Xue Chenwen was something of a celebrity at Han Province Normal University. The teachers who had personally taught him were unwilling to talk about him, while newer young teachers and students tried every possible way to dig up information. Over time, legends about him began circulating across campus. There was even an unapproved student group devoted specifically to studying how a teacher who should have educated and guided students had turned into a monster who killed them.
Chen Zheng could not help thinking that university students really were an astonishingly energetic bunch.
Back then, no clues had pointed toward Xue Chenwen’s alma mater, so the police had only made a cursory inquiry with the university. This time, Chen Zheng had come with a clear objective. When the university administrators learned that the police were investigating Xue Chenwen again, every one of them looked uncomfortable, as if they had plenty to say but did not know whether they should.
Before coming, Chen Zheng had briefly looked into Han Province Normal University. Before Xue Chenwen’s case, the university had enjoyed a very good reputation and was one of the better-known institutions in Han Province. But Xue Chenwen had once seriously damaged both its admissions and the employment prospects of its graduates. Only in the past few years had things gradually recovered. The university’s reaction now was understandable.
“He’s been gone for so many years. What’s left to investigate?” a man who looked like a department director muttered. “Our university is extremely strict about ideological and moral education now. We won’t produce another person like Xue Chenwen!”
Chen Zheng exchanged pleasantries with them while explaining the situation. Eventually, one vice dean stepped forward. “Xue Chenwen was my student. Whatever you want to ask, ask me.”
The vice dean’s surname was Zhou. He had once been the head of the teaching group for Xue Chenwen’s cohort and was now a forceful-looking middle-aged man. Chen Zheng followed him to his office. Vice Dean Zhou crouched beside a cabinet and pulled out a thick folder. “These are student files I compiled myself. Xue Chenwen is in here too. You can take a look if you need to.”
Chen Zheng thanked him and turned to Xue Chenwen’s page. It was unlike an ordinary student file. It was not official paperwork, but a far more detailed record, all handwritten in fountain pen. Chen Zheng glanced at Vice Dean Zhou, who was solemnly dropping a tea bag into a disposable cup.
A one-inch ID photograph of Xue Chenwen was pasted in the upper-right corner of the file. He looked different from the Xue Chenwen in Chen Zheng’s memory, youthful and thin, with a confident smile on his face. Beneath the photograph was Vice Dean Zhou’s evaluation: excellent grades, skilled at maintaining relationships among classmates, the glue holding the class together. His family circumstances left him free of worries, allowing him to pursue the life he wanted as he pleased. His weakness was that he had never experienced setbacks.
At that final sentence, Chen Zheng’s brows drew together slightly. He had once received a similar assessment himself.
Below the evaluation were Xue Chenwen’s scores from important examinations, his main student activities, and details of his internship before graduation. Chen Zheng had investigated many cases involving students, but rarely had he seen student records this complete and meticulous. It was enough to show how much care Vice Dean Zhou had put into his work when he led the teaching group.
“To be frank, even now I still don’t believe Xue Chenwen was capable of doing something like that.” Vice Dean Zhou placed the prepared tea in front of Chen Zheng. “He was always such a relaxed person. Do you understand what it feels like when someone is genuinely relaxed?”
Chen Zheng did not answer. In truth, he understood better than most. He himself had once been that kind of person.
“To do whatever you want without having to consider too much, as long as it stays within the bounds of law and morality,” Vice Dean Zhou said. “It sounds simple, but very few people are fortunate enough to live that way. Xue Chenwen was one of them. I’m in my fifties now. I’ve spent half my life dealing with students. Many of them, I’d even say the vast majority, claim they love teaching and want to become engineers of the human soul, but they don’t truly love being teachers. They make a practical choice because circumstances push them toward it. I’m not criticizing that. All of us are practical in one way or another. Xue Chenwen was different. He loved teaching, he had a gift for it, and he didn’t need to worry about making a living or supporting a family. He chose the profession freely. That’s why it’s so hard for me to imagine him killing his own students, and for such an absurd reason.”
Chen Zheng said, “We’re reinvestigating the case because we found some unresolved doubts. Back then, objective limitations kept us from finding the answers.”
Vice Dean Zhou froze. “You mean Xue Chenwen might not have been the killer?”
Chen Zheng pointed toward the end of the file. “You wrote here that you recommended Xue Chenwen for an internship at Xingning Middle School in Luocheng?”
Chen Zheng knew Luocheng better than anyone. Xingning Middle School ranked among the top key schools not only in Luocheng but throughout Han Province. Its high-school division in particular sent large numbers of students to prestigious universities at home and abroad every year. Xue Chenwen had interned in Xingning Middle School’s high-school division. It was a higher and better platform than Nanxi Middle School’s junior-high division.
Vice Dean Zhou nodded and explained regretfully that he had many connections and could recommend students to good schools for internships. But out of responsibility to both the students and the schools, he never made recommendations carelessly. Xingning Middle School had offered him two internship slots that year. His preliminary list contained five students, and he ultimately chose Xue Chenwen because the easy confidence Xue had shown throughout his first three years might allow him to adapt more quickly to Xingning’s almost suffocatingly competitive environment.
He had called Xue Chenwen in for a talk. Xue was delighted, thanked him repeatedly, and promised to work hard and stay in Luocheng. Since they had time that day, after discussing the internship they talked about life plans. Xue Chenwen’s eyes had shone as he said that he too had been trying to find an internship in Luocheng. He had considered Xingning Middle School before, but the threshold was so high that he probably would not have made it, so he had contacted two other middle schools and was waiting for replies. Getting Vice Dean Zhou’s recommendation had been an enormous surprise.
Vice Dean Zhou had found that a little strange. Xue Chenwen almost never competed with others for anything, much less sought connections to secure an internship. As far as Xue Chenwen was concerned, there should not have been much difference between staying in Tongzhou City, returning to Nanshan City, or going to Luocheng.
“Why are you so determined?” Vice Dean Zhou had asked casually.
Xue Chenwen had smiled with obvious happiness. “My family is starting a business in Luocheng. I want to go there too and help out.”
That explained it, or so Vice Dean Zhou thought. He asked no further questions. Not long afterward, Xue Chenwen left with the other students interning in Luocheng. Many excellent students ran into problems once they reached their internship placements, so Vice Dean Zhou paid particular attention to those who went out into the field. The other student sent to Xingning had even better grades than Xue Chenwen, but could not adapt and developed serious psychological difficulties. Xue Chenwen, by contrast, remained as reassuring as ever. Xingning Middle School told him, “You sent us another excellent prospect.”
Vice Dean Zhou relaxed and turned his attention to other students. Then, unexpectedly, Xingning Middle School contacted him to say that Xue Chenwen had terminated his internship and asked what was going on. He was baffled and called Xue Chenwen. Xue apologized over the phone and said he was now interning at Nanxi Middle School in his hometown. After thinking it over, he had decided he still wanted to go home.
Vice Dean Zhou was disappointed, but he could understand it. Missing home was perfectly normal, and Xue Chenwen had always been someone who followed his own inclinations. He even made a point of looking into Nanxi Middle School and discovered that the school had substantial financial backing and was recruiting teachers aggressively. Before long, it would almost certainly become a key school.
Near graduation, Xue Chenwen returned to the university to complete his paperwork. That was the last time Vice Dean Zhou saw him. He felt that Xue had lost some of his student-like vitality and become much more restrained. That was normal too. After more than half a year of internship and a taste of the real world, who could still grin foolishly all day?
Xue Chenwen thanked him, then apologized, saying that he had ultimately chosen Nanxi Middle School and had disappointed him. Vice Dean Zhou had comforted him instead, saying it was the same no matter where one taught. Once a teacher finished training, his responsibility was to his students, not his alma mater.
More than ten years had passed in the blink of an eye, and Vice Dean Zhou’s temples were now gray. Regret surged up again. “I keep thinking, if I had insisted that he stay at Xingning Middle School, would everything that happened later have been avoided? I really can’t understand it. Just how bad could the environment at Nanxi Middle School have been to make someone like him do something so foolish?”
Chen Zheng rejected that explanation inwardly. It was not Nanxi Middle School’s environment that had caused Xue Chenwen to kill. Some outside factor had changed him. Xue Chenwen had said his family had gone to Luocheng to start a business, but as far as Chen Zheng knew, the Xue family’s business interests had never expanded to Luocheng. Given Xue Chenwen’s aversion to the family business, it seemed impossible that he would choose to work in Luocheng for the sake of the Xue family. The “family” he had mentioned to Vice Dean Zhou might simply have been an excuse. He had gone to Luocheng for someone else.
Chen Zheng asked, “Which classmates was Xue Chenwen especially close to while he was here?”
Vice Dean Zhou took a sip of tea and shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t want to answer. Xue Chenwen treated all his classmates equally. He didn’t have the kind of ‘best friend’ most people would recognize. That was simply his personality.”
Chen Zheng asked again, “Did he have much contact with people outside the university?”
This time Vice Dean Zhou thought for quite a while. “I remember a relative came to see him several times. About the same age, but a little shorter. Probably his younger brother.”
Vice Dean Zhou could no longer remember what this “younger brother” looked like. He only recalled that the young man had seemed refined and scholarly, probably the same type of person as Xue Chenwen.
Chen Zheng thought of the man Teacher Quan had mentioned seeing at the fast-food restaurant. Could they have been the same person? Given that Xue Chenwen had never had a girlfriend, perhaps this “younger brother” had actually been his boyfriend. Could the “family” he mentioned have been this boyfriend?
But when the police had dug into Xue Chenwen’s relationships back then, there had been no boyfriend. Had they already broken up by then? Had Xue Chenwen returned to Nanshan City because of that? That did not quite make sense either, because Teacher Quan had seen the man coming to meet Xue Chenwen after Xue had already returned to work in Nanshan City.
“Forgive me for asking something personal,” Chen Zheng said. “You made such detailed files for every student, so you clearly invested a great deal in them. From what you observed, is it possible Xue Chenwen simply wasn’t interested in women?”
Vice Dean Zhou froze. It took him a long moment to react. “You mean Xue Chenwen was gay?”
Chen Zheng said seriously, “We currently have clues pointing to that possibility, and it could affect our judgment going forward.”
Vice Dean Zhou stood and paced back and forth in front of his desk with his hands behind his back, his expression growing increasingly troubled. Finally he stopped and frowned hard. “I just remembered something. In his first or second year, there was an event on campus supporting gay people. Men and women both took part, and it was a pretty big affair. We weren’t as open about such things back then. Even now an event like that would be sensitive. We were afraid it would cause conflict among students, so the university shut it down quickly. I remember Xue Chenwen was involved. The administration was furious at first and said they needed to find out who had organized it. You couldn’t just do something like that on campus. But once they investigated, they found that quite a few outstanding students had participated, making punishment difficult, so eventually the matter fizzled out. I wondered at the time whether Xue Chenwen might have been one of the organizers. He had both the social influence and the money to do it. Now that you’ve raised this possibility, it seems even more likely.”
Vice Dean Zhou asked uneasily, “If Xue Chenwen really was gay, could that be connected to him killing those students later? I know society is relatively hostile toward gay teachers, but we don’t have any explicit rule against them.”
Chen Zheng already had the outline of a theory, but he needed more clues to support it. Before leaving Han Province Normal University, he reassured Vice Dean Zhou and took whatever materials he was permitted to take. Vice Dean Zhou sighed. “I still failed to teach my student properly.”
Chen Zheng had originally planned to go straight to Luocheng, but Luocheng was a fair distance from Tongzhou City. By the time he got there, it would already be dark. He had no choice but to remain in Tongzhou for the time being and sort through his thoughts.
Han Province Normal University and Han Province Police Academy were both in the old city. Chen Zheng walked along a leaf-strewn street while thinking and, without realizing it, ended up at the entrance to the police academy. The old mottled gate had been renovated and now looked imposing and dignified. Evening was approaching, and many students who had finished the day’s classes were leaving campus to eat at nearby restaurants.
Chen Zheng could not help remembering his own university years. Back then, the school had been extremely strict. Before senior year, future criminal investigators like them were not allowed to leave campus casually. If they truly had to go out, they needed to pester their counselor for an exit slip.
Later, when he came to the police academy as a temporary instructor, the rules had relaxed considerably. Students who wanted to go out only needed to register. He got along well with them. Those energetic young men thought of him whenever they went anywhere, and almost every evening his desk ended up piled with food and drinks they had brought back. He kept telling them not to bring anything next time because he could never finish it all, but they kept doing it anyway.
The most unusual food he remembered receiving was a bowl of shaved ice packed inside an insulated bag with ice packs stuffed around it. Perhaps it had been sitting too long, because by the time he opened it, most of the shaved ice had melted and looked like a bowl of iced porridge. He asked the teacher beside him who had brought it, but the teacher said he had no idea. The bag had already been sitting on the desk when he arrived.
Chen Zheng had just come back from the athletic field and was parched. He took a couple of bites. It was cold and refreshing, only lightly sweet, just enough to quench his thirst without becoming cloying. He planned to thank the considerate student properly. The next day he asked who had brought the shaved ice, but the boys looked at one another and all said it had not been them.
That was strange, Chen Zheng thought. If it was not them, who else could it have been? He knew these kids. If they did a good deed, they absolutely wanted credit for it. None of them were the type to hide it.
When no one claimed it, somebody started heckling. “It had to be a girl from another class! Teacher Chen, they’ve had their eyes on you forever. I heard them talking about you yesterday!”
Chen Zheng did not think a girl had brought it. Since coming to the police academy, he had not had any contact with female students. The young men grew more and more excited and somebody even started whistling, so he quickly changed the subject and never mentioned it again.
By the time he left the police academy, he still had no idea which student had sent the shaved ice. Naturally, he never received another bowl either.
Shaved ice. Shaved ice that, once melted, looked like iced porridge. Chen Zheng’s thoughts paused. He remembered meeting Ming Han outside Fengshu Residential Complex, when Ming Han had talked him into buying a bowl of iced porridge. In a moment of weakness, Chen Zheng had gone on to buy it for an entire week.
“Teacher Chen?” An unfamiliar voice pulled Chen Zheng back to the present. He turned toward it and saw a round-faced man waving at him, his face bright with the joy of unexpectedly seeing an old acquaintance.
After a brief moment of confusion, Chen Zheng recognized him. He was a colleague who had worked with Chen Zheng for a while when Chen Zheng taught at the police academy. His surname was Liu. He was a proper full-time teacher and a few years older than Chen Zheng.
“Teacher Liu.” Chen Zheng walked over. “Long time no see.”
“It really is you!” Old Liu had put on weight, and when he smiled he looked prosperous and good-natured. He studied Chen Zheng carefully. “Look at you. Back then the two of us were both handsome instructors. All these years later, you haven’t changed at all. Look at me. I’ve turned into a barrel!”
“Not at all. You’re just wearing your happiness on the outside.” Chen Zheng exchanged a few polite remarks with him. Old Liu asked what had brought him to Tongzhou City, and Chen Zheng said he was following up on a lead. Old Liu was in the public-security system too, so he did not pry. He only said, “It’s rare for you to come back. If you’re free, want to go inside and take a look? We renovated the campus a few years ago. Dorms, training facilities, everything’s better than before.”
Chen Zheng really did have nothing else to do for the moment. Relaxing his mind might be good, so he followed Old Liu onto campus. The police academy seemed unchanged after more than a decade, full of young men shouting at the tops of their lungs. The female students looked every bit as spirited. Chen Zheng and Old Liu were dressed in thick winter clothes, while some students wore nothing but tank tops as they ran along the campus paths.
“Being young is great.” Old Liu sighed. “I look at them every day and sometimes still feel like a young man myself. That over there is the new cafeteria. Come on, I’ll treat you to the insider menu.”
Chen Zheng readily agreed. Even in this weather, the cafeteria still prepared shaved ice and ice water for students with too much internal heat. Old Liu remembered how students used to feed Chen Zheng constantly. “Students were always bringing you shaved ice back then.”
Chen Zheng said, “Not always. It happened once.”
“Only once? Then I remembered wrong.” Old Liu set his tray on the table and laughed. “You remember it that clearly?”
Chen Zheng paused. He could no longer remember how many braised-pork rice boxes or skewers students had brought him, but he remembered the shaved ice clearly. Probably because that was the only time he had never known who sent it.
The food at the police academy still tasted the same, generous and substantial, with the simple principle that students could not be allowed to fall short on nutrition. As they chatted, Chen Zheng mentioned that he was currently working with the Mobile Unit. Old Liu suddenly said, “The Mobile Unit under the Provincial Department? One of our graduates got picked by them. That place is full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers. Nobody can figure out what their selection standards are, so we don’t even know what kind of students to send them.”
Chen Zheng asked, “Who?”
Old Liu said, “You should know him, right? He was already here when you were an instructor, though you didn’t teach his class. What was his name, let me think… Ming Han! He even sat in on your classes!”
Chen Zheng’s chopsticks stopped. Ming Han? Ming Han had been a student at Han Province Police Academy? The last time Chen Zheng asked where he had graduated from, Ming Han had mysteriously claimed he came from Lanshangou Police School.
Old Liu went on to say that Ming Han had been very distinctive. His professional grades were not among the absolute best, and Old Liu had no idea why the Mobile Unit selected him, but Ming Han must have had strengths that stood out.
Chen Zheng asked, “You said he attended my classes?”
Old Liu said, “You don’t remember? Then maybe I’m remembering wrong? Why don’t you ask him sometime? Just don’t tell him I told you. That kid was arrogant even as a student. Now that he’s in the Mobile Unit, he’s even more arrogant…”
After saying goodbye to Old Liu, Chen Zheng walked through the night. He was certain Ming Han had never been in any of the classes he taught. But Ming Han knew Chen Zheng had come to his school, so there was a very good chance he had hidden somewhere and watched him from a distance. In that case, the mystery of who had left the unclaimed shaved ice no longer seemed to require much thought.
Chen Zheng laughed to himself. “Is shaved ice the only thing you know how to make?”
Back in Nanshan City, Ming Han sneezed, closed the window he had opened for ventilation, and rubbed his fingers over his burning ears.
Before dawn the next day, Chen Zheng left for Luocheng. When he arrived at Xingning Middle School, the first two morning classes had just ended. Vice Dean Zhou and some of Xingning’s administrators were old friends, and Zhou had directly told Chen Zheng that the teacher who had evaluated Xue Chenwen’s group of interns back then was surnamed Zhong. Teacher Zhong now handled administrative work and no longer taught frontline classes.
Vice Dean Zhou had contacted Teacher Zhong in advance. The moment Teacher Zhong met Chen Zheng, he said, “What happened with Xue Chenwen had nothing to do with our school. But personally, I feel both regret and fear when I think about it.”
Every senior who had taught Xue Chenwen praised him, and Teacher Zhong was no exception. He had sat in on every one of Xue Chenwen’s assessed lessons and personally coached him. Like Vice Dean Zhou, he believed Xue Chenwen had a natural gift for teaching.
Teacher Zhong said Xue Chenwen had been highly motivated when he first arrived, clearly confident that he would be able to stay. The school had been very satisfied with him. If there had not been a rule preventing them from signing interns before the internship ended, they would have wanted to secure Xue Chenwen early.
But not long afterward, Xue Chenwen suddenly asked to leave. He said something had happened at home and that he needed to return to Nanshan City to deal with it. Teacher Zhong had never expected him to leave only to continue his internship at Nanxi Middle School. That made Teacher Zhong furious. If it had been anyone else, Xingning would have closed its doors to them forever. But Teacher Zhong valued talent, and with Vice Dean Zhou putting in a good word, the school decided to give Xue Chenwen another chance.
Xue Chenwen did not take it. He never returned. Teacher Zhong took the loss hard, and the new teachers they hired that year did not meet the school’s expectations either. He often thought that it would have been good if Xue Chenwen had stayed. After the Nanxi Middle School case happened, however, Teacher Zhong and the other administrators felt fortunate that a teacher who harmed students had not remained at Xingning.
Chen Zheng asked, “Where did Xue Chenwen live? Did the school provide housing for interns?”
Teacher Zhong nodded. The interns came from different financial backgrounds, so to accommodate most of them, the school arranged housing in the faculty residential complex across the street. But one thing had left a strong impression on him: Xue Chenwen did not live there. He rented a place elsewhere with a friend.
“A friend?”
“Mm. A young man about his age.”
There it was again. A man who had been very close to Xue Chenwen years before the case, yet had faded from Xue Chenwen’s social circle by the time everything happened.
Teacher Zhong said he had seen the man come to the school to find Xue Chenwen many times. The two had even eaten together near the school. They looked like brothers who were extremely close. At school, Xue Chenwen spoke standard Mandarin, but when he was with that man, he spoke in the Nanshan dialect. Teacher Zhong had seen plenty of young people like them. When you first arrived in a city and had not settled your housing yet, sharing a rental reduced the burden.
Chen Zheng knew very well that Xue Chenwen had no need whatsoever to split rent with anyone.
Several doubts surfaced, and doubts were often exactly where a case could be broken open. Xue Chenwen had chosen Luocheng because of Man A. He and Man A were very likely romantically involved. Later, either their relationship ran into trouble or Man A’s career suffered a setback, and Xue Chenwen, or both of them together, returned to Nanshan City. After Xue Chenwen joined Nanxi Middle School, he continued seeing Man A. But at some point their relationship broke down, probably early enough that police failed to uncover this history when they investigated him. Even so, given how thoroughly police had investigated Xue Chenwen, Man A had probably been questioned.
After laying out the main thread, Chen Zheng opened the electronic case file and read every interview statement carefully. One name caught his attention: Fan Weijia.
Fan Weijia was the same age as Xue Chenwen and had attended Luocheng College of Finance and Economics. The Fan and Xue families had business dealings, and Fan Weijia and Xue Chenwen could be considered childhood friends. Fan stated that the Xue Chenwen he knew had been an extremely kind person, but they had drifted apart in recent years and he did not know what had happened to him.
Chen Zheng thought for a moment, then picked up his phone and called Ming Han. There was a fair amount of noise on Ming Han’s end, so Chen Zheng assumed he was somewhere on a street in Nanshan City. Ming Han said instead, “Bro, I came to Luocheng today too.”