Sweeping Mouse Ridge – Chapter Five : 4

After obtaining Ms. Zhu Min’s contact information from the personnel department of Xijiao No. 2 Middle School, Guo Xiaofen and Ma Xiaozhong spent a long time discussing how to phrase their visit so that Ms. Zhu wouldn’t refuse it. However, after dialing the number and explaining their purpose, Ms. Zhu said in a crisp, radish-like voice, “Come on in, come on in! My home isn’t far from the school.”

They bought some fruit downstairs and knocked on Ms. Zhu’s door. Ms. Zhu invited them into her study, poured them water, and even peeled a pear for each of them. Guo Xiaofen felt bad for making an old lady run around like that, while Ma Xiaozhong, while munching on his pear, stared at the mountain of books piled high on the bookshelves and desk, so thick you couldn’t even stick a razor blade in them.

“Sit down and let’s chat; sit down and let’s chat,” Ms. Zhu said, pointing to the sofa. She was in her early sixties, quite thin, but with bright eyes and short, graying hair that gave her a very capable look.

Ma Xiaozhong plopped down, pointing to a stack of notebooks spread out on the table, and said, “You are retired; why are you still here contributing your remaining energy?”

“I had nothing to do after retirement, so I opened a tutoring class in the community to help students preparing for the college entrance exam.” Teacher Zhu couldn’t help but laugh at his constant clicking of his teeth. “I bet you weren’t a very studious student, were you?”

“Actually, I’ve always been quite smart, but I just couldn’t get along with textbooks,” Ma Xiaozhong said shamelessly, pouting widely. “It’s all my mom’s fault. Before I was born, she went to the temple to pray to the God of Literature, but then she realized she might have prayed to the God of War instead…”

Guo Xiaofen, who was drinking water, spat it out on the floor, and Teacher Zhu couldn’t stop laughing.

“So, how was Zhou Liping’s academic performance in high school? Was he like me?” Ma Xiaozhong seemingly casually steered the conversation towards a more serious topic.

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Teacher Zhu paused, her expression suddenly becoming somewhat dazed, as if lost in memories of the past. After a long while, she slowly said, “Zhou Liping…ah, his grades were average, but he was completely different from you. He was a very cowardly child…”

Ma Xiaozhong and Guo Xiaofen exchanged startled glances. This was the first time they had heard someone describe Zhou Liping as “cowardly” since they began working on the Sweeping Mouse Ridge Case—and in their view, the word “cowardly” should never be associated with a ruthless murderer.

Teacher Zhu stood up, walked to the row of bookshelves against the wall, made from old-fashioned modular cabinets, opened a door, took out a photo album, dusted it off, slowly flipped through it, and pulled out one photo: “Look, this is a group photo taken when I took the students to Yunshui Cave in our second year of high school. The one on the far left in the top row is Zhou Liping.”

In the photo, the students in the first few rows were sitting on the steps, while the last row was standing. Some were making peace signs behind others’ heads, some were making heart shapes with their friends, some were pulling each other’s ears and grinning, and some were sweetly snuggling together, all smiling broadly. Only Zhou Liping, wearing a black jacket, stood alone, expressionless, like a wooden stake, keeping a distance from the other students.

“When he first started high school, he was quite different. He was withdrawn and didn’t like to talk. He wasn’t good looking to begin with; he had severe acne and a dirty mustache, making him look like a monster. So, his classmates didn’t like him, but no one dared to mess with him because they were all intimidated by his fierce appearance. Later, a thug outside of school robbed him on his way home. He had no money and was beaten up a few times. Our class had a lot of troublemakers, and we had a strong sense of community. We felt that if a classmate was bullied, we had to stand up for him. A whole bunch of us caught the thug and called Zhou Liping to beat him up to vent our anger. When Zhou Liping arrived, he said that the thug hadn’t actually hit him; he was just playing around… After that, all the classmates looked down on him, thinking he was a coward. Later, I asked Zhou Liping, ‘Why didn’t you hit the thug when your classmates told you to?’ He said, ‘I was afraid he’d retaliate later,’ then paused and added, ‘I felt sorry for that kid; he was trembling with fear, so I thought I’d just let it go…'” Teacher Zhu said, “That’s just the kind of person he is. He looks fierce, but once you get to know him, you realize he’s very weak. He doesn’t like causing trouble; he lives in his own little world…”

“What kind of world’s that?” Guo Xiaofen interjected.

“The inner world of every middle school student is ultimately a contradictory mix of openness and closedness; they want to open their hearts, yet they fear being hurt. Comparatively, Zhou Liping is perhaps more closed off,” said Teacher Zhu. “At first, I didn’t understand him either. Later, I discovered that he always lingered at school after class, sitting alone on the windowsill, staring blankly at the gradually darkening campus. Sometimes I would work overtime grading homework, finishing around 8 or 9 p.m., and he would still be sitting in the classroom. I would ask him why he didn’t go home, and he would say he had nowhere to go… He was abandoned by his biological parents, and his adoptive parents, his elder aunt treated him poorly, only giving him the bare minimum for living expenses. It wasn’t exactly abuse, but it wasn’t much better than keeping a dog. He wore that black jacket from his first year of high school to his third, it was practically faded from washing and he never changed it. Kids from houses like that often lack warmth and were prone to developing distorted personalities… You can see I have a straightforward temper, especially with boys. I teach them to act like boys, I encourage them to be brave, and I tell them that many great people grow up in loneliness and hardship. He especially liked listening to me talk about these things, and we gradually opened up to each other… I treat every student like my own child. Of course, not all students necessarily saw me as a mother, but Zhou Liping was definitely closer to me and trusts me more. He said ‘Having a teacher like you is a blessing for a student!'”

Teacher Zhu smiled and said, “Actually, there’s a secret to understanding students’ hearts: look at their essays. The quieter a child is, the more likely they are to reveal their true feelings in their writing. Zhou Liping isn’t very eloquent; he doesn’t like descriptions or metaphors in his essays, but his perspective’s quite peculiar. I remember one spring outing; I took the students to the park to admire the flowers. When we came back and I assigned an essay, everyone else wrote about how beautiful the flowers were; some more literary ones even wrote about Daiyu burying flowers, but only Zhou Liping wrote about a garden at night.”

“A garden at night?” Ma Xiaozhong didn’t understand. “Did he later wander around the garden in the middle of the night?”

“No, he just imagined the garden at night—the wind, the cold, the pitch black, and so on. He said the most beautiful thing about flowers isn’t their blooming but their withering. But flowers mostly wither at night, and yet no one can see them. This ‘resolute determination in the darkness, never pitying oneself,’ is the true beauty…”

“That’s interesting…” Ma Xiaozhong muttered.

“Interesting? I was terrified when I saw it, afraid he’d commit suicide. Teenagers treat life like instant noodles, thinking the finer the crumbs, the better,” Teacher Zhu said with a wry smile. “Later, I gradually calmed down because Zhou Liping started working out. Dumbbells, parallel bars, punching bags, and stuff like that. During breaks, even when it was raining outside, while other students stayed indoors, he’d run laps around the track shirtless. He’d catch a cold on the way back, and everyone laughed at him, but he wouldn’t say anything, just silently blow his nose… He ran like that for a year, and now he doesn’t even catch a cold running in the snow anymore, let alone in the rain.”

“That’s quite unusual,” Guo Xiaofen said. “I heard he was disciplined by the school for molesting a girl. What happened?”

“That incident was just a misunderstanding,” Teacher Zhu said. “Once in class, a male student sitting in the same row as Zhou Liping, but with a girl between them, borrowed his notes to copy. When he returned them, the girl had just stood up to answer a question and was about to sit down. The boy, being mischievous, deliberately threw the notebook on the girl’s chair. Zhou Liping went to get it, and the girl sat down, her bottom landing squarely on Zhou Liping’s hand… That girl’s the child of a school leader and is usually arrogant. This didn’t end there; in the end, Zhou Liping received a demerit to settle the matter.”

“But during the investigation of the Western Suburbs Serial Murders, this demerit was crucial evidence proving the validity of the police’s Criminal Personality Analysis!” Guo Xiaofen’s eyes widened. “Didn’t he defend himself when he was given the demerit?”

“He argued a couple of times, but seeing it was useless, he fell silent,” Teacher Zhu said. “Perhaps he had accumulated too much bitterness and suffered too many grievances; he seemed numb to the punishments he received. I remember the disciplinary decision was announced by the head of student affairs in the main playground, with a microphone, to the entire school. Under everyone’s gaze, he remained completely expressionless. The classmate who borrowed his notes and then tricked him was terrified of retaliation, but he was not. He just spoke even less to his classmates after that.”

“Such a person…” Guo Xiaofen sighed softly. “Were there any girls in the class who liked him?”

Teacher Zhu hesitated for a moment: “I don’t know if Fang Mei counts…”

“Fang Mei? The girl he almost raped and murdered?”

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“Yes, that’s her,” Teacher Zhu said, pointing to a girl in the group photo: she was sitting on the steps, very thin, with a sickly face, her smile somewhat restrained, her hand tightly gripping the strap of her red travel bag, as if afraid it would be stolen.

“This child’s quite pitiful. Her parents divorced, and she lived with her father. She’s incredibly timid, speaking and acting like a mouse, cowering and hesitant. If bullied, she wouldn’t even dare to cry out loud. In her second year of high school, Zhou Liping was her deskmate. Perhaps they shared similar experiences, and they gradually became closer. In their final year, when studies were intense, they even tutored each other. Some mischievous classmates went around telling everyone they were a couple, and Fang Mei was terrified. She distanced herself from Zhou Liping, but they were together again soon after. I remember Fang Mei loved reading comic books, so Zhou Liping used the money he earned from working at restaurants and convenience stores to buy them for her… It was more like giving them away for free.”

Guo Xiaofen suddenly asked, “Teacher Zhu, do you remember what kind of books Zhou Liping liked to read?”

Teacher Zhu thought for a moment: “He’s read quite a few martial arts novels… Compared to other students, he probably prefers detective novels, like Sherlock Holmes. I remember at the beginning of senior year, the school conducted a survey to see what their college application choices were. Zhou Liping said he wanted to go to police academy. I joked with him, asking if he’d read too many detective novels. He shook his head and said, ‘If I wear a police uniform, no one will dare bully me.'”

Hearing that a serial killer’s college application was to become a policeman, Ma Xiaozhong and Guo Xiaofen were once again incredulous. Equally unbelievable was that Zhou Liping’s reason for applying to police academy—to avoid being bullied.

Teacher Zhu sighed, “Who would have thought that just two months later he would commit such a serious crime? When the police came to me to inquire about Zhou Liping’s school activities, I firmly stated that Zhou Liping could never be the murderer. But after he got out, he… I still feel like something’s wrong. I know my student; he isn’t that kind of person!”

Guo Xiaofen tentatively asked, “I’ve looked into that case. The perpetrator mostly committed his crimes around 10 p.m. Do you remember anything unusual about Zhou Liping during those days? Didn’t he often stay in the classroom until very late? Can you recall, for example, that Zhou Liping might not have left the school when a certain crime occurred…?”

“Oh, I already answered that when the police came to the school to investigate back then. I didn’t know what Zhou Liping was doing during the time those cases occurred. Senior year was demanding, and as a homeroom teacher, I was focused on grades; I really didn’t have time for anything else… Zhou Liping’s grades were average; he was someone the school ‘abandoned,’ and he knew it himself. When The Wynners came to the city for a concert, he worked as a scalper for a few days, reselling tickets. Because he didn’t pay his commission to the scalper boss on time, he got a beating. When I went to the police station to pick him up, the blood on his face hadn’t even been wiped off. I was furious. On the way back, I asked him, ‘With your grades, do you really think you can get into the police academy?’ He was silent for a long time before slowly saying that he knew his grades meant he wouldn’t get into the police academy…”

“Shouldn’t the police station notify a family member first in this kind of situation? Why didn’t his elder aunt come?” Ma Xiaozhong seemed a little confused.

Teacher Zhu smiled wryly. “His elder aunt—I was Zhou Liping’s homeroom teacher for three years, and I only met her once. She never comes to parent-teacher conferences. In my opinion, Zhou Liping’s practically an orphan. The time he was beaten by scalpers, he gave the police my phone number directly. Later, I called his elder aunt to try and discuss the matter, but she was very impatient and said she didn’t want to get involved. After the college entrance exam, she planned to rent out that basement room and would have nothing to do with Zhou Liping anymore. Then she went on and on about how much money and effort she had spent on him, sounding like a con artist narrating her injuries.”

Guo Xiaofen thought for a moment and continued, “After he was released from prison, did he come to see you?”

“At first, I knew he was out, and I waited for him to come see me. But he didn’t come, and I waited and waited. Okay, then I went to find him. I went to the neighborhood committee and asked where he lived. I climbed upstairs and knocked on the door, but he wasn’t home… When I got home, he came to see me that evening. He was taller than he had been eight years ago, dark and thin, but looked more robust, and his expression was colder. It was I who started crying first. I couldn’t help but ask him why he did such bad things back then, hurting so many people. When he saw me crying, his face twitched, his eyes reddened, and he kept saying, ‘Teacher, I’m not a bad person. I didn’t kill all those people.’ I said, ‘Are you even speaking human language? Killing even one person’s wrong!'” At this point, Teacher Zhu took off her glasses and vigorously wiped her eyes.

The room was quiet. The afternoon sun streamed in through the window, and some dust, like stirred memories, drifted in the air.

“Before he left, I asked him if he needed any help, and he said no… After that, he never came to see me again. Maybe he felt he had let me down, but I still think about him, and thinking of him makes me incredibly sad… I’ve been a teacher my whole life. Some of my students are exceptionally outstanding, but most of them lead ordinary lives, which is fine. Only this student, only this one, makes me feel both resentful and heartbroken when I think of him.” As she spoke, tears welled up in Teacher Zhu’s eyes again. “At the end of August this year, his class had a reunion to celebrate their tenth graduation anniversary. They invited me, and I asked if I should invite Zhou Liping, which caused the class monitor to come to my house to tell me that the classmates didn’t want Zhou Liping to attend because he had brought shame to the school, the class, and all the classmates…”

Guo Xiaofen asked, “Are you still in contact with Fang Mei? How’s she doing?”

“Why haven’t you been in contact? After her father died, the school sent several teachers to take care of her, including myself, taking turns tutoring her. She eventually got into a very good university, worked hard after graduation, and is now an HR person at a large company. She got married this spring; the wedding was held at the Four Seasons Hotel, and I even attended.”

“So, didn’t Zhou Liping contact Fang Mei after he was released from prison?”

Hearing this question, Teacher Zhu paused noticeably, then said vaguely, “No… I’m not quite sure.”

Guo Xiaofen and Ma Xiaozhong both sensed that Teacher Zhu might know something, but it was clear that they couldn’t get any information from her.

As they were leaving, Ms. Zhu saw them to the door. In the dimly lit hallway, she suddenly asked Ma Xiaozhong, “Officer Ma, is Zhou Liping doomed this time?”

“If he really did the Sweeping Mouse Ridge Case…” Ma Xiaozhong paused, then asked, “Would you still go to see him one last time?”

Ms. Zhu didn’t answer, her expression of despair like that of a mother receiving a death notice for her son.