zero designs on Li Yongquan; him sending me home was pure coincidence.

I dug deep into my album, yanking the timeline straight back seven years, and sent Lu Jinshi’s photo over. Zhu Erting immediately believed me and promised to arrive right downstairs at 7:45 the next morning.

The photo from seven years ago was a bit blurry after two phone changes, but the well-worn patina made the scene clear despite the fuzziness. My finger paused on that pile from seven years back. There was a group photo with Plum Kindergarten, showing half of Lu Jinshi’s face.

Back then, I’d just arrived at Plum Kindergarten and decided to commemorate it. I wore a white plush jacket, a childish bunny scarf, pencil pants, and snow boots, flashing a peace sign at the lens, leaning against the plum tree.

Lu Jinshi was holding the camera on the windowsill, pressing the shutter, forgetting to set the timer. He came running toward me—click, capturing his profile.

Staring at the screen, I didn’t get all sentimental over the ex. It’d been six years since we’d last met; things and people had changed. Last I heard of him, his wife had popped out a second kid. I just found it odd that Lu Jinshi’s face in the photo looked more boyish than I’d remembered. Maybe my memory had some glitches. I scrolled up further.

I flipped to the Children’s Day photo from Plum Kindergarten’s Preschool Class rehearsing “Planting the Sun.” A bunch of kids with sticker-red cheeks clustered tight like steamed buns, each clutching a yellow circle cardboard, grinning hard. Zheng Ningning was extra uncoordinated in limbs, stuck in the corner by me, one worn-out ill-fitting cloth shoe fallen off as she hooked at it with her toes.

Later, Zheng Ningning never made it onstage. In May, she was hacked to death. The sun never got planted—all the kids huddled terrified at home, hastily waiting till September to start elementary school.

But I remembered there was one rehearsal.

My finger jerked, and photos cascaded like a waterfall. I clattered through to the latest ones.

I pulled the timeline back to the “Planting the Sun” photo, then slid forward one, two—

I found the rehearsal shot. Plum Kindergarten had set up a wooden stage in the alley, but it wasn’t finished yet. The kids were in costume, no makeup, faces sunburned dark. I led them walking positions on the crude boards, then back to the kindergarten dance room to practice the real layout.

Because it suddenly rained that day, many parents came to pick up their kids.

The little girls tried hard to protect their white stockings and hair flowers, tiptoeing along sneakily in unison.

I found it amusing and raised my phone.

The door curtain was open, plastic beads pushed aside by the children, rainwater pouring down with a clatter, like an underwater crystal palace. In the misty rain, umbrellas of various colors opened up, parents’ faces hidden underneath as they reached into the crowd of children to scoop up their coy little princesses.

I zoomed in on the photo, then zoomed in further, searching for Zheng Ningning.

According to my memory, Zheng Ningning’s position should be… huh?

There stood a woman wearing a black raincoat.

She stood in the corner, pitch black in color and blurry in quality. I couldn’t make out her face. The spot that should have been Zheng Ningning’s was occupied by this strange woman. My memory was unreliable, but I didn’t dare trust the photo either, so I turned off the screen and set it aside.

Who is she?

Zheng Ningning’s mom had died long ago. Who was this strange woman? What was Zheng Ningning doing that day? I couldn’t remember at all.