Perhaps it wasn’t entirely stealing. Perhaps they and I had come up with the same plan.
The first sign of strangeness was discovered in my desk.
The school desks had flip-top lids. After years of use, the lid of my desk was already a bit crooked. I had clipped a tiny scrap of paper on the edge of the wooden lid. As long as the lid was opened, this scrap of paper would fall to the ground. Of course, as long as the scrap was clipped back in its original place, I wouldn’t know someone had tampered with it. But the people who rummaged through my desk often wouldn’t notice this detail. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care.
Today was no exception.
I put down my schoolbag, glanced at the disappeared scrap of paper, and opened the desk.
The result surprised me. There was no trash in the desk, no insect carcasses, nothing, except for the textbooks I had placed inside.
Someone had gone through my desk but didn’t put anything in it?
After this surprise, during the lunch break in the classroom, a clamor arose.
“The water’s almost out, hurry up and go to the water room to get more!”
The one shouting was the class’s sports representative, Jiang Jie. She had long arms and legs, short hair, and a fiery temper, with a somewhat masculine appearance. However, her family was very well-off. She was one of Huo Ranyin’s lackeys—and also one of his admirers.
But because of her appearance, although she bossed people around in the class daily, she was always a bit shy and self-conscious around Huo Ranyin, not daring to confess her feelings to him. She would just act like a buddy around him, dealing with the people Huo Ranyin didn’t like—like me—and then disciplining any girl who dared to get close to Huo Ranyin.
Now they were in their second year of high school. At the beginning of the new school year, a first-year girl got close to Huo Ranyin and even went to see two movies with him. She took her lackeys and went directly to the first-year section, called the girl out of the classroom, and made her slap herself.
The girl slapped herself twice. Jiang Jie, thinking she wasn’t hitting hard enough, pulled her hand away and slapped her hard several more times. At that time, the girl’s classmates were all crowded at the classroom windows, watching as if it were a monkey show.
Nothing came of it afterward. The girl was thin-skinned. Being bullied at school, especially when it involved a puppy-love scandal, sometimes made her feel like it was her own fault. She became even more afraid to tell teachers or parents, which in turn fueled Jiang Jie’s arrogance.
Among the unresponsive crowd was Huo Ranyin, the one who went to the movies with the girl. He still acted like best buddies with Jiang Jie.
Jiang Jie thought no one dared to go over her head and tell Huo Ranyin, and that the girl had been beaten into submission. She walked around smugly with a swagger for a long time.
Ridiculous.
Everything Jiang Jie thought Huo Ranyin didn’t know, he knew.
He didn’t say anything, but it was only because he didn’t care.
He didn’t care about the girl he went to the movies with, nor did he care about Jiang Jie’s feelings.
Boys know much more than girls think they do. They pretend not to know, but it’s only because not knowing is more in line with their interests.
But all this was just a trivial matter in Jiang Jie’s school life of stirring up trouble.
She shouted, and a chorus of agreement gradually rose in the classroom, urging the class life committee member to quickly send someone to get water.
Drinking mineral water at school required paying a water fee, not much, 30 yuan per semester. The vast majority of the class had paid the fee, so the mineral water was consumed relatively quickly. A barrel of water could generally be finished in three days.
So every time they went to get water, they would bring back two barrels at once, which was just enough for a week.
But this time, the two barrels of water were consumed extra quickly. I remember it was just changed on Wednesday afternoon, and now it was Friday morning, and only a third was left.
During the lunch break, everyone said a few words, but then the math teacher suddenly came in and handed out papers, so they put aside the matter of getting water for the time being.
I didn’t notice anything unusual at that time.
It wasn’t until that evening, when I stayed behind to clean up, that I discovered something. It wasn’t my turn for duty, but with Jiang Jie around, days like this of cleaning for others happened from time to time.
Thinking about it carefully, maybe I should thank her.
Because it was this time, while I was cleaning the classroom, that I accidentally discovered a small pinhole on the round plastic seal of the empty barrel next to the water dispenser.
Someone had used a needle to pierce the plastic seal of the mineral water.
What were they trying to do?
Naturally, without any effort, my plan came to mind.
I thought of their plan.
They had put poison in the water. After poisoning it, of course, they would want to escape punishment and suspicion.
There were 49 people in Class E, and 45 had paid the water fee and could drink the water in the classroom. The biggest suspicion in a poisoning incident would naturally fall on the remaining people who didn’t drink water in the class.
I was one of those four people.
Who were they? From a motive standpoint, they must really hate the people in our class, which is why they would think of poisoning the shared water dispenser.
The water barrel had been brought in on Tuesday afternoon. They could have poisoned it anytime on Tuesday night. Everyone in the class had an equal opportunity, even those who drank the water could be them.
Besides people in the class, it could also be someone from outside. The classroom door was old, and a student card could easily open it.
Could it have been them who went through my desk this morning? I checked my desk again, emptying it and tipping it over. Only a cloud of dust came out.
But that didn’t prove anything.
If it were me, and I wanted to frame someone, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to plant something obvious like a syringe. If I were that stupid, living a conformist life wouldn’t be a bad way to live submissively.
If it were me, I would pour some hard-to-detect powder that dogs could smell into the cracks.
That would be both safe and economical.
I guessed that the poison they put in the water dispenser was drugs. Drugs are addictive. The people in the class unconsciously consumed more water, so the water was consumed faster. This deduction had a high degree of rationality.
Since the empty barrel placed at the same time as the half-full one had its plastic seal pierced by a needle, the remaining water must have also been poisoned by them.
Should I pour it out?
Touching it now would increase my suspicion. It was Friday afternoon. The people who got the water remembered there was still some left. When they came on Monday and saw it was empty, it would surely arouse their suspicion, and they would connect it to me, who stayed behind to clean on Friday.
Doing nothing, on the contrary, could protect myself.
Of course, to say it was for self-protection might be a bit hypocritical and ridiculous. It would be better to say that it was a good opportunity to get revenge on people like Jiang Jie who always bullied me. I didn’t pay the water fee, so it was normal for me not to drink the water. As for suspicion, weren’t there three other people who hadn’t paid the water fee with me?
The presumption of innocence is always a good policy.
If I decided to do nothing, all I had to do later was to drag the desk out to be cleaned, wipe the corners clean, and it would have nothing to do with me.
This thought stayed in my mind for a full ten minutes. In the end, I deleted it.
I didn’t have much of an opinion on my classmates. It’s hard to pay attention to a sheep every day, unless that sheep wags its head and tail and bares its teeth at you every day.
But even towards Jiang Jie—that follower of Huo Ranyin—I had no murderous intent.
All my murderous intent was always focused on Huo Ranyin. Before killing Huo Ranyin, it was not suitable for too many things to happen around me that would draw attention to me.
If I gave in to a momentary impulse now and got revenge on Jiang Jie, it would only prove that my brain was no longer calm enough. It was already controlled by hormones. It was no longer safe.
But do I need this safety?
I asked myself, but had no answer.
Perhaps time would tell me everything.
I filled the remaining water into mineral water bottles. After emptying the plastic barrel, there was indeed a pinhole on the round plastic seal. I planned to keep the water as evidence, and at the same time, I wanted to take it to that internet cafe and ask what kind of “goods” this was.
Looking at the clear water in my hand, I suddenly had a new idea.
Just as I, who had been bullied all along, didn’t hate all my classmates, did they really want to get revenge on everyone?
This kind of poisoning could on the surface seem to target the entire class, but in reality, it could be targeting a specific person. Expanding the victims was just their smokescreen to obscure their motive.
Perhaps that specific person was Jiang Jie.
Because in Class E, only Jiang Jie, who had to consume a lot of energy every day for physical training and wanted to take the college entrance exam as a sports specialty student, drank the most water in the class.
And she was the most ostentatious, and the things she did were the most annoying. Besides the first-year girl last time, she had also bullied many others, for example, recently there was a Xu Shijin who she didn’t get along with, to the point where Xu Shijin wrote a suicide note to confront her.
In addition, Jiang Jie also liked to play mahjong, not just for fun, but for money. She often extorted others to get money to play mahjong.
Her interpersonal relationships were a mess. It wouldn’t be a wise move to try to deduce them from her.
…
I took the mineral water bottle to the drug den I had found before.
Without any preparation or rehearsal, when facing the drug dealer, the lie came out naturally: “I have a batch of goods, but they’re dissolved in water. Do you take them? I brought a sample.”
The drug dealer obviously wouldn’t refuse goods. He casually asked, “Was it soaked out of clothes?”
I thought for a moment and understood what he meant. Some people smuggle drugs by soaking clothes in a drug solution and then drying them, a rather novel method not publicized in the school’s campaign.
I handed over the mineral water bottle. The drug dealer’s underling took a sip, his face didn’t look good. He shook his head and said, “Are you kidding us, little brother? Isn’t this the stuff that comes from here?”
What a surprise.
They found the same drug channel as I did? Was this a coincidence?
If I could, I would want to probe a little more here to confirm their identity, but obviously, the drug dealer wouldn’t let me do that. I acted panicked and scared, spouting some random lie that someone had tricked me.
They didn’t pay me any mind and kicked me out.
I wasn’t worried that this trip would bring me any trouble. Sometimes having a bowl-cut that covered my eyebrows had its advantages. At least my mostly obscured face wouldn’t leave an impression on anyone. I believed these two drug dealers didn’t even remember my face.
But this, in turn, made me lose some interest.
The drug dealers who supposedly lived on the edge of a knife were just like that, letting me get clues so easily.
Sheep.
One by one, sheep.
One by one, ignorant, one by one, pretending to be fierce but actually fragile sheep.
My deduction was verified. Since the drugs had already been put in the water, then next, someone should show signs of drug addiction—would someone show a reaction over the weekend?
After the reaction appeared, would they realize it was drug addiction? Would they go to the hospital? Would the school call the police?
Curiosity about the future development of the situation made me leave the house on Saturday morning and wait in the school corridor. Even knowing that my actions would completely overlap with theirs, curiosity still got the upper hand, driving my body to act.
…
Nothing happened on Saturday. On Sunday, something happened.
I was cornered by Jiang Jie.
After two days without drinking the spiked water, Jiang Jie was indeed much more irritable than usual. In the classroom, she drank the most water, so of course, her addiction was the heaviest. She brought her lackeys to beat me up. There were not only girls, but also boys.
I ran for a while, but they still caught me.
I covered my head and squatted against the wall. Their fists and feet rained down on me like a storm. And through the gaps in the crowd, I looked at the place I had carefully selected.
At the school’s boundary wall, my back was against the wall. As long as I leaned my back against the wall, I could protect many parts of my body.
There was also a rock here.
A human head is hardly harder than a rock.
There were so many of them, pushing and shoving, crowding, scrambling to get a few hits in on me. Once the scene became chaotic, it would be difficult to control. To pull a few tricks would become exceptionally easy.
I wonder whose head will end up testing the rock?
Just as I was thinking, someone suddenly said, “Hey, isn’t it a bit much for so many of you to beat up one person?”
This voice was not in my plan.
I was uncharacteristically dazed. After everyone else, I looked up in the direction the voice came from.
I saw a person sitting on the school wall. The sun was in the sky behind his head, so a black veil woven with colorful specks obscured his face.
I could only hear his voice.
“Little friends, study hard. Don’t go around causing trouble and bullying people every day, okay?”
