With a sharp snap, my wristwatch was smashed down onto the hallway tiles.
It was a watch that my deceased father and mother had bought me to celebrate passing my middle school entrance exams.
I used it while polishing it with care. It was a keepsake from my parents.
“Ah, oops, I dropped it. Sorry, Kurokawa.”
The one who laughed with a fake voice was the absolute ruler of the class—Tetsuya Fujisaki.
The reason I was targeted was not a big deal.
Fujisaki was bothering a female classmate named Yoko, so I stepped in to stop it. That is all.
I used to play with Fujisaki when we were little.
That is why I thought things would work out. But that was a mistake.
From that point on, my everyday life crumbled apart with a loud noise.
“…Ah, ah… aaaah—what are you doing…”
I crouched down while crying to pick up the broken watch.
Fujisaki and his groupies looked at me and laughed with vulgar, snickering voices.
Among them was Yoko, the classmate I had saved in the past.
“What am I doing? You were wearing dirty garbage, so I just took it off and threw it away, right?”
Fujisaki wore a grinning, twisted smile.
Then, he slowly moved the sole of his shoe over my hand as I tried to pick up the wristwatch that had fallen on the floor.
“Gyaaaaaa—”
He stepped right on my hand along with the watch.
Crack.
A dull, unpleasant sound echoed.
The glass of the watch—my parents’ keepsake—broke, the hands inside came loose, and the dial was warped.
“Ah… the watch…”
“Ah, it’s completely broken. You can’t use it even if you fix it now… It’s just trash.”
Fujisaki knows how precious this is to me.
My vision blurs with tears of frustration and humiliation.
I wanted to punch him.
But if I did something like that, his groupies would just hold me down and turn me into a punching bag.
Fujisaki pulled a thousand-yen bill out of my wallet.
Even though he is rich, unlike someone like me, he steals my meager money just to make me suffer.
In the past, there was even a time when my school uniform was stripped off, and I was thrown into the girls’ bathroom naked.
Everyone in the class is on Fujisaki’s side and thinks, “Anything is allowed to be done to me.”
Even Sato, our homeroom teacher, was useless when I tried to talk to him, saying, “You are also to blame for being disliked by Fujisaki.”
“Hey, is it fun living such a miserable life? Since everyone hates you, wouldn’t it be better if you just stopped coming to school? (Laughs)”
Those words Fujisaki spat out stuck in the back of my mind like a curse.
Because of Fujisaki, I became unable to go to school, shut myself away, and couldn’t do anything.
Is not having parents really that bad… I am poor, but I am not causing any trouble for anyone.
What on earth did I do wrong?!