Time flies fast in the illusion. After tearing off two or three pages of the calendar on the wall, it finally arrives at the 24th.
On March 24, 2004, a bus carrying all the students from Class 2 went to a lecture in the city center. On the way back, the driver suddenly fainted on the coastal bridge, and the bus broke through the railing and sank into the deep sea. Only Wu Runzhi survived.
In the past two or three days, Lu Yingjiu watched his classmates committing suicide in various ways.
Wu Runzhi had no choice but to carefully protect Fang Yu and Jiang Ruyun - one was his good brother, and the other was a girl he had a crush on. He was sticking to them all day long, for fear that they would go out.
Now there are only four or five people left in the class, including Fang and Jiang, and Wu Runzhi's loving care played an indispensable role in their development.
As a result, early in the morning, Wu Runzhi and Fang Yu came to the classroom happily after breakfast. When they saw "24th" written on the calendar, they started crying again.
"Fang Yu!" he shouted, "Hurry up and play another game of ball with me!"
"Not today." Fang Yu said as he rushed through his physics homework. "I still have three pages of homework to do, and I have to attend that crappy lecture in the afternoon. How can I have the time?"
"I'll give you my homework to copy!" Wu Runzhi shouted again.
"No, I was caught copying your homework last time, and I wrote a thousand-word self-review." Fang Yu kept writing with the pen in his hand, "I won't do that."
Wu Runzhi was furious. He grabbed the physics homework and held it in his hand: "If you don't play basketball with me, don't bother to answer this homework."
Lu Yingjiu: “…”
It was obvious that Wu Runzhi was extremely anxious.
Fang Yu:
He was full of questions: "What's wrong with you? Why aren't you usually so active?"
After saying this, he still complained about his integrity and was forcibly taken to the playground by Wu Runzhi.
For the next few dozen minutes, the two of them were playing ball on the playground.
Lu Yingjiu sat in the classroom, listening to Teacher Gui's lecture out of boredom, and chatting with Jing Xian at the same time.
Chu Banyang and Yao Gou had gone somewhere unknown. They might be wandering around the school, so the classroom was empty.
As he listened, Lu Yingjiu became distracted.
Chu Qianju, the Zhang and Chu families, heaven and sacrifice…
Those words lingered in his mind like a dark cloud that could not be dispelled.
He recalled his mother Zhuang Xue's efforts over the years - running around to find different exorcists to dispel his bad luck. However, he had no playmates since he was a child, and lived a lonely childhood full of fear.
He originally believed that the reason he had such an amazing talent for exorcism was the compensation given to him by fate, compensating for his extraordinary personality.
But now someone told him that everything was man-made.
The compensation he had done was what he deserved, only the bad luck was forced upon him. Now those so-called noble families were still obsessed with the unfinished ceremony, and they wanted him to return to heaven.
Lu Yingjiu looked so happy, with a lingering gloom between her pretty brows.
Teacher Gui was still talking passionately and incessantly at the podium, and Jing Xian next to him gently touched his elbow.
"What's wrong?" Lu Yingjiu asked, turning around.
He couldn't help but relax his brows, and almost unconsciously put those chaotic thoughts behind him.
"I drew our wedding photo." Jing Xian showed him the notebook.
There were two stick figures standing hand in hand, smiling cheesy smiles. Behind them was a messy thing that looked like a ball of wool, which Lu Yingjiu suspected was the sea.
Lu Yingjiu: "... Is this what you do in class?"
"Not really," Jing Xian said, "I've been staring at you for a long time, but you never looked at me."
"Listen to the class carefully," Lu Yingjiu teased. "There are no schools in the ghost world, right? Why don't you study hard?"
The ghost teacher coughed and said, "Don't tell small things, students."
Jing Xian ignored him and quietly held Lu Yingjiu's hand on the desk, whispering, "What else do you want to see? I'll draw it for you."
Lu Ying drank for a while and said, "Aren't you the Ghost King? You should have many attributes. Draw them for me."
Jing Xian obeyed the order and stuffed a few packets of snacks into Lu Yingjiu's pocket. Then he held his hand with his left hand and scribbled with a pen in his right hand.
After finishing each painting, he showed it to Lu Yingjiu.
“This is the Night Walker.”
A long line came out of a matchstick man's mouth - Lu Yingjiu guessed that was his tongue, flying and curling in the air.
“This is Black and White Impermanence.”
Two stick figures without feet floating in the air, one with a black head and the other with a white head, look a bit scary.
"This is the Ox-Headed and Horse-Faced Mask."
Two stickmen with polygonal heads appeared, and Lu Yingjiu couldn't tell which one was the cow and which one was the horse.
Jingxian drew a few more in succession.
But without his explanation, I wouldn’t be able to recognize what Lu Yingjiu was.
As they painted, Jing Xian moved closer and closer to him. Lu Yingjiu was sitting by the window, with nowhere to hide, so the two of them were almost squeezed together.
Lu Yingjiu whispered, "What are you doing coming over here?"
"Other young couples do the same in class. They even hug each other." Jing Xian said.
Lu Yingjiu: "I have never seen such a blatant couple. And why did you insist on holding my hand? You have been holding it for more than ten minutes."
He tried to pull back his right hand, but Jingxian was unwilling to do so and rubbed against him even harder.
“Bang!”
The teacher on the podium slammed the table and glared at him: "What's wrong with you two?! Are you thinking I don't exist? Even if you are two male classmates, you can't hug each other like this!"
Lu Yingjiu pushed Jing Xian away with all her strength: "Look, the teacher has already been seen! There's a circle of people around him!"
"They are just ghosts, they don't have any consciousness." Jing Xian hugged his waist, rubbed his neck contentedly, and smelled the faint fragrance of his hair, "Let's skip class and go to a deserted corner to make out..."
"Stop! Pay attention to the class!" the teacher shouted again.
Jing Xian raised his hand, and a book on the table was lifted up by the cold wind. The book flew out with a sharp sound of breaking wind and hit the teacher, directly turning him into a ball of black mist that dissipated in the air.
Lu Yingjiu: “…Too violent.”
The students around him all shouted “Great!”
After that, they happily returned to class early, and no one cared about their teacher.
Lu Yingjiu looked out the window and saw that the few remaining male classmates had joined Wu Runzhi and Fang Yu in the basketball game, and the playground suddenly became lively.
Jiang Ruoyun, wearing refreshing white clothes and holding a bottle of drink, was still standing at the edge of the basketball court, waiting for Wu Runzhi's game to end.
She brushed the strands of hair by her ears, her eyes and brows full of the innocence and beauty of a young person.
The classroom was empty.
Jing Xian hugged Lu Yingjiu as he wished and kissed him on the face several times.
Lu Yingjiu let him start behaving like a hooligan again, and leaned against the wall to catch up on his sleep, but Jing Xian pulled him over and rested his head on his shoulder.
"Sleep well!" he promised, "I'm here with you."
Lu Yingjiu pushed away his hand that was on his waist and almost inside his clothes, and said vaguely, "I feel uneasy when you're here."
Respect leisure and laughter.
Lu Ying fell asleep in a daze.
I don’t know how long it took, but Wu Runzhi finally returned to the classroom with a group of good brothers.
He was sweating and very excited, but when he saw the calendar on the wall, he started crying again.
He cried and shouted, "Don't get on that bus this afternoon! Don't go to that crappy lecture!"
A group of ghosts laughed and chattered with him, not paying any attention to his warnings.
Wu Runzhi cried for a while and sat in his seat blankly.
Jiang Ruoyun sat next to him, looking at him, as if she didn't want to say something.
Wu Runzhi turned around, grabbed her hand and asked, "I have asked you many times, but I will ask you again, do you have any wishes?"
"… Wish?" Jiang Ruoyun asked, "To get into a good university?"
"No, no." Wu Runzhi was anxious. "Didn't you call me back from your dream? There must be something you told me, and I helped you, right? Today is the last day. If you don't tell me now, there will be no chance!"
Jiang Ruoyun was still quiet and gentle, with her eyes lowered.
She tilted her head in confusion and said softly, "I don't know what you are talking about..."
Wu Runzhi grabbed a few more people and continued questioning them, but to no avail.
Lu Yingjiu watched him do all this and said, "Don't you have any guesses yourself?"
"Really not." Wu Runzhi was almost in despair. "If they don't tell me, how can I know? I will soon never see them again."
Just by closing his eyes, he could recall everything that happened at that time.
In fact, that scene often appeared in his nightmares.
The bus returning from the city center was filled with sleepy students, and no one expected that disaster would befall them.
"boom!!"
There was a loud bang, followed by a terrifying feeling of weightlessness. Screams exploded in Wu Runzhi's ears, the world spun, the car broke through the railing, and they finally fell into the icy sea.
The car windows shattered, and heavy seawater rushed in, filling their mouths and noses. Wu Runzhi was a good swimmer, but at this moment he was still pressed tightly into the car by the water, unable to move. When the car was filled with water, he could barely start to move.
But he was too panicked.
It was dark all around, as if he had fallen into an abyss. He could not see anything clearly, and could not even find a exit among the countless struggling people. The freezing temperature of the sea water was like maggots, drilling sharply into his bones.
Where is the window
It's so dark around me, am I dead
Breathe well, breathe well, breathe well…
In the midst of confusion, he felt a huge force on his collar, as if someone was trying to pull him in one direction.
It is extremely difficult to exert force in water. Even the most professional rescuers have to be very careful so as not to be entangled by panicked drowning people and suffocate them.
Like most drowning people, Wu Runzhi instinctively grabbed around.
Until a beam of light shone on his face.
—Looking back later, it was this light that gave him the courage to calm down.
Miraculously, his mind calmed down a little, and he struggled in the direction that the man was pulling him, and actually touched a hard object.
That's the window frame of the bus.
There was a circle of broken glass on the window frame, and Wu Runzhi grabbed it so tightly that blood immediately spread. But he didn't feel any pain at all, and he clung to the window frame and swam out with all his might.
He first got out of the bus, then out of the light of the flashlight.
The way up was long. In the pitch black, he could hardly sense any direction and could only move upwards by instinct. His lungs ached to the point of exploding, his heart pounded, and he could barely squeeze a little oxygen out of his blood vessels...
"ha!"
The moment he stuck his head out, he let out a horrible gasp.
His head was splitting with pain, and he was like a lone boat in the swaying waves. A few strands of black hair stuck to his ears, but the oxygen finally filled his lungs.
After he regained consciousness, he looked around at the dark sea.
He was the only one there.
Those young people disappeared in the waves with a beautiful dream.
They drowned in the sea, leaving Wu Runzhi alone.
"… "
At this moment, in the classroom filled with bright sunshine, Wu Runzhi held his head with his hands.
After a long pause, he said, "I recalled it later. Actually, I saw the person who pulled me with the help of the flashlight."
"It was Fang Yu who pulled me in that direction."
"He had just bought that flashlight, and he said that he would risk breaking into the teaching building that night and steal his confiscated cell phone. I watched him holding the flashlight and turning it on and off to study it the whole way."
Wu Runzhi smiled bitterly: "I know that he is much better at swimming than I am. But why was it that I escaped in the end, but he didn't?"
Lu Yingjiu said: "Luck is also a very important factor."
"Maybe it was luck." Wu Runzhi still smiled bitterly, "But I have always been worried. If he hadn't tried to pull me towards the window that day, if he hadn't spent so much energy and time, he might have survived..."
He rubbed his face and said, "There is one more thing I haven't told you yet."
"I didn't take the college entrance examination after that, nor did I take the second or third year. I never took the college entrance examination again and went out to work directly."
"My relationship with my family was very bad and we hadn't been in touch for a long time. During that time, I couldn't sleep at all. When I closed my eyes, I saw the sea and my struggling friends. I took medicine, took antidepressants for a long time, and had countless suicidal thoughts."
His spirits were downcast.
Lu Yingjiu saw that there was a faint black mist around him.
People who experience this kind of black fog are often in a very bad mental state and have a weak survival instinct, which makes them very likely to encounter ghosts.
However, since Wu Runzhi mentioned that he had suicidal tendencies...
Lu Yingjiu asked, "Let me ask you a more personal question. Have you had any suicidal thoughts recently?"
Wu Runzhi was stunned for a moment: "I have always had it, but..."
He hesitated for a moment.
After all, it takes courage to speak out such personal emotions.
A few seconds later, he continued, "I've been under a lot of work pressure lately, and I've also had family problems. I've stood on the rooftop three or four times in the past two months, or maybe more, I can't remember. Every time I was just one step away from it, just one step away from it all. Maybe this period of time is really the worst time for me."
Lu Yingjiu said, "And you dreamed about your classmates in the last two months?"
"Yes," Wu Runzhi nodded, "If it wasn't for this dream... If I hadn't seen them again and went back to school to see if they still had any wishes, I might have jumped off the mountain."
Lu Ying drank a little and said, "It's possible that these ghosts called you back not to ask you to help them realize their wishes."
"What else could it be?" Wu Runzhi was stunned.
As soon as he finished speaking, a bell rang in the corridor.
The afternoon class started.
But their class didn't have classes in the afternoon, and in half an hour, everyone would be on the bus.
Although many students in Class 2 committed suicide, at least a few of them survived and did not let this illusion end prematurely.
And that's enough.
They have waited for the end of the story.
The bell rang, and the whole illusion began to change. The building was twisting, the clock was melting, and the flowers on the windowsill bloomed and withered... In the classroom, the desks were piled high with books, pens, and countless unfinished test papers spread out on the desks, as if his classmates had just left their seats and would be back soon.
The black fog in the sky was gathering, constantly gathering the bodies of the dead students.
In less than three or four seconds, the empty classroom was filled with people.
The blackboard is filled with tonight's homework, and the flowers in the pots are gorgeous.
Friends sat in their seats and laughter filled the classroom.
Wu Runzhi opened his eyes wide.
Countless pieces of paper appeared out of thin air on his desk. They were all written with words and names that he was familiar with, and had lines of messages written on them.
You work hard, there are countless tomorrows =v=
Let’s go to the Internet cafe to play games next time. I promise I won’t cheat you!
I really enjoyed taking table tennis lessons with you. You hit the backhand really well.
Go and work hard to live!
I remember that you are a very optimistic person. I hope you can always be happy.
…
Fang Yu came over and hooked his shoulder: "I've had a lot of fun these past few days. Let's play ball together next time we have a chance! I won't let you go again. There are new games and new movies, and we will have the chance to go out and climb walls together! We'll see each other again!"
Jiang Ruoyun, who was standing beside him, was still quiet, with a blush on her face. She bit her lip and said to him, "Actually, I've always liked you... So I hope you can really find happiness. You're a very brave person."
Wu Runzhi's vision blurred.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't see the faces of the people around him. He wiped his eyes vigorously and finally saw their smiles.
"Bang!"
Unexpectedly, small ribbons flew up in the classroom, falling down in colorful circles and landing on Wu Runzhi's shoulders.
He looked back and saw the school emblem, clouds and sunflowers painted on the blackboard. Orange, bright yellow, sky blue... all kinds of colors were bustling in front of his eyes, just like that colorful youth.
They cluster around a few large characters in the middle:
We graduated!
This is a graduation ceremony they owe Wu Runzhi.
It was finally realized today, decades later.
Lu Yingjiu said beside him: "It is also possible that they let you come back so that you can let go of the past and untie the knot in your heart."
"You are their real wish."
There were laughter and applause, and everyone was looking at Wu Runzhi expectantly, their eyes full of encouragement and expectation, as if all their strength and hope were placed on him.
He burst into tears.