Don't Be Afraid, It's a Normal Social Phenomenon

Cheng Qianli is a young sociology lecturer at Yongning City University, known as a "young lecturer."

By day, she teaches classes, attends meetings, writes grant applications, supervises students, and does fieldwork.

By night, she patrols the buildings, draws talismans, seals demons, and submits reports on paranormal incidents to the Demon Hunters' Alliance.

As a sociology teacher, she's good at analyzing social structures.

As a registered demon hunter, she's good at dealing with structurally inclined demons.

In her first year on the job, Cheng Qianli is assigned by her department to take over the university's notorious problem class.

Students who fail courses, skip classes, fail their thesis proposals three times, have a ninety-nine percent plagiarism rate, or fill an entire page of academic probation lists...

Wow, what a gathering of talent!

The class monitor, the only good student, is in tears. "Teacher Cheng, is our class beyond saving?"

Cheng Qianli says lazily:

"Don't worry."

"Being beyond saving is also a normal social phenomenon."

Students: "..."

To make matters worse, paranormal incidents begin cropping up all over campus.

Crying can be heard in the library basement in the middle of the night.

A faceless hand reaches out from beneath a dormitory bed.

The conference room in the administration building turns on by itself every Wednesday. People who go in for a meeting come out three hours later carrying a pile of forms that keeps growing forever.

Students: Aaaaah! Teacher, help!

Cheng Qianli: "Stay calm. It's a normal social phenomenon."

Student: Teacher, lately I keep dreaming that a female ghost is sitting at the foot of my bed, urging me to revise my thesis. QAQ

Cheng Qianli: "Academic pressure is causing dream projection."

Student: Teacher, the academic affairs system automatically enrolled me in a class that doesn't exist in the middle of the night!

Cheng Qianli: "Check whether the online course system is glitching."

Student: Teacher, the conference room in the administration building eats people!

Cheng Qianli: "That's organizational alienation."

Until one day, the entire class is taken by a driverless school bus to the nonexistent Thirteenth College.

At the end of the corridor, countless sinister demons stare at them.

The students completely lose it. "Teacher Cheng! Does this count as a normal social phenomenon too?!"

Cheng Qianli falls silent for a moment, then takes out a talisman.

"Yes."

"But now it needs intervention."

Later, a new legend spreads across Yongning City University.

When trouble strikes, don't panic.

Find Teacher Cheng.

Because Teacher Cheng doesn't just hunt demons.

She interviews them, creates case files, and makes them submit a three-thousand-word explanation of their situation.

Later still, the university's notorious problem class clears all its failed courses, passes every thesis proposal, wins competitions, gets into graduate school, and reaches a hundred-percent employment rate.

University leaders are moved to tears. "Teacher Cheng, how exactly did you manage it?"

Cheng Qianli gives a fake smile.

"It's my duty to cultivate virtue and educate people."

"...And I got rid of a few demons along the way."

Reader's guide: Entirely fictional. It's all nonsense.

This is a new, standalone story in the same universe as the earlier short story Don't Panic, It's a Scientific Phenomenon. You don't need to read the previous story.

Theme: All our lives, what we seek is simply to be seen