IJRELD: Hide and Seek 9

MAY 25, 2023 ~ KIWII

The teacher obviously knew what happened in the kindergarten but claimed that she didn’t know anything. There were only two possibilities: she didn’t want to say it or she couldn’t say it.

The teacher’s thoughts could be seen from the difference of one word.

If the teacher doesn’t want to say it because they are strangers, they may find out if they ask again later.

It would be troublesome if you can’t say it. It is estimated that the matter was very big, but the leader forcibly suppressed it, and the employees were not allowed to say it. It is difficult to get any effective information in this situation.

Seeing the hurried back of the teacher and Xiao Wan, Moon in the Water sighed softly and said: “Let’s go, go to the principal’s office to see.”

They went to the Kindergarten principal’s office and knocked on the door. The person who opened the door was a slightly fat woman who looked about forty or fifty years old, with a pair of round eyes stuck on her already fat round face.

She was wearing a brown oversize dress and low heels. Knowing that they came from junior high school, she smiled and invited them to sit in the office.

Song Qingshu took the letter of introduction out of his pocket and handed it to the principal’s desk. After the principal registered, she had completed the procedure.

“Principal Chen, excuse me, we came here to inquire about the situation in the kindergarten.” Moon in the Water sat on the sofa, looked at the principal who was also sitting beside her and said.

“I heard what Lao Li said, what do you want to know? We will try our best to cooperate.” Principal Chen replied.

Lao Li is the principal of the junior high school, and she is a colleague. One manages the junior high school, the other manages the kindergarten, and a colleague surnamed Shen manages the elementary school. They also have an investor who uses money to run the school.

Moon in the Water didn’t go around the bush and asked straight to the point: “May I ask if any special incidents happened in the kindergarten recently? For example, something happened to the children?”

Principal Chen was taken aback, thought for a while, frowned slightly, and replied: “No, all the children in our kindergarten are here, and I haven’t heard of any parent looking for them.

Our kindergarten pays the most attention to the safety of children. The children here have some money at home. How dare we let them have a little trouble? Parents would have killed us if some kind of problem had happened.”

Moon in the Water frowned slightly, he had an intuition that this person was not telling the truth, so he asked her tentatively: “Then before? Did anything happen?”

Through the round lenses, Principal Chen, with an invisible gleam in her slightly squinted eyes, replied with a smile on her face: “I dare not say before, at least it has never happened since I became the dean.”

It seemed that he couldn’t get any desired answer from her. Moon in the Water stood up and said to Principal Chen: “Then can we inquire with the kindergarten teachers?”

Principal Chen nodded and said, “Okay, I’ll go with you guys.”

Moon in the Water didn’t say anything, took Song Qingshu and the others out of the principal’s office.

After going out, Moon in the Water said to the other three people in front of Principal Chen: “Let’s ask the teachers separately.”

Principal Chen’s expression changed and she finally said nothing. She led Moon in the Water to the door of one of the big classes and called the teacher out.

The teacher of the big class was a thin little girl, who was not very old. When she heard the principal Chen calling her, she left the children in the care of the nursery staff.

As soon as she went out, she saw a tall and long-legged handsome man standing beside Principal Chen. The man stood expressionlessly outside the door, giving off a sense of aloofness and coldness. She was stunned for a moment, then recovered and asked him: “Are you looking for me? May I please ask what’s the matter?”

Moon in the Water asked the big class teacher bluntly: “Do the kids in your class use a pink rabbit as a toy?”

The big class teacher shook her head and denied.

“What about the doll?” Moon in the Water asked.

She said: “There are a lot of little girls who play with dolls.”

“Are there any little boys playing with dolls?” Moon in the Water continued to ask.

The other party shook her head with certainty and said, “No, little boys don’t play with dolls, they play with small planes, cars, and puppet models……”

As soon as he heard the puppet models, Moon in the Water’s eyes lit up and asked her: “What kind of puppet models are they?”

The teacher replied to him: “They are all cartoon character models, I don’t know them very well. They should be from some cartoon.”

Moon in the Water felt that there was nothing more to ask, so he let her go back.

Principal Chen murmured in her heart, why did this person ask about the toys? So she asked him: “Does this incident have something to do with toys?”

Moon in the Water strode forward with long legs, regardless of whether the Principal Chen behind him could keep up, he said: “There is a little connection, not much.”

After finished speaking, he seemed to think of something, stopped moving forward, turned around and said to Principal
Chen who was following him: “Principal Chen, we may come a few more times, do we still need to get a letter of introduction when we come again?”

Principal Chen suddenly stopped her forward pace and almost bumped into Moon in the Water. After standing still, she habitually helped the mirror frame on the bridge of her low nose, and said to him: “This……Of course you don’t need it. I will talk to the guard and just ask him to let you enter directly next time.”

Moon in the Water thanked her politely.

Principal Chen hurriedly replied: “It’s okay.”

Moon in the Water reckoned that Song Qingshu and the others had finished asking their questions, so he said to Principal Chen, “Can we visit the kindergarten later? I’ve never seen a private kindergarten, and I just want to visit it. When the child in my family reaches the kindergarten grade, see if he can come here.”

“Of course.” Principal Chen readily agreed upon hearing this.

“Excuse me.” After Moon in the Water finished speaking, he went to find his teammates.

After the four people met, they tacitly did not mention the information they asked each other.

Principal Chen led the four people around the kindergarten to visit the buildings and other facilities, patiently and carefully explained the status quo and various advantages of the kindergarten, completely treating them as potential users in Amway Kindergarten.

kiwii: I’m not sure what Amway means. I googled it, and it showed a corporation that is an American multi-level marketing company that sells health, beauty, and home care products. So I’ve no idea why the author wrote this? It could be a bug too. To respect the author did not alter the tlation.

Kindergarten venues are much smaller than those of junior high schools, and they observed it quickly.

The four of them didn’t go back right away, instead they found an empty place in the playground and stood there.

Yan Ruyu said that she asked a small class teacher, who was new to the kindergarten not long ago, and did not get any useful information.

Sang Yu also said that the teacher he asked was a new recruit from other places, and she didn’t know anything about it, and she didn’t ask for any information either.

Song Qingshu said that he asked the teacher who brought Xiaowan, she was from the local area, but she also said that she had not been here for a long time. However, she provided a very effective piece of information, that is, a big incident happened in the kindergarten a while ago, the news was suppressed, but some still leaked out. She doesn’t know what it is, it seems to be related to children.

Of course, Song Qingshu didn’t say the whole thing, such as how he coerced and lured the teacher to let the teacher speak.

According to the information obtained by the three people and the performance of Principal Chen, it is basically certain that there was an accident in the kindergarten, and the kindergarten also suppressed the news of the accident, so a new batch of teachers were replaced.

A big question arose in the minds of several people at the same time: What happened to the kindergarten not long ago?

The four of them were silent for a while in tacit understanding.

“Principal Chen doesn’t say anything, the new teacher doesn’t know, we can ask the junior high school principal, if something happens to the kindergarten, it’s impossible for the junior high school to not know at all because it’s so close.

And there are clues in the kindergarten, they did not say we can’t ask children. Time is running out, let’s split up. Yan Ruyu and I will ask the principal, Xiao Guai Guai and Picking Mulberries will go to the kindergarten.” Shuiyue quickly found the task target and assigned their respective tasks.

kiwii: Xiao Guai Guai- little rabbit, be good.

God is so cute!!!

Song Qingshu wanted to hit someone!

But it’s an emergency.

After assigning tasks, Moon in the Water and Yan Ruyu went to the principal’s office, and Song Qingshu took Sang Yu back to the kindergarten.

“Why did you let the two of us go to the kindergarten to ask the children? What do children know?” Sang Yu asked as he walked, he couldn’t think of any reliable answers that he could get from the children.

Song Qing gave him a blank look, with sympathy and disappointment on his face. It seems to say: cub, dad is very disappointed in you.

But he answered him: “Maybe we two are good-looking, and who said to ask the children? You are stupid, how old are they to know anything?”

Sang Yu was puzzled by what Song Qingshu said, and asked him: “Then what should we do?”

“Of course it is to use the fudge method. The ghosts last night must have something to do with the children’s toys. If you trick the children into handing over all their toys, and you see a doll that is the same as last night’s ghosts, you will get the answer no matter what method you use. Let’s go.” Song Qingshu solved the question marks in Sang Yu’s head while walking towards the iron gate.

“Fudge?” The upright boy Sang Yu didn’t know how to apply these two words to his life.

kiwii: 忽悠

Song Qingshu stopped, blocked Sang Yu’s way, and looked at Sang Yu’s face seriously, making him hairy.

Song Qingshu looked at him for a while, then sighed: “I should have let Yan Ruyu come.”

Sang Yu: Are you despising me???

“Use your handsome face to play games with children, and ask them to show you their toys. As for the specific games, you can think about it yourself.” Song Qingshu said as he stepped into the gate of the kindergarten.

Since they came to the kindergarten in the morning, most of the teachers and childcare staff were familiar with them, and Song Qingshu was really good-looking and would not scare the children, so the teacher agreed to their request to play games with the children.

Song Qingshu and Sang Yu went to different classes, playing games to trick the children into taking out their toys.

Song Qingshu went to several classes and found nothing unusual, and stopped when he reached one of the small classes. The teacher of the small class was the one who talked to them when they came in the morning. After greeting her, Song Qingshu went to the children and said that he was here to play games with them.

The children were very obedient, sitting in a row on a circle of small chairs, waiting for Song Qingshu to explain the rules of the game. Song Qingshu suppressed his voice and tried to coax the child with a gentle voice, saying: “My friends, is the big brother handsome?”

The children said in unison: “Handsome.”

“Big brother is so handsome but he doesn’t have any toys, I want to see your toys, can you show big brother all your toys?” Song Qingshu deliberately pretended to be a pitiful big brother with no toys to play with.

Children like to show off the most. After listening to Song Qingshu’s words, they rushed to the small locked cabinet and used the key to open the cabinet. They took out their toys and showed them to Song Qingshu.

Song Qingshu looked at the toys brought by the children one by one. There were all kinds of toys, such as Ultraman, Joyful, Bald Qiang, model airplanes and tanks, and all kinds of dolls and dolls, but there were not the pink bunny doll, red-haired doll and puppet he was looking for.

Just when he thought it was over and was about to leave, his thigh was hugged again. He looked down and saw that it was Xiao Wan who hugged his thigh in the morning.

He thought that Xiao Wan was reluctant to part with him, so he knelt down and wanted to talk to her to persuade her to go back and sit down, but just as he knelt down, he saw the toy in Xiao Wan’s small hand—a doll with red hair and a big head.

Some parts of the dress on the doll’s body were stained with mud, the red hair was in a mess, the face was dirty, and the eyes opened and closed with Xiao Wan’s movements, which looked extraordinarily weird.

—

kiwii: A mistake to be noted that I’ve already corrected. In previous chapter you must’ve read the words “letter of permission” but it should be “letter of introduction”. I was a little confused back then about letter of introduction, after googling it, my doubts were cleared. My apologies!