A Few Things About My High School Days

My three years of middle school were an inferno. I had no friends, only a gang of punks who enjoyed bullying me. They stole my meal card, put nails on my chair, burned my neck with a lighter... Telling the teachers only earned me a worse beating.

I endured it for three years, wanting only to get into Pancheng No. 1 High School and escape this living hell for good...

I did it. But not long after high school began, the punk who had led the bullying transferred into my class. He went even further, spreading rumors and slandering me, pushing me into deeper despair.

“Silence! Silence! If you do not erupt in silence, you will perish in it.”

Then, during a study hall, I swung a chair and smashed his arrogance to pieces. I smashed my own cowardice, too, along with my last illusion of a “peaceful high school life.”

After that day, I took the cigarette my brothers offered me. It made me cough up tears, and woke the ruthless streak buried in my bones.

“From now on, I’m running with you guys.”

They called it “forcing a good person into prostitution.” I called it “fighting evil with evil.”

From then on, the skies over Pancheng No. 1 began to change.

I became the White Paper Fan of the White Sheep Gang, plotting with my brains and commanding respect with my fists.

With my brothers at my side and our enforcers leading the way, we fought from our first year of high school into our second, overturning all those so-called “rules.”

They said that once you stepped onto this road, there was no turning back. I looked back at who I used to be: the boy who curled up and trembled in the dark. At last, he had stood up and taken hold of a knife.

“If you don’t go looking for trouble, trouble will come looking for you.”

“If this world refuses to play fair, then we’ll fight our way to a new dawn by our own rules.”

We’re no good people, and we’ll never be silent lambs.