Chapter 167 Anomaly (as the title suggests)
To fall asleep faster, you quietly close your eyes and start daydreaming about how to plan your next steps.
Your life is a monotonous routine. There are problems at school, and problems at home. To safely get through this last month, you need to be more cautious and proactive than before.
Putting everything else aside, you need to stay at school after class to see what's really going on there—but is it really necessary? Taking it slow and dealing with things as they come is still manageable.
But those teachers, and some strange details... wait?
In the dead of night, your thoughts suddenly become clear, and a point that has always felt off but which you couldn't quite grasp suddenly appears.
This school is a whole.
Before the afternoon, you had a vague feeling that the whole school was like a small, complete world, but this intuitive perception flashed by and you hadn't yet sorted out your thoughts or found the basis for this feeling. You just intuitively came to a conclusion based on your own situation.
But the truth is, you don't just have a "sixth sense"; every little thing that happens at school is hinting at the differences here.
In the past, when you attended classes at university, you could clearly feel the strong independence and autonomy in the relationship between professors, the school, and students. As a result, the special scenarios and strange events that could be triggered were more diverse and tailored to each individual. Here, even though different courses may present different challenges, everything is still inseparable from the overarching premise of the school.
This may be because there is a fundamental difference between high school students and college students. Although high school students have basic judgment, they have limited social experience and are generally accustomed to relying on authority (teachers, senior students, systems, etc.), trusting their peers (friends, small groups), and tending to act in groups.
Therefore, if there are more and more people like Meiling and Wente, then all students will be more likely to unite into a passionate whole—even if you are not considering expanding your influence on all students for the time being, you should always think more about it when you are thinking.
Conversely, this means that the entire school that manages students should also be a more tightly integrated whole where every change has far-reaching consequences.
Furthermore, you've been wondering why the locals you've had a lot of contact with in this instance are "awakening," while Ambrose in the previous instance had his perception distorted. It seems this is probably related to your identity as a high school student.
High school students are a group of audacious individuals who are seen as children by adults, yet possess a self-perception of being capable adults. A rather conservative society generally doesn't pay much attention to the thoughts of such students. Therefore, the "consciousness" behind society naturally doesn't need to distort their new ideas that arise for various reasons.
Perhaps when you leave this instance, while time continues to flow within it, they will forget their feelings and memories of this moment, becoming a numb and ignorant "adult".
But if that were really the case, you'd feel a little bit sour...
In short, this school is indeed a maze whose structure needs to be "cracking".
Simply being a clever student passively might lead to being swallowed up by the school itself. Therefore, you must trace back its entire cause and effect, and find its secret hidden in the night.
Fortunately, with the help of others, things might become a little easier.
You slowly drift off to sleep amidst the various feasible options.
A new day has begun.
You seem to be in relatively good spirits, at least better than yesterday. On the school bus, when faced with those curious stares, you greeted them.
Just like with Wentworth and the others (and in most other instances as well), when you take the initiative to show kindness, others will stop looking at you as an outsider.
However, making more "friends" is not something you need to do right now; you don't plan to ignite things now.
Upon arriving at school, the flag-raising ceremony was held as usual—high schools in Thailand raise their flags every day, Meiling explained. This is to cultivate students' patriotism and sense of collective honor, which is related to Thailand being a country that emphasizes royalty, faith, and national unity.
The royal family? You think of those ubiquitous, glittering portraits of figures, contemplating this distinctive element of social context.
Furthermore, the practice of raising the flag every day is quite rare worldwide, which probably reflects the unspoken cultural rules of obedience and discipline here.
Then the principal led everyone in quiet recitation of scriptures before the meeting was dismissed.
Nothing much happened the rest of the day. Classes were uneventful. After Chinese class, you handed in your workbook to your Chinese teacher for grading, and she was very impressed with your diligent study habits. For lunch, to avoid eating in the cafeteria, you and the five girls bought bread, energy bars, and other snacks from the vending machine.
Oh, and I had music class today.
Despite its small size and lack of online search results, this high school surprisingly boasts a respectable dance troupe. It's run by music teachers from several grades, who select students who have studied traditional instruments and dance since childhood to participate. Sometimes, they even lead the troupe on performances in other cities.
In this lesson, you learned to play the lanat.
This instrument, also known as the Thai xylophone or boat lute, consists of a row of wooden planks strung together with rope and suspended from a beautifully painted, curved wooden body resembling a boat hull. Players strike the wood with small hammers to produce sounds. It's not difficult to learn, but memorizing the sheet music and keeping up with the rhythm requires practice. Overall, it's very fun. You tried some other instruments, which were all somewhat challenging, but this percussion instrument, where each strike produces a note, makes it much easier to quickly create melodies – it's quite enjoyable.
Day after day passed. Over the past three days, a few minor strange things happened occasionally, but nothing serious. You've been sleeping quite soundly these past few days, and the strange occurrences at home haven't happened again.
As you suggested, Wente and the others, along with Meiling and Huimin, diligently observed each of their classes and the corresponding teachers to see if they could find anything unusual about the teachers.
Each of you has taken elective courses that don't overlap. After these few days, you've summarized the strange things about all the teachers in this grade.
Most teachers only momentarily lose focus during class. It's not just you who thinks so; the other girls also feel that teachers look like soulless shells during that moment.
Some teachers exhibit rather subtle unusual phenomena.
“The things my math teacher wrote seem like some kind of code!” Huimin frowned. “When I got home, I checked the keyboard and found that she sometimes repeats certain strange structures, as if she’s deliberately leaving some kind of ‘hint’.”
“In today’s Chinese class, the syllable that the teacher paused on actually had nothing to do with the text we were learning, but I recorded that sound.” Meiling took out her phone and played the strange repetition: “da...da...da…” The sound was like a stuck cassette tape, or some kind of code.
Meiling, with a burst of imagination, suggested, "Could it represent 'isolation' (separation)?"
“I took an information technology course, and the teacher didn’t have the kind of obvious problem you’re talking about, but I think I’m not mistaken—his shadow really was off,” Went said seriously. “I don’t have proof, but when he was helping me fix the code, I saw his shadow on the computer screen distort!”
Their tone was light yet firm; none of them seemed to think they were playing a pointless game. Uncovering the "truth" fueled their drive and ignited a restless thirst for adventure.
In summary, these teachers have the following notable characteristics:
The math teacher would suddenly start writing incomprehensible characters while explaining a problem;
Both the Chinese and English teachers suddenly stopped talking while teaching the text, repeating a single phoneme several times, before returning to normal after a few seconds.
Just like Minte discovered before, the science teacher would drip his own blood into the chemicals;
The civics and morality teacher may seem like a very gentle old lady, but she can suddenly become agitated and shout in exaggerated gestures.
When the IT teacher was helping Huimin solve some software problems that she couldn't handle on her own, she noticed that the shadow reflected on the screen was distorted and warped.
As you listen, you can't help but feel a sense of disorientation—these high school students, who have no idea about concepts like "copy" or "rules," are approaching the truth in a way that they can understand.
“I have an idea,” you said slowly, guiding them into a deeper level of thought. “What if we imagine this school as a ‘whole’? Like a machine, if one part malfunctions, the entire system will be affected. Is it possible that the ‘problems with the teachers’ that you mentioned are actually the result of a ‘system error’?”
"So...it's not that the teachers are bad, but that the school itself has a problem?" Meiling suddenly realized, "The teachers are just one part that's 'stuck'?"
“Yes.” You nodded. “We’ve been trying to understand these strange things from a personal perspective, like who’s weird or what’s wrong. But from the beginning, you’ve been living in this problematic ‘overall structure’ for several semesters.”
Meiling and the others gasped.
"That sounds like our school is cursed," Went slammed his hand on the table. "If we're talking about the root of the problem, it's definitely the principal!"
Meiling seemed to remember something as well, and chimed in, "She must have raised a ghost or cast a curse!"
That's a bit too arbitrary!
You immediately exclaimed in confusion, "Wait a minute! Why does it have to be the principal? I feel like the Buddhist studies teacher would be more suspicious...?"
Although the dream you had during her meditation class saved you from danger in the cafeteria, you still felt that your earlier compassion for the frog was the real key to the whole affair. This class, however, revealed that this Buddhist teacher truly possessed some mysterious abilities, but it was precisely because of her extraordinary abilities that her indifference to so many strange occurrences at school seemed suspicious.
"Isn't this teacher the one our principal replaced?" Meiling raised her hand to answer your question, while looking at others for their opinions.
After receiving a positive reply, Meiling became even more convinced of their opinion: "Then it must have been her! We can just barge into the principal's office and see what she's hiding!"
The goal is clear, that's good. "How about we look up the school's history first?" you said. It's good to be cautious.
"That works too." They agree with your idea more, since searching for information in the library is relatively simpler, and if they can find evidence there, going to the principal's office will be even more justifiable.
“Let’s do it that way.” You high-fived each other in encouragement.
It's your fourth day in this instance, which is also a Friday of a natural week.
The first class was still a Chinese class.
The Chinese teacher, no longer all smiles, walked in with a stern face, carrying a stack of papers.
"This class is the weekly test," she said, and you never saw her so serious before. "Take the test seriously, and no whispering or cheating is allowed."
Then she started distributing the test papers to you one by one.
But how come you got a share too?!
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Author's Note: I always feel lazy when writing these transitional chapters... ==
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