ecstasy

The neighborhood was deserted, with only the faint sound of opera music drifting from the distant security booth. Most of the other residents were workers at the tape factory, rising even earlier than the students.

buzz

The hum of a car engine could be heard from the distance behind; the aisle was wide enough to accommodate two cars driving side by side: but Doudou still walked a little further in to make way for the car behind him.

Buzz!

The roar grew closer and suddenly burst into a roaring explosion; the car behind was accelerating, and the spinning tires smashed gravel into the walls of the surrounding firewood room.

Doudou turned his head slightly: the car adjusted its direction and rushed towards him directly—

boom!

The front bumper of the Citroën hit Doudou's legs and lifted him off the ground like a bulldozer: Doudou spun sideways, creating spider-web-like cracks on the front window, and then sent him flying higher.

squeak--

The tires left long gray-black marks on the concrete ground; the Citroën spun as it braked, then tilted due to inertia; the front and rear wheels on one side lifted up and then fell down again.

Bang:

Doudou fell upside down and the back of his head hit the concrete floor; the pencil case in his schoolbag made crisp and frequent sounds.

-

It was a low-slung Citroën CX20, its beige paint bleached in the morning light, making it difficult to see the license plate: this was an extremely popular car model in Mong Cai City in the past two years, and Doudou's father also had one.

The door opens slowly and gently outwards:

boom.

Then, the driver who got out of the car gently closed it again - one end of the front bumper slid down with the vibration and fell to the ground; the dent distorted the driver's figure like a funhouse mirror.

"Dad, are you back from your business trip?"

Doudou suddenly jumped up from the ground and brushed off the dust on his school uniform: this was his father, who hadn't come home all night. He was tall and strong, with a neck almost as thick as his head. Like Doudou's mother, he and his son didn't have much in common.

Dad raised his bony, veined hand and squeezed Doudou's shoulder. He had just hit his young son with his car, but his words were neither concerned nor filled with guilt:

"You're not angry."

It was a statement, not a question—his father's eyes were like spinning drills, as if he wanted to drill into Doudou's eye sockets and get a glimpse of the thoughts within.

Doudou turned his schoolbag in front of him and brushed off the white mist of dust:

"Huh? What?"

"Do you ever feel like getting angry—like hitting someone, like hurting someone?"

Doudou felt the slight tremors coming from the five fingers on his shoulders. His father was trembling all over as if he was wearing only a single layer of clothes in winter; his muscles involuntarily tightened, causing his body to twitch.

His other hand was behind his back - in the back pocket of his trousers, and he seemed to be holding his wallet tightly in his palm.

He is so scared. Why?

Doudou raised his hand and scratched his forehead—his father flinched back with this movement, revealing a comical double chin. His eyes reminded Doudou of the "Animal World" shows he'd seen on TV—those antelopes being chased had a similar cowering look.

It was like facing a ferocious and bloodthirsty beast.

"No, I didn't mean to get angry."

call--

My father let out a long breath, and it seemed as if all the air in his lungs was drained away.

"Remember, don't look up at the sky from now on; okay?"

Without waiting for a reply, he raised his hand and gently scratched Doudou's hair:

"Come on, I'll take you to school. Study hard, attend class, and be a good person."

-

When walking into the school and heading to the classroom, Doudou still raised his head quietly on the playground.

Nothing: except for some gray clouds, not very transparent sky and glaring sun, everything is normal -

There was no sight of the wreckage of the [Future Destiny] on the radio, nor was there the falling object my mother had mentioned; it was just another ordinary morning.

-

There was a crackling sound in the backpack: the tapes inside were not wrapped in "book covers" - silicone covers that cover the sharp corners to prevent damage; Doudou forgot to buy such things, so they made a lot of noise when he walked.

He picked and chose, took out the tapes for the computer class, and pushed them into the terminal's reading port. As the terminal began to hum, he piled the remaining cassette textbooks into a corner of the drawer, using his tattered schoolbag to support them.

The terminal was very old - it was the [Shutong] series launched in 85, which supported both punched paper tape and magnetic tape: it had two greasy, sticky knobs used to select up, down, left, and right; the monochrome CRT display, emitting a bright green light, was covered with scratches and tiny words written with a water-based pen.

There are also thirty round buttons and indicator lights, and the labels on them have long been worn away.

Next to me, I could hear classmates chattering animatedly: they were going to the city library this weekend, using their pocket money to buy time on the public mainframe computer and rent two copies of the recently released "Little Playmate." There were also faint whispers—someone had gotten the restore code for the classroom terminal, flashed it, and could secretly play game tapes during class.

But all this had nothing to do with Doudou: he carefully placed the textbooks under the monitor, and also arranged the pens and notebooks—

Dad told me earlier that I should study hard and attend classes attentively.

-

Ring ring ring ring.

The bell rang. But the person who came in from the corridor was not the computer teacher with thick glasses like the bottom of a beer bottle, but the head teacher with a slicked-back hair styled with styling mousse. He strode into the computer classroom, followed by the monitor, who was holding a huge stack of documents, which even reached his chin.

"I'll be covering computer class today. Come on, everyone needs to type these registration documents into the terminal today. Everyone, be quick. If you can't finish, you can continue after school."

A few faint and suppressed sighs like the sound of wind rose from the students in the classroom - it was time to help the head teacher register the student information for the weekend tutoring classes he ran.

"Everyone, be quiet! If you master this information input, it will benefit you for a decade or more. You could even say it will benefit you for life!"

"Everyone, remember this!" He strode down from the podium, clutching stacks of documents, and motioned for the students at the front desk to pass them to the back. "If it's gold, it will always shine."

The head teacher paused briefly to draw the class's attention to herself:

"But if you were a pile of shit, which toilet wouldn't stink?"

"This stuff is just as important as your classes! I want to see if you can learn anything. Send the materials back and type them into the computer."

When the materials were passed to Doudou's row, he was still busy flipping through his computer textbook: he hadn't noticed what the head teacher had just said.

The student sitting in front of him left half a stack of materials on Doudou's computer desk and turned back.

-

"Why did it stop mid-transmission? What happened?"

The head teacher's leather shoes clattered against the ground. He strode to the center of the classroom and glared at Doudou, who was still reading the textbook.

"Dou Dou." The head teacher raised his voice, "Dou Dou! Are you deaf?"

He raised his hand and poked Doudou's forehead hard with his untrimmed fingers.

There was a crackling sound. Doudou's head didn't shake, but the nail bed on the head teacher's index finger broke and flipped up, revealing the flesh underneath. He opened his eyes wide, his mouth half open, as if he wanted to scream—

"Don't bother me while I'm looking at the questions."

Doudou was still looking down at the textbook when he swung his right hand: first it hit his deskmate's terminal, and then it hit the head teacher's chin.

There was a "bang" as the terminal was smashed outward, a "pop" as the inside exploded, and a light but crisp sound, with a damp feeling: as if someone had broken open a half-frozen popsicle.

In a short moment, too many overlapping sounds sounded--

Rolling. Something hard and slippery first hit the wall, and then rolled to the side of the podium.

But then, in the classroom that had returned to silence, only one sound remained:

"Shh, shh, shh."

The sound came from Doudou's side: the mischievous smile that always graced the teacher's face was gone—in fact, only half of his mouth remained. In the upper jaw, only the facial artery, under pressure, made the sound of blood rushing out of his body like a fountain, a series of short, thin sounds.

His entire chin was gone.

Without the support of the chin, the head teacher's tongue was like a stretched rubber candy, hanging down to the throat; it looked slippery and made people feel that it would make a funny "gurgling" sound.

He stared, but didn't raise his hand to touch his face. He just stared blankly at the white teeth that were scattered everywhere like popcorn. The teeth belonged to the head teacher himself.

As sudden as an explosion—

The head teacher rolled his eyes upwards and finally deflated like a balloon with a hole in it.

-

Doudou retracted his swung right hand—a tooth lodged in the back of his outstretched hand. He pulled out the decayed back tooth, tossed it aside, and wiped the back of his hand on his school uniform.

[How annoying.]

The students looked at the head teacher's twitching body: his open mouth was still shooting out thin streams of red water.

"what!"

A short, sharp scream filled the classroom, like a flock of crows responding to a call.

Snap, bang!

“Aa ...

Another high-pitched, unhuman roar rang out: this time from the monitor, who had just been distributing materials. He stepped on the head teacher's fallen, blood-slicked jaw and fell hard to the ground. He crouched on the ground, raised his head, a face covered in blood, and roared wildly, tears and snot suddenly welling up.

Doudou didn't pay much attention to all this. He had already extended his index fingers to plug his ear holes—Doudou stared intently at the screen, the black and white pixels illuminated by the sparks from the exploding terminal next door, making them less distinguishable.

"Hmm, A or C?"

He twitched his nose: thinking made Doudou's scalp itch. But--

Both his parents told him to study hard.

-

《School teacher's jaw blown off by explosive terminal!》

The program crew of Mong Cai TV rushed to the school to broadcast before the get out of class was over: they were only slightly slower than the ambulance and fire brigade, and even the headlines were prepared in a hurry - in Mong Cai, where everything is so boring, the slightest fluctuation will attract people's attention.

By the time all the classmates in the class were taken home by their parents who came to inquire about the matter and the classroom was blocked off with yellow tape, Doudou was still in the principal's office with his parents, listening to the principal arguing.

The school has attributed the horrific accident to an accidental explosion of the terminal - at least that's what the initial on-site assessment conducted by the fire department and police officers said.

The school requested Doudou's parents to represent the victims and jointly file a lawsuit against the developer of the Shutong series:

After deducting the cost of the homeroom teacher's plastic surgery, the remaining compensation is more than enough to support Doudou's postdoctoral studies, and the school can also add a few multimedia classrooms.

I have to say - although Doudou didn't quite understand what was going on, the principal's words were still quite convincing: especially his assumption that Doudou could get a postdoctoral degree; it made Doudou realize that this old man with a round belly and small eyes in front of him was quite insightful.

Neither the other students who witnessed the incident nor the teachers and police officers who arrived noticed what was actually happening.

Doudou touched the back of his hand, which had become smooth again. The bloodstains left by the head teacher had not been completely cleaned up, but the teeth marks left by his teeth had long disappeared.

I don’t know if it’s an illusion

Mom and Dad turned their heads to look at me from time to time, and the look in their eyes contained many different things.

-

That night, Doudou was rushed to bed early. Outside the bedroom door was the clamor of his parents, the blaring of the TV and radio. These sounds mixed together, making it impossible to distinguish what was being said.

Doudou always had good sleep quality and could easily fall asleep: but today, he tossed and turned but couldn't fall asleep -

Because the head he picked up yesterday and placed in the fish tank started talking again.

"Your father and mother—they're going to kill you." The voice on the radio rose and fell, with a distant feeling. It was as if the interference on the radio station had a pattern; "And—and—and they're already going to do it."

"They-they! They can't accept such a perfect/excellent/flawless child. Do you understand, understand, understand--"

Doudou got up from the bed, fished out the head from the fish tank, and held it in his arms with his two palms. The murky liquid in the tank made his pajamas wet.

"You're such a nag. Mom doesn't like you either."

The eyes of the head blinked fiercely, and a more urgent voice came from the radio:

"I'm telling the truth—truly—truly—truly—"

Quack, quack, quack.

Doudou's hands pressed inward, inward. Gaps appeared between the gilded hair, and bone fragments pierced the scalp and turned outward. Thick, shiny yellow honey and thick white milk overflowed from the gaps, flowing through the gaps between his fingers. Those marble-like eyes with cloudy corneas were gradually squeezed out of the eye sockets, and then, with a muffled explosion, they shattered into a ball with the skull:

Paji.

The hands finally passed through the barrier and joined together--

After the explosion, all that remained of the fallen object were its soft, wet remains, their surface palely stained by the moonlight filtering through the newspaper.

Doudou casually threw the crumbs onto the ground, then tiptoed through the mess.