Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 122 The Teacher's Kindness

"Would you like some drinks?" Xu Yinqiu asked. "We have all kinds of drinks in the refrigerator."

“Anything is fine as long as it’s not lime juice,” Jiang Jin replied.

"Then how about sugar-free iced cola? What about you, leader?"

Yu Tianlun replied, "Then I'll do the same."

While the projection screen was still displaying the production company logo and cast and crew credits before the movie, Xu Yinqiu grabbed three cans of Coke.

Jiang Jin said thank you, took the Coke, and opened the can just as the movie officially started.

The first thing you see is a child blowing paper windmills, and then you can see that it's a classroom where several students are playing.

A girl made a paper crown and put it on the head of her female teacher.

The scene then shifts to the beach, where several children are playing in the water, while a heavily pregnant teacher stands on the shore. Suddenly, the teacher begins to bleed from her genitals.

Is she about to miscarry?

Soon the movie scene switched to the female teacher being rushed to the hospital.

What follows is a series of fast-paced montages, so much so that the audience can't keep up with the information.

A female teacher gave birth on the operating table in a hospital, and a hand, covered in blood and obviously swollen beyond recognition, emerged from her body.

A man picked up the swaddled baby, about to throw the child; he might be the female teacher's husband.
A man committed domestic violence against a female teacher, shoving her to the ground;
The man picked up the child, took him to the basement, and locked the door.

Finally, the female teacher shouted outside the door, but the man hanged himself in the basement!
Xu Yinqiu immediately translated the female teacher's words: "Yingmin, quickly open the door!"

Then, the man hanged himself, and the camera slowly moved to the side, revealing the back of a boy sitting at a table. The boy was writing, and his right hand was extremely oddly shaped, with a small thumb and four other fingers that were too swollen and thick, making it impossible for him to hold a pen like a normal person.

Then, the boy slowly turned his head, revealing the left side of his face.

Jiang Jin, who was drinking cola, paused slightly in the hand holding the can.

The boy's lower cheeks were strangely bulging, his skin and flesh were taut and stiff, and a row of protruding, deformed teeth were visible through his half-open lips!

In this way, the series of images in this montage can be fully explained.

The female teacher gave birth to a deformed child, which drove her husband to the brink of mental collapse. He eventually locked the child in the basement and hanged himself next to the child there.

The director's storytelling skills are evident; the smooth editing achieves the most efficient narrative, establishing a terrifying and oppressive atmosphere in the first minute or two, which further attracts the audience to continue watching the story.

Then, the screen went black, and the title "Teacher's Grace" appeared.

Thus begins this terrifying story.

After that initial montage, the film begins with a horrific bloodbath.

The female teacher's name was Park Yeo-ok. Many years after giving birth to a deformed child, she became paralyzed due to a neurological disease and had to use a wheelchair.

Police found five bodies in her home, all of whom had been murdered using extremely perverse and brutal methods.

There were two survivors who were unconscious at the scene. One of them was Ms. Park, and the other survivor was one of her former students, named Nam Mi-ja.

Nanmei recounted the events leading up to the incident to the police:
The five people who were murdered were all former students of Teacher Park.

It seems that Nam Mi-ko was taken in by Teacher Park because she was homeless, and lived in the teacher's old seaside house. In order to repay her teacher, she took good care of her mentor, who was becoming increasingly unable to take care of himself and whose health was deteriorating.

To cheer up her teacher, whose health was deteriorating, Miko chose to contact six of her former classmates to celebrate her birthday.

What was supposed to be a heartwarming teacher appreciation dinner, corresponding to the film's title "The Teacher's Kindness," turned out to be...

Yu Tianlun frowned: "The atmosphere feels a bit off."

Xu Yinqiu said, "Commander, look at those students. Although they are smiling on the surface, their eyes are full of resentment."

Jiang Jin said, "Maybe it's related to the deformed child Teacher Park gave birth to back then? Where did that child go?"

Based on the plot's explanation, the deformed child was likely caused by the fact that Ms. Park's husband had inhaled large amounts of dioxins (a highly toxic organic compound) before his death. It is estimated that her husband used to work at a waste incineration plant, and the long-term effects of this poisoning led to this tragic outcome.

As the teacher appreciation banquet progressed, the students gradually revealed the harm that Teacher Park had done to them:

Shihao, the class monitor, was publicly humiliated by his teacher for giving him a meager Teacher's Day gift because of his poor family background.

The vice class monitor, Eun-young, had a greeting card made by her mother, which was made overnight, discarded after being ridiculed by the teacher.

Da Feng, once a sports champion, was punished by his teacher for squatting for a long time due to a training mistake. As a result, he broke his leg while playing football the next day and became a cripple.

Soon-hee, nicknamed "Little Pig," was publicly humiliated by her teacher because of her obesity, and became obsessed with plastic surgery after adulthood.

Minghao, a handsome student, was excessively "pampered" by his teacher, which is suspected of sexual harassment.

Zhengyuan, a student with a withdrawn personality, was expelled from the classroom for incontinence during class. His mother died in a car accident while confronting the teacher, and he also dropped out of school as a result.

The students, now adults, come to see Teacher Park not to express their gratitude, but because they have lived in dire straits over the years and come to vent their resentment towards him. This is completely contrary to the film's title, utterly the opposite.

Then, the plot takes a sharp turn for the worse. After the banquet, the students are brutally murdered one by one by an assassin wearing a rabbit mask!

The rabbit mask was used by Ms. Park's deformed son to cover his face. Could the murderer be Ms. Park's deformed son?
Moreover, the students' deaths were increasingly bloody and horrific, and Jiang Jin's memories of watching short video explanations gradually resurfaced.

Shihao had a razor blade stuffed in his mouth and boiling water poured down his throat.

Eun-young's eyelids were stapled shut, and she was tortured to death.

Dafeng was covered in syrup and was being eaten by ants.

Soon-hee tried to push Teacher Park off the cliff, but instead fell off and died.

Minghao was blinded and killed by the rabbit killer.

Finally, the killer's rabbit mask was removed, revealing his true face, which turned out to be the last student, Zheng Yuan!
Subsequently, Zheng Yuan fled in fear of punishment and his whereabouts are unknown.

Then, the police can arrest Jung-won and close the case.

But what was his motive for killing?
“I remember now,” Jiang Jin said immediately, “The murderer is not Zheng Yuan!”

Sure enough, at the end of the film, the police investigation revealed:

Zhengyuan... is actually Nanmeizi!

Or rather, Minamiko is a pseudonym!
Nan Meizi's real name should be Liu Zhenyuan—Jeongwon and Zhenyuan are pronounced the same.

In the story that Yoo Jung-won told the police, she split her role into two people: one was her false identity, Nam Mi-ja, and the other was a male student, Yoo Jung-won, who had undergone gender reassignment surgery.

Liu Zhenyuan is a poor student who has been humiliated by Teacher Park for a long time.

All the students who were killed were actually successful people. They would come to celebrate Teacher Park's birthday every year because they were all Teacher Park's favorite students. The resentment they felt towards the teacher, as well as the rabbit mask killer, that Jung-won described were all fake.

Jung-won poisoned them out of jealousy and hatred. She projected the trauma she had suffered onto different students; the students' supposed experiences of being abused by Teacher Park were actually all things that had happened to Jung-won alone.

Her mother painstakingly made a Teacher's Day card, which was ridiculed in public by Teacher Park; she was verbally insulted by Teacher Park for being overweight; and she was beaten and scolded by Teacher Park for falling while running in PE class.

Once, she had her first period, and just then, the smell of fertilizer wafted in from outside. Since the children were all elementary school students and didn't understand physiological knowledge, they smelled the fertilizer and saw the stain on Zhenyuan's pants, and mistakenly thought she had wet herself.

Ms. Park didn't understand the situation at all and immediately kicked the female student, whom she already disliked and hated, out of the classroom.

When Jung-won returned home, her mother learned of what had happened and was filled with righteous indignation. She grabbed Jung-won's menstrual underwear and was about to rush to the school to confront the teacher.

However, perhaps due to excessive emotional distress, Jung-won's mother was involved in a car accident while crossing the street, resulting in paralysis of her lower body.

Jung-won dropped out of school and took care of her paralyzed mother, but her mother eventually died tragically at home. The film does not explain the cause of her mother's death, but Kang-kyum speculates that it was an acute infection caused by years of paralysis.

This became the final straw for Jung-won. Driven mad by her mother's cold corpse, she plotted revenge.

Jung-won came to the side of Mr. Park, who was unable to walk at the time, and was taken in by him. She lived there and waited for the annual birthday party where the five students of the teacher would come to celebrate.

She could have easily ended the life of Mr. Park, who was unable to walk, but she didn't.

On the day of her birthday party, she poisoned all her students, and then, in front of Teacher Park, she cruelly murdered these former students who were Teacher Park's favorites, these wealthy and glamorous students.

After Ms. Park fell into a coma, Jung-won lied to the police, not to escape punishment, but because her lies would soon be exposed. Having committed such a crime, she had long lost the will to live. After telling Ms. Park the truth, she angrily accused her of being unworthy of being a teacher, and then jumped into the sea to commit suicide in front of her.

In the final scene, an empty wheelchair remains on the beach, suggesting that Teacher Park may also follow in death.

After watching the movie, the three fell silent.

This film doesn't feature any ghosts, but it's enough to send chills down your spine.

Ms. Park was not entirely a "bad person," but her unconscious humiliation, favoritism, and corporal punishment cast a shadow over Jung-won's entire life. The profound impact of teachers' words and actions on students' psychology, especially the harm done to vulnerable students, can last a lifetime.

Yu Tianlun gripped the can tightly in his hand and said, "The scariest thing about this film isn't the gore, but the realism—in reality, there are indeed many teachers who unintentionally ruin students' lives."

Xu Yinqiu sighed, "Zhenyuan's revenge is too extreme, but I can understand her hatred... If Teacher Park had treated her a little better back then, would the outcome have been different?"

Jiang Jin analyzed, "Now it seems that giving birth to a deformed son who couldn't be seen in public, and the suicide of her abusive husband, led to Ms. Park's mental breakdown. The movie says that the deformed son went missing, but it's likely that Ms. Park abandoned him. She projected her twisted psychology onto her student Jung-won, causing a chain of tragedies. And the most ironic thing is that all the students who were favored by Ms. Park lived well, while only Jung-won was completely forgotten and eventually became a monster."

Jiang Jin still remembers that before giving birth to the deformed child, Teacher Park's first scene was when a female student who liked her put a paper crown on her head. At that time, her eyes were pure, and she was probably still a good teacher.

However, after giving birth to a deformed child, being abused by her husband, and her husband committing suicide in front of their son, Ms. Park's mind also became deformed.

Because of her son's ugly appearance, she favored students with good looks and insulted Jung-won, who was not good-looking; because of her family's modest means, her husband worked in an incinerator, and she taught students while heavily pregnant, eventually giving birth to a deformed child, which led her to be materialistic and snobbish; and because she suffered the pain of domestic violence, she eventually inflicted violence on the weaker ones.

Yu Tianlun said in a low voice, "The teacher's kindness... is truly the cruelest irony."

“However…” Jiang Jin continued, “Will this movie be contaminated with memes and turned into a horror movie?”

"It's hard to say," Yu Tianlun said. "But if this movie becomes a horror clone, the plot will undergo unimaginable and subversive changes. It might even be far more terrifying than those horror movies with ghosts!"

(End of this chapter)