They All Say I've Met a Ghost

17

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Why had he suddenly gotten off the train to carpool back?

I thought about it, then called Xiao Ning, but by now I didn't have a single bar of reception left. The coverage in the abandoned hospital must have been spotty.

"Back to back, such a comfort. Back to back, nice and warm."

Tan Xiaoming's voice didn't stop. I couldn't help sitting up and asking, "Xiao Ming, do you want to sleep in the same bed with me?"

But as soon as I sat up, he stopped talking. Was he shy?

To be honest, I didn't particularly want to share a bed with Tan Xiaoming. Most of the installations in the morgue had already been taken away. There were only a few broken down single beds, between 90 and 100cm wide. It was a little cramped for an adult man to sleep in, never mind two people.

If Tan Xiaoming wanted to sleep in the same bed with me, we would have to sleep very close together: the "back to back" posture he had described, or else I would have to hold him.

Imagine an adult male sexually attracted to men, sleeping in a single bed with a 13 or 14-year-old boy in his arms; it was no different than a 26-year-old male teacher holding a female middle school student. The image was truly unsightly. It absolutely wouldn't do.

I could only say, "Xiao Ming, it's not convenient for us to sleep in the same bed. If you're cold, let's go back to my dormitory. The room is empty, and there's a bed in it."

Under these pressing circumstances, I was willing to shell out money for a taxi. Xiao Ming was so frail, he wouldn't be able to bike home with me.

Tan Xiaoming didn't speak. I took this as silent refusal. Adolescents could easily enter a rebellious stage, and given his domestic situation, it would be difficult for him to accept a new environment.

Today was my first formal day of teaching. Between them, Tan Xiaoming and Mu Huaitong had really made me feel that it was no easy task being a teacher. When I was a student, I couldn’t stand my teachers. I’d thought that they were always making trouble.

But now that I was a teacher, I found that managing this many students, preventing them from going astray, worrying about their studies and their lives, really was a difficult matter.

It was a long and serious path.

I thought that although I couldn't sleep with Xiao Ming, I certainly couldn't let him continue being so lonely. I had to help him rejoin society and become a healthy and active young man, instead of someone who hid in a morgue trying to scare his teacher.

I tossed my phone on the bed, hopped up and walked to the corner where Tan Xiaoming was sleeping. As I approached, I said cautiously, "Xiao Ming, it's all right if you can't sleep. I'll keep you company. But I can't sleep in the same bed as you. How about this: you sleep here, and I'll sit beside the bed to keep you company."

So what if I had to sleep sitting on the ground? It was all for my students.

However, when I came to the corner, there was only an empty bed. At some point the child had crept out of his bed without making a sound. Of course, it may have happened while I was chatting with Xiao Ning. I'd had my whole heart focused on waiting for Ning Tiance's responses. I wouldn't have noticed anything going on around me.

That was a dereliction of duty on my part.

Had he run away, or was he still hiding in this room?

"Xiao Ming? Xiao Ming?" I whispered Tan Xiaoming's name in the morgue for a while without getting a response. I went to the door and saw that the handle had been blocked from inside with a wooden bar. That couldn't have been done from the outside, so that meant no one had gone out that door.