The end-of-school bell rang out across the campus, and the setting sun dyed the city of towering buildings red.
Wei Yuan and Bao Yun had not left. They sat side by side on the railing of the main building's rooftop, looking at the library, half of it bathed in the evening light. Set against red clouds that filled half the sky, the two silhouettes looked as though they could keep each other company to the end of the world.
Behind them, Peacock crouched in a corner with a cigarette, frowning at it. Then he mustered his courage and took a drag, and ended up coughing so hard he couldn't stop.
He didn't give up, though; he stayed crouched against the wall, taking a puff whenever he could stand it.
If he turned his head, he could see those two sitting together. Peacock had never thought there was anything wrong with his situation, but ever since Bao Yun appeared, he found himself alone more and more of the time.
Just like now: the closer those two figures nestled, the lonelier he felt. Peacock suddenly felt that he had grown up. Happiness, it turned out, came from comparison. So did unhappiness.
"The view really is nice." Bao Yun leaned toward Wei Yuan. He put an arm around her waist, and then his hand naturally climbed up inside her top.
Bao Yun gave a soft laugh and lifted her arm, opening the way for him. Wei Yuan explored earnestly for quite a while but could not find the boundaries of those peaks; attending to one thing meant neglecting the other, and in the end he could only marvel.
Bao Yun said, "The gymnastics hall, or the little woods?"
Wei Yuan withdrew his hand. "Not yet. I have to deal with one disgusting fellow first. Let's go to the restroom."
The two went downstairs and quickly disappeared. Peacock stayed alone on the rooftop, hardly able to believe that the two of them had just abandoned him there. Looking at the sun about to sink, he hurried downstairs and ran for the school gate.
Staying in the school grounds after dark was a very dangerous thing. It was said that the people who had done so before had all turned strange afterward.
By now the teaching building was dark and heavy, and in some corridors you could not see your own hand. Only a few places in the whole building had lights on, and many of those lights were broken, flickering on and off.
Wei Yuan pulled Bao Yun to the restroom; without bothering about which sex it was for, he pushed the door open and went in. Then he stood before the mirror and looked at himself in it.
The mirror showed a somewhat delicate-looking youth, still seemingly full of childishness, yet with eyes calm and steady in a way that did not match his appearance. Beside him, Bao Yun was as bright and striking as ever, her eyes full of light. The two in the mirror were, at best, a passable match; the main problem was that Wei Yuan's body was a bit lacking.
"You want to do it here? We're running short of time."
As she spoke, Bao Yun braced both hands on the sink and leaned her upper body forward, looking up at the mirror; the back hem of her school-uniform skirt rode up high.
Wei Yuan felt around under her skirt and pulled a lighter from a small pocket at the side. "Hold on. Let's deal with that annoying fellow first."
Then Wei Yuan lit the lighter and began burning his own left little finger. The searing pain of flame on living flesh spread through his whole body in an instant; his right hand desperately wanted to pull the lighter away, but Wei Yuan used his will to suppress every movement of his body, his mind at peace, and kept burning.
The pain set his whole body trembling, and Wei Yuan seemed to hear a wail rise from deep inside him. But once the fingertip was charred, that wail did not come again.
The lighter grew scorching hot; a little longer and it would burst, so only then did Wei Yuan shut it off.
Bao Yun had been watching him all along. "No luck?"
"It has no way back now, so this is its final madness," Wei Yuan said. "A little longer and I could force it out, but then the little finger would be ruined, and it's not worth that. We'll try a different way. You help me."
"As much pain as possible, with as little damage as possible?"
"Yes."
"I'm not good at that."
"It doesn't matter. The night is long; we can find a target to practice on first. I hear there are teachers on duty in the teaching building. Let's go look—we should find one."
"All right. Let's go."
Wei Yuan and Bao Yun left the restroom and found the corridor nearly pitch black, with only one lamp lit at the stairwell at the far end. The whole building was silent. Outside the windows it was already deep night, with no starlight and no lights anywhere.
The two walked without a sound. The building was so quiet they could almost hear their own heartbeats, yet now and then strange noises drifted past.
When they reached the stairwell, there was a sudden sound from above. Wei Yuan glanced up and made to climb the stairs, but his leg stopped halfway up and returned to where it had started on its own!
Wei Yuan took out a fountain pen and drove it straight into his own thigh—half the pen sank in! That intense, vivid, sudden pain made a wail rise from deep inside his body again.
Wei Yuan pulled the pen out, leaving a bleeding hole in his thigh; the pain went on and on. This time, when he went up the stairs, there was indeed no obstruction.
Following the sound, they climbed to the floor above.
The sound came from an equipment room around the corner, where several rows of metal cabinets stood piled with plugs. Between the two rows sat a long-haired girl. She was the girl Wei Yuan had seen that afternoon, the one who had walked into the library; somehow she had now turned up in the teaching building. At that moment she was hugging her knees tightly, sobbing quietly.
"Why does everyone blame me? I... I didn't want this either. They all lied to me! What am I supposed to do now? I'm still young. I don't want this baby..."
Wei Yuan and Bao Yun watched for a while; she only kept her head down, sobbing, and did not notice them.
Wei Yuan shook his head. "This one's no good for practice."
Bao Yun nodded in agreement. The two were just about to leave when footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and someone called, "Where are you? Didn't I tell you to come to my office?"
Hearing that voice, the girl grew visibly frightened.
Bao Yun tugged at Wei Yuan, and the two hid behind the cabinets. They had barely done so when the door was pushed open and a short but burly man appeared in the doorway. His hair was somewhat disheveled, he looked as though he hadn't shaved in days, and he wore thick black-rimmed glasses.
"This one will do," Wei Yuan said.
"Why?"
"He doesn't look like a good person. Besides, what good person is still here in the middle of the night?"
Bao Yun looked at Wei Yuan. "You just don't like the look of him, do you?"
Wei Yuan admitted it. "Yes. I only play with good-looking people."
Bao Yun hooked an arm around Wei Yuan's neck and kissed him hard again.
Then Wei Yuan appeared behind the man like a ghost, casually pulling a cable from a nearby cabinet.
The man came up to the girl and said viciously, "The school does not permit early romance or pregnancy. I'm expelling you!"
"Dean, they tricked me..."
"They have power and money. What do you have that's worth tricking? Why would they bother tricking you! Come with me to the office!!"
The man reached for the girl, but his body was suddenly hoisted into the air. Wei Yuan had looped the cable around his neck and strung him straight up to the ceiling. At that moment Wei Yuan's body was obstructed again, and another bleeding hole appeared on his arm.
Wei Yuan ripped off the dean's clothes in one motion and said to Bao Yun, "I'll test. You take notes."
"I can test too."
Wei Yuan shook his head. "He's too filthy. I don't want you touching him."
That night, exceptionally shrill screams echoed through the teaching building, and many a figure was struck with terror.
Who knows how long had passed before Wei Yuan lay naked on a school desk and said, "Come on."
In Bao Yun's hand was a yellow hair, sharp as a needle—one she had just pulled out. "Tell me if you can't hold out."
"There's no chance I can't hold out."
The yellow hair slid in at his fingertip, straight as a needle, going deeper and deeper. Wei Yuan did not even close his eyes, watching the ceiling calmly, while across his body things seemed to crawl beneath the skin like so many mice, his muscles twitching.
When the hair reached its other end, Bao Yun drew it out and pushed it in through another finger.
Suddenly Wei Yuan grunted, and from his nostril shot a finger-sized flesh worm. The worm tried to flee, but Wei Yuan caught it in one grab.
Wei Yuan opened his hand. The worm had already become a smear of flesh, and on it appeared the figure of a boy—fearful and full of venomous hate. He screamed shrilly, "I'm already miserable enough! Why do you treat me like this?"
Wei Yuan said, "I'm smarter than you and more diligent than you. Even at the simplest thing—enduring pain—you can't match me. So I can do whatever I like to you. As for whether you're miserable, what is that to me?"
"You all bully me! I—I don't want to stay in this country anymore. I'm going abroad!"
Wei Yuan smiled. "You're trash in this country, and you'll be trash once you go abroad too—you'll still do nothing but get bullied."
"Impossible! As long as I leave this place, I can become better!" The boy was growing hysterical.
"But you can't leave."
"I will leave! This is my youth. My fate is mine to decide!"
Wei Yuan wiped the flesh from his hand and flicked it onto the floor in front of him. The boy tried to lunge at Wei Yuan, but he could not leave that smear of flesh no matter what.
"Since your resentment is so powerful, I'll say a few more words to you, so that you die even more unwilling. Look at yourself: poor, cowardly, daring only to vent your anger on the people who treat you well, ranked last in your grade, fighting, skipping class, knowing nothing but idle fantasy. Going abroad? Do you have the money to go abroad?"
The boy pointed at Bao Yun and cried, "She's my girlfriend! She'll give me the money to go abroad!"
Wei Yuan pulled Bao Yun to him and kissed her cheek.
The boy was on the verge of madness. "Don't touch her—I'll kill you!" But he could not leave that smear of flesh no matter what he did.
Wei Yuan laughed. "Earlier, when we were getting intimate, I blocked your senses—were you going crazy with anger? Now I'm not blocking you, and yet you can't sense a thing."
Bao Yun said coldly, "Am I your tool?"
Wei Yuan was taken aback. That was not an easy question to answer. But before he could, Bao Yun took his hand and pressed it to her chest. "If I am, then use me more!"
The boy screamed curses and struggled wildly, his figure gradually turning pure black.
Wei Yuan said, "I took revenge for you and let you vent your anger. I studied for you. And you wanted to kill me and seize my fortune. So ending up like this is entirely your own doing. Apart from anything else, you can't blame anyone for being last in the grade."
"Someone is first and someone has to be last! It just happened to be me! That's not my fault!"
Wei Yuan shook his head slightly. "You've certainly learned plenty of sophistry. Fighting, skipping class, early romance, abortion—that was your youth, not mine, and not ours. Youth ought to be spent in the classroom, in the library, in struggle and in physics."
As he spoke, Wei Yuan lit the lighter. "We still have a desk to fool around on. No time to waste jabbering with you. Goodbye, master of this youth."
The lighter traced an arc through the air, set the minced flesh alight, and blazed up, illuminating the whole school. The boy's scream echoed over and over: "...I'll be back!"
Wei Yuan spread his hands. "I never meant to let you go so soon anyway—I haven't even finished the book yet!"
Bao Yun had stood quietly beside him the whole time. Only now did she ask, "You seem to really love physics."
Wei Yuan nodded. "Yes. I've discovered that when I want to persuade someone, physics works better than reason."
Chapter 761