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Everyone harbors a demonic streak within, and when anger accumulates to a certain point, it explodes exponentially. —Epigraph
Looking back now, I realize that my dramatic personality change began around that time. Whether I hated her or thanked her, I don't know. I only know that ordinary days were gone forever.
In junior high, I was a good student in the eyes of my teachers and a dutiful child in my parents' eyes. I focused all my energy on my studies, and while my grades weren't top-notch, they were certainly not bad.
Our school was located in the west of the city, a city that wasn't particularly prosperous but certainly not dilapidated either. However, the west side of the city was the most chaotic. I don't know if they planned to abandon it or demolish and rebuild it, but in any case, it was a haven for thugs and hooligans, with frequent street brawls. The surrounding residents were used to it and had become desensitized.
The school campus perfectly embodied the characteristics of a microcosm of society. Groups of three or five formed cliques, from the entire grade down to each class having its own "big brother" and "big sister."
I was terrified, please don't laugh at me, I was genuinely scared. Because I skipped two grades, I was generally two years younger than everyone else in my class, some even three. No one played with me, no one took me under their wing, and I disliked and looked down on them. They ignored me because I was younger.
Was this my destiny? Ever since the teacher assigned me to be deskmates, my miserable fate began.
My deskmate was named Tara. By today's standards, she was definitely a charming and adorable girl, but everyone in the class was afraid of her, terrified. We were in high school, a combined junior high and high school, and her boyfriend was a notorious troublemaker in the second year of high school. Most importantly, I don't know when it started, but she had also gathered a lot of troublemakers around her, and the other students in the class followed her lead. I personally witnessed someone get a beating once because the class monitor said, "I'm in charge in this class. I don't care if you guys fight after class, but you'd better be quiet during self-study." After that, the class monitor became a mere figurehead. The reason he got beaten up was because Tara was unhappy when she heard the class monitor say he was in charge in the class.
When the teacher announced that decision, I hated him to death. Although I was still a good kid back then, I still cursed his ancestors to the eighteenth generation. Now I'm in the final year of junior high, and there's only one year left until the high school entrance exam. This bastard teacher actually put her as my deskmate. I'm not kidding, that's what I thought back then.
For the first two days, we didn't have any conflicts. If I had to say there was one, it was when she walked out of the window seat after class, I vaguely sensed her small... breasts.
I was even a little secretly pleased. It would be nice if things continued like this. At least after class, the classroom was a mess, but no one dared to cause trouble. But I was clearly wrong, terribly wrong.
On Wednesday morning, I had just taken out my Chinese textbook to prepare for morning reading when Tara arrived, dragging her empty backpack. The whole class turned their attention to her, or rather, to her hair. Her once short, choppy hair was now dyed a deep burgundy. She was the first girl in our class to dye her hair. To be honest, looking back now, it actually looked pretty, but at the time I just found it disgusting. A perfectly normal Asian person with perfectly normal black hair, and she dyed it red—what was that all about?! But I only thought it to myself; I didn't dare say it aloud. I knew that even though we hadn't spoken to each other in the past two days, and she hadn't picked a fight, if I dared to say anything to her openly, she would definitely dare to beat me up.
What was even more frustrating was that the Chinese teacher acted as if she hadn't seen anything, even smiling at her before letting her in. If it were anyone else, the Chinese teacher would never have been so lenient.
I slightly shifted my seat forward to let her in. Tara plopped down, pulled her math workbook from her desk, and threw it on my desk. "Here, could you copy this for me?"
I didn't want to offend her, but I also didn't want to let her copy my homework. So I gave her her workbook back and offered her mine; I had no time for that.
Tara clearly hadn't expected me to disobey her. She turned around, staring intently at me. My heart pounded, but I pretended not to notice her anger.
"I'll ask you one more time, copy or not?" Tara was clearly angry; her voice had turned cold. I looked at her, a sudden, inexplicable fear gripping me, but I finally gave in.
I don't know what I was thinking, but I wanted to get back at her, so I deliberately wrote many wrong answers and made a mess of my handwriting. Sure enough, when the teacher graded it, her face was terribly grim. I secretly glanced at her and immediately regretted it. It turned out she got a zero on her math homework, and the teacher, without any mercy, gave her a comment—"I can't teach a student like you."
Tara held her notebook, and with a tearing sound, the page with the humiliating comment instantly turned to shreds. "No one has ever dared to insult me like that, never!" she said viciously.
I didn't know who she was talking to—the math teacher or me—but I couldn't concentrate on the rest of the class. Watching her gather her followers to discuss things as soon as get out of class ended sent a chill down my spine.
No, I couldn't just sit idly by. To be precise, I didn't want her to retaliate. The opportunity finally came. While she was twirling a pen, an accident happened; a cute ballpoint pen accidentally fell onto the corner of the desk. I quickly bent down to pick it up. "Hey, your pen."
