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墨書 Inktalez
My fingers trembled as I pressed the last digit on the keyboard, and the monitor suddenly flickered to life. Through the moldy glass of the surveillance room, I could hear Li Qiang cursing as he kicked a Storage Locker at the end of the hallway—inside was the Transfer Student whose ribs he had broken last week.
“It worked!” The moment I plugged in the USB drive, Xiao Ya suddenly grabbed my shoulder from behind. The cold sweat on her palm seeped through my school uniform, mingling with the beads of sweat on my neck. The blue light from the screen reflected off her glasses, and I saw my pale face mirrored in that cold glow.
In the video, Li Qiang was slamming a girl’s snail-shell curls against the wall. I recognized that strand of hair—last Wednesday evening, I had found similar curled strands in a girls' restroom stall, stained with rust-colored blood. The image suddenly shook violently, red splatters obscuring most of the view, but I could clearly hear the dean's voice: “Clean it up, leave no traces.”
Xiao Ya suddenly turned my chin towards her, her fingers surprisingly strong: “Breathe!” It was then that I realized I was biting my lip hard enough to draw blood. When she pulled the damp USB drive from my hand, my fingerprints were still visible on its metal casing.
That night when we discovered the ledger behind the water tank on the rooftop, spring rain had swollen the pages. Li Qiang ’s signature danced across the reimbursement form, and on the same page was a yellowed receipt from the XX Psychological Counseling Center, indicating a three-year treatment plan with the payee listed as the Transfer Student’s mother. As Xiao Ya sliced open the ledger cover with a utility knife, a photo fell out from between its layers— Li Qiang had his arm around the dean’s shoulders, with a backdrop of a principal's office adorned with a banner proclaiming “Outstanding Alumni.”
“His father is a school board member.” Xiao Ya picked up the photo with tweezers, raindrops dripping from her bangs onto the yellowed paper. “Three years ago during the library renovation…” She suddenly fell silent as a beam of light from a security guard’s flashlight appeared in the distance.
That night we kissed in the specimen cabinet of the biology lab, formaldehyde stinging our eyes. When Xiao Ya pressed a voice recorder into my palm, its metal casing still held her warmth. “They’re going to destroy the server hard drives tomorrow,” she whispered, her teeth grazing my earlobe. “During the anniversary celebration, the key to the broadcast room is in the third drawer of the academic affairs director’s desk.”
I stared at the blinking red indicator light on the control panel, my sweaty palms slipping on the keyboard. Xiao Ya was prying open an air duct with a hairpin; today she had braided her long hair into twists—last night we had hidden in the equipment room while she taught me how to braid this complex style and said, “If it fails, just pull it apart and use it as a knot.”
As Li Qiang ’s curses erupted from the loudspeakers, I was pouring water over the main circuit board. The auditorium filled with screams like cold water splashed into boiling oil. The dean’s furious shout cut through: “This is forged! Turn it off! Turn it off now!” But what followed was his own words—“clean it up”—mixed with whispers from the finance director haggling over details.
Suddenly, Xiao Ya pulled me through a hidden door in the podium; as her braid brushed against my nose, I caught a faint scent of disinfectant. The cramped space we were curled up in began to shake as thousands stirred outside. When police sirens pierced through the chaos, I noticed flecks of gold dust clinging to her eyelashes, glimmering faintly in the dark.
“You’re shaking so much.” She suddenly bit my earlobe; pain jolted me back to reality. In the beam of light filtering through the door crack, Li Qiang ’s Chelsea boots stomped heavily over scattered evidence photos. The limited edition watch on his wrist glinted just like the amount listed on that golf club membership receipt tucked within our ledger.
As we rushed out through a side door of the auditorium hand in hand, dawn broke through rain clouds. The police car lights painted the entire tree-lined path in swirling red and blue hues; I caught a glimpse of the dean’s bald head passing by a car window. Xiao Ya suddenly pulled me under a cherry blossom tree; as petals fell into her collar, I tasted mint lingering on her lips.
"Breathe," she said again, this time with a smile. It was then that I realized I was crying, tears washing away a trail of golden powder stuck to her neck. In the distance, I heard the familiar sound of a camera shutter; the Transfer Student, who always photographed the sky, was now aiming the lens at the figure being led into a police car.
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