They All Say I Encountered A Ghost Chapter 15 9 Apr 26, 2020

In the moonlight Mu Huaitong's smile was extraordinarily piercing. I sighed. How could a nice girl like this have a worse idea of female beauty than a cast-iron gay man like me? It was one thing to use some powder to cover up blemishes and lipstick to add a little color, but putting on too much powder made the face look bloodless, and her lips looked as if she'd been drinking pig's blood. There was nothing beautiful about it.

Mu Huaitong took my arm in a natural gesture and said softly, "It's not good to walk after dark. I was worried Teacher Shen wouldn't be able to see clearly. Let me help you."

She was talking as though I was an old man in his seventies or eighties. And Mu Huaitong was plastered to my body, her chest rubbing against my arm.

"Mu Huaitong, you..." I hesitated, looking at her.

She looked up at me and blinked. Her big eyes were like a spirit lure, and her chest rubbed against my arm again.

"You should drink more goji berry concentrate," I said with concern. "You're so cold, even though it's summer. Your blood iron content must be low and your blood circulation poor. Having such problems when you're this young will make it hard for you in the future. The most important thing now is to exercise more. When we have a break during class I'll recommend my exercise routine to you. It's very effective."

Saying this, I pulled my arm away from her chest, took off my jacket, and put it on her. The jacket was warm from my body and would help her warm up a little.

Fortunately, I had bought another jacket and shirt for class. If I'd been wearing a 19.9 yuan t-shirt like I wore for my part-time job, taking it off would have meant going bare-chested. I couldn't have lent it to Mu Huaitong.

Mu Huaitong's face shrank down into the jacket so I could only see her eyes looking at me. She asked, "Teacher, am I ugly? Is my figure bad?"

"You're very beautiful," I said confidently. "I was a liberal arts student. The majority of students at our school were girls. It was like drifting among clouds of beautiful women. But even in those surroundings you would be among the first rank of beauties. Your only disadvantage is that you lack self-confidence. I'm not like those straight men who have a problem with women wearing makeup. I think makeup can make you look more beautiful, as well as giving you more confidence. As long as you take care to protect your skin, makeup is a good thing. But everything has its limits. You're so beautiful. Heavy makeup will only cover up your beauty. You should stick to light makeup."

And the most important thing was that her make-up was badly applied. When I went to school, I was surrounded by female students. They had passed along a lot of make-up tips to me. Even though I wasn't interested in that, I still remembered a lot.

Mu Huaitong's face twisted. She stared at me and said, "Don't you have any other ideas about me, teacher?"

After that, she blinked repeatedly. Her eyelashes were really long, but they weren't as long as Xiao Ning's. I thought of how Xiao Ning looked with his head lowered, deep in thought. His long, long eyelashes had captured my attention.

"I do," I said, nodding. "I hope you can make it out of the shadow of your past as soon as possible and face life with a positive attitude. There's no barrier in the world that can't be crossed. People are stronger than they think. "

I knew that abandonment, miscarriage, and the contempt of her fellow students had hurt her a lot. This kind of pain wouldn't go away just because I stood there and told her to be strong. Mu Huaitong's future path wasn't an easy one to walk.

"I'm not a psychology student. I don't have a lot of theoretical knowledge, but one thing I know very well is that exercise makes people happy." I smacked my chest and said to her, "When I'm in a bad mood, I run 10,000 meters, sweat all over, then take a bath. When my body's tired, my mind can't overthink things so much. If you want, you can ask me to accompany you on a morning run."

Mu Huaitong threw my jacket into my face and angrily walked ahead of me. "Teacher Shen, you're never going to have a girlfriend."

That was perfectly reasonable. I didn't want a girlfriend, anyway.

After Mu Haitong got angry, we went much faster. Within five minutes, we went into the outpatient building. It was dark in the building. I couldn't help grabbing the arm of Mu Haitong, who was walking in front of me.

"What is it? Are you scared?" Mu Huaitong looked back at me and smiled, her face as white as A4 paper.

"Well, a little scared," I admitted. "What if I run into another student pretending to be a ghost in the dark? Last time, because you stopped me halfway up the third floor stairs, that class was cancelled. I didn't even see the students. Principal Zhang didn't blame me, but I don't want to miss work again. It makes me feel unworthy of the salary Principal Zhang is paying me."

Mu Huaitong could probably tell that I was alluding to her naughty behavior and seemed a little conscience-stricken. She was silent for a long time, and didn't speak until we reached the fourth floor. "Don't worry, Teacher Shen. No one will dare to stop you in the corridor this time."

I was ready to praise the students for their obedience, but Mu Huaitong added, "But they won't necessarily behave in the classroom. I hope you'll be able to deal with them like you dealt with me."

After that, the door to the assembly room behind her opened by itself without any wind. The lights inside were off. Mu Huaitong disappeared into the darkness. I guessed she was hiding behind the door to frighten me.

Ah, these students were too wary of their teacher. They hadn't even turned on the light. They must have wanted to have a frightening welcome ceremony in the dark.

Fortunately, after my experience at Benevolence Middle School, I had come prepared. I took out my newly purchased energy-saving LED table lamp from the bag I was carrying. I had charged it during the day, and it was at full power. It could light up 40 square meters of space when it was turned on, the first choice for dealing with a power outage.

I went into the classroom carrying the lamp. On entering I saw a student wearing a hospital gown, his head covered in blood and brain matter, floating in front of me. He saw me and grinned. By the lamplight I saw maggots crawling on his teeth.

"Such delicious human energy, such thick Yang. It's enough to keep me full for a year. Hee-hee-hee!" He let out an ugly-sounding laugh, and maggots fell to the ground from his smiling mouth.

This student had gone to a lot of trouble to scare me. I didn't know whether the bugs were real or not.

What a joke. Was I the sort of person who would be scared of some insects? When we'd had cockroaches in the dorm Xia Jin had howled, crawled up from the bottom bunk to my top bunk, clung to me, and said that there was a cockroach on his bed and he didn't dare to sleep. I grabbed the cockroach with my bare hands and threw it out of the window. How could I be afraid of these little bugs now?

The maggots rolled on the ground and crawled towards me. Unhurriedly, I took out the notebook Teacher liu had given me and used it to crush the maggots. At the same time, my expression not changing, I patted the student on the shoulder. "Young man, you've really gone out of your way to scare me. What's your name?"

"You — you actually killed the blood maggots I worked so hard to raise?" said the student angrily. "Do you know how much thought and effort it took me to grow these maggots in formalin?"

"I know you aren't very conscious of hygiene." I tried to stay away from him. "Go back to your seat. All the students are waiting."

Principal Zhang had given me a roster in advance. There were 23 students in this class. The number wasn't very large, but judging by this one in front of me, none of them would be easy to deal with.

After going through the door, I held up the powerful lamp and saw the faces of the 23 students clearly.

They were dressed up in all kinds of strange ways. Some were in wheelchairs, some were wearing cheongsam, some had wrapped themselves up like mummies, and there was even a boy about thirteen or fourteen sitting in his seat with a bedplate on his back, apparently not afraid of damaging his spine.

Seeing them like this, I suddenly felt that you could call Mu Huaitong's behavior towards me the other night polite. At least she understood hygiene and didn't try to disgust me with insects.

"Ahem," I cleared my throat. "Hello, everyone, I'm your teacher for this Ideological and Moral Cultivation class. My name is Shen Jianguo. You can call me Teacher Shen, Teacher Jianguo, or Shen Jianguo, it's all fine. This is my first job. This class will be a chance for us all to learn and to progress together. I'm very glad that all 23 of you could be here today. I know it's hard to attend class at night and in such surroundings. In order to get to know you better and faster, let me call the roll. Mu Huaitong."

Sitting at the front of the assembly room, Mu Huaitong slowly raised her hand, supporting me. With her taking the lead, the rest of the students cooperated. A few minutes later I remembered all the students' names and appearances. Of course, this wasn't because my memory was good, but because their outfits made a deep impression; once you had seen them, you wouldn't forget.

For example, the student who liked playing with maggots was called Tian Bowen[1], a rather literary name.

The electricity in the classroom seemed to have been cut off by the naughty students, so I couldn't use the projector. I could only use my specially-prepared traditional materials. I put the notebook that Teacher Liu had given me on the table, and the students became quiet and well-behaved.

"Ideological and Moral Cultivation is a subject we actually begin to encounter starting in elementary school, and we learn about it at every stage after. Because it is not a compulsory subject, schools, students and even teachers don't attach importance to it, but it really is the most important subject, because it can help students to establish a correct world view during their developmental period, as well as helping adults find direction during confused periods in their lives. What do I mean by world view? This is the topic we will cover in today's class."

After my opening remarks, I wrote down the words "world view" on the whiteboard in the assembly room.

The students were very quiet. Mu Huaitong even took out a notebook to take notes. I was very pleased. Although everyone had dressed strangely to scare me, they were all good children.

My throat was dry after talking for an hour, so I took out a bottle of water and said, "Let's take a ten minute break. You can go to the toilet or stretch your muscles. Uh — which student does this classroom belong to? Can you tell me where the power is? I'll turn on the light. This darkness isn't good for everyone's eyes."

Hearing my words, the thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy wearing the bedplate shuffled over to me. "Teacher, I lent this classroom."

I remembered that his name was Tan Xiaoming, a name commonly seen on rosters.

"Do you know where the power is?"

"I can turn on the light," Tan Xiaoming said to me, then laughed: "Haha." My students really liked to laugh. "But there is one condition."

"What condition?"

"Teacher Shen has to sleep with me tonight."

I looked at Tan Xiaoming's fresh young face and said very properly, "Although you are handsome, you're a minor. That can't happen."

"No," said Tan Xiaoming, shaking his head, "I mean, Teacher Shen has to sleep in the morgue tonight with me."

[1]博文 - "pursuing knowledge/culture"