Chapter 3: Couples Should Disappear from the World
"You don't know how annoying Wei Jinchao is!""If they really bring him here, I'm quitting tomorrow!"
Class was over, but my suffering had just begun. The only thing left in my day was to drag my miserable body to the bar where my fellow teachers exorcised their sorrows with cheap beer and stale peanuts.
A few blocks away from the bar, I could already smell the unmistakable mix of spilled beer and cheap cigarettes in the air. It was such a familiar scent it almost felt like coming home.
"Possibly, I am home… No, more likely if I fell asleep here, the boss would kick me out like a vagrant and no one would lift a finger for me," I thought, grinding my teeth.
I walked into the bar, body ready to collapse and face prepared to start a brawl if anyone dared look at me funny. The dim lights, the cigarette smoke, and the murmur of tired conversations confirmed I wasn't the only unlucky soul in this world.
"Well, ignore that couple… couples should go extinct," I muttered to myself. "They should invent artificial procreation and just wipe out these pests once and for all."
As in every proper bar, two tables away sat a young couple who, thanks to alcohol, had already forgotten the meaning of the word shame. Kisses, restless hands, and everything else that follows. They could've been boyfriend and girlfriend, secret lovers, or simply two brave souls doing some 'field research.'
I, with my usual brand of romanticism, preferred to imagine they were cheating lovers and that, upon returning home, they would be discovered and kicked out of their respective houses.
"How beautiful imagination can be," I sighed with a touch of cruel satisfaction.
"Look who's here! The self-proclaimed revolutionary artist!" shouted the math teacher, who already had more drinks in him than integrals he could solve.
"Better tell me how I'm supposed to survive when Wei Jinchao shows up. That man's like a cockroach—he appears where you least expect him and never dies," I replied, dropping into a wooden chair that looked just as tired of life as I was.
The history teacher, with his crooked glasses and permanent smell of dusty archives, chimed in:"They say Jinchao was once at an elite school, and there he managed to get the students to perform a play in classical Latin. In Latin! Do you hear that? Even I don't understand Latin, and I'm a historian!"
I raised my glass with exaggerated solemnity."That fraud went to my same school. The only thing he knew how to do was copy other people's scripts and steal ideas. The man is a master, yes… but in plagiarism."
A couple of colleagues snorted, and the P.E. teacher nearly spat his beer across the table.
"Well, I heard he even won national awards," said the biology teacher, raising an eyebrow.
"Awards, my grandmother," I grumbled. "The only races he ever won were the ones to get first in line for free cafeteria lunch. I don't know how he manages to fool everyone with that fake smile… Maybe he signed a pact with the devil of school theater."
The silence that followed was short-lived, until someone muttered with a mix of fear and amusement:"Well, if that's the case, tomorrow he'll be sitting right here… with us."
A shiver ran down my spine."Is it possible to fake death for a day?""I don't know, maybe say I got kidnapped and they'll release me after the play… or when Wei Jinchao dies, whichever comes first."
"I like that!" said the math teacher. "We can stage your kidnapping. I'll bring the duct tape.""And I'll bring the rope," added the P.E. teacher with a suspicious grin.
"With colleagues like these, who needs enemies?" I sighed, slamming my glass against the table. "On top of sacrificing myself daily to enlighten young minds, now they want to make me disappear like old furniture."
"Enlighten?" scoffed the biology teacher. "More like you blind them with so much pessimism. Your students probably leave with existential trauma after every one of your classes."
I clutched my chest like a wounded martyr."Hey, that hurt! I treat them like my children… sure, much less handsome than me and with a dimmer future than the radiant being of light standing before them… but still, my children."
An improvised toast sealed the joke. Glasses clinked clumsily, and laughter echoed for a moment, covering the shadow of Jinchao.
Just then, the bar door creaked open, silencing half the room. A bulky figure, tie loose and eyes sharp like a tax inspector, appeared in the doorway.
"The principal!" someone whispered.
Everyone straightened their backs as if they'd suddenly remembered they had dignity. I, on the other hand, buried my face in my half-empty glass, wishing I could turn into foam.
We were outside of school, and with two drinks too many, I dared to mutter:"Your spare-mirror authority doesn't work here."
I'm not sure what exactly I said—sometimes words fire off like stray bullets—but suddenly, the whole place went silent.
Laughter died, glasses froze midair, even the cigarette smoke seemed to stop, as if someone had pressed pause on reality.
I looked around, confused."What? Now I can't joke anymore? What kind of humor dictatorship is this?"
The math teacher glared at me."Are you stupid or just pretending? The principal's still here."
I turned my head just slightly, and there he was: the principal, standing at the entrance, staring at me like a judge already holding my death sentence.
I swallowed hard, trying to salvage the moment with a drunken smile."It was… an academic joke, you know, intellectual humor…"
The silence grew even heavier, so thick I could hear the bartender rinsing a glass with the calm of someone waiting for tragedy.
Finally, the principal cleared his throat."Intellectual humor, you say?… Tomorrow we'll see how funny your performance is in front of Wei Jinchao."
And with that, he turned and left. I swear that man enjoyed watching me suffer. I could already picture the speech he'd give the next day, with that malicious grin of a satisfied bureaucrat:
"Good morning, Lu Cheng. Here I present your new theater supervisor. He is blah blah blah, and more blah blah blah… And now here's a five-hour résumé, written by artificial intelligence, filled with words he doesn't even understand but that sound serious enough to make your life lose the little meaning it had left."
I pressed my hand against my forehead and sighed."Well, my friends," I said, lifting my empty glass like a sacred chalice, "if anyone wants to say their last words at my funeral, now's the time."
Laughter broke out, but it was the kind of awkward laughter, like when you try to cheer up a condemned man on his way to the gallows.
The history teacher raised his glass and toasted solemnly:"May your death be swift and your suffering short."
The math teacher added between chuckles:"I say at least enjoy it… or tell us in detail afterward so we can all laugh too."
I stared at my empty glass, wishing the wooden table would swallow everything: my body, my problems, and most of all, Wei Jinchao.
"I still consider faking a convincing heart attack," I muttered. "Or better yet… is it feasible to fake death for a day?"
The math teacher raised an eyebrow."A day, he says… with the amount you're drinking tonight, you might not have to fake it."
I ignored him, sinking deeper into my seat.
At the very least, the last day of my life should be unmemorable… if that's even a word. The drinks would drown my brain in artificial peace, and if by some miracle I woke up with a dress on… or better yet, with the impossible luck of having a woman at my side, then fine: I'd become religious on the spot.
I staggered up from the table. Nausea was already kicking in."Now I understand the suffering of pregnant women…" I muttered under my breath.
The city greeted me with heavy air, the kind that mixes working women, vagrants, and old swindlers selling napkins to youngsters. Such good people, compared to me.
The echo of my shoes on the pavement blended with the distant murmur of an accordion played by some poor devil. I walked aimlessly—or rather, my body walked; I had already given up.
Each step reminded me of what I really was: a man full of regrets, who knew nothing but how to hide his sadness beneath a façade of joy.
"If only I could reincarnate…" I thought with a bitter laugh. "Though with my luck, I'd probably wake up as Wei Jinchao's personal assistant."
I kept walking until the world blurred more than usual. I swear I hadn't taken drugs, but you never know in this life.
The lights stretched like melted candles, the ground swayed like waves, and for the first time in years, I felt a strange peace… as if the universe was loosening the chains of my tired body.
The last image I remember is my own shadow, stretched and trembling on the wall, bowing to me in farewell.
And then, silence.Darkness.An immense void that, far from frightening, felt like the rest I had always secretly wished for.
"Now all that's missing is some useless goddess showing up to tell me: 'you died in the most pathetic way possible.'"
I laughed to myself in the middle of the nothingness."As if that would ever happen… Probably I just passed out in some alley. All I really hope is that I wake up tomorrow still wearing clothes."