“Does Mu Yicong live around here?”
There was a big stone pillar at the entrance of an alley next to the No. 9 Middle School. Qi Yang was squatting on it, a bag of soy milk dangling from his mouth, watching the students passing by.
Liu Dameng, Lai Jiahao, and a few others were squatting or standing nearby, all eating breakfast.
Qi Yang had woken up early today. He was worried about his 800-character self-criticism. He bought breakfast at the school gate and decided not to go inside. He planned to just wait for Mu Yicong outside.
Just in case that bastard hadn’t written anything good. If he hadn’t, Qi Yang would just beat him up outside, save himself the trouble of doing it at school.
“Either this end or that end,” Liu Dameng said, squatting beside the stone pillar too. He stuffed a hard-boiled egg into his mouth. “Keep an eye on both sides.”
“How can you see anything squatting down there?” Qi Yang shoved him. “Get out of here. Your breath stinks.”
“Does it?” Liu Dameng stood up and breathed into his cupped hand. “I brushed my teeth this morning!”
“Help me keep an, an eye out for my mom!” Lai Jiahao said, hiding behind Liu Dameng and moving with him.
They waited until even the morning reading bell had rung. The street was empty, except for the vendors packing up. There wasn’t a single student in sight. Everyone turned to look at Liu Dameng.
“Hey, don’t all look at me!” Liu Dameng was annoyed. “I don’t know where he lives either. We were all watching. Who knows which of you blind bastards missed him?”
“Late?” someone suggested.
“Forget, forget it.” Lai Jiahao swept his gaze around, grabbed his bag, and ran for the gate. “My mom has, has the first class. If I don’t, don’t run now, I’ll…”
Qi Yang didn’t wait for him to finish stuttering. His face dark, he climbed the wall and vaulted over into the school.
As he passed by the window of Classroom 9, he glanced inside. Mu Yicong was sitting there like a normal person, doing his morning reading.
“Shit, this dog bastard,” Liu Dameng fumed. “We waited for him all that time. Which gate did he come in through anyway?”
Qi Yang didn’t answer. He walked to the classroom door, and sure enough, the homeroom teacher was waiting for him with her arms crossed.
“Stand outside,” she said, not letting either of them in. She looked Qi Yang up and down. “Where’s your self-criticism?”
Qi Yang kind of wanted to laugh. He felt like a fucking idiot.
“I wrote it,” he said.
“Then hand it over,” the teacher said, holding out her hand.
“It’s not on me.” Qi Yang took a breath. “I was eating outside. I had Mu Yicong bring it in for me.”
Liu Dameng couldn’t hold it in anymore. He was ‘huffing’ into his collar, trying not to laugh.
The homeroom teacher had been dealing with Qi Yang for two or three years. She knew his dirty tricks all too well.
“Mu Yicong!” She turned her head towards the classroom and called out. “Is Qi Yang’s self-criticism with you?”
The sound of morning reading stopped abruptly. The teacher told them to keep reading and called Mu Yicong out.
Mu Yicong came out holding the new notebook Qi Yang had given him yesterday.
When he met Qi Yang’s eyes, he didn’t tattle, didn’t say anything else. He even nodded cooperatively. “It’s with me.”
The teacher took the notebook he handed over. When she opened it and looked, she paused for a moment, then her expression turned into one that was barely holding back a laugh, though she forcibly suppressed it.
“So this is your self-criticism.” She threw the notebook at Qi Yang.
Qi Yang didn’t reach out to catch it. The notebook fell to the floor. On the first page, there were only six words.
I, Qi Yang, am a big dumbass.
Qi Yang stared at the notebook on the floor for a while, feeling Liu Dameng trembling with laughter beside him.
A rush of blood surged to his head. For whatever reason, he felt like laughing too. A thought popped into his head: That bastard Mu Yicong has nice handwriting.
He tilted his head and chuckled. Then he looked up at Mu Yicong and gave him a thumbs-up. You’re a fucking beast.
“Mu Yicong, go back inside.” The teacher rubbed her nose to suppress a laugh and cleared her throat. “Qi Yang, your attitude towards the self-criticism is good, but the word count isn’t up to standard. Stay outside and finish writing the remaining 794 words. Bring it to me when you’re done.”
Liu Dameng was trying to slink into the classroom with them. The teacher pointed back at him. “You too. 500 words. You two can come into class when you’re done.”
As soon as the hallway was empty, Qi Yang kicked Liu Dameng twice in the ass.
Liu Dameng clutched his butt and hopped around. He couldn’t take it anymore. He squatted on the ground, laughing so hard he cried.
The incident of the self-criticism quickly spread through their little gang of delinquents, courtesy of Liu Dameng’s big mouth.
They all had a good laugh first. Qi Yang beat each of them up. Then they got serious and decided to stand up for their buddy.
“This Mu Yicong is way too cocky. Yangzi was giving him a way out, and look what he did!” Liu Dameng was the first to declare. “Get him!”
“Get, get him!” Lai Jiahao echoed.
“You calling in the troops?” someone else asked. “My buddies are itching for a fight.”
Qi Yang shook his head.
He wasn’t afraid of a fight, but it was such a pain getting called out by the homeroom teacher all the time.
Besides, this Mu Yicong was a new transfer student. He was obviously still under special observation. Starting a big fight with him now wouldn’t do him any good.
“So, so what do we do?” Lai Jiahao asked. “We just let him make us look like fools?”
A few of them snickered, their heads tucked in.
“Actually, I’ve been learning some stuff from a book I’ve been reading lately,” Liu Dameng suddenly said.
“You’ve been reading?” Qi Yang shot him a sideways glance.
“What, what book?” Lai Jiahao was curious too.
“‘How to Become a Mafia Boss’,” Liu Dameng said, dead serious.
Everyone looked at him like he was the dumbass.
“Just hear me out,” Liu Dameng said, putting on airs of mystery. “If you want to get revenge on someone, or mess with them, you don’t always have to fight.”
“Like, when Mu Yicong pissed Yangzi off those two times, did he use his fists?”
Hearing this, Qi Yang started to think he had a point.
“If you want to destroy someone, you have to let them run wild first,” Liu Dameng said, pretending to be Zhuge Liang, fanning himself with an imaginary fan. “The greatest destruction is betrayal.”
“What, what do you mean?” Lai Jiahao blinked. “First pretend to, to be his friend, then get, get someone to beat him up?”
“Vicious, isn’t it?” Liu Dameng clapped his hands together.
“That’s pretty low,” a few people admitted.
Qi Yang thought about it for a moment. He stood up and patted Liu Dameng on the neck. “Dameng’s growing a brain.”
Liu Dameng puffed out his chest proudly.
“But would you believe it?” Qi Yang asked him.
They all looked at him.
“Exactly. Suddenly wanting to be his friend is way too obvious,” someone caught on. “I wouldn’t believe it either if I were him.”
“Good point,” Liu Dameng nodded.
“I don’t think we need to go, go to all this trouble,” Lai Jiahao contributed his own strategy. “Yangzi, you’re in the, the same class as him. Just pretend like nothing’s wrong. The rest of, of us will mess with him on the, on the QT.”
“How?” Liu Dameng asked.
“How else? We’ll just mess, mess with him,” Lai Jiahao said.
For a while after that, Mu Yicong had a few peaceful days.
But they weren’t entirely peaceful.
Qi Yang didn’t cause him any trouble. He didn’t mention the self-criticism incident again, and he didn’t pick on him in class.
But Mu Yicong started experiencing all sorts of nasty things.
First, his textbooks, which he kept in the little space under his desk, were ripped.
Then, the homework he turned in. Everyone else’s homework was returned as they had submitted it. Mu Yicong’s either had shoe prints on the cover or had spit and phlegm stuck to the inside pages.
Glue was smeared on his chair.
Trash and earthworms were stuffed into his bag.
Chalk dust was poured into his water bottle.
When the monthly exam papers were handed back, his was crumpled into a ball. When smoothed out, the pages were covered in scribbles from a thick black marker. On the name line, two big characters were scrawled: Dumbass.
“Has he made a peep about it?”
They were in an internet cafe playing games, chatting about which deed they’d done.
“Nothing, not a single reaction,” Liu Dameng said, a bit frustrated. “He hasn’t even told the teacher. And he hasn’t gotten angry either. He just cleans up himself and goes to class like nothing happened.”
“He’s got, got some nerve,” Lai Jiahao said, a little surprised.
It wasn’t just them who were surprised. Qi Yang found it strange too.
How could someone be so calm? It was like they weren’t even his things.
“Boring.” He frowned as he worked the keyboard. “Forget it, guys. Let’s stop messing with him.”
“Just like that?” Liu Dameng wasn’t done having fun.
“Does he even care enough to respond to you?” Qi Yang asked.
“What the fuck…” Liu Dameng clicked his mouse loudly.
It wasn’t just Liu Dameng who was dissatisfied. Qi Yang was even more unhappy.
He didn’t really understand why he was targeting Mu Yicong either. Some of the things Liu Dameng and Lai Jiahao had done were too much, too disgusting.
He just wanted to see Mu Yicong lose it. To come and fight him. Not just act like some kind of ascetic sage.
They were all just junior high kids. To put it bluntly, they were barely even teenagers. This Mu Yicong acted like he was from a different generation. What was he playing at?
But Mu Yicong wasn’t reacting to any of their tactics. He was like a dead pig that couldn’t be woken up. What could they do?
Qi Yang was ready to give up on his plan to target Mu Yicong. But on the day before the National Day holiday, as Qi Yang and Liu Dameng parted ways at an intersection, he saw someone leaning against a wall by an alley entrance as he rode home.
He squinted.
Even with the orange light of the setting sun in his eyes, he could smell Mu Yicong’s unique arrogance from a mile away.
“Waiting for me?” Qi Yang slowed down on his bike, holding his leg out to brake.
Not only was he not nervous, he was even a little excited.
He couldn’t hold it in anymore.
Mu Yicong wasn’t wearing his uniform. He had it draped over his hand, hanging by his leg.
He stared at Qi Yang for two seconds, didn’t say a word. He just raised his hand and threw the uniform in his face.
Qi Yang instinctively raised his arm to block it.
But before he could even touch the clothes, a strong smell of urine, mixed with a faint scent of laundry detergent, hit his nose as the clothes swung through the air.
“Fuck.” He pushed Mu Yicong’s arm away. The uniform got caught on the handlebar of his bike.
Up close, the smell of urine was even stronger.
A ring of pale yellow on the back of the uniform was clearly visible in the setting sun, disgusting.
“Are you sick?” Qi Yang grabbed the uniform by the collar and threw it back at Mu Yicong.
“When does it end?” Mu Yicong asked him back.
“What do you mean?” Qi Yang pointed at the uniform. “You think I peed on it?”
Mu Yicong went silent again.
He glared at Qi Yang by the alley entrance for a moment, then took off his bag from his shoulder, turned around, and walked into the alley.
This meant a fight. Qi Yang was all too familiar with it.
He didn’t waste a single word. He kicked his bike over against the wall and followed him into the alley.
