Trafford’s Trading Club

Superiors let subordinates wait, leaders had workers wait, and teachers let students keep waiting… all of these might be a habit.

He came to the school, arriving at the dean’s office. Yet, didn’t see the teacher he should talk to.

Instead, he saw his only classmate.

Zhang Qingrui sat on the bench with him. Luo Qiu sat at the left end and Ms. Zhang sat at the right.

The two didn’t keep a distance on purpose nor intended to get close. Just sitting like this like, like the distance of their seats in the classroom.

The rain was not heavy or light outside, the aisle was dim and depressing.

It was not convenient to check the account book now. So Luo Qiu logged in to his Quora account and found some new responses to his question.

It was from the same person—‘Golden Eyes’, who answered from last time who replied, ‘It might be from Gospel of Judas’.

It probably meant whether you had verified the source of those ancient words or not. Golden Eyes said he was a student majoring in ancient characters and was recently planning to work on a project about the research of ancient characters. Therefore, he was interested in the words that Luo Qiu posted.

‘Golden Eyes’ left his email address for Luo Qiu.

Luo Qiu didn’t reply to his request in a hurry. However, an unspeakable feeling arose. If he established a relationship with Golden Eyes, something unpredictable might happen.

He thought for a minute but didn’t greet Golden Eyes; instead, he registered a common email, and sent his email address to him.

Pa, pa, pa… pa.

The sound made Ms. Zhang look around curiously. She took a glance at Luo Qiu first, but saw that he didn’t react, so she looked towards his direction.

Zhang Qingrui saw a little girl that was about 6-7 years old, in the dim aisle at 3:30 p.m.

The little girl wore a dress with a blue and white plaid. Her face was slightly pale… Zhang Qingrui couldn’t see her appearance. She could only see her side face and behavior.

The little girl lowered her head, tapping the dark red ball.

Pa, pa, pa, pa.

The ball jumped one time after another, with a steady sense of rhythm. But her clothes were totally wet, water was dropping from her hair.

Zhang Qingrui frowned. When she was about to go there, that little girl held the ball and turned around.

“Ah…”

Ms. Zhang let out a low scream all of a sudden and her body stepped back slightly.

Big eyes, wet hair sticking on the cheeks and the bowknot hair clasp, all these didn’t impress Ms. Zhang as deeply as the little girl’s mouth.

Her mouth… was badly mutilated. It was even sewn with needlework!

…

The frightened Ms. Zhang covered her mouth tightly with her hands. Yet in a blink of an eye, that little girl ran away quickly in front of her.

“Luo, Luo Qiu, did you see her?” Zhang Qingrui moved her pale face and focused on Luo Qiu who was sitting on the other side.

Yet Luo Qiu was still gazing at his cellphone, didn’t raise his head.

“What did you see?” Luo Qiu didn’t raise his head.

“Just…” Zhang Qingrui gaped. Looking at the place where the little girl stayed— the floor that should have been soaked with water dripping from the little girl’s body now seemed dry.

A chill ran over the whole body of Zhang Qingrui. She couldn’t forget the scene of the little girl’s sewn mouth.

“Sound, didn’t you hear any sounds just now?”

Now, Luo Qiu looked up, looking right ahead of him— the door of the dean’s office. He stood up and said, “I’ve heard it, let’s go in.”

“The two students, come in!”

That was the teacher’s voice. Zhang Qingrui looked inside of the dean’s office. She had an impulse e to say that the sound was not from the teacher. However, she stopped even though the words were on the tip of her tongue.

She followed Luo Qiu with full thoughts, walking into the dean’s office.

There was a teacher, Teacher Wang, in the office. She led two students to a small room and had them sit down.

Teacher Wang, who was over 30 years old, wore glasses accompanied with a dynamic short haircut. A female at this age could look good in today’s society.

Zhang Qingrui took a glance at the ring finger of Ms. Wang’s left hand. There was a light ring trace there. It was probably because she took it off recently, so it hadn’t yet returned to its original skin colour.

‘Did she get a divorce recently?’…

“During these two days, we received Qin Fang’s family member…” Teacher Wang remained silent for a while, “It’s your teacher. According to his family member, Professor Qin passed away due to a sudden heart attack. And we already received the death report of the professor.”

Zhang Qingrui frowned. She recalled the incident happened at the underground graveyard in Ulan Bator but now… how did his family member get this death report?

The professor seemed to have only one family member, Qin Chuyu, Miss Qin?

“We’re very sorry to hear about the misfortune of Professor Qin Fang. Anyway, the dead can’t be brought back to life. You two please take things easily.” Teacher Wang spoke slowly, “The reason why we called the two of you to come today is for your opinion for further lessons.”

Teacher Wang said, “The majors of the both of you… you should be able to understand this on your own too. The university authority has set a plan for you so that we can provide assistance in changing the majors. If so, we’re going to add an additional course during summer holiday to try to help you to catch up with the learning progress before the next semester…”

While Luo Qiu asked, “Is there some other arrangement?”

Teacher Wang nodded, “In addition to that, we can try to find a new teacher for you. Even though you two are Year 2 students, due to the uniqueness of your major, basically a professor would be in charge of students for sophomores. Year 3 and Year 4 students will be doing research in other places led by other professors… Or we could let a professor that teaches freshmen to come teach you both. We can communicate with them. Otherwise, I’m afraid that we have to wait for some new teacher to come. But it’ll take a longer time.”

Teacher Wang smiled, “Of course, the university will give the two of you some time to consider it.”

Luo Qiu nodded.

Yet Zhang Qingrui was shocked suddenly, “Teacher… that item…”

She pointed at a cabinet in this small room. There was a small, dark red… ball in it!