I didn’t know how to use it at all, much less Xiaotao. She grabbed the condom from my hand and studied it. "How did you put it on?"
"How should I know?" I replied.
"Don’t you watch porn?" Xiaotao asked.
"I do, but that part’s always blurred out..."
Xiaotao burst into laughter, "We’ll take off your pants first. I’ll help you put it on."
I blushed, hands trembling as I unbuckled my belt. Xiaotao grabbed her cell phone from under the pillow. "I’m turning my phone off so no one will disturb us."
We turned off our phones together, burning the bridge, revelling in our own world. But at this moment, a knock sounded on the door. We held our breaths but nothing happened.
"Could it be Bingxin?" I asked.
With tacit understanding, we got dressed and tidied up the scene. When I opened the door, I found the hallway empty.
The sudden interruption deflated my hard-fought courage. Turning to Xiaotao, I said, “I'm going back to my room!"
She leaned against the door and kissed me gently. "Good night!"
"See you tomorrow."
Wang Yuanchao and I shared a room while Song Xingchen slept alone. When I returned to my room, I found Bingxin sitting on the bed, eating grapes and watching TV.
"Huh?" We looked at each other in surprise.
"Uncle Wang, I’m going back to my room." With that, Bingxin got up and left. As she walked past me, she smiled slyly. I was almost certain she was our mysterious knocker.
Perhaps she assumed Xiaotao and I were in the throes of love-making and left wisely. Unfortunately, any desire I had was completely dispelled by the knock on the door.
Although Xiaotao and I failed to seal the deal, it seemed that we made Bingxin think otherwise. At breakfast the next morning, she glanced at us with a mischievous glint in her eye.
As soon as she got the chance, she asked, "How was it?"
"I have no idea what you are talking about!" I retorted.
"Hmph, you can pretend all you like, but I saw what was in the trash can," Bingxin pursed her lips.
"What!"
It turned out Bingxin found the opened condom Xiaotao threw away in a hurry. With such solid “evidence,” it was hard to keep arguing.
"Why don't I stay alone so the two of you don’t have to keep sneaking around?" suggested Bingxin.
I smiled bitterly, "Why are you so kind?"
"Well it’s because I’m a good person of course!" laughed Bingxin.
But even if I denied it, Bingxin wouldn't believe me.
Since today was a public holiday, there was nothing much we could do. Captain Tang's investigation was still ongoing. The three of us simply treated it as a three-day holiday. I headed down to the bookstore to purchase some reading materials.
On the last day of our three-day holiday, Xiaotao suddenly steered me to look at Weibo.
At first, I assumed word got out about the incident in the park that night. But upon checking Weibo, Xiaotao had tagged me in a microblog that was forwarded numerous times, and the source was a Jiangling City forum.
The blogger called ‘I am a monkey' wrote: A teacher whose death we caused came back for revenge!
It told a story that happened more than ten years ago. At the time, the poster was studying in a private middle school. The admission rate of this middle school was average, and students basically spent money to buy their high school diplomas, so one could imagine the lack of discipline.
The poster's class teacher was a Chinese teacher named Xu. Once in class, Mr. Xu caught two girls playing with their cell phones and he confiscated the phones on the spot, severely criticized them and asked their parents to pick up their cell phones.
The girls were afraid of alarming their parents. At this time, Boy C, who had a crush on Girl A, and Boy D, who had a crush on Girl B, volunteered to steal their cell phones from the teacher’s office. Assuming the phones had been stolen, Mr. Xu purchased two cell phones matching the same models with his own salary. With the price at that time and Mr. Xu’s meager salary, it was certainly not an easy feat!
Mr. Xu visited Girl A’s home in order to return her cell phone. As soon as both parties confirmed the situation, their little mischief-making was discovered. Mr. Xu flew into a rage at the class and gave them a lengthy lecture. The two boys who stole the phones were also criticized in front of the entire school.
What was originally a small matter was blown out of proportion after such a disturbance. Both boys had little interest in school and were fooling around outside. Boiling with anger, the boys thought of gathering a bunch of boys to beat up Mr. Xu.
The boys’ friend E said that if they were caught beating a teacher, they would be forced to drop out of school. Thus, it was better to come up with some other way to punish him, one that wouldn’t violate the school rules but also quell their anger.
Together with F and G, these five boys followed Mr. Xu every day after school and realized he had a daughter attending kindergarten. It was E who came up with the diabolical plan.
They were going to kidnap Mr. Xu's daughter to trick the man. The plan was to take her out for some fun and frighten Mr. Xu.
The plan went very smoothly up until C recklessly made a phone call to Mr. Xu. With his voice muffled, he said, "Your daughter is in our hands. If you’d like to see her again, put together one million yuan!"
The five boys happily took the girl for a day out at the amusement park. When they sent her back to the neighborhood at nine that evening, they found several police vehicles parked at the door. It turned out Mr. Xu reported this as a kidnapping.
The boys were scared silly! With their lack of legal awareness, they weren’t sure how many years they would be sentenced to for the crime of kidnapping, but they knew they would definitely be incarcerated.
At this time, the girl was in a hurry to go home and shouted, ‘Daddy!’ One of the five boys quickly covered her mouth and turned to the others. "We can’t let her go back, or we’ll be finished!"
"What are we supposed to do then? We can’t really kidnap her!" argued another.
The boy replied, "If we tell the police it was merely a prank, would they believe us? Even if they do, we’ll be forced to drop out of school!"
During their quarrel, their companion found that the girl was struggling more and more violently. By the time the boy removed his hand, she had already stopped breathing.
The boys were livid with fear. After a heated debate, they reached a consensus to keep this a secret.
After all, they were inexperienced teenagers so the way they dealt with the body was bold and inconceivable. They buried the child under the sandpit in the school playground.
Mr. Xu was absent for three days. When he returned, the students were surprised to find that his hair had turned grey.
Wracked with guilt, some wavered and wanted to confess everything, but they were stopped by their companions. They vowed never to mention this matter and the names of the parties involved or their families would be cursed to death!
After a month of suffering, summer vacation arrived and the boys were relieved to have escaped judgement. However, Mr. Xu never returned after vacation and the class got a new class teacher.
Later on, after further inquiry, they learned that Mr. Xu and his wife argued all day long since their daughter’s disappearance. His wife left home to become a nun while Mr. Xu drank all day long, and finally died from a fall down the stairs.