The figure fell from the rooftop.
And then.
Disappeared.
There was no sound.
"..."
Zhang Shutong subconsciously stood up, his mouth agape without a sound.
Everything happened too fast, without any warning. The other person's body was already swallowed by the blocky buildings around them.
It was fleeting.
There wasn't even a muffled thud, because they were too far away.
On the empty rooftop, the sun was dazzling, and a bone-chilling coldness suddenly rose from his back.
Who was it?
Why were they on the roof of the staff dorm?
Zhang Shutong's pupils then constricted. He had been to Teacher Song's room, at the very end of the hallway. If he wasn't mistaken, the figure was standing on the edge of the roof right before they jumped, and it was right above Teacher Song's room!
The memory etched into his muscles prompted him to take out his phone. Zhang Shutong quickly found Teacher Song's number. However, a second later, he gritted his teeth and exited the page.
He still couldn't be sure who the falling figure was. He was just vaguely preparing for the worst-case scenario. But no matter who it was, they had already jumped from the rooftop. So the correct choice was not to confirm the other person's identity, but to—
Call 120 as soon as possible!
He frowned, waiting for the operator to answer the call, while standing on his tiptoes to get a clearer view of the situation. However, this was futile. The buildings blocked the view of the ground. It was impossible to see just by standing on his toes.
Lu Qinglian was also frowning. She stared intently in the direction of the dorm building, not saying a word.
Soon, the call connected:
"Someone jumped from the staff dorm of Yingcai Middle School!"
Zhang Shutong's words were concise and to the point. He verified the location and time with the other person, and after confirming it was correct, he immediately hung up and called Teacher Song.
Pick up, pick up...
Zhang Shutong even started praying in his heart. His mind began to become uncontrollably agitated. What the hell? Why would someone suddenly run to that place and jump off a building? Was it because they were in despair? Were there cases like this before? Who could it be? A faculty member or Teacher Song?
Why was the call not connecting?!
But things went against his wishes.
Song Nanshan's phone was constantly busy.
But shouldn't he be in the hospital off the island?
Zhang Shutong cursed under his breath. Lu Qinglian, on the other hand, had already withdrawn her gaze. Without a single word, she had already judged the current situation:
"Let's go."
The girl spoke one character.
The two of them ran out of the rooftop at the same time.
Zhang Shutong was not as fast as Lu Qinglian, but he didn't know if Lu Qinglian's foot injury still hadn't healed. Her speed was also not very fast.
During the lunch break, two fast-paced footsteps ran across, breaking the silence of the corridor.
Occasionally, a student would tiptoe out, surprised to pass by the two of them.
They went from the fourth floor down to the first floor, and then rushed out of the teaching building and into the bike shed:
"Wait."
Zhang Shutong said, panting. He was already struggling to keep up.
"Let me get my bike out."
He took out a string of keys from his pocket. His bike had been parked at school since he rode it here last Thursday. He hadn't taken care of it since he was hospitalized. It had been almost a week. The back of the bicycle had a tail box, a quick-release design. He had bought it at the same time as Qingyi's motorcycle tail box.
He had joked at the time that with a tail box on the back, he wouldn't be able to carry a girl. But now, he only felt that it was in the way. Zhang Shutong threw the tail box on the ground:
"Get on."
He said to Lu Qinglian and was about to get on the bike, but he paused.
Zhang Shutong looked down at his left hand, which was in a sling. He then remembered that he was injured and was no longer the person who could just get on his bike and go. He couldn't ride a bike at all now, let alone carry someone.
But there were no taxis on the small island. It would take seven or eight minutes to run from the school to the dorm. By the time they got there, the person might have already been taken away by an ambulance. So should they just go straight to the hospital? But the hospital was even farther from the school, at least twenty minutes away.
In the moment of his hesitation, a flash of green swept by. Lu Qinglian got on the bike, and the hem of her long robe fluttered with the motion.
"You can ride a bike?" Zhang Shutong was stunned.
Lu Qinglian never wasted words. She stepped on the pedal and just glanced back at him:
"Get on."
This was the first time Zhang Shutong had ever sat on the back of his own bicycle.
Being pulled by Lu Qinglian.
He grabbed the hem of the girl's long robe with one hand. He hadn't even had time to process what was happening, or rather, he was a bit uncomfortable, because his hand in the sling was a real hassle. He couldn't sit straight.
So Zhang Shutong was now sitting sideways on the back of the bicycle, holding onto Lu Qinglian's clothes. He suddenly felt like he was the one being carried like a little girl. Even though he couldn't see what he looked like, he imagined he was being very awkward.
But he was in no mood to care about that. Zhang Shutong belatedly thought, "Is today a bit too much of a coincidence? Something like this happened right after we decided to go to the dorm to get the notebook."
And he hadn't planned on going to the rooftop at all. If it weren't for that misunderstanding, he would have just stayed in the classroom to rest. Lu Qinglian's usual lunchtime was also earlier than this. If it weren't for the fact that she didn't have the key to the rooftop, and if she hadn't happened to see him walking in this direction, she wouldn't have followed.
In any case, the result at this moment was—the two of them were on the rooftop at the perfect time, witnessing a figure falling from the top of the building.
He told Lu Qinglian these speculations. She nodded, and then her eyebrows furrowed slightly:
"Don't wobble."
Zhang Shutong didn't ask where she learned to ride a bike:
"It's a bit hard for me to keep my balance right now. Be careful, but you'd better go faster..."
"Then hold on tight." But Lu Qinglian interrupted him and commanded, "Student Zhang Shutong, I'm not that delicate."
Zhang Shutong subconsciously put his arm around her waist.
The bike sped up.
Everything in front of them was quickly moving backward. His body was tilting back and forth with the bike. He didn't know why, but he felt like he was on a motorcycle. It was clearly just a thin bicycle, but under her, it was incredibly nimble, as if it were an extension of her body. Lu Qinglian rode through several alleys. A few times, they almost hit the open windows in the alleys, but there was a scare but no danger. Zhang Shutong watched as the corners of the windows passed by his nose with only a few centimeters to spare. Before he could even recover—
"We're here."
Lu Qinglian squeezed the brakes.
It turned out they had already ridden to the back wall of the dorm building.
Looking up, they could see the mottled wall. The white plaster of the past had now turned gray and black, and it was full of cracks.
This was an old-style block apartment building. It wasn't on the street. It was likely that when it was built, the area around it was still a wasteland.
The weeds around it were overgrown, almost up to their knees. Not far away, there was a sofa that was just a skeleton, and a pile of old tires. The cold wind hit them, making a sharp whistling sound.
In the desolation, Zhang Shutong tried to distinguish the scene he saw from the rooftop, looking for the place where the figure landed.
Actually, he didn't need his eyes. His ears were enough—
The ambulance siren was sounding from the other side of the building. The people from the hospital had already arrived before them.
Zhang Shutong's heart clenched. He jumped off the bike, went around the building, and ran quickly to the front.
He could hear the paramedics' conversation:
"Who called the ambulance? Can we get in touch?"
"It seems to be a student. I'll try calling him again..."
Zhang Shutong didn't know if a person would die from jumping off a two-story building. Regardless of the probability, he remembered that the person had spread their arms and fallen on their back. This would cause them to hit their back of the head, which could be fatal even if the building wasn't very high.
Thinking about this, he held his breath. Although he hadn't witnessed it with his own eyes, he was mentally prepared. One, he could anticipate the bloody and mangled scene that was about to come. Two, he was afraid of seeing a familiar face.
"How could it be you?"
When two paramedics appeared in his sight, one of them looked up and gave him a surprised look.
Zhang Shutong also stopped. It turned out that the other person was the male nurse named Li. The two of them had worked together to take Teacher Song to the hospital.
"I'm the one who called 120," he quickly explained. His gaze went to the ambulance. The back door of the car was wide open. "How is the person now?"
Saying this, Zhang Shutong was about to walk into the ambulance, but he was stopped by another person. It was likely the driver. The driver said angrily:
"What are you doing here, you meddling kid?"
"Don't worry, I know this kid. Let me ask him first. He shouldn't have gone to the wrong place..." Little Li also stopped him.
The words in his ears passed by like the wind. Zhang Shutong was frozen in place. A sense of coldness swept through his entire body in an instant.
...Where is the person?
Where was the person who jumped from the building?
There was no injured person in front of the dorm building as he had expected.
So he subconsciously assumed that Little Li had already carried the injured person into the car and was about to go to the hospital. But a few seconds ago, he had already seen the inside of the ambulance.
It was impeccably clean.
There was only an empty stretcher.
Where did the person go?
Why did the figure who jumped from the two-story building on their back disappear?
Suddenly, Zhang Shutong felt a tightness in his chest. He took a few deep breaths and almost thought that the group had gone to the wrong place. He was about to take a few steps back to look more closely, but Little Li had already turned his head:
"You don't need to look. We've already searched around the building, and there's nothing."
Saying this, the other person took off his mask and frowned:
"I don't doubt that you're playing a prank, but when you called 120, you said you saw someone jump from the school rooftop, right? Are you sure you didn't see it wrong? Was it this building, and not another one around here?"
Saying this, Little Li started talking to himself:
"But that doesn't make sense either. If someone really jumped around here, Master Sun should have already gotten a call..."
"Alright, what are you even talking about with these kids? I think these brats are just pulling a prank!"
The driver, who was called Master Sun, was a middle-aged man with a shaved head and a scar on his eyebrow. When he raised his eyebrow, the scar also wriggled:
"You can call an ambulance whenever you want? Do you know that's a waste of social resources? And you even made it up to sound real. You said they jumped on their back. So I'm asking you, where did that person go?"
But Zhang Shutong was still thinking about what Little Li had said. Could it be that he had seen the wrong location?
The person who jumped had to exist, but which building they jumped from was up for debate.
He closed his eyes and then opened them, trying to remember more details.
No, it was better to say that the existence of this building was the biggest detail.
Even if there were other two-story buildings nearby, there was only one block apartment building with this style from the last century.
Besides, Lu Qinglian had also seen it at the time.
Even if that person didn't die from the fall, they should have been seriously injured. They wouldn't have just fallen and then dusted themselves off and walked away. Zhang Shutong didn't know whether to feel relieved or to frown. The good news was that the person was definitely not Teacher Song. But the bad news was, how did the other person just disappear?
Zhang Shutong looked at the front wall of the dorm building again. The driver seemed to be really angry:
"Are you listening to me? Do you think it's okay to make a fake 120 call just because it's okay to make a fake police report? What class are you in? I'm going to call your teachers and ask them how they teach their students!" The other person cursed and grumbled.
Little Li pulled the driver away and came over to whisper:
"Do you have enough money? If you don't, you'd better call your parents. How should I put this? Master Sun's car isn't from our hospital. It's contracted from a company in the city. It's not that official. Don't let his shouting fool you. He mainly wants to get money from you..."
Sure enough, before Little Li could finish, the driver went past Little Li and walked straight to Zhang Shutong, about to grab his wrist:
"It's eighty for this trip!"
Zhang Shutong guessed what was going on. He was probably just putting on a show, but there was nothing to complain about for having to pay for an ambulance trip.
He guessed that the other person was afraid that he would just run away since he was a student. Zhang Shutong just wanted to send the other person on their way. He felt in his pocket. He only had fifty dollars in loose change.
"Not a cent less, or you'd better call your parents right now!" The driver saw this and raised his voice.
Just then, Lu Qinglian came from behind the building and looked at the change in his hand:
"Not enough?"
"What are you doing here, you little brat..."
"Please don't make a fuss."
Her eyes were cold and without any emotion, which made the other person freeze for a moment. But he didn't move any closer. Zhang Shutong knew that Lu Qinglian was actually very scary when she was serious. Just like the woman he saw in the black and white album eight years later. After she finished speaking, she took out a bill from the inner pocket of her green robe and put it in Zhang Shutong's hand:
"Consider it my share. Is this enough?"
It was a fifty-dollar bill.
Zhang Shutong didn't know where she got so much money.
He broke up the change, added it to the bill, and handed it to the driver. The ambulances on the island were indeed eighty dollars a trip, so he wasn't being ripped off. The other person no longer said anything. He counted the money with his spit and told Little Li to get back in the car.
The ambulance started up, and the surroundings quickly became quiet. Only the two of them were left on the barren field.
Zhang Shutong looked at his phone.
He felt as if he could hear the bell ringing for the end of the lunch break. It was already time for the first class of the afternoon.
So...