Chapter Text
X was a good student, an outstanding achiever—someone who belonged to a class far above mine, a person wasting his life away. But back then I was naïve enough not to hold such notions, and instead pestered him relentlessly, clinging to him in a deadweight way. Six years ago, I once asked X: “Do you believe in the soul?” He answered: “I suppose I do.” The answer surprised me. At the time, I had a certain prejudice against him; I assumed he was just like everyone else—brutishly classifying the worldly, the material, as matter (the so-called “real”), and treating that unexamined assumption as truth. It was because of this moment that I developed a peculiar feeling toward him, something between “interest” and “disgust.” Suddenly, I realized X resembled Miss Jiang, a shallow childhood acquaintance of mine, both wrapped in the same animal hide. The difference was that I once held a faint, hidden affection for Miss Jiang, but not for X. Eventually, I abandoned my attempts to manipulate X. I knew it was meaningless. Everything seemed so absurd, so laughable—like spoiled flesh turning banal and dull.
If X was a somewhat intelligent man, then Y was a man with nothing but petty cunning. Y never understood me; he found me absurd, neither quite hating me nor liking me. I suspect that in Y’s eyes, I was little different from a lunatic or a madman (which is likely how everyone saw me). I remember once, when I picked up the shattered fragments of a broken glass and walked toward him, he looked at me with the expression of someone convinced I was about to kill. That fact struck me as briefly “funny,” though the amusement quickly numbed over. Sometimes Y could even strike me as “cute,” but most of the time he was simply revolting. He would crack crude jokes about female classmates, fantasize about female teachers, and spread obscene rumors about girls… such things were the usual pastime of Y and his brothers. To them, it seemed, the very label “woman” existed only as a sexual object. Their innocence and arrogance made me laugh to myself for a while, though I knew that my laughter would no doubt be taken as another sign of “insanity,” something for them to gossip over at lunch. The most memorable thing about Y was his missing finger. Every time he recounted how his pinky had been crushed off, it reminded me of when a metal gate mangled my finger in childhood. For a fleeting moment, there was the faintest trace of resonance. “Oh, I see,” I would answer, and our banal conversation would end there.
I never held much resentment toward Z. Though he, too, was one of Y’s delinquent companions, he was the only one among that pack of bastards who seemed to feel a trace of guilt toward me. Honestly, I hardly recall much of him; only that he was a pitiful man. Unlike X and Y—bright students, basking in their parents’ love and free from worry about the future—Z was different. His grades had once been decent, but under the cold neglect of his family he slid into the familiar cliché of “rebellion.” Brawls with outsiders, refusing homework, fooling around with loafing friends, earning the homeroom teacher’s scolding, losing face before the class, and yet wearing such disgrace as a badge of pride. It was not that he didn’t realize the absurdity of his actions; rather, he was stubbornly intoxicated by that mire, because beyond it, he had nothing at all. Sometimes I wondered what it felt like for Z to be Y’s friend. Y was also a schoolyard delinquent, yet with his sharper mind he could coast into high scores even without studying. Because of those superior grades, even when he was scolded, teachers still spared him some face. Z and Y must have both known this: Y had an escape route. The moment he grew tired of their little campus games, he could simply “return to the proper track.” So what must it have felt like for Z, befriending someone whose fall from grace was never real, whose ruin was only play-acting, and who always had a way back? Did it spark envy? Unease? Of course, that is something I can no longer know.