Lucia was the main source of news regarding past lives and reincarnations. In fact, if it weren’t for her, with the strict control system of Scuola Superiore di Milano, the students would probably have only heard these sensational stories during the winter holidays.

The university entrance exams were fiercely competitive. From the first year, except for a few commuters, all students were required to live on campus. The only break was Saturday afternoons; the rest of the time was filled with classes or exam simulations.

Parents and teachers kept everything under close scrutiny. There wasn’t even time for breaks between lessons or during the afternoon rest; parents hoped their third-year students would be "haunted" by lessons in Italian, mathematics, and foreign languages in their dreams.

Fun? That wasn’t even an option. Parents constantly repeated that it was better to suffer a little now than to suffer for a lifetime.

Adults had their reasons, but students weren’t machines. They needed to find a way to breathe.

Under all this pressure, some students started wearing prayer bracelets, while others distracted themselves by playing with stones they collected from the school gardens.

There was also a group of students who, instead of staying silent, found comfort in the most violent and gruesome horror stories.

Paradoxically, such destructive plots helped them release their tension.

However, even novels were banned at school.

In this atmosphere, Lucia decided to make some money, taking advantage of both the silence and the chaos.

She was one of the few commuting third-year students. At first, she convinced her mother to buy her a printer, using the excuse that she needed to print mistakes and study materials, and she used her New Year’s money for the purchase. Every evening, under the guise of correcting errors, she started printing.

Her mother, a middle-aged woman with little education, didn’t really understand what she was doing and let her be.

Entertainment gossip, scary crimes, jokes, and major school news: four sections, four A4 pages, with carefully selected content, printed and brought to school to be sold.

Four euros per copy.

At the beginning, Lucia didn’t intend to make money. It was just a small business to cover her costs.

But she soon discovered that she had an incredible talent for gathering information, and her classmates, under tremendous pressure, desperately needed a way to relax.

First, it was her own class, then the one next door, and soon even the classes from the floors above and below: everyone was buying from her.

In one month, she managed to earn over a thousand euros, while the printer had only cost four hundred.

For a high school student, this felt like achieving financial freedom!

Lucia continued treating this as a proper business, constantly receiving compliments from her classmates, to the point where they almost started calling her "the great editor."

The online news about "past lives and reincarnations" was so intriguing, and the image of the killer, who looked so much like their teacher, sparked so much debate that it naturally became one of the day’s hottest topics.

This time, the homemade paper brought enormous excitement to the 5th class of the third year.

"Doesn't that look exactly like our teacher?"

"Look, our teacher has become a crazy serial killer!" said the girl in the front row, laughing as she opened the paper.

A group of students gathered around.

"It really does look like him!"

"Even the mole is the same."

"They must have based the drawing on our teacher, right?"

"Our teacher’s made it big, secretly becoming a serial killer!"

"If our teacher were really crazy, haha, who’d be the first to die in our class?"

The teacher of Class 5 in the third year was Professor Rossi, the Italian teacher. He was about fifty years old, a middle-aged man with a common appearance, but he didn’t have the typical distant or arrogant demeanor. On the contrary, he was someone who approached life with a surprising calmness.

Scuola Superiore di Milano was highly competitive: every morning, there were five classes, with the last one finishing at 12:20. The third-year building was far from the cafeteria, and when the bell rang, it looked like a horde of zombies flooding the city as they rushed to get lunch.

Professor Rossi taught the last class of the morning and always finished ten minutes early to give the students time to reach the cafeteria without hurrying.

One of his most famous sayings was, "Kids need to eat well to have the energy to study and rest well to stay focused."

When a student made a mistake, unless it was something serious – like skipping class to buy fried skewers or sneaking away during gym – Professor Rossi never called their parents. He would simply say, "The school system has its flaws, and if authority oppresses too much, the people must rebel."

Lucia wasn’t originally part of this class. She had been one of the top students in the elite section, but after her grades plummeted due to a romantic relationship, she was expelled from the advanced class. No other teacher wanted to take her in, but it was Professor Rossi who stepped forward and offered her a spot.

With a teacher like that, the students in Class 5 held a deep affection for him.

And that’s exactly why everyone found the contrast with the sketch so amusing, and they couldn’t help but joke about it.

No one actually believed that the person in the sketch was their teacher; they thought it was just a strange coincidence.

After all, there are many people who look alike in this world. Abroad, there are even people who are unrelated but look like twins.

During the morning Italian reading session, one student secretly snapped a photo of the teacher with his phone and uploaded it online with a playful caption:

— "Our teacher looks like a psychopathic serial killer."

Everyone laughed and didn’t think much of it. That morning, during the fifth lesson, a few students were reading Lucia’s homemade newspaper.

Usually, it wasn’t easy to get caught.

But that morning was different.

Who would have thought anyone could be holding their breath while reading an Italian textbook?

Could a textbook really be that frightening?

Professor Rossi noticed that many students seemed distracted, and taking the opportunity, he decided to liven up the class by calling out a student who was secretly reading an extracurricular book.

He often used this trick to wake up the atmosphere in the classroom.

"What are you reading that’s so interesting it makes you look terrified? Read it aloud for all of us."

The girl wasn’t afraid of the teacher; after all, it wasn’t the first time she had been caught.

She stood up and began to read:

"I lie in the darkness, a sharp, piercing sound echoing constantly in my ears. I want to cover my ears, but I can’t. He’s coming back, again."

Professor Rossi smiled: "So you’re reading a horror novel, huh?"

"He kept asking me if I would make more noise, if I would scream again. I wanted to tell him I wouldn’t anymore, that I’d be good, that I’d behave, but my tongue... my tongue had been cut off by him..."

"Then he started pouring something disgusting and foul-smelling into my mouth..."

At that point, no one seemed sleepy anymore.

"That’s enough, stop reading," said a sudden voice from the podium, followed by a loud slap of a hand on the table.

The sound was so loud that everyone, used to laughing and joking, was startled and immediately turned towards the teacher.

It was the first time the students had seen Professor Rossi with such a severe expression. His face, usually calm and gentle, had turned grim, and the wrinkles that usually conveyed kindness now looked as sharp as blades.

The student who had been reading didn’t notice the change, perhaps because Professor Rossi had always been a composed man. She continued: "Professor, it’s just a story about a serial murder case called 'The Red Balloon,' I found it online."

The hard lines on Professor Rossi’s face slowly softened, and in a calmer tone, he said, "Sit down."

He approached the desk, took the few pages the girl had been reading, and added, "Continue your morning reading."

Lucia turned and noticed that the professor’s hand, the one holding the thin pages, was trembling slightly.

It was just a small incident.

When she got home, Lucia told her mother everything.

Her mother, Elena, was a robust middle-aged woman. Years earlier, she had separated from her husband and son and opened a bakery in their village. She and Lucia mostly communicated by phone and only saw each other during the holidays.

This year, Lucia had been admitted to Scuola Superiore di Milano thanks to her excellent grades, initially joining the experimental class. However, after falling in love, her academic performance had dropped dramatically.

Her mother had come from the village to take care of her, while still managing to sell bread. She woke up every day at two in the morning to bake, then loaded the bread onto a cart to sell it in front of the school.

Despite living together, the two women often sat across from each other at the table like strangers, without much intimacy.

Lucia hadn’t seen her mother since she was six years old.

Half a year ago, her mother had come back to take her. Two strangers forced to live together, trying to play the roles of a loving mother and obedient daughter. At first, it had been awkward, but over time they had learned to coexist.

Lucia always talked about what happened at school during meals.

"Today, when our teacher heard that story, he made a terrible face," Lucia said without going into detail. "And when he took the paper, his hand was trembling."

Her mother remained silent for a moment, lost in thought.

The next day, life as a third-year high school student resumed as usual. The only novelty was that Lucia’s desk mate, whose paper had been confiscated, had brought a large stone, about the size of an ostrich egg, that she’d found in a flowerbed to play with.

"The pressure is mounting, I need a bigger stone to relax," said her desk mate with a confident tone. In the third year of high school, how could anyone not go crazy?

Stress-relief methods were becoming more and more bizarre.

Even Lucia held the stone in her hands, but it didn’t provide her with any relief.

Her desk mate, noticing she didn’t get it, explained: "Look at this rough surface. Imagine if you could smooth it out until it was as smooth as an ostrich egg. What a sense of accomplishment! Much easier than passing the exams!"

This simple and mechanical activity, which required no mental effort, turned out to be surprisingly relaxing.

"Where did you find it?" Lucia asked.

"In the flowerbed."

"I want one too," Lucia replied, as she was going through a very stressful period.

"Take it easy, the school is now strictly monitoring students who steal stones from the flowerbeds. We need to plan everything."

So, two classmates distracted the security guard, one kept an eye on the situation, and Lucia was tasked with stealing a stone from the flowerbed.

Lucia only needed a stone the size of an egg.

In the end, with the guard chasing after her, Lucia managed to run back with her stone.

She ran ahead while the guard chased her. The classmates on the second floor cheered her on, shouting, "Go!" giggling. The situation was both absurd and exhilarating at the same time.

In fact, all of it helped relieve her stress.

The next day, Professor Rossi was back to his usual kind self. Noticing the strange behavior of the students, he joked, "Just be careful not to hurt yourselves."

Other people at school had also heard about the resemblance between the professor and the serial killer. Many joked with him.

"Professor Rossi, are you a little creepy in your private life?"

"If that’s how you see it, come to my office. We’ll talk in private."

Thus, the resemblance between Professor Rossi and the supposed serial killer became a lighthearted topic for jokes. Even though it was all just in good fun, no one really believed that such a kind person could be a murderer.

Three days later, just as Lucia arrived at school, she didn’t even have time to pull out the day’s newspaper when a classmate dragged her away.

"The professor is missing!"