The hallway returned to silence. The front door of Class 1, Grade 12 had been closed by the students who sat in the front rows as they left, leaving only the back door wide open, waiting for the last student to shut it.
Gu Renwen methodically packed his bag. He moved with light steps, bypassing Jiang Wei’s seat as he walked from the front of the room to the back, as if afraid of disturbing something. Even his movement to press the light switch was cautious and deliberate.
In an instant, the classroom became as pitch-black as the hallway.
Gu Renwen stepped over the threshold and placed his backpack on the stairs. Class 1 was located at the very end of the hallway, right next to the stairwell, making it very convenient for heading up or down.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and crouched on the stairs, finding the perfect angle.
During the nearly interminable wait, many thoughts drifted through his mind.
He truly did not like Jiang Wei. He hadn't liked him since the first time they met—it was as if they were born with clashing fates.
Jiang Wei’s appearance had indeed thrown his hard-won, stable life back into chaos, much like it had been when he first entered the tenth grade.
He was born into an ordinary family, and his mother was the quintessential parent who placed "great expectations" on her child. This meant he had lived under various high-pressure constraints since childhood. While other children’s growth was marked by gains—toys, rewards, time, freedom—he felt as though he had been losing everything since he was small. He was like a canary imprisoned in a cage, forced to use his grades to appease his "master." This didn't even earn him the same rewards others received; it only served to maintain a life that was already teetering on the edge.
He had always been the "model child" in the eyes of other parents. When he first entered this school, his mother had scolded him more than once, simply because the school was a place of hidden dragons and crouching tigers. No matter how hard he worked, he could only gaze at the backs of the geniuses from afar. For a parent accustomed to seeing her child’s name at the very top of the rankings, this was clearly not enough.
Fortunately, time can wear anything down. The scoldings passed, the beatings passed, and the tears were shed. In the end, he could only cling to the tail end of the top five in the grade. He knew that if he ever became too exhausted to persist, he would lose his footing and fall. He didn't dare imagine the consequences, nor could he bear them. Even though he was plagued by nightmares every night and had to rely on sleeping pills to get through the days, he could only keep the string in his mind pulled taut, praying he could hold on a little longer.
However, he never expected that while he was still holding on, he would be abruptly kicked off the pedestal he couldn't afford to lose during the joint examinations. And that person was Jiang Wei.
Was Jiang Wei a genius?
Perhaps, or perhaps not.
But regardless, Gu Renwen believed the effort and time he invested far exceeded Jiang Wei’s, yet the other boy could effortlessly take his place and receive all the praise and cheers.
By what right?
If he didn't do something, he would never be able to swallow this resentment.
***
"This time, what can you see?"
A cold male voice rang out. Jiang Wei could feel himself pushing up from a semi-reclined position. When his fingers brushed against the scratches on the leather chair, his entire body shuddered uncontrollably.
He could feel it, yet he couldn't control his actions. He could only obey the man’s command and open his eyes.
Everything was pitch black.
A normal person can still sense a light source even with their eyes closed, but even with his eyes wide open, he couldn't find a single glimmer of light.
"I can't see! I can't see anything!" Jiang Wei suddenly screamed hysterically, shaking his head violently as he tried to look in other directions to find a shred of non-existent security. "What did you do to me?!"
He reached out, wanting to touch his eyes, but before he could make contact, his arms were forced back down by hands appearing from both sides.
"Don't touch your eyes."
"What did you do to me?!"
Jiang Wei could feel his heart racing and his breathing becoming shallow and rapid. If he could see, his face would likely be flushed red. For the first time in a long while, anger overrode his fear, giving him the courage to resist again.
"Administer another sedative." From somewhere else, another voice emerged, slightly more magnetic and deeper than the one Jiang Wei had heard before.
His subconscious told him he should be very familiar with the owner of this voice, but he didn't have the slightest mental capacity to think about it now.
The needle pierced his skin.
*No—*
The back of a chair slammed into the floor, letting out a dull thud in the classroom.
Jiang Wei was still dazed when he hit the ground, but he immediately scrambled up. His breathing, which hadn't yet calmed, grew even more ragged, and the expression on his face gradually turned to one of terror.
The surroundings...
Jiang Wei reached out with a trembling hand. It was pitch black, so dark he couldn't see his own fingers.
He closed his eyes again, took two deep breaths, and opened them once more.
It was still pitch black, and the silence was suffocating.
No...
This wasn't right...
He shouldn't be dreaming now, so why could he still see nothing?!
A whimper escaped Jiang Wei’s throat, like a discarded cub letting out a feeble cry of distress.
His movements became increasingly frantic. His arms and legs collided with desks and chairs countless times. The classroom was filled with the dull thuds of collisions and the sound of heavy objects crashing to the floor.
Yet he seemed to have lost his sense of pain, spinning in place like a headless fly. Occasionally, he would stumble back a few steps, and the sound of his back hitting the metal locker doors rang out sharply.
The emergency voice-activated lights in the hallway had already responded to the intermittent crashing and flickered on. However, Jiang Wei seemed completely unable to sense the light. He lost control, overturning every obstacle in the classroom that hindered his path. His movements were violent and urgent, but the expression on his face was the opposite—one of panic and fear. His lips trembled as he uttered indistinguishable syllables, looking like a child who might burst into tears at any moment.
Even Gu Renwen, who had been watching with the intent of a prankster, could no longer sit still. He shoved his phone back into his pocket and walked into the classroom, trembling with trepidation.
By the light of the emergency lamps, he could roughly see the mess the classroom had become. For some reason, Jiang Wei had transformed into a rampaging lion. Almost all the desks and chairs in the back rows were overturned, and there were even streaks of blood on the locker doors—blood was dripping from Jiang Wei’s fingertips onto the floor, silenced by the chaotic noise of the collisions, yet sounding deafening in the stillness.
Gu Renwen didn't even dare to fully enter the room now. It felt as though if he made a single sound, he would be torn to shreds.
He could only reach out with shaking hands to grope along the wall, praying he could find the switch quickly, and praying that Jiang Wei would be like a boss in a horror game, frozen in place by the light.
***
By the time Tang Zihe finished asking his questions and left the classroom, there were no other students left in the teaching building.
It was getting late; it was truly hard on Jiang Wei to still be waiting for him in the classroom.
Thinking this, Tang Zihe quickened his pace, taking the stairs two at a time as he ran toward Class 1.
As he drew closer, he began to hear intermittent noises.
Who would be in the mood to cause destruction in the teaching building this late? He frowned and looked up. The emergency lights were on in the half of the hallway where their classroom was located. His heart began to race in sync with the growing sounds of impact, and a strong sense of unease surged within him.
"What are you doing?" As soon as he approached, he saw Gu Renwen leaning mysteriously against the classroom wall, as if reaching for something inside.
Gu Renwen clearly hadn't expected anyone else to be in the building at this hour. Startled, he spun around and slammed into the wall, gasping for air.
Tang Zihe took a few more steps forward. Previously, his view had been blocked by Gu Renwen, but now it was different. At the same moment Gu Renwen was spotted, he finally managed to fumble the classroom lights on. The brightly lit room could no longer hide the carnage.
The first thing that caught his eye was the messy trail of blood on the floor—red is always a piercing presence. Then he saw Jiang Wei. The boy’s back was slightly hunched as he gasped for air. Hearing the footsteps, he glanced toward the back door—
There were streaks of blood on his face from where he had been scraped. It wasn't much, and it had already dried, but the look in his eyes was one of utter confusion. His dark pupils seemed to swallow every beam of light that hit them, unable to reflect a single spark.
It was a shocking sight.
Tang Zihe felt his heart skip a beat. The person before him felt both incredibly familiar and utterly strange. The unease in his heart had turned into something physical, carving into his chest like a blade.
As he took a step forward, Jiang Wei took two steps back, as if facing a monstrous beast. His footsteps were messy; he only realized he had bumped into something when his entire body began to tilt backward uncontrollably.
"Don't move—!"
Tang Zihe reacted quickly, lunging forward to grab Jiang Wei and pull him back, only to be met with violent struggling from the person in his arms.
"Let go—don't touch me—!"
Jiang Wei’s shoves were backed by every ounce of his strength. Tang Zihe was pushed back, nearly losing his grip.
Jiang Wei was almost manic, kicking and punching at the air in front of him, yet the arm Tang Zihe held tightly was trembling.
"Jiang Wei!"
"Don't touch me—please, I beg you..."
"Jiang Wei! It's me, Tang Zihe!"
Tang Zihe felt Jiang Wei’s movements slow down. Perhaps his shout had worked, or perhaps the violent struggle had pushed him to his physical limit. He was finally exhausted. Regardless, Jiang Wei tilted his head up, staring blankly at Tang Zihe.
It couldn't even be called staring, because his eyes had no focus. His pupils were like black holes; even though he was looking directly at him, there was only a sense of emptiness and vacancy.
Up close, Tang Zihe could see the tear tracks on Jiang Wei’s face. His hands fumbled blindly in the air for a moment before tremulously finding Tang Zihe’s cheek. He traced from the lips to the eyebrows, moving with extreme caution, as if confirming the identity of a fragile object.
Tang Zihe hardly dared to breathe, letting Jiang Wei’s cold fingertips brush over his features. Only when they stopped at his forehead did he speak: "Don't be afraid. I'm here."
A sob broke from Jiang Wei’s throat almost instantly. He wrapped his arms around Tang Zihe’s neck, like a weary traveler who had finally found an oasis, clinging to him with desperate dependence.
Tang Zihe didn't care how disheveled they both looked. He gently patted Jiang Wei’s back to soothe him, but his heart was slowly sinking.
He realized, with a delayed sense of horror, that the person in his arms was truly blind.
***
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