Chapter 25: The Eccentric Liu Sui

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What on earth was this guy hiding?

The lakeside was dark and eerie. I felt uneasy staying in such a cursed place, so I stopped pressing Jin Yuan for answers and pulled him toward the dormitory. This time, Jin Yuan was surprisingly obedient. As soon as I reached for him, he stood up of his own accord and walked ahead of me.

Following behind him, I still could not help asking, “Jin Yuan, are you all right?”

Jin Yuan turned around and flashed me a wide grin. “Li Xi, what’s gotten into you? I’m perfectly healthy. What could possibly be wrong?”

I stared at him, my thoughts in utter turmoil. Aside from the strange things he had said, I could see nothing abnormal about him. What on earth was this guy hiding?

We soon returned to the dormitory. When Li Xiang and Hu Tou saw me bringing Jin Yuan back, they hurried over and bombarded him with questions. Jin Yuan merely shook his head at them, smiling faintly as he climbed onto his bed.

Jin Yuan was from Guangdong, and for him, going a single day without a shower was practically unbearable. Yet today, he did not even bathe. The Jin Yuan now in our dormitory felt like an entirely different person.

Li Xiang and Hu Tou were clearly puzzled as well.

“Li Xi, what’s wrong with Jin Yuan? He seems really strange. Damn it, he’s even making me a little scared.”

“It’s nothing. Go to sleep.”

Li Xiang scratched his head and put on an anxious expression, as if he still wanted to say something. But I turned around and collapsed onto my own bed. Hu Tou said nothing, though his expression was just as peculiar.

Near midnight, I drifted into a deep, drowsy sleep. Sometime during the night, I seemed to hear a strange burst of laughter from the dormitory. But I was sleeping too soundly to pay it any attention.

The night passed without incident. When I woke the next morning, everything seemed normal. Jin Yuan was in good spirits and showed no apparent signs of trouble. The only difference was that, from that day onward, he seemed unwilling to stay with the rest of us in the dormitory. Instead, he often slipped out alone and did not return until evening.

I also discovered that, nearly every night around midnight, laughter could be heard in the dormitory. One night, I woke up and listened carefully. The laughter was coming from none other than Jin Yuan.

He lay alone on his bed. Apart from occasionally letting out a foolish chuckle, he would sometimes begin to weep.

He tormented me for several nights, leaving me unable to sleep. Gooseflesh kept rising all over my body in waves. Still, I did not question him. I simply watched him in silence from behind.

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That day, Jin Yuan went out as usual. Li Xiang also left to chase girls, while Fatty stayed in bed playing video games. I could not stop thinking about Jin Yuan’s trouble, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not let it go. In the end, I went alone to the lakeside where Jin Yuan’s incident had occurred.

The lakeside looked much as it always did, except that it was daytime now, and students sat everywhere, whispering sweetly to one another. Apart from them, a man with a face covered in stubble lay on the grass nearby, dressed in clothes that were extremely worn and tattered.

Hesitantly, I walked toward him and stopped at the edge of the grass, staring down at him. His eyes were tightly closed, and he seemed to be asleep. A few people by the lake turned to look, but none of them reacted. It was as if they could not see the man at all.

I had actually seen him before. He was a groundskeeper at our school—and a very strange one at that. He was not mute, yet no one had ever heard him speak. We had already spent more than half a semester at the school, but none of us knew his name or even his surname. Not even the dormitory supervisor, who had the most contact with him, knew.

His clothes were terribly shabby, and his face was covered in stubble, as though he did not care in the slightest about his appearance. Yet by chance, I had once seen the groundskeeper’s face and discovered that he was exceptionally handsome. There was also a certain quality about him—a cold, ruthless air. It suggested that he had been through a great deal in his life.

At the time, I had wondered why someone with such a fine face would not bother to tidy himself up.

Now, seeing him lying on the grass, I could not help taking a second look. Yet his eyes remained shut, and his body did not move at all. He looked as though he might be sleeping—or dead.

Perhaps driven by compassion, I momentarily forgot about Jin Yuan and walked toward the groundskeeper instead. I reached out to check whether he was breathing, wanting to find out whether the man was asleep or dead.

Never in my life would I have expected that, the instant I extended my hand, the world would suddenly spin around me. The next moment, I was sprawled on the grass, something pressing down on my back so hard that I could barely breathe.

What had happened?

What had just occurred?

I was completely stunned and had not the slightest idea what was going on. To be honest, I did not even know how I had been thrown to the ground and pinned there. His movements had been so fast that I had not had time to react. If my back had not been throbbing with pain, I would have thought I was dreaming.

The man who had just knocked me down was the groundskeeper?

At that thought, I turned my head slightly. The groundskeeper, who had been lying on the grass moments earlier, was now staring down at me with an icy expression. The instant our eyes met, he released my hand, rose coldly to his feet, and walked away.

I watched his retreating back as my heartbeat began to quicken, faster and faster. After he had gone some distance, I climbed to my feet and shouted, “Hey, wait!”

The groundskeeper stopped and turned his head halfway. In a frigid voice, he said, “What is it? I injured you. Do you want compensation for your medical expenses?”

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As he spoke, he reached into the pouch at his waist. Finally, he tossed a thick stack of renminbi onto the grass. Then he turned his head away and continued walking.

I stepped over the money and hurried after him. “No, I didn’t ask you to pay my medical expenses. Wait a moment.”

He stopped again and said without turning around, “Then what is it? I still have work to do. I have no time to stand here chatting with you.”

I ran up behind him before saying, “I just want to get to know you. What’s your name?”

“Names aren’t important.”

After leaving me with that cold remark, he started walking again. I did not call out to him this time. I merely stood there, silently watching his back.

The money he had thrown lay scattered on the ground. He had not taken it with him. Clearly, he did not care about it in the slightest.

I turned around. The students who had been sitting by the lake, flirting with one another, were all staring at me in shock. Several young girls had their mouths open wide enough to swallow an egg.

“That groundskeeper is so cool.”

“Yeah, he’s really cool. How come I never noticed before?”

I glanced at the money on the ground and squatted down helplessly to pick it up. I would find a chance to return it to him—and I was determined to get acquainted with him.

Come to think of it, the school ought to have his records. I was familiar with the administrator; perhaps I could look him up.

With that thought, I glanced once more in the direction the groundskeeper had gone.

I saw that he had already stopped. He was holding a pair of tongs and picking up litter from the ground.

There was something deeply strange about this man.

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