My Homeroom Teacher, Fei Xinran

On the first day of school, my new homeroom teacher, Fei Xinran, caught me gesturing at an invisible crime scene. The whole class was saying I was crazy. Only he handed me a spicy snack and said, “The timing doesn't fit. The victim has defensive wounds on their right hand.” I stared at him, snack in hand. Everything he said was a detail the security cameras had missed. Later, while tutoring me, he kept solving cases “on the side.” “The answer is C, just like how it's obvious the killer is left-handed.” Then a string of disappearances took place, and he locked me in the archive room. “Don't come out until you count to 100.” As I heard a fight break out beyond the door, I was leafing through an old newspaper from ten years ago: The young police officer in the front-page photo looked exactly like him. And my mother's name was clearly written on the victim list.