The September rain softened the walls of Qinghuai Middle School, and also soaked up secrets that had been sealed away for decades.
When Song Huan came here with his brother's last photo, he only knew that it was a school built on a cemetery - the site of a girls' school in the Republic of China was stacked with mass graves of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the three feet below the foundation were full of yellowed bones.
Three years ago, his brother Song Yi walked into the sealed old teaching building, and even his name disappeared from everyone's memory.
No one remembers this student, no one wants to mention Classroom 302 on the third floor, and no one dares to count the steps of the old staircase in the evening.
Those who step on the thirteenth step will have blue-black handprints on their shoulders; those who clean the toilet mirror on the first floor will see girls wearing blue student uniforms standing behind them; those who count the thirteenth brick under the old locust tree in the northwest corner of the playground will be dragged into the ground by the roots of the tree.
Twelve campus ghost stories are like twelve locks, locking up the grievances underground and also locking up the secrets that families have guarded for generations.
Song Huan, his deskmate Zhou Yan, the administrator of the school history library Xia Zhi, and the school belle Lin Han broke through taboos and uncovered layers of truth: the century-old injustice of the girl Huai Ying in the Republic of China, the hundreds of bones that were buried on the spot when the school was founded, the family conspiracy behind the grudge array, and deeper in the mass graves, the ancient tomb of the Western Zhou Dynasty that had been sealed for three thousand years.
On a rainy night, the branches of locust trees outside the classroom gently tapped on the glass windows.
You listen——
It is counting, and there are a few more disobedient children today.
