Fair

After Chang Di's paper-burning was reported, no one saw him go behind the boiler room again. But whoever had stopped burning hadn't stopped drawing. Chang Di kept buying new notebooks. As for whether those notebooks were being filled with new sketches, no one dared look.

A week after Chang Di stopped burning, during a Chinese class, language teacher Ma Dahua was grinding through an exam paper in her coarse, raspy voice. The woman — plain name, heavy frame, jowled face, past fifty — was not well liked by her students. Not because of her appearance, but because she routinely berated and humiliated any student who didn't bring her gifts. For a language teacher, she had no cultural refinement whatsoever; when she attacked students verbally, she sounded like a street market fishwife, reaching for the crudest and most degrading words she could find.

Some students hated her also because of Gu Qing. The chain of events that led to Gu Qing's death had begun in Ma Dahua's class.

Months before, during a Chinese lesson, Ma Dahua had suddenly charged at Gu Qing's desk and snatched a drawing she'd been making secretly under the table. It was a couple embracing — a lifelike portrait: the woman was Gu Qing, the man was Chang Di. Ma Dahua first "exhibited" the drawing in front of the whole class, then tore the entire sketchbook to pieces, then subjected Gu Qing to a torrent of sexually degrading abuse, then brought in homeroom teacher Xiao Jin, and finally escalated it to the disciplinary office.

In the aftermath, because Chang Di ranked at the top of the class and had been designated a "good student," he received no punishment. Gu Qing, for a single drawing, walked toward her death.

But Ma Dahua — the woman who had set this in motion — showed no remorse. She never visited the family of the deceased. She didn't even attend the funeral. A person who does not know how to repent will inevitably be taught to.

Ma Dahua was in the middle of her lesson. She turned to write on the blackboard, and a paper ball flew from the back of the room and struck her squarely on the back of the head, then bounced onto the lectern.

She spun around, clutching the back of her skull, and screamed at the class: "Who threw that? Who?!" She grabbed the paper ball from the lectern and unfolded it.

Another sketch. This one depicted the very classroom she was standing in — the writing on the blackboard inside the drawing matched her own exactly. There was also a version of herself in the picture, standing at the lectern in the same floral blouse she was wearing. The only difference: in the drawing, she had no head. The neck ended in nothing. The perspective indicated the artist had been sitting in the second seat by the wall.

A student with the ability to draw like that had once sat in that seat — Gu Qing. And now, months later, someone had drawn a picture in the same style from the same seat during a Chinese lesson. Who?

Ma Dahua stared at it, the flesh of her face twitching. Her gaze turned viciously on Chang Di, who sat in the second row by the wall. "You drew this, didn't you?! What's the meaning of this? Are you cursing me to die?! You little—!" She shrieked at him.

"I didn't draw it, I—" Before Chang Di could finish, Ma Dahua had already crossed the room, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him toward the door. Sometimes rage can disguise fear very effectively, and it doesn't much matter who you take it out on.

Chang Di didn't resist. He let himself be pulled outside. The moment they were in the corridor, Ma Dahua raised her hand to slap him. Chang Di knew the blow was coming and shut his eyes to receive it.

But the slap never landed.

Chang Di opened his eyes. A young female teacher stood between him and Ma Dahua, straining with both hands to hold back Ma Dahua's raised arm.

Chang Di recognized her — she was the student teacher for geometry in Class 4, who had been at the school less than a month. Her name was Hui Nan.

Hui Nan held Ma Dahua's arm with one hand and pushed Chang Di out of range with the other, all while saying rapidly: "Okay, okay, Ma Laoshi, let's calm down, let's calm down — talk it through, talk it through."

"That little — he drew, drew a curse on me! He wants me dead!" Ma Dahua panted, still straining against Hui Nan's grip with no sign of surrendering.

"That really is unacceptable behavior. Ma Laoshi, you calm down — I'll deal with him."

Speaking as she went, Hui Nan seized Chang Di's wrist and pulled him away, her other arm looped behind him over his shoulder, shielding him with her body as she hustled him clear, leaving Ma Dahua stomping and cursing behind them: "You little brat, don't you think this is over!"

Hui Nan brought Chang Di to the mathematics office and pulled up a chair for him.

"Chang Di, I've heard about your situation. You're acting out in class because of Gu Qing, aren't you?"

Chang Di said nothing. He kept his head down.

Hui Nan sighed. "What's done is done. You have to look forward. You still have a long road ahead — studying, the entrance exams, work one day. The competition is fierce; without effort now, getting a job later will be very hard. This world is fair — whatever effort you put in now is what you'll get back…"

"Fair?" Chang Di had been staring at the floor. At that one word he suddenly snapped his head up, eyes cutting into Hui Nan like pins. As if that single word was the only thing he had heard in everything she said.

"You said fair?" He repeated it. "Xiao Qing was always kind. She never did a bad thing in her life. She was killed for nothing at barely fifteen years old. Ma Dahua — that scum who takes students' bribes, beats and abuses them, has done every rotten thing possible — she's past fifty and still going strong. Is that fair?"

"Chang Di!" Hui Nan stood up, furious. "How can you speak about your teacher that way? Didn't you learn to respect your elders?"

Chang Di gave a cold laugh. "Respect should go both ways."

After the conversation with Chang Di ended, Hui Nan replayed it in her mind and felt a chill crawl down her back. Not because of the student's extreme attitude toward teachers. But because of what he had said: Xiao Qing was killed.