The extra desk beside the trash can was removed.

The classroom looked full again, as if no student were even missing.

When a person dies, it’s like water disappearing into water.

Everything gradually settled back into calm.

An Qi went from being a name on everyone’s lips to living only in my memory.

His good days hadn’t lasted long.

Neither did mine.

Once I entered ninth grade, with schoolwork growing intense, my homeroom teacher applied on my behalf for a free boarding spot at school.

The second night after I moved in—

I was in the classroom during evening study hall, and Teacher Li was up at the podium going over a math exam paper.

My father barged in, reeking of alcohol.

“Where’s that little bitch Tang Heqing?”

It seemed he’d lost money again and wanted to take it out on me.

My hand tightened around my pen.

Teacher Li set down the exam paper. After a moment of shock, her voice stayed calm.

“Sir, please step outside. We’re in the middle of class.”

Something about her stern tone seemed to hit a nerve.

He swept his arm across the podium, sending everything crashing to the floor.

His finger jabbed almost right at the teacher’s forehead.

“You dare tell me to get out? Who the hell do you think you are?

“Actually think you’re somebody, huh.”

He raised his hand as if to strike.

However stern Teacher Li usually was, she was barely in her twenties.

Faced with someone like this, how could she not be afraid.

Her whole chest heaved violently, her fingers gripping the edge of the podium so hard they turned white.

This was Teacher Li—the teacher I admired and respected most.

She would quietly slip me school supplies under the excuse of encouragement.

She would argue with the principal on my behalf, just to get me a spot in the poverty-assistance program.

Seeing me eating nothing but plain cabbage at lunch, she would silently move a chicken drumstick from her own bowl into mine.

She looked out for how I was treated in class, worried constantly that I might be facing some unfairness.

But now, she was the one suffering because of me.

In that instant, some courage I couldn’t name surged up, and I rushed forward like something possessed.

I yanked the teacher aside and stood in front of her, shielding her.

Screaming at my father to get lost, calling him a beast.

A loud slap landed across my face.

The force was so great that half my face went nearly numb, blood slowly seeping from the corner of my mouth.

My ears rang, wave after wave.

The first thought in my mind:

Good. Good, I managed to block it. It’s just that the flowers I folded for the teacher, tucked in my drawer, won’t get to be given after all.

Today was Teacher’s Day.

But it seemed I wasn’t fit to be her student after all.

The security guards, arriving late, finally dragged the beast away.

I slowly raised my head. The looks from all around me were impossible to name.

They hadn’t actually done anything, and yet I felt as if I’d been stripped bare in front of everyone.

That single slap shattered the teacher’s dignity, and shattered my own self-respect along with it—and with it, my last remaining shelter was torn away too.

The principal came to see Teacher Li and said my boarding there might endanger the other students’ safety, suggesting I go back to commuting from home instead.

Teacher Li wanted to argue on my behalf, but I couldn’t bear to let her pay any more for my sake.

I agreed to move out that very night.

At that moment I was almost grateful my belongings were so pitifully few—I didn’t need the teacher’s help; I could carry it all myself.

I looked out at the pitch-black night.

I knew that starting tomorrow,

my good days would be over.

Abusers, unrestrained, only grow bolder afterward.

And once I got home, I would face the bitter consequences of having fought back for the first time.

I stood at the intersection with my bags on my back, imagining the past and the future all at once, the two tangled together in that single moment, both of them brushed by the same cool early-autumn wind.

In a daze, I fell into an illusion—

that my whole life would be one long stretch of muddy, impassable road.

And yet, the present kept moving forward regardless.

So, on this river of hardship, I rowed on with my broken oar, and set off once more.