48 Hours a Day

“Don’t take it too seriously,” Zhang Heng said.

“If you are right, I really pity Teacher He.”

“This is life... We all have our own difficulties to face.” Zhang Heng fiddled with the gel pen in his hand.

“It sounds old-fashioned, but you are right,” Bai Qing sighed and placed her chin on the desk, “My dad and my mom have been giving me a headache recently.”

“Headache... and why would that be?” Zhang Heng’s expression changed, and he clamped the rotating gel pen with his index and middle fingers.

“I think I told you about it before. My dad has begun socializing less with his client, and he now comes home early. However, they quarreled again last night, and this time, it was a long argument. They didn’t want to let me listen to what they were fighting about, and when I went to the bathroom at night, I saw my mother crying in the living room. She just sat there, and her surroundings were pitch black.”

“Did you comfort her?”

“No, I went back to my room,” Bai Qing said.

“Huh?” Zhang Heng snorted softly. “From the time I found out about their dispute, they had always been quarreling over trivial matters. I guess this is how they run their marriage. When my mother was young, many men had their eyes on her. She would party every day, but in the end, I guess that she wanted to live a stable life, and she married my dad. After they were married, however, she kept getting the feeling that she was married to the wrong man. At that time, my dad was just a small-time technician. His world revolved around technology, and he knew nothing about romance.

“My mother had always told me that if it were not for me, they would have gotten divorced. As I got older, they argued less frequently. At that time, my dad went through a rather large change. He began learning how to socialize. Later, he quit his job to start his own company, and when the business had become stable, he started coming home late. So my mother began to suspect that he had an affair... So is this what marriage looks like?”

“Well, many marriages do indeed look like this.”

“Then, marriage is a scary thing.” “You shouldn’t be worrying about this sort of thing yet. A friend once told me, don’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet,” Zhang Heng said.

“Don’t you boys ever wonder who you will marry in the future?”

“About that, it’s a useless thought at the moment... We will know when the time comes,” Zhang Heng said. “Eh...”

The bell rang, and the teacher opened the door and walked into the classroom.

Immediately, Bai Qing straightened up herself. “Ah, did I talk too much? I haven’t even told any of these to my best friend.”

“You’ll feel better after you let it out of your chest. And as I said, you can tell me about your dad’s abnormal behaviors anytime you want,” replied Zhang Heng.

“So that you can continue to study the subject of emotion serving as a trigger for crimes? I’ll pass. Although my parents always quarrel, they are not going to kill each other.” Bai Qing finished the last sentence quickly, pulling out her biology textbook from her schoolbag.

Zhang Heng had almost completely forgotten how he spent his high school years. Whether it was the phoenix trees outside the window or the sound of playing from the playground, they now seemed so foreign and unfamiliar.

And he did not remember too much about Bai Qing as well, who was sitting next to him, paying attention to the class. There were no such things as aliens in the real world. Although the relationship between the two was amicable, they were classmates, and they did not go beyond that. She did not meet him at Wanda Plaza. The two had never eaten KFC together. Zhang Heng had also never listened to Bai Qing discuss her family matters.

After going to college, the two gradually lost contact with each other, just like most of his other friends in high school. Everyone met new friends in college, and each began to have new circles. Most of them did not meet up after that, and Zhang Heng only remembered that Bai Qing was enrolled in Fudan University.

Zhang Heng spent another day falling asleep in class. At the end of the last period, all the students in the class were almost gone. Bai Qing’s gel pen was still scribbled on the paper, and she handed her finished homework to Zhang Heng after a while. Once she entered her learning state, she would become as efficient as a machine.

“Well, this is the last one.”

“Thank you.” Zhang Heng took the homework from her and put them in his backpack. After thinking about it, he had been copying her homework for some time now. And Bai Qing even treated him to a KFC meal. He felt awful about it, so he took out his phone and checked on something

“Are you free Friday night?”

“Huh?”

“I will take you to a place after school.”

“Oh.” Bai Qing nodded. She did not know why she said yes to Zhang Heng. Her mother had been telling her to keep her distance from boys to protect herself. Traveling with a boy at night was something that her mother would never agree with. Perhaps it was because Zhang Heng had always given her a sense of security. Besides, he had “saved” her once, and it was hard to put her guard up against him. Thus, she unconsciously agreed to Zhang Heng’s proposal. “Oh, by the way, you can bring a friend with you. And I will bring a friend too.” Zhang Heng realized that Bai Qing might feel uncomfortable if she was the only girl that went with him. “Okay.” Bai Qing picked up her schoolbag as she bashfully bit her lower lip, “Then... see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.” After school, most students would either go home and slog on homework or make plans with each other. As for Zhang Heng, he had to work on the investigation immediately.

Zhang Heng hadn’t gained much information about the river, and he quickly realized that perhaps he had been heading in the wrong direction. Perhaps he should no longer be focussing on the three children but on what they found or discovered instead. What caused those creatures to attack them? Maybe their past lives could yield some answers? Zhang Heng found a school that one of the kids used to attend. He tore a piece of paper from his exercise book and wrote down the name of the school. An elementary school should have ended all their classes by now, but fortunately, the class teacher’s name was printed on the news. So, Zhang Heng took a taxi to the elementary school.

At that time, all the students had basically left the school and had returned home. The school’s gates, however, remained unlocked.

king for only a few steps, Zhang Heng was stopped by the security guard. “What are you here for?” the guard asked.

“Oh, I booked the badminton court at 7:00 in the evening, and my friend has already arrived,” Zhang Heng said calmly and confidently.

Many elementary and junior high schools had indoor gymnasiums. To generate some extra revenue, the indoor gymnasium would be opened to the public during non-schooling hours. Zhang Heng had checked everything out when he was in the car, which was why he knew exactly what to say at a time like this.