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墨書 Inktalez
The education department quickly intervened in the investigation. The school swiftly initiated crisis management, inundating the public with announcements that blamed "a few teachers who were overly eager for quick results, employing inappropriate experimental teaching methods." Wang Yan was suspended, becoming that "individual teacher," the scapegoat.
But I knew that the unseen hands behind him would find a way to protect him. Once the storm passed, everything would return to the way it was. The Last Classroom was temporarily closed. Yet, I had no doubt it would reemerge under a more discreet name—"One-on-One Elite Tutoring," "Personalized Potential Development"—in some obscure corner in the near future. The massive machine that measured everything solely by scores had not truly been shaken at its core.
As for me, Zhou Ran, I was expelled for "seriously disrupting the teaching order and spreading rumors that severely harmed the school's reputation." The school even threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against me. I paid a price for the truth. My future was shrouded in uncertainty, and both my body and mind needed a long period of healing.
On the day I packed my things to leave school, the sky was overcast. With only a few belongings on my back, I walked along the empty campus path. As I passed a secluded corner by the Administrative Building, hurried footsteps approached from behind. It was the young Teacher Chen.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his face looked somewhat pale. He quickly walked up to me and swiftly shoved a small, slightly damp piece of paper into my hand. His fingers were cold and trembling slightly.
"You did nothing wrong," he said tightly, his lips pressed together as his eyes darted around nervously. His voice was low and hurried. "This might be useful. Take care."
With that, he turned abruptly and walked away with stiff strides, as if afraid of being seen. I watched his hurried figure disappear and tightened my grip on the paper in my hand. Standing in that corner, I looked at where he had vanished. The afternoon sunlight was pale, casting its light on the deserted concrete path.
Unfolding the note, I saw a website address for an internal reporting platform and a line of handwritten words: "Persist." A few days later, I received an anonymous encrypted email. The sender claimed to be a parent of a student in another city. He said that he saw sporadic discussions and vague fragments about my incident in the cracks of the strictly censored Internet. His child is also undergoing similar "intensive tutoring." The email included some disturbing details. He asked me if I could provide some experience or advice on how to protect my children. I stared at the screen, my fingers trembling a little. It turns out that I am not alone. It turns out that the seeds of resistance have quietly sprouted elsewhere. After the incident, Chen Shuo's parents finally woke up from their enthusiasm for high scores. They looked at their son's still empty eyes and were silent for a long time. Later, they put Chen Shuo's favorite drawing board and paints back in the most conspicuous place in his room. I went to see Chen Shuo once. He was still the same, with no reaction to the outside world. His mother took out the tube of dark blue paint from the paintbox, squeezed a little on the palette, and gently pulled up Chen Shuo's still empty fingers, trying to guide him to dip in the paint. Chen Shuo's fingers were stiff and unresponsive, allowing his mother's movements to control them, and the paint dripped onto the ground. The tears in his mother's eyes finally fell silently, but she did not wipe them off. Instead, she used her finger dipped in blue paint to tremble and paint a tiny, crooked, but upward-looking sun on Chen Shuo's blank canvas. It is said that when the investigation team came to the school to collect evidence, the cleaner Old Zhang was cleaning near their office and "accidentally" left some of the discarded medicine bottle labels with the words "CTX-Alpha" printed on them, as well as several torn pages of student diaries, in a corner where the investigators could easily find them. The diary fragments were filled with sentences of unknown meaning. At this moment, I am sitting in front of the window. The sky outside the window is dark and unclear, like dusk, or like a heavy rain is coming. I imagine Chen Shuo's room. Perhaps, just like now, there is not much light. But perhaps, there will be a faint ray of light, struggling to penetrate the clouds, or just squeeze in from the gap in the window frame, and fall on the blank canvas, illuminating the lonely and stubborn little sun painted by my mother's fingers with dark blue paint. It is crooked, but it seems to contain endless expectations and perseverance.
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