Wen Ye transfers to Linshui No. 1 High School in a southern county town. The first rule he learns is this:
All first-year students must attend evening choir practice three times a week, rain or shine.
It doesn't take long for him to realize that something about this tradition feels wrong in every way.
The choir's lead singer always stands on the third floorboard from the east side of the auditorium. That board is cold all year round.
Several names on the attendance sheet are so faint they look as if they've been soaked in water.
In the corner of the graduation photo, one spot is left empty every year.
No one thinks it's strange. No one except him, an outsider from out of town.
Following the trail from an old graduation photo, Wen Ye finds something even more chilling:
Every few years, a girl "transfers" out of this school. There is no farewell, no trace of where she went,
and no one even remembers her, not even the person they were yesterday.
And the choir in the auditorium sounds better with every passing year.
An old local who knows his stuff says it's not that the singing has improved.
It's that the voices accumulating inside the walls are growing more numerous.
In 1998, a great flood struck here.
The floodwaters receded, but the water remembers what this school owes it.
