Two days later, my desk mate’s standing punishment finally ended. He could sit and attend class like the other students.

I thought I would feel somewhat better in my heart when I saw him start to sit in class, but I didn’t.

Doing one bad thing was really strange. I wasn’t happy before doing it, wasn’t happy while doing it, and wasn’t happy after doing it either.

If that’s the case, why are there still so many bad people in the world?

I was very afraid they would discover this was something I had done. I was afraid I would end up in prison in the future.

I endured for a long time in my anxious state of mind. By the second period in the afternoon, the entire room suddenly began to shake.

The homeroom teacher, who was in the middle of lecturing, let out a heart-wrenching shriek when the room began shaking. Her entire face flushed bright red. A few seconds later, she abandoned us and fled from the classroom as if running for her life.

She stumbled every three steps, running and crawling, as if being chased by a man-eating tiger.

Seeing her panicked retreating figure, the students sat in the shaking room looking at each other.

The teacher had said that if we walked out of the classroom during class without her permission, everyone would get zero points on the pinyin questions during exams.

But what should we do now?

I put my hands behind my back and sat motionless in my chair. Perhaps when the room stopped shaking, when the teacher came back, seeing that I sat more upright than the other children, she would even praise me as a “good child.”

But even as cracks began appearing in the room’s walls, even as the ceiling fans began to fall from the roof, the teacher never came back.

The rotating electric fans began successively crashing onto the students. I witnessed with my own eyes the people in the first row being pinned underneath. They screamed loudly, with lots of blood appearing on their bodies.

Only then did people finally begin to stand up. Everyone realized something was wrong.

“No… can’t…” I forcefully kept my hands behind my back. “The teacher said…”

“Damn it! The teacher is nothing!” My desk mate suddenly pulled me up. “Zheng Yingxiong! This is called an earthquake. If we don’t run now, we’re going to die!”

But I felt I couldn’t trust him. He was a bad child. The classmates all said he came from somewhere else, and the clothes he wore every day were all dirty…

While I was hesitating, the electric fan above our heads finally couldn’t hold on any longer. After a loud crash, it fell down. It rotated as it descended, looking extremely frightening.

At the critical moment, my desk mate fiercely pushed me, shoving me to the ground, and I only felt a burst of heat on my face, as if something had splattered over.

I stood there dazed for a few seconds, then immediately stood up to check on my desk mate’s condition. I discovered that one of the fan blades was stuck in his chest.

He sat leaning back in his chair, continuously convulsing, with blood constantly spurting from his mouth.

“Xu Jiahua…” I walked forward with a choked voice, continuously shaking him. “Xu Jiahua…”

But I actually didn’t know what to say.

“Zheng Yingxiong… run… run…” He kept pushing me outward with his dirty hands, but every time he spoke a sentence, blood spurted from his mouth. “Damn it… cough… it hurts so much…”

“I’m sorry… Xu Jiahua… I’m sorry…”

“Don’t apologize… run quickly…” He kept pushing me. “I said I’d look out for you… run…”

But I really wanted to apologize to him. If I didn’t apologize at this moment, I might never have another chance.

“I stole the meal tickets, Xu Jiahua. I was the one who framed you…” I said while crying loudly. “You mustn’t die…”

“I know… I know…” He reached out and patted me, but he was in so much pain that his entire forehead was covered in cold sweat. “It’s okay, Zheng Yingxiong… run…”

But even until the next second when the entire ceiling collapsed, even until the entire school building buried everyone together, I never understood what Xu Jiahua meant by “I know” and “it’s okay.”

Was he in too much pain to hear me speak clearly?

Was he about to die, so he was confused?

It was me who framed him. It was me who put the meal tickets in his desk compartment.

It was me who caused him to stand as punishment for two days.

But he wasn’t angry. He just kept telling me to run.

But where should I run to…?

I truly had no place I could go… I didn’t want to run to the street, didn’t want to go do homework under that streetlight, and I didn’t want to return to the home full of broken fragments either.