Chapter 10: Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN: The Song of Drowning Girls

The headmaster's study smelled of old paper and something floral—osmanthus, perhaps, or jasmine. Bai Su sat in the carved rosewood chair, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone white. Across from her, Headmaster Zhou poured tea with the practiced grace of a man who had done it ten thousand times before.

"I trust you found the bell tower enlightening," he said, not looking up from the stream of amber liquid.

Bai Su said nothing. Her palms still tingled with the memory of blood that wasn't there.

"Ah." He set the teapot down with a soft click. "I see you've already encountered the echo. Most students don't trigger it until their third month here."

"The echo?"

"A memory stain. When something violent happens in a place, the building remembers. Students who are sensitive enough—or unlucky enough—can sometimes... experience it." He finally looked at her, his eyes dark and unreadable. "Chen Feng's death left a deep mark on that tower."

"I saw him fall," Bai Su whispered. "I felt it."

Headmaster Zhou nodded slowly, as if she had confirmed something he already suspected. "The echo shows you what happened. But it can also show you what you fear happened. Or what you think you might have done."

"I don't understand."

He leaned forward, his voice dropping. "The echo is not objective, Miss Bai. It adapts. It finds your deepest anxieties and feeds them back to you. The blood on your hands, the footprint that matched your shoe—none of it was real. But your fear of it was."

Bai Su's stomach twisted. "How do you know what I saw?"

"Because every sensitive student who enters that tower sees something different. But they all see something that makes them doubt themselves." He sat back, his face softening almost imperceptibly. "It's the academy's first test. A reminder that what we see is not always truth, and what is true is not always visible."

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that the blood had been a trick of the light, a phantom of her own making. But the ghost scholar's words echoed in her mind: *You need to find the killer. Before they take enough qi to break through the veil entirely.*

"What about the bell?" she asked. "It rang ten times. But no one was pulling the rope."

Headmaster Zhou's expression flickered—the first crack in his composure she had seen since entering the room. "The bell rings of its own accord sometimes. It is very old. The wood expands and contracts with the weather."

"Nine times is the warning for a ghost student," Bai Su pressed. "Everyone knows that. But ten times? I've never heard of ten."

He was silent for a long moment. Then he reached into his sleeve and pulled out a scroll, yellowed with age. He unrolled it on the desk between them.

It was a list of names. Dozens of them, written in fading ink, each with a date beside it. The dates spanned over a hundred years.

"The tenth bell," Headmaster Zhou said slowly, "has not rung since I was a student here. It rings when a living student dies within the academy walls."

Bai Su's blood went cold. "Chen Feng—"

"His was the ninth. Students who die before they can take the imperial exams linger as ghosts. That is the ninth bell's purpose—to mark their transition." He traced his finger down the list, stopping at the very bottom. "But the tenth bell rings for a different kind of death. A death that was not meant to be."

She read the names. Each one was followed by a brief notation: *Fell from the east wall. Drowned in the garden pond. Poisoned in the dining hall. Found in the library with a blade through the heart.* The most recent entry was from forty years ago.

"These are murders," she breathed.

"Yes." Headmaster Zhou rolled the scroll back up with deliberate care. "And every single one remains unsolved."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you saw the tenth bell ring. Because you triggered the echo on your first day. Because there is a ghost student stealing life qi from the living, and the last time that happened, the tenth bell tolled for three nights straight." He looked at her with an intensity that made her want to shrink into her chair. "I am telling you this because I believe you are the only one who can stop it from happening again."

"I'm just a student," Bai Su protested. "I've been here for two days. I don't know anything."

"You see ghosts. You survived the echo. And you have already attracted the attention of something that has been dormant for forty years." He paused. "The ghost scholar. The one who warned you. Did he tell you his name?"

Bai Su shook her head.

"He was the last living student to die in this academy. His name was Lin Wei, and he was murdered on the night of his graduation, three days before he was to sit for the imperial exams." Headmaster Zhou's voice grew heavy. "He has haunted these halls ever since, searching for his killer. And he has never spoken to anyone until you."

"Why me?"

"Perhaps because you can see him clearly. Perhaps because you remind him of someone. Perhaps because he knows something that the rest of us do not." He stood, signaling that their conversation was over. "Whatever the reason, Miss Bai, I urge you to trust him. But I also urge you to be careful. Ghosts remember their deaths differently than they lived their lives. And Lin Wei's death was particularly... cruel."

Bai Su rose on unsteady legs. "What happened to him?"

"He was drowned. In a barrel of water no deeper than your waist. The examiners found him the next morning, still wearing his scholar's robes, his hands bound behind his back with silk cord." Headmaster Zhou's eyes were distant, lost in a memory he had never witnessed. "They say he was alive when they put him in. They say he fought so hard that he broke his own fingers trying to free himself."

The image was so vivid that Bai Su could almost see it—the dark water, the desperate struggle, the slow surrender. She pressed a hand to her mouth.

"I will assign you a room in the west wing," Headmaster Zhou continued, his tone businesslike once more. "Near the library. You will have unrestricted access to the archives, and I will instruct the gatekeepers to allow you to come and go as you please. If you need anything, you may send word through the servant girl, Lian."

"You're making me an investigator?"

"I am making you a student with certain privileges." He handed her a small bronze key, worn smooth by years of use. "This opens the restricted section of the library. I suggest you start there."

Bai Su took the key, its weight heavier than it should have been. "And if I find something?"

"Then you bring it to me. Directly. No one else." He held her gaze. "Trust no one, Miss Bai. Not the living, and not the dead. The killer is still here, and they have had forty years to perfect their secrets."

She nodded and turned to leave. Her hand was on the door handle when he spoke again.

"One more thing. The song you heard—the one following you down the stairs?"

Bai Su froze.

"It is an old folk song from the southern provinces. A lament for a daughter who drowned herself rather than marry a man she did not love." His voice dropped to barely a whisper. "It was Lin Wei's favorite song. He used to sing it in the courtyard, every evening, for the entire year before he died."

"Why would a boy sing a song about a drowned girl?"

"No one knows. He never explained." Headmaster Zhou's face was unreadable. "But perhaps you can ask him yourself."

---

The west wing was quieter than the main dormitory, its corridors lined with faded tapestries and portraits of scholars long dead. Bai Su's room was at the very end, a small chamber with a single window overlooking the graveyard. The bed was narrow but clean, and a writing desk sat beneath the window, its surface scarred with ink stains from a hundred years of use.

She set down her bag and sat on the edge of the bed, the bronze key cold in her palm. Her mind was a storm of questions, each one more tangled than the last.

A knock at the door made her jump.

"Miss Bai?" It was Lian, the servant girl from earlier. "I've brought you some tea and a copy of the academy rules."

Bai Su opened the door. Lian stood there with a tray, her face pleasant but her eyes sharp. She was young—maybe sixteen—with the kind of beauty that was easy to overlook until you looked twice.

"Thank you," Bai Su said, taking the tray.

"Headmaster Zhou asked me to remind you that the library closes at midnight. The restricted section has its own rules, but he said you would understand them when you saw them." Lian paused. "There's something else."

"Yes?"

"I was here forty years ago. When the last murder happened." Lian's voice dropped, her pleasant demeanor fading. "I was a servant girl then, too. I saw things. Things I've never told anyone."

Bai Su's heart rate quickened. "What did you see?"

"The night Lin Wei died, I was walking past the bell tower. It was late, past midnight, and I shouldn't have been out. But I heard singing." She shivered, her face pale. "It was Lin Wei. He was standing at the top of the tower, singing that song about the drowning girl. I thought nothing of it—he sang it every night. But this time, when he finished, he didn't come down."

"What do you mean?"

"I waited. I waited for half an hour, but he never came out. So I went to the headmaster and told him. By the time we returned, Lin Wei was gone." She met Bai Su's eyes. "They found his body the next morning, in the exam hall. In the barrel."

"You think someone killed him while he was in the tower."

"I know someone did. Because I saw a shadow leave the tower that night, after the singing stopped." Her voice was barely a whisper now. "A shadow with a woman's shape."

Bai Su's blood ran cold. "A woman?"

"Yes." Lian looked down at her hands. "I've never told anyone because I was afraid. The headmaster at the time was very clear—no one was to speak of what happened. But you're different. You can see things. You can find the truth."

"Lian, who was she?"

The servant girl shook her head. "I don't know. I never saw her face. But I heard her voice." She looked up, and her eyes were filled with a terror so old it had calcified into certainty. "She was singing, Miss Bai. The same song Lin Wei always sang. She was singing it as she walked away."

The wind outside picked up, rattling the window in its frame. Somewhere in the distance, a bell began to toll.

One.

Two.

Three.

Bai Su counted, her breath catching in her throat.

Four.

Five.

Six.

"It's starting again," Lian whispered.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

The ninth bell faded into silence. Bai Su waited, her heart pounding, for the tenth.

The silence stretched on.

And then, from somewhere deep in the academy, a woman's voice rose in song. Sweet. Familiar. A lament for a daughter who drowned herself rather than marry a man she did not love.

The tenth bell never rang.

But the singing grew louder, closer, until it