Chapter 4 Numb.04 Eyes
The dust from the paper melting into ashes seemed to still cling to the corner of the clothes, along with the unpleasant and pungent smell of the burning residue.
The sound of running water in the bathroom gradually stopped. The doorknob was turned from the inside, and Xu Wu, wearing a simple white nightgown, came out. Her bare feet left water stains on the floor because the water hadn't completely dried.
Xu Wu bent down, picked up the school uniform she had changed out of from the bucket, and without saying a word, stuffed it all into the washing machine.
Her overly long hair was casually twisted into a single strand and secured at the back of her head with a hair clip, preventing most of it from getting wet. However, a few stray strands at the ends were still wet and tightly tangled together.
The old washing machine started working with a loud rumble, successfully pulling Xu Wu back to reality.
She snapped out of her reverie and looked at the phone screen that had received an incoming call.
The note says it belongs to the owner of a fresh food supermarket. Actually, the shop is not big; it's more like a 24-hour convenience store, located downstairs. It's also a courier station, and Xu Wu usually leaves whatever she needs to send or buy there.
"Hello." Xu Wu picked up her phone and pressed the answer button, then turned and left the small area to avoid the noise of the washing machine disturbing her hearing.
"Hey sis," came a rather gruff middle-aged man's voice on the other end of the phone, along with the sounds of a cash register scanning items, "your package has been sitting here for four or five days, when are you coming to pick it up?"
Upon hearing this, Xu Wu frowned: "Express delivery?"
She thought back carefully and realized that she hadn't bought anything in the past two days, so where did the package come from?
"How big is it?" she asked. "Not very big, it's small." The shopkeeper held the package in his hand and gestured, then thought for a moment and said, "About the size of a photo or postcard."
photo......
Xu Wu's gaze unconsciously fell on four or five photos placed on the coffee table not far away. Without exception, they all depicted her: fetching water, running exercises, looking down, and talking to someone.
It was also sent via express delivery, and it appeared three days ago.
The day before Ji Lin jumped off the building.
Xu Wu suddenly felt that the surrounding environment had become quiet, so quiet that he could clearly count how many times his heart was beating in his chest.
She unconsciously gripped her phone tighter, her eyes narrowed slightly, and her expression gradually turned cold.
"Okay, I'm coming over now," Xu Wu replied.
After hanging up the phone, she glanced at the photos again, went back to her room, casually threw on a coat, and prepared to leave. She made sure the security door was locked before going downstairs.
The convenience store isn't far away; it's only a four or five-minute walk downstairs.
It was nearly 11:30 p.m., and with the cool, slightly chilly wind of the end of the season, Xu Wu regretted stepping outside after only two seconds. She should have put on another pair of pants.
She sighed and silently wrapped her coat tighter around herself. Because she was wearing short pajamas, the coat wasn't very big, leaving her two straight and slender legs exposed to the wind, making her already pale skin look even paler.
Xu Wu shortened the five-minute walk to the supermarket by half. When they arrived at the store, the owner was still sitting at the cashier watching videos, occasionally chuckling to himself.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Xu Wu walking in, exclaimed "Oh!", handed over the package beside her, and then focused her attention back on her phone: "It's so cold tonight, don't you know you should wear more clothes?"
The boss is from Sichuan and Chongqing, but after staying here for a long time, he doesn't speak his hometown dialect much anymore. Although he occasionally mixes in some dialect, it doesn't matter much, and Xu Wu can understand most of it.
"It's okay, it's just a short walk." Xu Wu took the money and scanned the QR code on his phone to transfer one yuan as a payment.
She glanced down at the delivery slip; there was nothing unusual about it, and it had been checked. Even the recipient's name and phone number were hers.
If Xu Wu hadn't been certain he hadn't bought anything, he might have actually started to doubt himself.
Five minutes later, she returned home.
The warmth that rose in my body after taking a shower was completely dissipated after going out for a walk, and I even brought back a chill.
Xu Wu found a larger pajama jacket and put it on before walking to the sofa and sitting down. After tearing open the express delivery bag, the photos inside slid out.
Unlike the four lonely sheets on the coffee table, this time there are a full ten.
The further down Xu Wu read, the colder his expression became.
The filming was really bad.
It's so bad that you can't even tell if it was filmed by the same person.
If there's one redeeming quality to be found in these poorly composed and poorly lit photos, it's probably only Xu Wu's face.
Xu Wu looked through the photos one by one until the seventh one caught her attention. She paused, threw the other photos onto the coffee table, and took out only this one.
This photo is beautiful, like a close-up. She's standing outside the classroom, and the shot captures the exact moment she looks up at the camera. It was a rainy day, the air was sticky, and her fine hair was being blown around her. The cool-toned image gives her an eerie beauty.
Who was she looking at at that time? She couldn't quite remember.
Xu Wu stroked a corner of the photo, seemingly lost in thought.
Her memory isn't particularly good, but at this moment she genuinely couldn't recall it.
Is it someone else, or...?
A thought flashed through Xu Wu's mind: Jieying?
She chuckled briefly after a couple of seconds.
How could that be? He wouldn't have the guts.
Before she could finish her thought, she remembered Jie Ying's behavior, which could be described as that of a rat in the gutter. Xu Wu paused, a guess forming in her mind.
She glanced at the photos one last time, reached out and hooked the trash can over, then tore them into pieces one by one, coldly watching the shredded paper, whose content was almost unrecognizable, fall into the trash can.
Only one copy was kept.
Xu Wu didn't sleep well; she kept dozing off and waking up until four in the morning before she finally managed to get some sleep. It felt like she'd barely slept two minutes before her alarm, set for six o'clock sharp, woke her up.
Xu Wu struggled to check the time, then, still half asleep, hesitated for a couple of seconds before setting an alarm for half an hour later. She let go of her phone, which fell back onto the bedside table, and drifted back to sleep.
I woke up again at 6:40, half an hour before morning reading.
Xu Wu suddenly opened her eyes, not even caring about her bloodshot eyes in the mirror. She didn't even have time to apply moisturizer before rushing out the door after washing up and changing her clothes.
Although her place is a bit old, it's fortunately not far from the school; if she runs as fast as she can to the bus stop, it only takes about three minutes.
Fortunately, she was lucky today; the bus arrived right after she arrived at the station.
With one minute left before the school gates closed at 7:00 PM, Xu Wu scanned his face and entered at the last second.
Before she could catch her breath, one of the boys on duty at the door, responsible for catching latecomers, teased her with a smile: "Not bad, Wu, it's rare to see you get up late."
Looking to the side following the sound, I saw a red armband with the words "Today's Duty" on it. The boy had a handsome appearance, resembling the stereotypical image of a model student.
His name is Chu Lian, a senior in the third year of high school, and also the president of the club he shares with Xu Wu.
He has an outgoing personality and can easily liven up the atmosphere. He gets along well with most of the members in the club, so it's quite normal that Xu Wu has an impression of him.
"It's rare to see you on duty," Xu Wu replied after catching her breath.
"There's nothing I can do, none of them are willing to accept bribes anymore." Chu Lian sighed regretfully as he spoke, then glanced at his watch and said, "You can stop standing here for now. You should go back to the classroom too, morning reading will start in a few minutes."
Xu Wu nodded and didn't say anything more to him. She turned around and ran towards the classroom.
Sometimes she really wanted to complain about why the classroom had to be on the fourth floor. When she was about to be late, she didn't even dare to breathe and had to take three steps at a time to climb the stairs.
Just as I reached the third floor, the preparatory bell rang.
Perhaps she was too hasty, because Xu Wu didn't notice that she stepped on an extra step. Her body swayed, and her pupils contracted sharply. But she reacted quickly enough and instinctively grabbed the railing to steady her swaying body. However, her leg bent, and her knee still slammed hard onto the marble step.
The impact was so severe that an indescribable pain instantly spread throughout her limbs and bones, as if her bones were about to be shattered. Xu Wu was in so much pain that tears welled up in her eyes.
She gritted her teeth, endured the pain, and walked into the classroom through the back door with two minutes left.
While everyone in the class was still chatting animatedly, the group of students responsible for the public health area today also returned with their cleaning tools.
Xu Wu had only been sitting down for a couple of seconds when a composition book with her name on it was handed to her. She looked up and glanced at the person who had come.
"Thanks, Xu Wu." Xia Ni said to her with a smile.
"It's okay, as long as it's useful." She didn't take it, letting Shani place the composition book on her book.
"Honestly, it feels like I got lucky to participate," Xia Ni remarked, then asked curiously, "You really don't want to go?"
"Okay, you can go." Xu Wu subtly distanced herself and looked down at the textbooks she needed for today's morning reading in the drawer.
She would put a bookmark on the first page of each book, and write the book's name on the exposed part so that she could pull it out directly without having to search for it.
"Thank you so much." Xia Ni clasped her hands together and knelt down to express her sincere gratitude.
They all knew this was a school competition, and as long as they didn't do too badly, they could get a ranking, and with a ranking came a certificate. Xia Ni's family valued this kind of thing quite a bit, regardless of its actual prestige, and Xu Wu knew this too.
The morning reading bell rang, and Xu Wu's knee pain only came on belatedly. The pain wasn't intense at first, but rather felt like a dense, needle-like pricking sensation, causing him to groan even when he bent over slightly.
The instant Xu Wu propped herself up on the table, a chilling gaze followed her from behind, causing her to shiver involuntarily.
That gaze was chillingly cold, inexplicably reminding Xu Wu of the snails that used to appear in the courtyard after summer rains, leaving behind sticky slime wherever they touched.
She pursed her lips. She was already holding her breath because she was late and had fallen down early in the morning. Seeing her like that made her about to explode in anger.
But the gaze didn't linger; instead, it slowly moved downwards and settled on her injured right knee.
Realizing this, Xu Wu's inexplicable anger immediately subsided, and the fingertips gripping the textbook twitched slightly.
In the instant he lowered his eyes, he caught a glimpse of a letter peeking out from under the math textbook on the table.
Xu Wumei's heart skipped a beat as if she had a bad feeling. She put the textbook aside, and there lay a letter lying there quietly, written exactly like the one Ji Lin had written.
She turned around abruptly to look at Jie Ying, but the sound of morning reading that had been heard by several classmates had vanished like bubbles.
Inside the bubble that could be popped with a touch, she saw Jie Yingsi's lips curve slightly.
Their secret glances exchanged, creating a subtle collision in the air.
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