Chapter 689: My Name Is Zheng Yingxiong
My name is Zheng Yingxiong.
I'm from Quanzhou, Fujian.
I lied. The reason I came to "Dao City" was to find that scent I had once smelled.
Before I arrived at the "Land of Finality," I was sitting in my second-grade classroom, trembling with fear.
As I listened to the homeroom teacher's footsteps drawing closer, I kept my head bowed the entire time.
I didn't have the courage to look at her, let alone at my deskmate.
Just as I expected, when the teacher saw a few meal tickets lying quietly in my deskmate's desk cubby, she exploded like Zhang Fei in a picture book, flying into a rage in an instant.
She slapped my deskmate across the face, then grabbed him by his dirty collar and yanked him to his feet.
"Xu Jiahua! Have you lost your mind?!" The teacher kept jabbing her finger at my deskmate's temple. "Stealing at such a young age—you'll grow up to be a thief!"
My deskmate stared in disbelief at the meal tickets in the teacher's hand, stammering, "No way... I, I didn't steal them!"
"Cursing! Cursing!!" The teacher rained slaps down on my deskmate's head and face. "If you didn't steal them, where did these meal tickets come from?! Your family is dirt poor, huh? So you stole meal tickets to eat, is that it? You can't even afford a three-yuan meal ticket—you deserve to rot in jail when you grow up! The Xu family line ends with you!"
"It really, really wasn't me!" My deskmate was on the verge of tears. "My mom packed me lunch! I brought my own!"
He frantically pulled a crumpled plastic bag from his desk cubby. Inside were two dry, hard flatbreads. They looked like they had crumbled, and the bag was full of crumbs.
Holding up the flatbreads, he choked out, "Teacher, look! I-I brought flatbreads! Why would I steal if I had my own food?"
Hearing him start to make excuses, the teacher raised her voice even higher. "You haven't done enough bad things already?!"
Her voice was so loud my ears felt like they were going deaf.
"I... I..." My deskmate's hand trembled as he held the flatbreads. In his entire life, he had probably never suffered such an injustice.
"Oh, I get it! The school lunch has ham in it, and you wanted some, so you stole your classmate's meal tickets?" The teacher slapped the flatbreads out of his hand onto the floor, pointing at his forehead spitefully. "You filthy brat! You little pauper! Don't disgust me with this crap!"
Right in front of the entire class, the teacher tore into my deskmate relentlessly. He was usually the cheeky, grinning sort, but now he felt terribly wronged, yet he couldn't think of any excuse on the spot.
How could he even defend himself...? There was no way.
Because those meal tickets weren't stolen by him. They were stolen by me.
During recess when no one was around, I swiped those few meal tickets and quietly slipped them into his desk cubby.
The girl who lost the meal tickets realized they were missing during the homeroom teacher's lesson. She interrupted the class, stood up, and started wailing. Once the teacher figured out what happened, she ordered everyone to put their hands behind their backs while she personally checked each person's cubby and backpack.
Just as I'd predicted, my deskmate was caught.
The teacher cursed him out in the harshest terms. I was shaking all over, because I knew she wasn't really scolding Xu Jiahua—she was scolding me.
I didn't want to steal, either. I didn't want to end up in jail. But I hoped the school would expel my deskmate. He wasn't a good person.
He would demand money from me, poke me with his pencil, and if I didn't obey, he'd punch me.
But the teacher never did anything about it. She always said, "You should get along with your classmates. Why doesn't he bully someone else?"
I had no other choice. I didn't want to get beaten up every day, and I didn't want to hand over my lunch money to him.
My family couldn't afford the three-yuan meal tickets either. I only had one yuan and fifty cents for lunch every day. But he asked me for fifty cents every single day!
Students who didn't buy meal tickets were already disliked by the teacher. This time, I absolutely couldn't get caught, or the teacher would surely beat me to death.
But... I had never imagined that framing someone else would feel so terrible.
I kept my head down, holding back tears. I thought I'd feel happy watching my deskmate get yelled at, but I felt nothing of the sort...
I was terrified, but even more than that, I felt miserable.
Later on, I found out that stealing a classmate's meal tickets wouldn't get you expelled at all. The teacher made my deskmate apologize to the girl in front of the whole class, then told him he'd have to stand during lessons for the next two days.
It looked like my deskmate had been punished, but actually, I was the one suffering the most.
I had stolen something, and I had framed someone else. Seeing my deskmate standing there with a nonchalant expression, I knew that the one who deserved to be punished was me. The one who should apologize was me.
Until school let out, my heart felt unbearably heavy.
That evening, when I got home, my dad was drunk again. As usual, he had a fight with my mom. All the plates and cups in the house were smashed.
My dad was sprawled out on the sofa snoring. My mom wasn't home—she'd probably gone out to play mahjong again.
Our house was already tiny, and now the floor was covered in broken glass. There was no place to stand. I grabbed a broom and swept up the shards, then went to my room.
My room was very small. The bed was right by the door, and a desk stood at the foot of the bed.
Every day I sat on the bed to do my homework. The light in the room had been broken for a long time. My parents never fixed it, and I couldn't reach it myself. But luckily, I had a small desk lamp.
Today, though, my parents' fight must have been especially fierce. My little desk lamp had fallen over on the desk. I set it upright and saw that the bulb was shattered.
"Ah..."
I didn't know what to do. Not a single bright spot in the entire house was left for me to do my homework. My grades weren't great, but if I didn't do my homework, the teacher would slap me. Our teacher was fine in every way except for her terrible temper.
I grabbed my backpack and went to the doorway, sitting on the steps in front of the yard. There happened to be a streetlamp nearby. I pulled out my exercise book and started on today's homework.
Thank goodness... there was a streetlamp in front of the house.
Today I had to copy "Sima Guang Smashed the Vat." That story was really interesting—I could read it without needing pinyin.
Sima Guang not only had lots of playmates, but he also went to save one of them.
After he smashed the vat, his parents and teacher didn't scold him either.
What a wonderful story. I envied Sima Guang so much.
He had his own playmates, and his parents and teacher weren't mean.
I was halfway through copying when I noticed a few spots of water on the four-line grid paper.
Was it raining?
I looked up blankly. On summer nights, everyone seemed to be arguing. Neighbors argued, pigeons argued, and the cicadas argued.
Sometimes the sky argued, too. The sky was like my dad—after a thunderclap, it would drop a few raindrops that shattered on the ground.
Then the sky would fall into a deep sleep, and the next day it would act as if nothing had happened.
But tonight, the sky wasn't arguing. The pitch-black heavens showed no stars, only a moon that was just as lonely as I was.
Was the moon also doing homework out here tonight?
I reached up and touched my cheek. It was cold. So it wasn't the sky crying—it was me.
I buried my face in my knees, holding back every sound, and then the tears poured down.