The chalk dust in the hallway hadn’t even settled when, on my first day as a transfer student, I stubbed out a cigarette on the uniform of a top student.
My fists taught people to shut up faster than a teacher’s pointer, until thirty steel pipes gleamed coldly around me outside the school gates.
Chen Xu blew a smoke ring and said, “Around here, things go by my rules.”
As I reached for the rusty machete in my schoolbag, my deskmate, Shen Yu, stepped trembling in front of me
“Let him go. I’ll go with you.”
A rusty machete, a mad dog who didn’t care if he lived or died, and a girl willing to become a sacrifice.
In this wretched school where all rules have fallen apart, you either claw your way to the top through blood, or get crushed underfoot.
I never imagined that the first drop of blood to jolt me awake would come from her softly trembling words: “I’ll go with you.”
